L'Shanah Tovah

Yesterday I was working with a high school student when his mother mentioned something about someone who was "half Jewish." My student immediately shot back, "There's no such thing, Mom. You either are or you aren't." Technically, he's right. Although some reform Jews will recognize those whose mothers aren't Jewish as Jews, traditional Jewish law requires matrilineal Judaism, and my mother is not a Jew.

But one of the best things about Judaism, which marks it as distinctive from so many other faiths, is that it encourages questioning, and as a proud half-Jew with a father who was raised Orthodox, I would like to respectfully disagree with my young charge.

Because my last name is Jewish, people almost always assume I am Jewish. This has been true for as long as I can remember. And when people make inclusive comments, as happens frequently, I never correct them. If asked outright, which rarely happens, I explain that I was born to parents of different religious backgrounds and sent to a liberal Unitarian church for religious education and spirituality--and then, when their eyes glaze over--I stop. Half-Jewish is a better answer. People either think it's bologna, so to speak, and let it drop, or are also half-Jewish and take it as an opportunity for a high five (this is generally when the asker is male).

Where am I going with this? I wish I knew. But when I read the email I received today from my dad's cousin, the former Gloria Schrager of Philadelphia (long story), which read, in part: "To my long lost cousins, some of whom I have never met, my daughter, and other members of the tribe, wherever you are geographically, I wish all of you a HAPPY NEW YEAR. Six degrees of separation, genes, and blood, we are all connected," I felt connected. Not half-connected but fully connected, to a long line of people as far back as people go, who look like me, sound like me, smile like me are related to me, genetically and yes, as Jews.

Rosh Hashanah may be my favorite Jewish holiday. I like new beginnings, fresh starts, second chances. I like autumn, much better than January, and have always thought September a far more fitting month in which to celebrate the ending of one cycle and the launching of another.

So from this half-Jew to ye of all faiths, or none: L'Shanah Tovah. A very good year for us all.

Friendship

Nicole, whom I have written about before, is here with her husband and daughter for the week because she has finished her dissertation. From the first time I met Nicole, literally in the first few minutes--when she appeared in my dorm room asking for clothes because her trunk had not arrived from San Francisco--her presence has made me feel as though a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. She is relaxed, cheerful, unflappable, responsible, impervious to pettiness or jealousy, congenitally uncomplaining and the least neurotic person I have ever met. In short, she is nothing like me.

The stark differences in temperament make every adventure a heightened study in contrasts, although somehow we are preternaturally compatible. There was the cross-country road trip on which I forced us to eat every meal and snack at a carefully researched, Chowhound-endorsed, Saveur-featured out-of-the-way spot featuring regional specialties. By the time we hit the East Coast, she was begging me to let her eat a sandwich, just one sandwich. There was the episode in Mexico when I was, as I was each time I visited her in Mexico, taken violently ill and the side-of-the-road "medicine woman" told her she had to give me a shot. As I lay moaning in agony on the floor, she ran around the hotel begging strangers to come with her so she wouldn't have to insert the needle herself. There was the time I lent her my car in college to get to a soccer tournament although my parents had forbidden me to let anyone else drive it for insurance reasons. When, inevitably, it was wrecked, their response was: We are angry with you, not Nicole. She is much more responsible than you, and you are the one who disobeyed us. There was the series of attractive, athletic, if mildly mentally incapacitated boyfriends I was forced to make idle small talk with at dinner after dinner, but I digress. As well as grow fearful of possible retaliation in person if not in print.

So I will end with one of my favorite Amy and Nicole stories which gives, I think, a taste of our dynamic and will put me in a good mood for the rest of the day, remembering. It was the end of the summer, and Nicole had flown to Boston to head to college with me. The aforementioned car, before its demise, was packed full of our stuff, and when we were ready, we said good-bye to my parents and got on the road. Not ten minutes into the trip we had our first argument, about directions, my bete noire and a particular strength of Nicole's. As I was driving, another bete noire of mine, I was feeling defensive, and Nicole was likely feeling on edge, which is another way of saying "concerned about her personal safety." Although it is a rule of thumb among those who know me well to completely disregard anything I have to say on the subject of navigation, and although I usually acquiesce quickly if anyone offers up so much as a hunch, this time I would not back down, and Nicole--who is stubborn and likes the idea of punishing me with my own stubbornness and did not have the advantage of being behind the wheel, had no choice but to sit and seethe as I drove in the direction I felt was the right one...for about a hundred and fifty miles.

By this point, I was starting to get a little nervous. Nothing looked familiar, and Nicole was exuding irritation, and all I wanted was to be pulling up to the Main Gate where we could unload the car and make sure we got the best two rooms in our five-bedroom student house. Finally, Nicole spoke. Do you smell anything? she asked. I shook my head no, but there was a smell in the air, hard to place but distinctive. Do you see anything unusual by the side of the road? she asked. I looked. Sand. Grass, set back from the sand. My stomach was starting to feel a little bit funny. At the next possible opportunity, I pulled into a lot and turned around. We were at the beach. Cape Cod. It was indisputable.

Which would have been fine. But we went to school in Poughkeepsie.

Gratitude

John McCain-like, I refused to acknowledge you on Friday and Saturday, after a few very lame pseudo-entries last week. And in surreal fashion, I'm not even sure whom I'm addressing right now: The blog itself? My readers? My own conscience? All of the above?

I think I'm back now, though, and there are a few very concrete reasons why. They are the same reasons that have made this the only successful experiment in discipline and continuity--or the only one that has brought me such happiness--in my life thus far.

I'll be honest. There have been many, many days when I have forced myself to write here because of my pledge to myself and signed off convinced that this was, indeed, an exercise in futility. Not futile in that I was actually writing, but futile in its grim march onward in spite of lack of inspiration. It is counter to my personality, my belief system, to make myself do things for the sake of doing them. And there have been weeks at a time when I was writing so fluidly, so productively, that it never occurred to me to compare this blog to a diet or a gym regimen. But then there have been the dark days, or rather nights, when I have waited--in my old familiar style--until the very last possible minute and then forced myself to type, not write, something--just so I could say that I had done it.

