Lint rollers. We have two long-haired, light-colored collie dogs, who shed heavily pretty much year round and ensure that everything we own or wear is coated in dog hair. Some people, such as the woman who gave birth to me, find this, should we say, distasteful and refuse to enter our home without a fresh lint roller tucked into her purse. Others, such as myself, cheerfully accept the state of affairs and occasionally, if a social or professional situation warrants it, wrap a desperate loop of Scotch tape around a hand for some last-minute futile patting. If I had a dime for every time somebody asked me on first sighting, "Wow. You must have a dog," let's just say I would have my own, in-house dry cleaner on call.
But I did not want to write about lint rollers because I find them fascinating, which--heave shared sigh of relief--I do not. I wanted to write about them because this weekend, when my visiting mother whipped hers out of her purse and started rolling down her black pants, Lily watched for a few minutes, transfixed. "Sands?" she finally asked.
"Yes, Lily," my mother answered, distracted by the monumental task ahead of her--she still had the sweater to go.
"I don't understand why you're doing that. You're just going to have to do it again." My mother thought this was pretty funny, as well as true, and we all laughed, some of us less enthusiastically or sympathetically, but I kept thinking about it for some reason, and then--late, late at night as I was on my hands and knees picking up toys--I realized why.
So much of my days, these days, are spent doing the same things over and over again in what could be a sort of Zen exercise, if I were an entirely different, much more relaxed, potentially Buddhist type of person. Instead, I am tightly-wound and full of nervous energy and determined to fend off the chaos that threatens to wash in at any moment, thanks to thousands of puzzle pieces, doll clothes, dropped snack pieces, scraps of paper, bits of chalk, loose socks, the occasional errant banana peel or toast rind. Each meal, as Annika drops food off her high chair, the dogs eat the desirable droppings, and I find myself picking up the bits of the rest of the floor, I do not feel like an aspiring Buddhist. I feel like a person for whom a lint roller could serve as a symbol of daily existence, and for all you lint roller lovers out there (Mom), I do not mean this in a good way.
Why do we do the same things over and over and over again, knowing as we do them that we will be doing them again before the paint has dried? The immediate answer is that we have to, or we soon become a crazy person living under piles of garbage and the subject of a piece on Dateline or NY1. But I'm talking about other things, less dramatic or health-threatening things, such as, well, rolling the stray dog hairs off of our pants when we know, all along, the dogs aren't going anywhere and we're going to have to sit back down on the couch.
I think we do them because in spite of the fact that everybody I know, myself included, seems to be so busy we never sit down, life is made up, in a way, of these small acts of renewal, and in doing them, we are making a statement, to ourselves, and to the rest of the world. We are saying: It all matters, it all means something, it all keeps the world turning, sun rising, future coming. We do it, all of it, because we need to fill our days with living.
And that may be the only time I have ever--or ever will again--take on the subject of lint rollers.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
On Life and Death and Dogs
I was all set to write about lint rollers--seriously--when I put Lily to bed some odd hours ago, and suddenly I realized she was sobbing. "For the last few nights I have been thinking about when you have to die," she said. "You said that everybody dies. Is that really true? It makes me too sad to think about it." I lay down beside her, my thoughts of take-out dissipating.
"Yes, it's true," I said. "People and animals and plants and all living things will die."
"But where do they go? What happens to them?" she asked. I know people handle this in all kinds of ways. Maybe there are reasons for cushioning the blow. I answered honestly.
"Nothing happens," I said. For people and animals, the bodies are buried in the ground or turned into ashes, like Rory's body. But the people and animals we love stay with us because we think about them and love them still." She had stopped sobbing; her eyes were enormous in the dark. Annika was gurgling in her crib, standing and watching us, but we both ignored her.
"Why can't things that are alive live forever?" she pressed. "Why?"
"If we lived forever our days would not seem special," I said, feeling a little lame. I have read Tuck Everlasting 100 times now, and I never quite buy it. I didn't at her age, and I still don't now. I always explain to students why Winnie made the right choice, but I always feel like a bit of a phony when I do it. Knowing what I do now, even, I'd drink the water and deal with the consequences come eternity.
"I hope you live for all the time I live," she said. "I hope you live for a thousand years." I should have said no, that I wanted to live a long, long time, to see my great-children, like Mormor, but that it wouldn't, couldn't, be for a thousand years. But instead I whispered, "Me too." Just then, Scout--all 80 overweight pounds of him--leaped up on the bed on top of us and settled in with his paws around Lily in a hug. She began stroking his nose. Then, the sobbing again, louder than before.
"I hope Sadie and Scout die at the same time," she said. "Because they would miss each other too much if one died first." By this point I was practically sobbing myself, but the mood lifted, on my end anyway, when through the tears and whimpering she managed one last thought: "And I am very worried about Christmas because I think it's just terrible that Sands doesn't let Scout up on the couch when couches are his favorite thing in the world."
At this, I was ready for my Thai food. One needs a full stomach to explain the mysteries of the universe to a four-year-old.
"Yes, it's true," I said. "People and animals and plants and all living things will die."
"But where do they go? What happens to them?" she asked. I know people handle this in all kinds of ways. Maybe there are reasons for cushioning the blow. I answered honestly.
"Nothing happens," I said. For people and animals, the bodies are buried in the ground or turned into ashes, like Rory's body. But the people and animals we love stay with us because we think about them and love them still." She had stopped sobbing; her eyes were enormous in the dark. Annika was gurgling in her crib, standing and watching us, but we both ignored her.
"Why can't things that are alive live forever?" she pressed. "Why?"
"If we lived forever our days would not seem special," I said, feeling a little lame. I have read Tuck Everlasting 100 times now, and I never quite buy it. I didn't at her age, and I still don't now. I always explain to students why Winnie made the right choice, but I always feel like a bit of a phony when I do it. Knowing what I do now, even, I'd drink the water and deal with the consequences come eternity.
"I hope you live for all the time I live," she said. "I hope you live for a thousand years." I should have said no, that I wanted to live a long, long time, to see my great-children, like Mormor, but that it wouldn't, couldn't, be for a thousand years. But instead I whispered, "Me too." Just then, Scout--all 80 overweight pounds of him--leaped up on the bed on top of us and settled in with his paws around Lily in a hug. She began stroking his nose. Then, the sobbing again, louder than before.
"I hope Sadie and Scout die at the same time," she said. "Because they would miss each other too much if one died first." By this point I was practically sobbing myself, but the mood lifted, on my end anyway, when through the tears and whimpering she managed one last thought: "And I am very worried about Christmas because I think it's just terrible that Sands doesn't let Scout up on the couch when couches are his favorite thing in the world."
At this, I was ready for my Thai food. One needs a full stomach to explain the mysteries of the universe to a four-year-old.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
On Love and Pork
Monday is my father's birthday, and as my parents are visiting us in Connecticut this weekend, and because I haven't been with my father this close to his actual birthday in many years, I decided to make a special lunch and his traditional cake from my childhood in order to properly celebrate.
Although I'd planned to do the cake all week, the lunch was a more recent idea, and after a somewhat hectic day I was forced to turn not to a lovely gourmet market but to the depths of my freezer for a main course. Fortunately, there was a pork loin right in the front, saving us from some sort of casserole (or puff-pastry crusted tart) combining half-melted and refrozen lime popsicles, Trader Joe's eggrolls and a plastic baggie full of sesame seeds.
There was one small problem with the pork loin, however, being that one of the vestiges of my father's Orthodox Jewish upbringing is a very conflicted relationship to pork. Now while I have embraced most of the cultural and some of the spiritual practices of my father's religion, my own relationship to all things porcine is free and clear. In fact, just last night at a restaurant near our apartment, I found myself eating roast Berkshire pork served with steamed buns, stuffed pork ribs, and sticky rice with Chinese sausage. "Wow," said the waitress, after I'd ordered.
"Kimchee cuts grease," I offered, weakly, referring to one of the entree's side dishes.
My father would not have ordered these dishes, but if I gave him a bite of any of them in a darkened dining room, he would have said, "Delicious," and asked for another bite. It is the idea of pork (now that's a subject for philosophers and kings) that upsets him, not the taste. In fact, when pork is not called pork, and is called, say, bacon, or hot dog, he eats it with relish (pun not intended but allowed to stay). If it is called pork, or worse, ham--which I think for his mother was one of those words whispered if children were around so as not to upset the natural order of the universe--he politely declines. Or not so politely, actually, as the declining is always followed by the only partly true explanation: No thank you. I don't eat pork.
When I realized that pork loin was really our only potentially edible option, I expressed my concern to my mother. I must have been having a micro stroke at the time because my mother's sympathies to my father's convoluted pork policies are nonexistent at best. Once, in a deserved yet immensely passive aggressive display circa 1978 she actually cooked a ham on an evening my grandmother was coming over for dinner. This would be the modern-day equivalent of inviting one's strictly Catholic relation over for a big gay wedding, followed by a pro-choice rally and a rigorous denouncement of pedophilic priests. My mother's response was utterly predictable. "He'll love it," she said. "Just don't even think about telling him what it is."
Nice. It must be said on my mother's behalf, that my father often eats foods he claims to detest having been tricked into doing so. After being called out on it he promptly expresses disbelief, then manages to forget the entire episode ever happened 24 hours later and will deny it ever happened the following week. This happened once with his so-called most-loathed food: the beet. I had roasted a pan full of little baby beets and made an arugula salad with beets, goat cheese, caramelized nuts and a sherry vinegar dressing, and my father singlehandedly polished off about a half-pound of beets. When told what he had eaten he tried to argue they had not actually been beets, at which point I felt like telling him they'd been cooked in pork fat. Or melted ham.
Anyway. Once I'd come to terms with the centerpiece, the rest of the meal took shape, enabled by my knowledge that my father--and my mother, who will object to being portrayed as an underground pork pusher--won't be reading this until Monday. The pork loin is to be glazed with maple syrup and wrapped in bacon. There will be Thanksgiving stuffing, because I won't have any on actual Thanksgiving, with just a little sprinkling--or chopped two pounds--of bacon, too. And a vegetable, because some people like that sort of thing. If my father asks what we're eating, which he usually doesn't, I will say: chicken. I won't have to explain why the chicken is long and thick and in the impossible shape of a pork loin because that's not the sort of thing that interests my father. He will be distracted by mentally noting all of the sports events he's missing by virtue of the fact that we no longer have cable TV.
Happy birthday, Dad. The cake was clean. Not so much as a droplet of pork juice.
Although I'd planned to do the cake all week, the lunch was a more recent idea, and after a somewhat hectic day I was forced to turn not to a lovely gourmet market but to the depths of my freezer for a main course. Fortunately, there was a pork loin right in the front, saving us from some sort of casserole (or puff-pastry crusted tart) combining half-melted and refrozen lime popsicles, Trader Joe's eggrolls and a plastic baggie full of sesame seeds.
There was one small problem with the pork loin, however, being that one of the vestiges of my father's Orthodox Jewish upbringing is a very conflicted relationship to pork. Now while I have embraced most of the cultural and some of the spiritual practices of my father's religion, my own relationship to all things porcine is free and clear. In fact, just last night at a restaurant near our apartment, I found myself eating roast Berkshire pork served with steamed buns, stuffed pork ribs, and sticky rice with Chinese sausage. "Wow," said the waitress, after I'd ordered.
"Kimchee cuts grease," I offered, weakly, referring to one of the entree's side dishes.
My father would not have ordered these dishes, but if I gave him a bite of any of them in a darkened dining room, he would have said, "Delicious," and asked for another bite. It is the idea of pork (now that's a subject for philosophers and kings) that upsets him, not the taste. In fact, when pork is not called pork, and is called, say, bacon, or hot dog, he eats it with relish (pun not intended but allowed to stay). If it is called pork, or worse, ham--which I think for his mother was one of those words whispered if children were around so as not to upset the natural order of the universe--he politely declines. Or not so politely, actually, as the declining is always followed by the only partly true explanation: No thank you. I don't eat pork.
When I realized that pork loin was really our only potentially edible option, I expressed my concern to my mother. I must have been having a micro stroke at the time because my mother's sympathies to my father's convoluted pork policies are nonexistent at best. Once, in a deserved yet immensely passive aggressive display circa 1978 she actually cooked a ham on an evening my grandmother was coming over for dinner. This would be the modern-day equivalent of inviting one's strictly Catholic relation over for a big gay wedding, followed by a pro-choice rally and a rigorous denouncement of pedophilic priests. My mother's response was utterly predictable. "He'll love it," she said. "Just don't even think about telling him what it is."
Nice. It must be said on my mother's behalf, that my father often eats foods he claims to detest having been tricked into doing so. After being called out on it he promptly expresses disbelief, then manages to forget the entire episode ever happened 24 hours later and will deny it ever happened the following week. This happened once with his so-called most-loathed food: the beet. I had roasted a pan full of little baby beets and made an arugula salad with beets, goat cheese, caramelized nuts and a sherry vinegar dressing, and my father singlehandedly polished off about a half-pound of beets. When told what he had eaten he tried to argue they had not actually been beets, at which point I felt like telling him they'd been cooked in pork fat. Or melted ham.
Anyway. Once I'd come to terms with the centerpiece, the rest of the meal took shape, enabled by my knowledge that my father--and my mother, who will object to being portrayed as an underground pork pusher--won't be reading this until Monday. The pork loin is to be glazed with maple syrup and wrapped in bacon. There will be Thanksgiving stuffing, because I won't have any on actual Thanksgiving, with just a little sprinkling--or chopped two pounds--of bacon, too. And a vegetable, because some people like that sort of thing. If my father asks what we're eating, which he usually doesn't, I will say: chicken. I won't have to explain why the chicken is long and thick and in the impossible shape of a pork loin because that's not the sort of thing that interests my father. He will be distracted by mentally noting all of the sports events he's missing by virtue of the fact that we no longer have cable TV.
Happy birthday, Dad. The cake was clean. Not so much as a droplet of pork juice.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Related
This evening, as I was standing in the kitchen with Lily, my sister called. We were trying to organize ourselves to run out on an errand; my sister was in a silly mood and was attempting to conduct the conversation as her cat, Elvis. Lily, whose phone etiquette leaves quite a bit to be desired, was not holding the phone up to her ear or her mouth, causing my sister to meow at the other end even louder. Finally, I took the phone and said, exasperated, "We can't do this now. We're trying to get out the door."
"Why so grouchy?" she asked, cheerfully. I did not say, "Because we really need these lampshades and you're 37-years-old and the cat voice thing isn't funny after the first line and Lily isn't even listening to you."
Instead, I said, "Look. I'm not in the mood. I'll call you back." And I hung up the phone. When I set it down, I realized Lily was looking at me with interest. "What is it?" I said.
"Mama? Are you the oldest or the youngest sister? I forget." Ouch.
"Which do you think?" I asked, knowing full well which she thought.
"The oldest," she said.
"Why?" I asked, under the grounds of: If you're already caught in a flash flood, you won't mind a little more rain.
"Because you acted like Aunt Alison was bothering you," she said.
"Like Annika bothers you sometimes?" I said, apparently seeking an ally.
"Annika can't talk on the phone," she said. Which has its own kind of logic. But I think I'll call Alison back in the morning.
"Why so grouchy?" she asked, cheerfully. I did not say, "Because we really need these lampshades and you're 37-years-old and the cat voice thing isn't funny after the first line and Lily isn't even listening to you."
Instead, I said, "Look. I'm not in the mood. I'll call you back." And I hung up the phone. When I set it down, I realized Lily was looking at me with interest. "What is it?" I said.
"Mama? Are you the oldest or the youngest sister? I forget." Ouch.
"Which do you think?" I asked, knowing full well which she thought.
"The oldest," she said.