I started this blog as an experiment, as a framework for me in which to find my voice and stride again. I didn't tell many people about it, but the ones I did tell were people whose opinion, whose feedback, matters most profoundly to me, in so many different ways. Some of you are writers, and I crave your feedback on the writing itself. Others of you are people who know me very well and love me anyway, and I crave your support and encouragement. Some of you are both.

Some people, to my surprise, have come to read this blog thanks to a friend or relative of mine, or because they saw a link on Facebook and have known me at some point over the course of my life and found themselves mildly curious. Your responses--the fact I know you are reading, too--has also kept me going. I find myself daily marveling at the fact that the circumstances of my life have led to me form some kind of a connection with so many fascinating, brilliant, thoughtful, insightful people doing so many wonderful things. The very occasional nasty comments tend to elicit an immediate outraged response by someone feeling protective of me, which so totally more than negates the momentary pang at the nastiness.

I am not actually writing this for you, at heart, however. I am still doing it for me, in spite of my increasingly appreciative relationship to your feedback. But your comments--gracious, reassuring, wondering, defensive on my behalf, and yes, praising--make the enterprise worthwhile. You are why I keep going, why I am reminded every single morning that writing is a conversation and that I need to be worthy of the dialogue, that attention of the right kind is why we wake up and push through every day, that I am fortunate beyond compare in friends and family regardless of anything else that is happening in my life or in the world.

I won't do this again. Or maybe I will--one unequivocal aspect of the blog is that it is uncharted territory. But I kind of think I won't. So just this once, as I ease back in from my quicksand episode, I will say what I have wanted to say to so many of you for 248 days now.

Thank you.

Another Sigh

Oh, for just one day writing day like the days of me, ten, with a yellow legal pad and a #2 pencil. That's how I used to write, all the way through high school: longhand, on a pad, often prone on the floor, or in a hammock, or in bed. And you know what? I would fill pages and pages at a time, forgetting where I was, or what I was supposed to be doing, and never once did I think to myself: Why am I doing this? What is the point of this? Not once.

Sigh.

Blog suspended one day on account of exhaustion. In spite of my disappointment in myself I think this is preferable than making you read whatever I could write right now.

A demain.

Absorption

It's late, and I'm tired, and my day tomorrow starts at about 5:30 and will go until 11 or so with not more than five or ten minutes for a break, let alone lunch. I know, I know. You are playing your tiny violin. Or at least one of you is. You know who you are.

Anyway. But I am making myself push through this rough patch, in which I feel I have nothing to write about of any interest (my god, yesterday I told you about my dream), because I have faith (sometimes) that there is something worthwhile on the other side of it, and I won't find out unless I persevere.

An anecdote:

Lily had a long day today, and I hadn't seen her, and when I got home from work I asked her to tell me something special about her day, and as always she didn't want to. The information has to come from her. If I solicit it, she clams up; I know this, but day after day I try in spite of myself. Sometimes, on a good day, something juicy leaks through.

While I was cooking dinner she came into the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. "We played a fun game on the roof today, Mama," she said. I tried not to appear overly interested.

"Oh?" I said, keeping my cool.

"Yes. Luke and Calvin got bikes, and Isabel and I decided that they would be our taxi drivers, so they picked us up and took us to work, and then they waited outside while we were at our jobs, and then they drove us home after work."

"That sounds...fun," I said, choking back laughter and, I must confess, a little bit of pride.

"It was," she said. And over her shoulder as she walked out with her water, "But I'm not talking about anything else."

Okay. That was enough.

Perspective, Ad Infinitum

I figure everyone is allowed one opportunity to share the dream they had the night before. Just one, mind you. Just one. You're probably thinking I've already had mine, but the truth is, I rarely remember my dreams. And when I do, they are so prosaic as to be virtually indistinguishable from my actual life. For example, I will fall asleep reading a book, will dream I am in bed reading a book, and when I wake up in the morning will realize for a fleeting moment: I dreamed I was reading a book. Seriously.

But for a few flirtations with standard anxiety dreams--being chased, falling, etc.--during times of duress, this has been the situation. Last night, however, I had an unusual dream, or for me an unusual dream, in that it did not echo in some way an actual experience, and I am going to take my one opportunity to share it here.

I was somewhere out in the country. It was green and beautiful. The day was sunny and clear. There was a pool, or a pond, or a natural pool made to look like a pond, and at some point I noticed that there was a reddish golden retriever swimming around its perimeter. There were other people around, my children, for example, and it may have been some kind of party, but there were no people swimming in the pool, just the dog. And in my dream I thought: That dog looks so happy, swimming around in the pool. It must feel great to be swimming in that cool, clean water. And hours later, I was back by the pool, and I noticed the dog was still swimming, around and around in slow circles. And I thought: That's a long time for that dog to be swimming. He must be tired. But he really must love to swim. What a happy dog. Some dogs just love water. And at some point, hours later again, I suddenly had a flash of terror and ran to the pool as fast as I could. The dog had been swimming around the edge of the pool all day by this point, and it had hit me out of nowhere that the dog DID NOT KNOW HOW TO GET OUT OF THE POOL. He's going to drown! I screamed, not out loud but in my head, and I jumped in the water fully clothed. Somehow, in my dream, I managed to get the dog's front paws up on the rocks and grass around the pool. He was heavier than I could have imagined, and sodden, but I did it. And then, by myself, I pushed his lower body out to follow, and the dog collapsed, exhausted but alive, on the grass, as I watched from the edge of the pool.

Can you see why I wanted to share it? Hmmmm.

Out of my system. No more dreams.