"Why?" I asked, under the grounds of: If you're already caught in a flash flood, you won't mind a little more rain.
"Because you acted like Aunt Alison was bothering you," she said.
"Like Annika bothers you sometimes?" I said, apparently seeking an ally.
"Annika can't talk on the phone," she said. Which has its own kind of logic. But I think I'll call Alison back in the morning.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Sometimes a Mudge is Just a Mudge. Or Not.
One day recently Lily came home from school with a dog she'd cut out of paper attached to a popsicle stick. The dog was colored brown, with clearly delineated features and a magic-markered collar. It resembled a puppet, which I thought it actually was. But no. The dog was Mudge, from the Henry and Mudge books they've been reading in class, and he came with strings attached, the metaphorical kind.
The idea, Lily explained to me with great excitement, was that we were to take Mudge places with us and photograph him, with or without Lily in the shot. For example, if we went grocery shopping, Mudge could come too, and I could snap a shot of Lily holding him in the grocery cart. If we went on the subway, Mudge could be photographed going through the turnstyle or "sitting" on a seat by himself. What a clever idea, I thought. How fun and whimsical!
The following Saturday morning I happened to take both girls to the greenmarket. Let's bring Mudge along, I suggested. Lily was thrilled to do so , glad I'd remembered, and as Mudge weighs about a gram, we didn't even have to have our usual fight about who was going to carry her stuff after the first two minutes of our outing. At the market, I photographed Lily and Mudge in front of a pile of pumpkins. We ran into Lily's friend Alex and his mom, and I photographed Lily, Alex and Mudge in front of some giant buckets full of eucalyptus. When we got home, I photographed Lily holding Mudge in front of our building. A few days later, Mudge came along to Sadie's dog graduation and was prominently featured in a group shot of all the actual dogs and their owners. Lily looks tired but happy in this one, holding up Mudge on a stick two hours past bedtime.
The next weekend, we were going out to Connecticut, and Lily suggested we bring Mudge along. Sure, I said, but when Mudge fell onto the floor halfway down the Merritt Parkway I didn't really want to pull over so he could be picked back up. When Mudge got wet at lunch, I suggested we cover his body with tape, a suggestion that like so many of mine these days, was met with scorn and condescension. When we got back to the city Sunday night, I realized after putting the girls to bed and unpacking our endless bags of stuff that Mudge had been left in the car.
The next morning, when Lily suggested we bring Mudge to school, I "forgot" him in the chaos of getting out of the house. By the time the following Friday rolled around, I had almost forgotten about Mudge altogether, but as soon as we got back in the car, there he was--missing a foot. I taped it back on, assured Lily that the water smudges all over his body gave him character, and wondered if a strong wind could possibly blow Mudge right out of Lily's hand and into the country sky.
From that point on Mudge became the mosquito in your bedroom at night you hear buzzing around your head but can't see when you turn on the light. He was everywhere and nowhere: everywhere because I kept thinking every time we left the house "Oh, I forgot the stupid dog," and nowhere because I never remembered him and we never took any pictures.
Right now, Mudge is on the kitchen counter. After that first blast of photos, I haven't taken anymore, and we just got a reminder from the teacher that the Mudge shots are due in-house asap. Tomorrow, I will make myself take a few more, download them and order prints, because that is what parents do. We deal with Mudge even when we really feel like setting a match to him.
Here's the thing. When we first started carting Mudge around, I thought it was fun, just like Lily did. Once the initial novelty factor had faded, though, I found Mudge a nuisance and a new sort of nuisance for me: a task meant for Lily and assumed by me out of responsibility or guilt, like the actual dog parents in books and on television shows are always forced to assume care for once the child inevitably loses interest herself.
What interests me here is that when I started to see Mudge as a minor burden, and then as a major pain in the ass, it never once occurred to me that I was complicit in the transformation. Tonight, as I was washing dishes, I noticed Mudge lying there half-buried on top of a pile of mail. Lily hadn't asked about him in days. I picked him up and straightened his folds, propped him up against the toaster, where he took on a jaunty, optimistic air.
Something somebody said to me today reminded me that in most things, especially attitude, we do have a choice. A large part of how I see Mudge is my decision. Mudge can be a symbol of the burdens of parenting or, in a world I'd rather live in, a cheerful, clever reminder that the world is still a magical place to my 4-year-old and need not be anything else for me. Mudge can be one more thing to add to my to-do list and my chronic low-grade resentment, or a way for Lily and I to take on what is actually a very small and eminently charming project as a team and part of our classroom community.
I think once the pictures are taken, the Mudge period over at school, I will keep Mudge around for a while, maybe stick him in a potted plant or on the dresser by my bed where my eyes will pass over him regularly. If Lily asks me why Mudge is hanging out in my room, I will say, merely, "Because I decided I wanted to keep him."
The idea, Lily explained to me with great excitement, was that we were to take Mudge places with us and photograph him, with or without Lily in the shot. For example, if we went grocery shopping, Mudge could come too, and I could snap a shot of Lily holding him in the grocery cart. If we went on the subway, Mudge could be photographed going through the turnstyle or "sitting" on a seat by himself. What a clever idea, I thought. How fun and whimsical!
The following Saturday morning I happened to take both girls to the greenmarket. Let's bring Mudge along, I suggested. Lily was thrilled to do so , glad I'd remembered, and as Mudge weighs about a gram, we didn't even have to have our usual fight about who was going to carry her stuff after the first two minutes of our outing. At the market, I photographed Lily and Mudge in front of a pile of pumpkins. We ran into Lily's friend Alex and his mom, and I photographed Lily, Alex and Mudge in front of some giant buckets full of eucalyptus. When we got home, I photographed Lily holding Mudge in front of our building. A few days later, Mudge came along to Sadie's dog graduation and was prominently featured in a group shot of all the actual dogs and their owners. Lily looks tired but happy in this one, holding up Mudge on a stick two hours past bedtime.
The next weekend, we were going out to Connecticut, and Lily suggested we bring Mudge along. Sure, I said, but when Mudge fell onto the floor halfway down the Merritt Parkway I didn't really want to pull over so he could be picked back up. When Mudge got wet at lunch, I suggested we cover his body with tape, a suggestion that like so many of mine these days, was met with scorn and condescension. When we got back to the city Sunday night, I realized after putting the girls to bed and unpacking our endless bags of stuff that Mudge had been left in the car.
The next morning, when Lily suggested we bring Mudge to school, I "forgot" him in the chaos of getting out of the house. By the time the following Friday rolled around, I had almost forgotten about Mudge altogether, but as soon as we got back in the car, there he was--missing a foot. I taped it back on, assured Lily that the water smudges all over his body gave him character, and wondered if a strong wind could possibly blow Mudge right out of Lily's hand and into the country sky.
From that point on Mudge became the mosquito in your bedroom at night you hear buzzing around your head but can't see when you turn on the light. He was everywhere and nowhere: everywhere because I kept thinking every time we left the house "Oh, I forgot the stupid dog," and nowhere because I never remembered him and we never took any pictures.
Right now, Mudge is on the kitchen counter. After that first blast of photos, I haven't taken anymore, and we just got a reminder from the teacher that the Mudge shots are due in-house asap. Tomorrow, I will make myself take a few more, download them and order prints, because that is what parents do. We deal with Mudge even when we really feel like setting a match to him.
Here's the thing. When we first started carting Mudge around, I thought it was fun, just like Lily did. Once the initial novelty factor had faded, though, I found Mudge a nuisance and a new sort of nuisance for me: a task meant for Lily and assumed by me out of responsibility or guilt, like the actual dog parents in books and on television shows are always forced to assume care for once the child inevitably loses interest herself.
What interests me here is that when I started to see Mudge as a minor burden, and then as a major pain in the ass, it never once occurred to me that I was complicit in the transformation. Tonight, as I was washing dishes, I noticed Mudge lying there half-buried on top of a pile of mail. Lily hadn't asked about him in days. I picked him up and straightened his folds, propped him up against the toaster, where he took on a jaunty, optimistic air.
Something somebody said to me today reminded me that in most things, especially attitude, we do have a choice. A large part of how I see Mudge is my decision. Mudge can be a symbol of the burdens of parenting or, in a world I'd rather live in, a cheerful, clever reminder that the world is still a magical place to my 4-year-old and need not be anything else for me. Mudge can be one more thing to add to my to-do list and my chronic low-grade resentment, or a way for Lily and I to take on what is actually a very small and eminently charming project as a team and part of our classroom community.
I think once the pictures are taken, the Mudge period over at school, I will keep Mudge around for a while, maybe stick him in a potted plant or on the dresser by my bed where my eyes will pass over him regularly. If Lily asks me why Mudge is hanging out in my room, I will say, merely, "Because I decided I wanted to keep him."
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
In School
Many of my earliest memories take place at the White House Preschool in Sudbury, Massachusetts, the town where I grew up. This is not just because it is the school I attended from the age of 2 to 4 but because it is also the school my mother worked at when I was very young, during the period in my life that my own girls are in now.
The White House Preschool, so-called because the school consisted of a little white house adjacent to the public high school, for which it was a lab school, was a very comfortable home-away-from-home for me and my sister. We went there as students, yes, but speaking for myself I felt a sense of ownership, of intimacy with it. When I was there after hours while my mother was working I would often curl up in my favorite spot from my own in-school hours: the raised reading nook lined with carpeting that had to be reached with a little ladder. Nooks are very important for preschool-age children, I think. I knew the pantry intimately, that was for sure--on which shelf the goldfish crackers I liked were kept, the cookies for special occasions, the juice. I knew that the upstairs was sometimes forbidden, a little mysterious. It was an attic floor where the staff offices were, as well as a long jam-packed supply room, where we, and the daughters of my mother's best friend and colleague, could lie and color or read if we were "home" sick from school, once we'd left and gone on to actual school.
I logged a lot of hours at this school. Although my mother wasn't technically working full-time, she'd left her first grade teaching job to have more time while we were small, my mother's not really a part-time kind of a teacher. Or a part-time kind of an anything. So when she worked, and we weren't otherwise occupied, we went to her school, too.
I've just been thinking about why I feel so at home in schools, why they feel so comfortable to me. More on this to come...and I'm leading up to something, I promise.
The White House Preschool, so-called because the school consisted of a little white house adjacent to the public high school, for which it was a lab school, was a very comfortable home-away-from-home for me and my sister. We went there as students, yes, but speaking for myself I felt a sense of ownership, of intimacy with it. When I was there after hours while my mother was working I would often curl up in my favorite spot from my own in-school hours: the raised reading nook lined with carpeting that had to be reached with a little ladder. Nooks are very important for preschool-age children, I think. I knew the pantry intimately, that was for sure--on which shelf the goldfish crackers I liked were kept, the cookies for special occasions, the juice. I knew that the upstairs was sometimes forbidden, a little mysterious. It was an attic floor where the staff offices were, as well as a long jam-packed supply room, where we, and the daughters of my mother's best friend and colleague, could lie and color or read if we were "home" sick from school, once we'd left and gone on to actual school.
I logged a lot of hours at this school. Although my mother wasn't technically working full-time, she'd left her first grade teaching job to have more time while we were small, my mother's not really a part-time kind of a teacher. Or a part-time kind of an anything. So when she worked, and we weren't otherwise occupied, we went to her school, too.
I've just been thinking about why I feel so at home in schools, why they feel so comfortable to me. More on this to come...and I'm leading up to something, I promise.
The More Things Change, the More I Still Wish I Had a Book and a Bath
Oh, it couldn't be later, and I got back hours later than I expected to from my children's literature book group, which is a good thing, in that it was so enjoyable, but a bad thing in that earlier--knowing I would regret it--I made Eggplant Parmesan and Caesar salad for dinner instead of writing my 750 words.
So I will give you oh, say, 250 words instead, loosely on the subject of a book called Betsy's Little Star by a really old-fashioned unremarkable writer named Carolyn Haywood, whose name came up tonight when it turned out I was not the only person I knew who had actually read her. This book, and the others in a series about a girl named Betsy and her little sister, Star, were among the very first chapter books I ever read. Not because they are so wonderful, or because someone I knew felt passionately about them, but because they somehow seemed accessible to me in the Sudbury Public Library, I chose them by myself, and I could read them by myself. And so I did.
And these were among the first books I was able to lose myself in, because they were longer than picture books, and there was more than one of them. The characters were the same, with variations, of course, but I could get to know Betsy, feel I understood her, anticipate what she was going to do in any given situation. I ordered the first Betsy book for Lily not so long ago from Amazon, thinking it would be quite nice if it were to be among her first solo chapter books as well, but the paperback arrived looking all glossy and modernized. It was not the soft, worn, pale blue hardbound book of my memory, and I haven't actually given it to her yet.
But Betsy's Little Star I remember in particular, as relates to the notion of losing oneself in a book, because I read it in the bathtub. And I remember I read it in the bathtub because I dropped it in the bathtub, and although we dried it in front of the radiator, it dried all wrinkly and warped, and I had to bring it into the librarian, whose name was also Betsy, and explain what I had done.
And if it were even two hours earlier, there is still nothing I would like more in this world than to be in the bathtub reading a book.
So I will give you oh, say, 250 words instead, loosely on the subject of a book called Betsy's Little Star by a really old-fashioned unremarkable writer named Carolyn Haywood, whose name came up tonight when it turned out I was not the only person I knew who had actually read her. This book, and the others in a series about a girl named Betsy and her little sister, Star, were among the very first chapter books I ever read. Not because they are so wonderful, or because someone I knew felt passionately about them, but because they somehow seemed accessible to me in the Sudbury Public Library, I chose them by myself, and I could read them by myself. And so I did.
And these were among the first books I was able to lose myself in, because they were longer than picture books, and there was more than one of them. The characters were the same, with variations, of course, but I could get to know Betsy, feel I understood her, anticipate what she was going to do in any given situation. I ordered the first Betsy book for Lily not so long ago from Amazon, thinking it would be quite nice if it were to be among her first solo chapter books as well, but the paperback arrived looking all glossy and modernized. It was not the soft, worn, pale blue hardbound book of my memory, and I haven't actually given it to her yet.
But Betsy's Little Star I remember in particular, as relates to the notion of losing oneself in a book, because I read it in the bathtub. And I remember I read it in the bathtub because I dropped it in the bathtub, and although we dried it in front of the radiator, it dried all wrinkly and warped, and I had to bring it into the librarian, whose name was also Betsy, and explain what I had done.
And if it were even two hours earlier, there is still nothing I would like more in this world than to be in the bathtub reading a book.
Monday, November 17, 2008
I Am Also Quite Good at the Limbo
So earnest, so self-centered, so annoying. Who knew 365 days would feel so long? The years go fast, but the blog entries are interminable. Is that what you're thinking? I am, at least some of the time. Obviously I've been off the specific projects, in favor of existential whine sessions. Come on, admit it. You've had it with me, too.
I'm going to force myself to switch gears, even it hurts, which it will, because I'm feeling blank. Blankness can be good, in the sense of being open to inspiration, but the inspiration seems to be taking its own sweet time. So I will turn back to specific projects or assignments or give myself concrete exercises, unless I catch a whiff of inspiration, in which case I will let her in.
So for tonight, I give you: Some Things Most People Don't Know About Me
I am an ace at most non-sport "sports." What this means in actual English is that I can hit a ping-pong ball with uncanny precision, am a bit of a pool shark, regularly hit holes in one on the mini-golf course and kick ass at croquet. These are, needless to say, some of the most useless skills known to humankind, most of whom find these "sports" the gaming equivalent of Broadway musicals. That is to say: unbearable. Now I also happen to enjoy Broadway musicals, so I am the wrong person to ask, but if you ask me, a ping-pong table and a game opponent are two of the happiest sights on earth. Along with a private karaoke room, which I love like some people love chocolate, or diamonds, both of which I can take or leave. Probably leave.