Sliver

Today was the first day of the season cold enough to wear a sweater. In fact, as I lay on the couch reading the paper just a short time ago I had to get up for a wool blanket to keep from shivering. The girls are wearing sleeper pajamas with feet.

Being cold always makes me think of the bathroom in my parents' house, on the second floor, where the heating vent was on a vertical panel by the door at the base of a shelf to the ceiling on which towels and bedsheets were stored.

As my mother's strategy for keeping heating costs down in our drafty old house could be summed up by the words, "Put on your parka," we found unorthodox ways to keep warm. Or at least I did, and I was the one who always seemed to be cold: like Midnight, our cat, I sought out all the heating vents in the house and would lie on them, or by them, with Midnight, waiting for the periodic blasts of heat to warm me while I read.

But the bathroom heating vent--that was my vent of choice. For one, the bathroom door was the only one in the house with a lock. I could go in and close and lock the door, sit with my back against the wall, knees bent up--as the space was small--the soles of my feet against the vent. It would get too hot, and I would have to pull them an inch or so away, but for as long as I could I would let the heat waft around my legs, never quite reaching my face, leaving most of my body warmed, the way it feels to lie under layers of down with the windows open in the middle of winter, the burnish of cold on the cheeks serving only to enhance the cocoon effect of the bedding.

Right now, as I sit and write, my feet and lower legs are cold. I have wrapped my legs around each other for warmth, but what I would really like is about fifteen minutes in that bathroom, with the door locked, my chemistry book on my lap, a Seventeen magazine on top of it, my feet flat up against the blast of heat from the vent.

Transition

Because it is September, and it is "back to school," and because I will soon be spending a weekend with four of my closest friends from college, all of whom I met in my first few days on campus, I have been thinking about when I left home for college, twenty years ago this fall, when I was eighteen years old. It doesn't seem possible that so much time has passed, that I am sitting in a home of my own, with a husband, two children and two dogs of my own sleeping as I write. So much is still the same: My parents, in their house, my childhood home, so much the same, my late night ways--I sit here well past midnight, sleep a distant point on the horizon, as it always has been, so many of the people I hold dear, the same, the same, the same.

And yet. I remember standing on the deck of the ferry back from Martha's Vineyard by myself, a hardback copy of Little Men in my hand, a library book, not mine, and looking out at the ocean, thinking: The last summer of my childhood. Nothing will ever be the same again. And the drive back to Sudbury with my parents, just my parents, to pack the station wagon full of all my things--new clothes, new sheets, a hot pot (never used)--and the drive, then, to Poughkeepsie, a tense drive, a quiet drive, the three of us lost in our thoughts, although I thought nothing of this at the time, only of my thoughts, me.

And before all this, that drive, so many moments. A chaotic, giddy shopping excursion at CVS for school supplies with my friend Kate, as though we wouldn't be able to buy notebook paper! pens! highlighters (also never used)! at our college bookstores. The somber drive to Bloomingdales for my somber clothes: dark jeans, a navy and black striped T-shirt. I had no inkling that in a few short months I would be waiting in line at the dining hall in pajama pants and a ratty sweatshirt of someone else's, always someone else's, the crisp dark jeans folded in a neat square with the hotpot in the back of my closet, unworn.

But what I am writing up to, what I was thinking about when I started, is a moment I can't really bear to conjure up in full. Still. I will sketch around it, though, because I have to now, and why I am thinking of it now?, but I will do it. Waiting in a long line that snaked around and around a part of the Main building that I can't even remember anymore, with my parents, because everybody else's parents were there, too, to get something, or sign something, and then realizing this was where we were supposed to say it, and somehow being by a big glass window, and having hugged them, and closed my eyes hard tight because crying all out was not really an option, and then looking out the window and saying it, the word, again in my head as I watched their backs walk away, walk away with what seemed like forever in their posture, telling myself to stop being such a baby, so stupid, and then realizing they'd rounded a corner and looking out this big glass window, walking close to it, leaning into it so none of the strangers around me could see me and crying anyway, and whispering the word one more time.

Good-bye.

No Excuses

I lied. But seriously, back tomorrow.

Suspension

Blog suspended for one day on account of my having found an amazing babysitter who works at night. Back tomorrow.

One More Night...

On the morning of Saturday, September thirteenth, a friend and I, her
husband, father and stepmother, and the three oldest of our four
children, two four-year-olds and an almost seven-year-old, set out in
two cars from Manhattan and Westport, Connecticut, headed for Bucks
County, Pennsylvania: a swing county in a swing state we fervently
hope will go for Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election.

We arrived at campaign headquarters with no idea what to expect,
knowing only that each of us had reached a point at some time over the
course of this campaign when we could no longer be satisfied remaining on the sidelines yelling at our television sets. We were told we would be canvassing and were given as a group four manila envelopes with lists of about twenty-five households in each, providing us with the names and ages of all members of the household, as well as party affiliation.

Over the course of a very long, hot, exhausting day walking up one
winding street, then driving to another, over and over again, we were
greeted at the door by people who were almost uniformly willing to
talk to us. I had planned on writing a descriptive essay about this
experience, about how it felt to take my most deeply held beliefs to
strangers' doorsteps, to--for the first time in my life--play an
active role in an election I think could determine the world my
children will grow up in, but somehow I just can't quite do it. It is
not that I don't have enough to say; it is that I have too much.
Although I will say that canvassing itself is dense, dirty, sweaty
work, the experience itself, the day, felt sacred.

I am also not certain that the best use of my voice right now is to
tell you about the poor, working and lower middle class families we
met, the guard dogs behind chain link fences at virtually every
household, the decaying statues of jockeys or the Virgin Mary on the
front lawns, the crumbling window frames, the jaunty potted plants and
often carefully mowed lawns, the overloaded ashtrays on the front
steps, the doors slammed in our faces, the wide-eyed children behind
screen doors, the nearly ubiquitous American flags. More important, I
think, is to say that at almost every household we visited, someone
said something that surprised me. Yes, I was often dismayed. The lack
of information, education, interest, perspective and respect was
depressing. However, I was much more often, and more meaningfully,
inspired: by the seventy-four-year-old Catholic woman who had voted
Republican her entire life but was not going to let her party "take
away my rights." By the handicapped woman whose rotting porch
threatened to collapse beneath my feet who said pro-choice was her
issue, and if she had to walk to the polls come election morning she
was ready. By the African-American woman to whom we gave her first
ever voter registration form and her just eighteen-year-old daughter
who had registered the moment she could, telling her mother, You're
coming with me, we'll do this together. I think in November, when the
election results come in, I will remember her face.

When we arrived back at the campaign headquarters, universally worse
for the wear, we filled out the Canvass Tally Sheets we were given,
along with other people who had been doing the same thing, all over
the county. One woman looked up from her sheet at the young man who
had given us our morning training and asked, "I have to ask: Does this
really make any difference?" Although I was curious to hear his
response, which was that from the highest levels they were being told
that canvassing was far and away the most valuable way to contribute
to the campaign at this point in time, I didn't really need to.

Over the course of one blazing hot Saturday, we were able to tell about a hundred households just why we are convinced that Barack Obama needs to be the next president of the United States. We made personal pleas. We refuted some lies. And although we weren't really supposed to, we engaged in some arguments. I left Bucks County ready for a shower and about twelve hours of sleep. I also left thinking that if Bensalem, Pennsylvania is any indication, or if I am any indication, people in this country are angry and disillusioned. And they're going to do something about it this time.

I am not the same person who left the city Saturday morning with a cup
of coffee and a whole lot of preconceptions. I don't want to tell you
the details of my experience. I want to beseech you to contact the
campaign office in a swing state near you, and tell them you'll give
them a day.

This I can promise: It will be a day you will never forget

A Plea: Repeated (ten people have committed to canvassing in five states so far...will you join them?)

On the morning of Saturday, September thirteenth, a friend and I, her
husband, father and stepmother, and the three oldest of our four
children, two four-year-olds and an almost seven-year-old, set out in
two cars from Manhattan and Westport, Connecticut, headed for Bucks
County, Pennsylvania: a swing county in a swing state we fervently
hope will go for Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election.

We arrived at campaign headquarters with no idea what to expect,
knowing only that each of us had reached a point at some time over the
course of this campaign when we could no longer be satisfied remaining on the sidelines yelling at our television sets. We were told we would be canvassing and were given as a group four manila envelopes with lists of about twenty-five households in each, providing us with the names and ages of all members of the household, as well as party affiliation.

Over the course of a very long, hot, exhausting day walking up one
winding street, then driving to another, over and over again, we were
greeted at the door by people who were almost uniformly willing to
talk to us. I had planned on writing a descriptive essay about this
experience, about how it felt to take my most deeply held beliefs to
strangers' doorsteps, to--for the first time in my life--play an
active role in an election I think could determine the world my
children will grow up in, but somehow I just can't quite do it. It is
not that I don't have enough to say; it is that I have too much.
Although I will say that canvassing itself is dense, dirty, sweaty
work, the experience itself, the day, felt sacred.

I am also not certain that the best use of my voice right now is to
tell you about the poor, working and lower middle class families we
met, the guard dogs behind chain link fences at virtually every
household, the decaying statues of jockeys or the Virgin Mary on the
front lawns, the crumbling window frames, the jaunty potted plants and
often carefully mowed lawns, the overloaded ashtrays on the front
steps, the doors slammed in our faces, the wide-eyed children behind
screen doors, the nearly ubiquitous American flags. More important, I
think, is to say that at almost every household we visited, someone
said something that surprised me. Yes, I was often dismayed. The lack
of information, education, interest, perspective and respect was
depressing. However, I was much more often, and more meaningfully,
inspired: by the seventy-four-year-old Catholic woman who had voted
Republican her entire life but was not going to let her party "take
away my rights." By the handicapped woman whose rotting porch
threatened to collapse beneath my feet who said pro-choice was her
issue, and if she had to walk to the polls come election morning she
was ready. By the African-American woman to whom we gave her first
ever voter registration form and her just eighteen-year-old daughter
who had registered the moment she could, telling her mother, You're
coming with me, we'll do this together. I think in November, when the
election results come in, I will remember her face.

When we arrived back at the campaign headquarters, universally worse
for the wear, we filled out the Canvass Tally Sheets we were given,
along with other people who had been doing the same thing, all over
the county. One woman looked up from her sheet at the young man who
had given us our morning training and asked, "I have to ask: Does this
really make any difference?" Although I was curious to hear his
response, which was that from the highest levels they were being told
that canvassing was far and away the most valuable way to contribute
to the campaign at this point in time, I didn't really need to.

Over the course of one blazing hot Saturday, we were able to tell about a hundred households just why we are convinced that Barack Obama needs to be the next president of the United States. We made personal pleas. We refuted some lies. And although we weren't really supposed to, we engaged in some arguments. I left Bucks County ready for a shower and about twelve hours of sleep. I also left thinking that if Bensalem, Pennsylvania is any indication, or if I am any indication, people in this country are angry and disillusioned. And they're going to do something about it this time.

I am not the same person who left the city Saturday morning with a cup
of coffee and a whole lot of preconceptions. I don't want to tell you
the details of my experience. I want to beseech you to contact the
campaign office in a swing state near you, and tell them you'll give
them a day.

This I can promise: It will be a day you will never forget.

An Urgent Plea

On the morning of Saturday, September thirteenth, a friend and I, her
husband, father and stepmother, and the three oldest of our four
children, two four-year-olds and an almost seven-year-old, set out in
two cars from Manhattan and Westport, Connecticut, headed for Bucks
County, Pennsylvania: a swing county in a swing state we fervently
hope will go for Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election.