There isn't really that much to say about my gifts in the non-sports sports arena except that I have excellent hand-eye coordination, and that my highly developed fine motor skills might have made me a superior surgeon, had I decided there was a way I could avoid chemistry, and I mean the high school kind, not the organic kind, the mere notion of which makes me feel vaguely sick to my stomach. One aspect of being good at these kinds of non-sport sports is caring to be good at them, of course. When one's competitive nature comes up against one's small stature and lack of natural ability on the playing fields and courts of actual sports, one seeks other outlets. Thus, as a pre-teenager, I spent hours in my grandmother's basement chalking cues and making increasingly ludicrous bets with my equally competitive (if more athletic) cousin Andy and our younger siblings, none of whom burned with the fire to emerge victorious or beat one of us.
Non-sports sports are parlor tricks, in a way, like making a coin appear in someone's ear. Giftedness in them is always a little unexpected in another person, welcome when found in a like-minded soul. There is no larger point here. I am not about to bring this around to how mini-golf is like life, or how I learned to serve and found my inner confidence. I'm not in the mood, and besides, there is no point; these examples are nonsensical. I have excellent hand-eye coordination and highly developed fine motor skills; I am competitive, and I have no fear of peer ridicule, never really have.
I feel bad now that I was so mean to myself at the beginning of this entry. I don't need you to tell me that recent entries haven't been all bad, although there have been some self-indulgent snoozefests interspersed throughout. Now, thinking of how I once dazzled a crowd at a bar almost twenty years ago by knocking in three angle shots in a row, or--even earlier--the Round Robin ping-pong tournaments of Martha's Vineyard circa 1982, I am feeling like myself again. Take that, life. I have mad useless skills. And my version of Blondie's "The Tide is High" doesn't sound totally unlike Blondie, when belted out late-night in a private karaoke room.
I'm going to force myself to switch gears, even it hurts, which it will, because I'm feeling blank. Blankness can be good, in the sense of being open to inspiration, but the inspiration seems to be taking its own sweet time. So I will turn back to specific projects or assignments or give myself concrete exercises, unless I catch a whiff of inspiration, in which case I will let her in.
So for tonight, I give you: Some Things Most People Don't Know About Me
I am an ace at most non-sport "sports." What this means in actual English is that I can hit a ping-pong ball with uncanny precision, am a bit of a pool shark, regularly hit holes in one on the mini-golf course and kick ass at croquet. These are, needless to say, some of the most useless skills known to humankind, most of whom find these "sports" the gaming equivalent of Broadway musicals. That is to say: unbearable. Now I also happen to enjoy Broadway musicals, so I am the wrong person to ask, but if you ask me, a ping-pong table and a game opponent are two of the happiest sights on earth. Along with a private karaoke room, which I love like some people love chocolate, or diamonds, both of which I can take or leave. Probably leave.
There isn't really that much to say about my gifts in the non-sports sports arena except that I have excellent hand-eye coordination, and that my highly developed fine motor skills might have made me a superior surgeon, had I decided there was a way I could avoid chemistry, and I mean the high school kind, not the organic kind, the mere notion of which makes me feel vaguely sick to my stomach. One aspect of being good at these kinds of non-sport sports is caring to be good at them, of course. When one's competitive nature comes up against one's small stature and lack of natural ability on the playing fields and courts of actual sports, one seeks other outlets. Thus, as a pre-teenager, I spent hours in my grandmother's basement chalking cues and making increasingly ludicrous bets with my equally competitive (if more athletic) cousin Andy and our younger siblings, none of whom burned with the fire to emerge victorious or beat one of us.
Non-sports sports are parlor tricks, in a way, like making a coin appear in someone's ear. Giftedness in them is always a little unexpected in another person, welcome when found in a like-minded soul. There is no larger point here. I am not about to bring this around to how mini-golf is like life, or how I learned to serve and found my inner confidence. I'm not in the mood, and besides, there is no point; these examples are nonsensical. I have excellent hand-eye coordination and highly developed fine motor skills; I am competitive, and I have no fear of peer ridicule, never really have.
I feel bad now that I was so mean to myself at the beginning of this entry. I don't need you to tell me that recent entries haven't been all bad, although there have been some self-indulgent snoozefests interspersed throughout. Now, thinking of how I once dazzled a crowd at a bar almost twenty years ago by knocking in three angle shots in a row, or--even earlier--the Round Robin ping-pong tournaments of Martha's Vineyard circa 1982, I am feeling like myself again. Take that, life. I have mad useless skills. And my version of Blondie's "The Tide is High" doesn't sound totally unlike Blondie, when belted out late-night in a private karaoke room.
Balance, Me
Today I did the most mundane things imaginable. I slept in a little, which I never do, and woke feeling a little dazed and groggy. I did dishes, two loads, and made a savory bread pudding and sauteed zucchini for lunch. I cleaned up toys, the ultimate Sisyphusian task, and sorted through a small mountain of clothes I've been avoiding for months, storing some, washing some, putting some in a bag for charity. I didn't spend a lot of time actively playing with the girls, but I was with them all day long, able to build the fence for Lily's barn and find her tape to make the stuffed animal dogs new collars. I held Annika when she wanted to be held, and chased her when she wanted to be silly. When I went upstairs to put away the clothes we were keeping, they came too. I folded; they arranged the doll house (or pretended to eat small pieces of furniture, depending). At night, I worked, some, sent some work-related emails, cleared my desk for the morning. I made Lily's lunch, ground the coffee beans, set the dog dishes on the counter for the morning.
I didn't do anything today for pleasure. I didn't really read, call a friend, lie on the couch and close my eyes. But consciously, I allowed myself to forget about the rest of the world. Today did not feel like a race. It did not feel like a challenge. It did not feel like an entanglement of commitments and scheduling and frustrations. What I did, I did well, not sloppily or half-assed. None of it mattered, I was about to write, but I'm not so sure I think that's true.
The Phantom Tollbooth is doing a number on me. In it, the Terrible Trivium, "demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs," tells Milo, "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing." Maybe working mothers shouldn't read The Phantom Tollbooth. Today, if not tomorrow, I disagree with Terrible Triv. I needed a day for the easy and useless jobs. Not just to get them done--I could have waited on everything with no great price--but because in the doing of them I backed off the idea that life has to be largely about what I "really should be doing." And that was absolutely necessary.
I didn't do anything today for pleasure. I didn't really read, call a friend, lie on the couch and close my eyes. But consciously, I allowed myself to forget about the rest of the world. Today did not feel like a race. It did not feel like a challenge. It did not feel like an entanglement of commitments and scheduling and frustrations. What I did, I did well, not sloppily or half-assed. None of it mattered, I was about to write, but I'm not so sure I think that's true.
The Phantom Tollbooth is doing a number on me. In it, the Terrible Trivium, "demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs," tells Milo, "If you only do the easy and useless jobs, you'll never have to worry about the important ones which are so difficult. You just won't have the time. For there's always something to do to keep you from what you really should be doing." Maybe working mothers shouldn't read The Phantom Tollbooth. Today, if not tomorrow, I disagree with Terrible Triv. I needed a day for the easy and useless jobs. Not just to get them done--I could have waited on everything with no great price--but because in the doing of them I backed off the idea that life has to be largely about what I "really should be doing." And that was absolutely necessary.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
On Balance
Completely out of the blue, Lily has decided she wants to "ride on a see-saw." When I ask her where she heard of a see-saw, she will not tell me. When I ask her to describe one, she does. Here's the funny thing, and you may not know this if you don't--or even if you do--have little kids, the see-saws aren't around anymore.
Gone the way of the playpens and baby walkers, see-saws were clearly deemed dangerous at some point along the line (how quietly they slipped away!) and removed from playgrounds everywhere. Or at least in New York City, and anecdotally in Massachusetts, where children exist on the older generation's fond or at least vivid memories of being unceremoniously deposited bottom first on the concrete patch beneath their end of the see-saw, when the (always larger) child on the other end decided to jump off and run away.