We arrived at campaign headquarters with no idea what to expect,
knowing only that each of us had reached a point at some time over the
course of this campaign when we could no longer be satisfied remaining
on the sidelines yelling at our television sets. We were told we would
be canvassing and were given as a group four manila envelopes with
lists of about twenty-five households in each, providing us with the
names and ages of all members of the household, as well as party
affiliation.

Over the course of a very long, hot, exhausting day walking up one
winding street, then driving to another, over and over again, we were
greeted at the door by people who were almost uniformly willing to
talk to us. I had planned on writing a descriptive essay about this
experience, about how it felt to take my most deeply held beliefs to
strangers' doorsteps, to--for the first time in my life--play an
active role in an election I think could determine the world my
children will grow up in, but somehow I just can't quite do it. It is
not that I don't have enough to say; it is that I have too much.
Although I will say that canvassing itself is dense, dirty, sweaty
work, the experience itself, the day, felt sacred.

I am also not certain that the best use of my voice right now is to
tell you about the poor, working and lower middle class families we
met, the guard dogs behind chain link fences at virtually every
household, the decaying statues of jockeys or the Virgin Mary on the
front lawns, the crumbling window frames, the jaunty potted plants and
often carefully mowed lawns, the overloaded ashtrays on the front
steps, the doors slammed in our faces, the wide-eyed children behind
screen doors, the nearly ubiquitous American flags. More important, I
think, is to say that at almost every household we visited, someone
said something that surprised me. Yes, I was often dismayed. The lack
of information, education, interest, perspective and respect was
depressing. However, I was much more often, and more meaningfully,
inspired: by the seventy-four-year-old Catholic woman who had voted
Republican her entire life but was not going to let her party "take
away my rights." By the handicapped woman whose rotting porch
threatened to collapse beneath my feet who said pro-choice was her
issue, and if she had to walk to the polls come election morning she
was ready. By the African-American woman to whom we gave her first
ever voter registration form and her just eighteen-year-old daughter
who had registered the moment she could, telling her mother, You're
coming with me, we'll do this together. I think in November, when the
election results come in, I will remember her face.

When we arrived back at the campaign headquarters, universally worse
for the wear, we filled out the Canvass Tally Sheets we were given,
along with other people who had been doing the same thing, all over
the county. One woman looked up from her sheet at the young man who
had given us our morning training and asked, "I have to ask: Does this
really make any difference?" Although I was curious to hear his
response, which was that from the highest levels they were being told
that canvassing was far and away the most valuable way to contribute
to the campaign at this point in time, I didn't really need to.

Over the course of one blazing hot Saturday, we were able to tell
about a hundred households just why we are convinced that Barack Obama
needs to be the next president of the United States. We made personal
pleas. We refuted some lies. And although we weren't really supposed
to, we engaged in some arguments. I left Bucks County ready for a
shower and about twelve hours of sleep. I also left thinking that if
Bensalem, Pennsylvania is any indication, or if I am any indication,
people in this country are angry and disillusioned. And they're going
to do something about it this time.

I am not the same person who left the city Saturday morning with a cup
of coffee and a whole lot of preconceptions. I don't want to tell you
the details of my experience. I want to beseech you to contact the
campaign office in a swing state near you, and tell them you'll give
them a day.

This I can promise you: It will be a day you will never forget.

Bucks County Demographics

Courtesy of Wikipedia, a little information about where we were today: Bensalem, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Actual posting tomorrow...

"Bensalem has a large and fast-growing foreign-born population, which includes large concentrations of American immigrants.
As of the census of 2000, there were 58,434 people, 22,627 households, and 15,114 families residing in the township. The racial makeup of the township was 82.90% White, 6.93% African American, 0.22% Native American, 6.61% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 1.64% from other races, and 1.65% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.29% of the population.

There are 22,627 households of which 30.6% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.6% were married couples living together, 10.5% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.2% were non-families. 26.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 7.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.56 and the average family size was 3.14.

In the township the population was spread out with 23.1% under the age of 18, 8.9% from 18 to 24, 32.5% from 25 to 44, 24.5% from 45 to 64, and 11.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years.

The median income for a household in the township was $49,737, and the median income for a family was $58,771. Males had a median income of $39,914 versus $30,926 for females. The per capita income for the township was $22,517. 7.4% of the population and 6.0% of families were below the poverty line. Of the total population, 6.8% of those under the age of 18 and 10.6% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.

As of April 2008, there are 427,604 registered voters in Bucks County:
Democratic: 185,407 (43.36%)
Republican: 181,701 (42.49%)
Other Parties: 60,496 (14.15%)

Like Pennsylvania at large, Bucks County is regarded as a swing vote in major elections. Bucks County was once a safeguard for the Republican Party, and although politically the county has diversified, Republicans still control most of the offices at local levels of government. County Republicans tend to hold moderate positions on environmental and social issues while advocating fiscal restraint. While the GOP controls most offices locally, at the national level, voters have favored the Democratic presidential candidate in the last four elections."

To PA

Tomorrow I am going to Pennsylvania, with Lily and another family, to register voters in a swing county in this swing state.

Although I know there are voters who are not physically able to get to the polls, or are kept away from the polls in various ways for political reasons, I believe that if you are well and able, and you do not vote, you should not have the privilege of being a United States citizen. I do not think this is a strong statement. I think it is eminently reasonable. I would like to do my part to convince people that voting is a base expectation, not a choice.

That's all for tonight. I have a had a very busy week. But I will be writing a real piece after my experience tomorrow, that is for sure.

An Introduction!