The see-saw we had in our backyard was made of wood and was probably a cousin to thousands of like-minded 1970s, peacenik parent-purchased environmentally-friendly wooden yard structures, such as the swingset and the slide. It was on grass, not concrete, but was like its playground counterparts the scene of many a deliberately thrown child. We loved it, came back for more every time. I remember Lord of the Flies type games centered around it, in which several children would stack themselves on each end, pushing with our feet as hard and fast as we could, occasionally throwing the see-saw off-balance and turning it on its side, spilling all of us on top of each other onto the ground.
Much has been written of this, this trend in outdoor equipment for children to be so safety conscious, so thoroughly, overly designed as to lock out so much as the possibility of a spill but for a wholly child-motivated push or jump. And although I don't bemoan the loss of the concrete patches at the bases of the jungle gyms, which are surely not still called jungle gyms, and ooo and ahh over the new foam material that floors our playgrounds now, when I think of the see-saw, and how much fun Lily would have falling off of it, and even the tears she would shed when the falling was not of her own volition but a result of a stronger child and an irrepressible urge for (temporary) domination, I feel a little bit sad. Again, a cliche in this day and age to say so, but when we adults try to control too much in our children's world, something forever is lost. Too much safety, if you ask me, can be a dangerous thing.
I look online to see if one can still buy a see-saw if one wished to buck this trend, stake a claim for moderate risk in the safety of one's backyard. There are a few. They have bells and whistles and are pricey and come with safety features and multiple seating. No need to pile on like gram weights at the end of a scale. I don't feel drawn to them. I would prefer, instead, to take Lily back to 1976 and let her have a real ride.
Gone the way of the playpens and baby walkers, see-saws were clearly deemed dangerous at some point along the line (how quietly they slipped away!) and removed from playgrounds everywhere. Or at least in New York City, and anecdotally in Massachusetts, where children exist on the older generation's fond or at least vivid memories of being unceremoniously deposited bottom first on the concrete patch beneath their end of the see-saw, when the (always larger) child on the other end decided to jump off and run away.
The see-saw we had in our backyard was made of wood and was probably a cousin to thousands of like-minded 1970s, peacenik parent-purchased environmentally-friendly wooden yard structures, such as the swingset and the slide. It was on grass, not concrete, but was like its playground counterparts the scene of many a deliberately thrown child. We loved it, came back for more every time. I remember Lord of the Flies type games centered around it, in which several children would stack themselves on each end, pushing with our feet as hard and fast as we could, occasionally throwing the see-saw off-balance and turning it on its side, spilling all of us on top of each other onto the ground.
Much has been written of this, this trend in outdoor equipment for children to be so safety conscious, so thoroughly, overly designed as to lock out so much as the possibility of a spill but for a wholly child-motivated push or jump. And although I don't bemoan the loss of the concrete patches at the bases of the jungle gyms, which are surely not still called jungle gyms, and ooo and ahh over the new foam material that floors our playgrounds now, when I think of the see-saw, and how much fun Lily would have falling off of it, and even the tears she would shed when the falling was not of her own volition but a result of a stronger child and an irrepressible urge for (temporary) domination, I feel a little bit sad. Again, a cliche in this day and age to say so, but when we adults try to control too much in our children's world, something forever is lost. Too much safety, if you ask me, can be a dangerous thing.
I look online to see if one can still buy a see-saw if one wished to buck this trend, stake a claim for moderate risk in the safety of one's backyard. There are a few. They have bells and whistles and are pricey and come with safety features and multiple seating. No need to pile on like gram weights at the end of a scale. I don't feel drawn to them. I would prefer, instead, to take Lily back to 1976 and let her have a real ride.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Perspective, More
Last weekend, Lily learned how to take pictures using my new iphone, which I can barely operate myself. I was busy and let her wander around with it out in Connecticut for awhile, and I never looked at the pictures she'd taken. Tonight, I happened to notice there were suddenly 96 photos, when there'd been 6 before, and I decided I'd delete the ones she'd taken, which I assumed would be mostly random slices from her line of vision.
And, in fact, most of the pictures she'd taken did turn out to be slices from her line of vision. But they weren't random. The first two were just darkness, and I hit the little trash can twice in a row. The next picture was of Annika's crib, taken from down low, so low that Lily must have been crouched down when she snapped it. And then: a series of crib photos, from every angle, including one of the inside, for which she must have leaned over the edge.
A picture of Annika being changed on the changing table was next. I was changing her; I recognized my sleeve. But I don't remember the picture being shot. Changing Annika is something I do automatically. It would never in a million years have occurred to me to record it this way. But changing Annika has always been a huge deal to Lily. It was the one thing that made having a new baby concrete for her from the very beginning. In the weeks before Annika was born, Lily changed hundreds of doll diapers. Now, she stands on the bottom rung of the table and hands me supplies.
Another series followed: Annika, at the bookshelf, choosing, flipping through, then discarding a book. I would also never have taken these pictures. They are blurry, slapdash, action shots. They also capture a few moments of Annika's life at a particular point in time about as well or better than any photos I have taken of her, in that they are so mundane and sequential. Several shots of the leaves covering the backyard. These made me feel a little guilty. Lily has been talking about making a "huge leaf pile" and jumping in it for weeks, longer. A backyard covered with leaves is her father's irritation, something not on my radar screen. For her, it is a scene of possibility and desire.
And me. Seated at my laptop in a blue turtleneck sweater that was my mother's nearly fifty years ago, my back hunched over in a way that makes me fearful for my bones. Seen from below I look serious, focused, not particularly inviting. I didn't know she had taken the picture. I will think of it next time I am working and she tugs on my arm.
I did delete some of Lily's photos from this afternoon shoot. There were a number of gray or black screens, and floorboards, and lots of pictures of doors leading into rooms, which I noted but didn't feel obligated to preserve. But I kept some of them, too. They capture ordinary moments I'd like to be able to remember as images, not just words. Viewing them, I can almost grasp the world through the eyes of my girls.
And, in fact, most of the pictures she'd taken did turn out to be slices from her line of vision. But they weren't random. The first two were just darkness, and I hit the little trash can twice in a row. The next picture was of Annika's crib, taken from down low, so low that Lily must have been crouched down when she snapped it. And then: a series of crib photos, from every angle, including one of the inside, for which she must have leaned over the edge.
A picture of Annika being changed on the changing table was next. I was changing her; I recognized my sleeve. But I don't remember the picture being shot. Changing Annika is something I do automatically. It would never in a million years have occurred to me to record it this way. But changing Annika has always been a huge deal to Lily. It was the one thing that made having a new baby concrete for her from the very beginning. In the weeks before Annika was born, Lily changed hundreds of doll diapers. Now, she stands on the bottom rung of the table and hands me supplies.
Another series followed: Annika, at the bookshelf, choosing, flipping through, then discarding a book. I would also never have taken these pictures. They are blurry, slapdash, action shots. They also capture a few moments of Annika's life at a particular point in time about as well or better than any photos I have taken of her, in that they are so mundane and sequential. Several shots of the leaves covering the backyard. These made me feel a little guilty. Lily has been talking about making a "huge leaf pile" and jumping in it for weeks, longer. A backyard covered with leaves is her father's irritation, something not on my radar screen. For her, it is a scene of possibility and desire.
And me. Seated at my laptop in a blue turtleneck sweater that was my mother's nearly fifty years ago, my back hunched over in a way that makes me fearful for my bones. Seen from below I look serious, focused, not particularly inviting. I didn't know she had taken the picture. I will think of it next time I am working and she tugs on my arm.
I did delete some of Lily's photos from this afternoon shoot. There were a number of gray or black screens, and floorboards, and lots of pictures of doors leading into rooms, which I noted but didn't feel obligated to preserve. But I kept some of them, too. They capture ordinary moments I'd like to be able to remember as images, not just words. Viewing them, I can almost grasp the world through the eyes of my girls.