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

--Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities



Okay. So Dickens was referring to the French Revolution, not my house in the hour between dinner and bedtime on an arbitrary Thursday evening in September, when my four-year-old is “putting on a show” on the living room couch clad in a tutu and fireman’s hat, and my one-year-old is pushing a wooden tricycle into the wall over and over again in a desperate attempt to turn it around, and the dogs are circling my legs because although I managed some meatballs and zucchini for the girls, and set the highchair tray on the floor for them afterward as an appetizer, I have not actually managed to feed them, and the telephone rings and it is an editor I owe work to, and I say, “Oh, no, it’s just the radio,” and rush into the bathroom and lock the door behind me to block out all the background noise.

It is times like this when, like Dickens, I fear we are “all going direct the other way,” especially me, because I am responsible for all this chaos: I made it, I asked for it, I wanted it, even—or so I thought. I think it is safe to say that parenting has never before been compared to the French Revolution, but now that I think about it, I’m not sure why. If the Revolution was a time of political and social upheaval during which the monarchy was overthrown by the people, who desired equality and more control over their government, then is there in fact a more apt comparison for a peaceful household of authoritarian adults into which two citizens are born, insisting upon radical change, personal freedom, the undivided attention of those in power, making manifest a willingness to fight to the death for them?

The end result, of course, of all this turmoil, was the Enlightenment, a glorious period for France, and for much of the world. And even when I am locked in my own bathroom, trying to conduct a business call, as four especially demanding citizens lean on the door from the other side, demanding entry, I can still grasp the “season of light” to which Dickens refers. All of the best things in life, in my experience, come from hard work and a sense of purpose, burnished with a sense of humor and a refusal to quit. I was queen, once. I ate cake for dinner whenever I wanted to, which was more often than it should have been. Now, I need to share, and let them eat some too, and that is only the very beginning of the end of my years of entitlement. At heart, I believe in democracy, which requires being open to the wisdom and the foolishness, the best and yes, the worst.

At night, when my children are sleeping, which is sometimes the easiest time to love them, I slip into their rooms and watch their faces in the shadows, the rise and fall of their little chests. Yes, I can see then, can say to myself as I slip back out and close the door gently behind me. This is the spring of my hope.

Cryptic

I am not posting tonight because I spent the evening working on something I'm kind of excited about. Will elaborate, and post assignment from yesterday, tomorrow...

Blackout

I have an assignment, and I've been putting it off, but now I really to finish it and turn it in. There are so many reasons I procrastinate, but in this case the reason is that the subject matter causes me emotional distress, and I am going to have to push through it to emerge intact on the other side, my piece submitted.

I am supposed to write about the circumstances of Lily's birth, albeit in a non-graphic way. Specifically, I am supposed to write about how desperately I wanted to leave the hospital after the traumatic experience--24 hours of labor, prep for C-section, emergency C-section, discovery of placental abruption, DIC, night in intensive care wavering between life and death--and to go home, to my childhood home, for Christmas. A large part of my motivation, for this is all true, was to bring Lily to meet my grandmother, who hadn't been able to make the trip and wasn't entirely aware of just how traumatic the birth had been.

One problem I am having in the writing, which I will post when completed (tomorrow? I hope so.), is that it is proving difficult to achieve poignancy without the specifics, but the specifics, when included, drown out everything else. Another problem is that thinking about the experience is challenging in and of itself. I can see before and after so clearly, remember details such as a splotch on the wall in the stairwell on the way out of my building, the way the air felt as I stepped out of the car, Lily in my arms, but the trauma itself requires a kind of digging I haven't really forced myself to do.

Anyway. This is what is on my mind, and on my plate, today. We shall see, I suppose, how I work these issues out.

Short and Sweet

So Lily has a friend from school with an equally, should we say, feisty personality. I love eavesdropping on their play as they navigate various situations each from the vantage point of assumed leadership. This friend had been away for much of the summer and recently returned; today was the first day the girls had seen each other in almost two months. I should also mention that said friend, like Lily, has a new baby sister, even more new than Lily's, in fact, and like Lily has had mixed and fluctuating reactions to the newcomer.

During this two month period of Lily's friend's absence, our home has changed significantly. All of the toys have been moved out of Lily's room, and into the new playroom next door. Annika has been moved into what is now exclusively a bedroom, as has her--formerly Lily's--large white crib. The room they now share looks nothing like it did earlier in the summer when Lily and this friend played in it quite a bit.

When the friend arrived at our apartment this afternoon, she, as is her custom, marched right in, depositing unwanted items of clothing--her skirt, her shoes--in her wake. Lily was excited to show her that she and Annika were now sharing a room, and implored her to come see the big surprise in her "old room." The friend willingly complied, and the babysitter and I followed; she too seems to enjoy their dynamic.

Well? What do you think? Lily asked, arms spread, giving her friend time to take in the dramatic changes, the elephant in the room: Annika's huge crib. The friend surveyed the room a few times, taking her time, finally landing her gaze on the window sill.

You got a new clock, she said, blase as all get out, and I followed her pointing finger to the little blue clock my grandmother had just given Lily and which she had tucked there without my knowledge. I waited for Lily to express dismay. How could her friend not notice how much her room--her life--had changed? Instead, Lily grinned. She ran over to the window and picked up the clock. She carried it over to her friend. The babysitter and I watched with bated breath.

It tells real time," she said in a hushed, dramatic whisper. And then they were off, over to the playroom, where the real fun was now to be had.

Back to School, Eternally

September has always been so fraught for me with nervous energy and promise. Before I even started school myself, the atmosphere changed in our house as August waned because my mother's school year was starting. And because I went back to graduate school in between my own college graduation and the birth and eventual first day of school of my oldest daughter, there have been few consecutive years when there wasn't that amped up feeling, that shifting of molecules that has nothing whatsoever to do with the cooler air and lack of humidity.

September is change, it is newness, it is hiking yourself to your feet after a languorous rest, no matter how you spent your summer months. Suddenly, everything is faster, brighter, more urgent; because I am me, inexorably me, there is an inevitable edge to my excitement. And now, there is Annika's birthday--the annual reminder of this insane, wonderful decision that I made to do this all over again in spite of my conflicted feelings the first time around--and--in honor of the swirling, edgy, elation that is my relationship to this decision, there is Annika's birthday party.

This year, I decided to do a harvest dinner on the roof for just family--Ben's family, my family, us. We brought in all of the vegetables and fruits from the garden: zucchini and patty pan squash, beans, cucumbers, eggplant, onions, shallots, cantaloupe, and armfuls of tomatoes in a dozen hues, from the tiniest currant variety to Brandywines nearly as big as Annika's head. And herbs: basil, thyme, parsley, chives, cilantro, and tarragon. And with the exception of an exceptional fillet of beef provided by my sister (for which I concocted an herb and shallot mayonnaise using the herbs and shallots I had grown), and some shrimp because, well, it always seems like a good idea to have some shrimp, each dish featured ingredients we had grown ourselves.

Is my self-congratulatory tone coming through? I felt proud, I will confess, and please, no need to egg me on here with words of praise; I'm doing it myself, cutting you off at the pass. Not just for the garden-centered meal, which represented a full day's hard work, and yes, a summer's investment of time and love, but for this year--for surviving this year--perhaps the hardest of my life, in so many ways. This year, among so many other things that have happened, I became a mother of two, and it has been the hardest, most excruciating transition. I know here I am supposed to add that it has also been the best thing I ever did, because people always say that after they say how hard parenting is, but the truth is, although Lily and Annika seem to me to be exemplary children, whether or not raising them is the best or most rewarding thing I ever do remains to be seen.

I realize how much I am my mother's daughter when I feel compelled to add: I kind of hope not. Or rather, I hope it is only one of many best and rewarding accomplishments that require all kinds of investments on my part over the mad, erratic, unpredictable course of a lifetime. I'd like to think I'm raising them to want for me nothing less. And as the year--the way I always view it (no New Year's Eve resolutions for me)--rolls to an end and just as quickly takes off like a race car--I would like to add that I desire nothing less for them.

No Room of One's Own...Yet

Tonight I put my two daughters to sleep...in the same room. Although "the two daughters" part of that sentence still gives me pause (that's my parents, not me!), the part of the sentence I am going to focus on here is the "in the same room."

Alison and I never shared a bedroom, not really. In our first house, where we lived until I was seven, my parents converted a little nook off the kitchen maybe meant to be a pantry or a laundry room into a bedroom for Alison. My room, which had pink walls, and the little desk my grandfather made, and a big closet, was probably big enough for both of us, as I remember it, but for some reason this never happened. I don't remember it ever being discussed.

And when we moved to the house my parents still live in today, we were allowed to choose our own bedrooms. I am not sure how this happened, as at that time if we were presented with two identical pistachio nuts we would have managed to fight over which had a smoother shell, but perhaps we were each subtly directed toward the room that my parents had already decided would be ours, and somehow the strategy worked. Regardless, we each had our own, and over time it became clear that we had chosen--or been chosen for--well. My room was so perfectly mine, with its long bookshelf in the closet and the window that looked out over the field, and Alison's, with the big walk-in closet and room enough for a pink velvet chair, so perfectly hers.

Occasionally, we used to sleep in Alison' closet, in sleeping bags, but more than that I remember being so grateful for my own room, my own space, a door that I could shut when I needed to. I remember that bedroom, and even my first bedroom, as a sanctuary. Which is why it seems funny that I was so desperate to get Annika into Lily's, and so surprised that Lily jumped so enthusiastically onboard. In fact, when she tiptoed into the room during Annika's nap to get something, and I told her that if she wouldn't let Annika sleep I would have to take out the crib, she wailed, "Nooooo, Mama! You can't take Annika away from our bedroom!" Hmmm.

Now granted, Lily is 4 1/2, and once in her crib, Annika can't really get out and, say, "borrow" her favorite earrings to wear to the seventh grade formal or take the last piece of gum from the "secret" candy box on her bureau. Lily only very occasional craves privacy, and even on those occasions, largely for show, it is for a matter of moments. This, can be easily arranged. And Annika is years too young to realize that not much more than the diapers in this shared room are actually hers, and to desire her own things, let alone four walls enclosing a space that is hers in which to store and arrange them.

I am thinking of this as an experiment in sisterhood, to be honest. So far, report from Day One: Total success.

Lip Smacker

In her comment on yesterday's post a friend referred to the Bonnie Bell lip smackers sold at my town's drug store, and the mere mention opened a floodgate for me. Of course: the lip smackers. I had forgotten all about them, but they were important to me too. Not to mention the fact that they so vividly conjure up fifth grade: whose hair feathered perfectly, who had the most turtlenecks with little hearts printed on them, whose barrettes best matched her corduroys--boy, was fifth grade in my hometown a shallow experience.

I am trying to remember what I learned in fifth grade. I know I wrote and performed a play with two other girls, but that was on our own volition. I have to say, I don't remember what we studied in any subject. I do, however, remember the social intricacies and the clothing and those sickly sweet, pastel colored tubes of lip gloss in nauseating flavors such as Bubble Gum and Root Beer. There were big, fat, thick tubes, and smaller skinny tubes, and even skinny tubes on rope that could be worn around your neck like a necklace. A very popular girl in the sixth grade whose hair did feather perfectly, and who was a whiz on roller skates (especially to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"), and who kept a comb in the back pocket of her designer jeans wore one of these, and if you ever walked by her in the hallway or glanced her way at a school function, she would inevitably be applying a fresh coat.

And it is always said that smell is the most powerful sense, and at various points I have scoffed at this, but certain smells--those scented markers from the White House Preschool, the heavily chlorinated pool where I first had swimming lessons, and the thick-tubed, pink-hued Bubble Gum Bonnie Bell lip smacker from the Post Road Apothecary--leave me no doubt. I love this, that someone else's memory can bring me back an entire year of school: the year I was in a school bus accident and broke my ribs and had to sleep with a heating pad, the year two friends made a club against me, the year I saw Brian's Song in the school gymnasium, and on and on and on.