Orbit
This evening I had to attend a school function at the home of a family who lives just around the corner and has a girl a year older than Lily. So on the mother's suggestion, I brought Lily along. Lily worships this girl, as well as other girls just a little older than herself. I recognize this trait; I do it myself. At one point in the evening, I went to the bedroom where the girls had been playing for an hour or so quite self-sufficiently, and peeked in the door. The older girl was explaining something to Lily, who was looking up at her with shining eyes, shaking her head ever so slightly side-to-side, as if to say, "I can't quite believe my luck."
When I was a kid, a couple of years older than Lily, there were a number of slightly older girls I thought were magical. One, the older sister of a friend of mine, seemed especially awe-inspiring. One summer, and I suspect I am the only person in the world who remembers this, including the girl herself, she had a black two-piece bathing suit with a top that came with instructions. It was two pieces of fabric connected with a circle of elastic and straps that could be moved all over the place. It could be worn in so many different styles that the instructions were in a booklet, not just on a sheet of paper, and each time she wore it she tweaked the design: strapless, one day, haltertop the next.
I remember she seemed like a creature from a different universe altogether. My bathing suits were always one-piece, always worn through on the backside from sitting on concrete, always blue or blue with stripes, and utterly boring. In them, I looked like a little kid wearing a bathing suit. In hers, this girl looked like a movie star.
I still do this, project these otherworldly qualities onto other people, especially other woman, who always seem more comfortable and sophisticated in their bathing suits, more at home in the world and in their lives. I know it often doesn't have anything to do with who they really are, or what their lives are really like, but I can turn any element into this black convertible bikini top, squint and see Marilyn Monroe where a lovely but ordinary person exists.
I guess I've been thinking about how we view other people and how we are viewed by them, how we see ourselves in relation to them. That's all. For now.
When I was a kid, a couple of years older than Lily, there were a number of slightly older girls I thought were magical. One, the older sister of a friend of mine, seemed especially awe-inspiring. One summer, and I suspect I am the only person in the world who remembers this, including the girl herself, she had a black two-piece bathing suit with a top that came with instructions. It was two pieces of fabric connected with a circle of elastic and straps that could be moved all over the place. It could be worn in so many different styles that the instructions were in a booklet, not just on a sheet of paper, and each time she wore it she tweaked the design: strapless, one day, haltertop the next.
I remember she seemed like a creature from a different universe altogether. My bathing suits were always one-piece, always worn through on the backside from sitting on concrete, always blue or blue with stripes, and utterly boring. In them, I looked like a little kid wearing a bathing suit. In hers, this girl looked like a movie star.
I still do this, project these otherworldly qualities onto other people, especially other woman, who always seem more comfortable and sophisticated in their bathing suits, more at home in the world and in their lives. I know it often doesn't have anything to do with who they really are, or what their lives are really like, but I can turn any element into this black convertible bikini top, squint and see Marilyn Monroe where a lovely but ordinary person exists.
I guess I've been thinking about how we view other people and how we are viewed by them, how we see ourselves in relation to them. That's all. For now.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Change
Tonight, among many other things, I am feeling mystified by my children. They seem so other sometimes, so unknowable.
Today, when Annika woke up from her nap, I went into her room, and she was standing up in her crib. Her hair was tousled and damp, her eyes still squinty with sleep. She was smiling and drowsy and just standing there, holding onto the side rail, peering out at me, happy to see me, and not at all distressed. Usually, I just scoop her right out, but today, for some reason, I went to her and just stood there right up against the crib for a minute or two, sort of hugging her, rubbing her small back, stroking her soft hair. She seemed so very small, and somehow unreal, in that how can a living person be that small? And I found myself wondering what she was thinking, how she thinks when she doesn't actually have language yet to categorize her thoughts. It made me happy that I knew she was feeling safe and loved, and that I could recognize that from her face and her eyes and the way she leaned into me, but still, I felt a little shiver of wonder: Who is this person, who will she be?
And then, tonight. The long awaited dog graduation. Lily was beside herself with excitement about the staying up. How long exactly past my bedtime will it be? she kept asking. When it was time to leave, at 8:15, she was already yawning but raring to go. She insisted on putting on Sadie's leash herself and walking her all the way to the facility where the training had happened. As we walked, she asked questions--Will the dogs do tricks? Do they do grooming at this place too? Will the huge dog be there?--and after a while I realized that she had no idea what we were going to do at a "dog graduation;" it was hard to say what her sense of the word "graduation" was, although we had been using it liberally over the past few weeks.
The dog graduation was, as I should have known, anticlimactic. The best moments for Lily were getting some sample dog calling cards and a free pen, and walking around and meeting the other dogs, including a big, goofy, uncoordinated rescue pit bull named Jackson whose owners had taken him to over two years of classes until, tonight, he was finally deemed ready to take his life full circle. Sadie's training had taken five weeks. Lily sat quietly on the folding chair next to mine, occasionally whispering quietly but insistently into my ear: When are the dogs going to do their graduation things?
It was mostly talking and paperwork. There were no tricks, no walks, no tests of the kind we'd described from previous classes. But she was a good sport, and at the end, she was in the group graduation shot, holding Mudge, the paper dog she'd made in school that we are supposed to photograph in different situations. When I told her I was certain Mudge would be the only paper dog to appear in a group therapy dog graduation photograph, she looked thrilled. Exhausted, but thrilled.
On the way home, she was pretty quiet. I could tell she was not just exhausted but also experiencing the inevitable let-down of reality trumping expectation. Are you glad you stayed up for that? I asked, as Ben swung her up on his shoulders. She looked up, pointing at the full moon, so I would notice it, then up the street as he walked toward home. Oh yes, she said. Of course I am, Mama. I've never been to a dog graduation before.
How can babies become people so fast? How can it happen while you're standing right there, watching with all of your might?
Today, when Annika woke up from her nap, I went into her room, and she was standing up in her crib. Her hair was tousled and damp, her eyes still squinty with sleep. She was smiling and drowsy and just standing there, holding onto the side rail, peering out at me, happy to see me, and not at all distressed. Usually, I just scoop her right out, but today, for some reason, I went to her and just stood there right up against the crib for a minute or two, sort of hugging her, rubbing her small back, stroking her soft hair. She seemed so very small, and somehow unreal, in that how can a living person be that small? And I found myself wondering what she was thinking, how she thinks when she doesn't actually have language yet to categorize her thoughts. It made me happy that I knew she was feeling safe and loved, and that I could recognize that from her face and her eyes and the way she leaned into me, but still, I felt a little shiver of wonder: Who is this person, who will she be?
And then, tonight. The long awaited dog graduation. Lily was beside herself with excitement about the staying up. How long exactly past my bedtime will it be? she kept asking. When it was time to leave, at 8:15, she was already yawning but raring to go. She insisted on putting on Sadie's leash herself and walking her all the way to the facility where the training had happened. As we walked, she asked questions--Will the dogs do tricks? Do they do grooming at this place too? Will the huge dog be there?--and after a while I realized that she had no idea what we were going to do at a "dog graduation;" it was hard to say what her sense of the word "graduation" was, although we had been using it liberally over the past few weeks.
The dog graduation was, as I should have known, anticlimactic. The best moments for Lily were getting some sample dog calling cards and a free pen, and walking around and meeting the other dogs, including a big, goofy, uncoordinated rescue pit bull named Jackson whose owners had taken him to over two years of classes until, tonight, he was finally deemed ready to take his life full circle. Sadie's training had taken five weeks. Lily sat quietly on the folding chair next to mine, occasionally whispering quietly but insistently into my ear: When are the dogs going to do their graduation things?
It was mostly talking and paperwork. There were no tricks, no walks, no tests of the kind we'd described from previous classes. But she was a good sport, and at the end, she was in the group graduation shot, holding Mudge, the paper dog she'd made in school that we are supposed to photograph in different situations. When I told her I was certain Mudge would be the only paper dog to appear in a group therapy dog graduation photograph, she looked thrilled. Exhausted, but thrilled.