Thanks, Betsy. Thanks, Bonnie Bell.

Losing Steam

Have hit some kind of a wall--am not getting any enjoyment these days from writing. I am forcing myself right now, and I mean forcing because I actually got out of the chair three times to go to bed, and I can't even really remember why. I am going to think about this overnight and see if I can figure out a way out of this.

But for some reason I just remembered how on Saturday mornings, when I was growing up, my father used to take us to the town dump to drop off our garbage; this was how it was done. Afterward, we would stop at the Post Road Apothecary, the town drug store, where we would each be allowed to choose a candy bar. I loved going to the drug store. It was nothing like CVS or Rite Aid or today's big chains where you can buy everything from office supplies to hair dryers to canned soup and cameras. The drug store sold greeting cards, band-aids, cotton balls, hair brushes, medicine and candy.

The candy was the focal point, of course, although I logged plenty of time perusing the greeting cards, and although Alison chose something different almost every time, I almost always chose the same thing: a Charleston Chew. This was for several reasons. One, because I am, and was, a creature of habit. Two, because it is the longest candy bar, and therefore I believed I was getting the best possible deal out of my choice. And three, I liked the whole freezing it and cracking it into pieces for reasons related to number two, i.e. it made the candy bar, and the experience of eating it, last longer.

Anyway. Saturday morning candy bars from Post Road Apothecary. That's all I've got tonight.

One

It's the middle of the night, and I can't sleep, and it just occurred to me that exactly one year ago from this very minute I was sitting in my apartment, wide awake, both willing dawn to arrive and praying it wouldn't. Tomorrow, or rather today, is Annika's birthday.

Because of the complications of Lily's birth, I had to schedule Annika's birth two weeks before my actual due date. It seems so long ago now, but there were choices, and I agonized over them. Did I want to have the C-section before Labor Day? The arduous, anxious pregnancy would be over sooner, but the hospital staff would all be at the beach. I decided to wait until after the holiday weekend. The night before I was to go into the hospital I couldn't sleep at all. I sat on the reclining chair reading for a while, then just sat. Although the apartment was full--my family was here--it was quiet and still.

I remember being grateful that the feeling afraid was about to end, one way or another, because all along I'd known that the surgery could be dangerous for me, and I remember trying, desperately, to imagine Annika. Of course, I couldn't do it. All I could envision was a baby Lily, the baby Lily had been, with a feature or two tweaked, but I could no more imagine an entirely different baby, her own person, than I could make myself fall asleep. I pushed open the door to Lily's room. She was sound asleep. I tried to imagine how her life was going to change, and mine, and I couldn't do that either. All I could imagine was the two of us, going on as we had, with a prop baby off to one side, as though we'd just happened to pop Baby Ann, Lily's largest doll, into my handbag.

In the morning I was exhausted. Fueled by adrenaline, we got ourselves to the hospital. There was a lot of lying around on gurneys, shots, explanations of what was going to happen. It was cold; I was cold, pretty much at every stage of the process. And I steeled myself to remain alert. Lily's birth had been an excruciating, terrifying blur; this was cold and clinical, yes, but I'd be damned if I wasn't going to be fully present.

When the doctor held the baby up over the sheet so I could see her, I tried to focus but only got a fragmented view: her skin looked much darker than I'd expected, I saw brown hair, squinted eyes, tiny squared-off feet. Annika, I thought. She didn't look like her ultrasound picture. She didn't looked like Lily. She looked like herself.

It is the ultimate cliche to note that it's astonishing what can happen in a year. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I will not have to go to the hospital in the morning. But I will have to get up at 6:30 to give breakfast to my one-year-old girl. I think tonight, now, I may just be able to sleep.

Apologies to Shakespeare, and the Rest of You

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow..."

The Multigenerational Dinner Party

Modern life is so segregated. By this I mean that we tend to socialize only with others in our age group, give or take a few years, and this--I feel--is a shame.

One of the high points of my Labor Day weekend was a multigenerational dinner party, hosted in the country by one of my oldest friends. When said friend, and her gracious husband, invited us for dinner, I declined, explaining that my parents and grandmother would be staying with us for the weekend. Although I have known this friend for about twenty-seven years, it did not so much as occur to me to accept a dinner invitation on behalf of the seven of us.

My friend thought this was foolish. Of course you will all come, she insisted, so at six o'clock on Saturday evening, the seven of us arrived, in two cars, ranging in age from almost one to going on ninety-three. My friends, who have two girls of their own, had another friend visiting for the weekend, so altogether, there were twelve of us, which in itself was not unusual. Most of us have been to a dinner party of a dozen before. Ho hum. However, when is the last time, when it wasn't Thanksgiving or another family holiday meal, that you sat around a table laden with excellent food and wine and conversed with a lively, witty crew whose ages spanned nearly a century?

I can't remember another occasion. And it was a perfect night: our host, who hails from Barcelona, made bread toasted and rubbed with ripe tomatoes, salt and olive oil, and gazpacho prepared in the traditional way with egg and croutons, and best of all an enormous seafood paella, cooked outdoors. Our hostess roasted two kinds of figs, which she served with Greek yogurt and honey. We had white wine and rose after gin and tonics on the screened-in porch, and the four girls played in the grass as we ate pistachios and homemade cheese spread. And we talked about politics, and shellfish, and books, and more politics, and it grew dark behind us, and the little ones drifted off and upstairs, where their happy, sleepy voices could be heard behind the steady buzz of conversation at the table, and I felt very fortunate, in my grandmother, who is young enough still to sneak a little extra rose when my mother is out of the room, and in my old friend, who insisted on including everybody, and for an evening when I wasn't secretly thinking to myself that we all knew everything each other had to say.

The Multigenerational Dinner Party: Its time has come.