On the way home, she was pretty quiet. I could tell she was not just exhausted but also experiencing the inevitable let-down of reality trumping expectation. Are you glad you stayed up for that? I asked, as Ben swung her up on his shoulders. She looked up, pointing at the full moon, so I would notice it, then up the street as he walked toward home. Oh yes, she said. Of course I am, Mama. I've never been to a dog graduation before.
How can babies become people so fast? How can it happen while you're standing right there, watching with all of your might?
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Vicious Circle
Well, I'm speechless. Not really, of course. But the sentiments of the two Anonymi (?) and my Aunt Sheila took me by surprise and have had me thinking much of the day. This is waaaaay off track in terms of what I am supposed to be writing about here. Or is it? I am supposed to be using this blog to make myself write, right?, and if I have a really strange way of viewing myself at this point in time, then that might have something to do with what and how I am writing, right? I know. It's a stretch. But why does everyone else in the world (or two Anonymous comment-leavers and my aunt) feel that the layers they are adding are all good, while I feel mine are obscuring me?
The truth is: I'm not sure. But I do know that lately I have been feeling beaten down by my many roles and often long for what I remember as a simpler time, before I was so responsible for other people's lives, although this is a trick of memory, this rewriting of history as seamless and clean. I didn't spend my twenties and half of my thirties in a state of grace; it just feels like that when it is, yes, 12:55 in the morning, and I am sitting typing like a madwoman at my computer because the last half hour has been the first time all day I have actually had to myself, and even now, I again hear Annika stirring in her room, and I will soon go to her and comfort her, and I will lie down and close my eyes and it will be five hours later and Lily's face will appear next to mine and her voice, a voice I love but not so much at six in the morning, will say: Mama? What's for breakfast?
I agree with my commenters, after all. My layers are essential. They are part of who I am, and I would not peel them away even if I could. Who would I be, after all, without them now? Not a mother, not a writer, not a wife, not a teacher, not an adult, not a person with many more layers to add. But still, I am wistful. Fewer layers means less complication. More sleep. More time. More me. And here we are again. Back where I started. Still working this one out.
The truth is: I'm not sure. But I do know that lately I have been feeling beaten down by my many roles and often long for what I remember as a simpler time, before I was so responsible for other people's lives, although this is a trick of memory, this rewriting of history as seamless and clean. I didn't spend my twenties and half of my thirties in a state of grace; it just feels like that when it is, yes, 12:55 in the morning, and I am sitting typing like a madwoman at my computer because the last half hour has been the first time all day I have actually had to myself, and even now, I again hear Annika stirring in her room, and I will soon go to her and comfort her, and I will lie down and close my eyes and it will be five hours later and Lily's face will appear next to mine and her voice, a voice I love but not so much at six in the morning, will say: Mama? What's for breakfast?
I agree with my commenters, after all. My layers are essential. They are part of who I am, and I would not peel them away even if I could. Who would I be, after all, without them now? Not a mother, not a writer, not a wife, not a teacher, not an adult, not a person with many more layers to add. But still, I am wistful. Fewer layers means less complication. More sleep. More time. More me. And here we are again. Back where I started. Still working this one out.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Layers
Well, it was bound to happen. Yesterday was the first day I actually forgot to write on this blog. And I almost just did it again.
This is a busy week for me. I will be brief, at least for now. Brief, I feel, is better than nonexistent.
This past weekend I saw someone I love singing a song I heard this person last sing twenty years ago and had this thought: For so many people growing older seems to be a process of adding layers to the self, some translucent, some ragged, some waterproof and even airtight. By the time a person reaches, say, my age, he or she is so buried beneath these layers that it's virtually impossible to find the original self. And then, in glimpses, or flashes, or bursts, it reveals itself, and the revelation is somehow both terribly sad and incredibly joyful. Sad, in its temporary nature, joyful in its truth. I would like to try to peel off some of the layers I have built up myself, keep from adding unnecessary ones as I age.
This is a busy week for me. I will be brief, at least for now. Brief, I feel, is better than nonexistent.
This past weekend I saw someone I love singing a song I heard this person last sing twenty years ago and had this thought: For so many people growing older seems to be a process of adding layers to the self, some translucent, some ragged, some waterproof and even airtight. By the time a person reaches, say, my age, he or she is so buried beneath these layers that it's virtually impossible to find the original self. And then, in glimpses, or flashes, or bursts, it reveals itself, and the revelation is somehow both terribly sad and incredibly joyful. Sad, in its temporary nature, joyful in its truth. I would like to try to peel off some of the layers I have built up myself, keep from adding unnecessary ones as I age.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Rough Spell
I am an excellent speller. I say this not as a particular point of pride, as good spelling is primarily a function of one's visual memory, meaning that being a good speller is like having an acute sense of hearing or being able to sniff wines and distinguish them from one another, neither of which, incidentally, are also true of me. But spelling: yes. I have an almost robotic ability to detect spelling mistakes in everything from menus and subtitles to actual manuscript copy, which has served me well in a professional capacity but--as my mother is prone to saying--"That and a dime will buy me a coke." I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I remember learning I had spelled a word incorrectly over the course of my life. The most galling occurred twenty-eight years ago this fall.
When I was in fifth grade, my entire school was given a spelling test, a long one, with over a hundred words. The student who spelled the most words correctly in each class was invited to participate in a school-wide spelling bee, to be held in front of the entire school and the participants' parents. The winner of the spelling bee would get not individual prizes but glory and treasure for his or her class, in the form of a pizza and ice cream sundae party to be attended by the principal, new books and dictionaries, and some privilege I can't remember but seemed monumental at the time: first to the cafeteria at lunch or something like that.
As per usual, I knew all of the words on the test. I spelled them all correctly. My teacher made a smiley face at the top of my test and wrote, "Can't wait for our pizza!" On the day of the spelling bee, however, I was nervous. I was going through a self-conscious phase, and I was not thrilled by the prospect of sitting on a stage in front of the whole school. My parents were coming. Fifth graders don't like seeing their parents in public. But there was nothing I could do. The writing, as it were, was on the wall.
When the gymnasium full of kids had finally been silenced, we were a row of fidgety middle schoolers facing the crowd. We had been instructed to write our word each round on a strip of paper given to us for the purpose, then hold it up facing out, so the other kids, teachers and parents could see it. The first few rounds went smoothly. A few kids were eliminated, then a few more. And then it was my turn again. The words had been easy; I had forgotten about the crowd; I was feeling much more confident now. I looked out and made eye contact with each of my parents. I smiled.
When the MC read my word, I smiled. I started writing immediately, so quickly, in fact, that I was asked if I'd like to have my word repeated. No, I shook my head. P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N, I wrote, then turned my strip out, held it up above the desk as we'd been instructed. The room fell quiet, and my classmates, who had been cheering for me each round, looked crestfallen. I met fifty-five pairs of disappointed eyes. But I knew there was a mistake. Anybody could spell "position." It shouldn't have been in the bee.
Next thing I knew, as my face grew hotter and my stomach tighter, the word P-H-Y-S-I-C-I-A-N was being spelled by the MC, and I somehow made it off the stage. Later, back in our classroom, nobody mentioned the spelling bee. "Tough break," the teacher murmured, patting me on the shoulder. But her heart wasn't in it. I could tell.
I was never in another spelling bee. But I am always very careful when I spell the word "physician."
When I was in fifth grade, my entire school was given a spelling test, a long one, with over a hundred words. The student who spelled the most words correctly in each class was invited to participate in a school-wide spelling bee, to be held in front of the entire school and the participants' parents. The winner of the spelling bee would get not individual prizes but glory and treasure for his or her class, in the form of a pizza and ice cream sundae party to be attended by the principal, new books and dictionaries, and some privilege I can't remember but seemed monumental at the time: first to the cafeteria at lunch or something like that.
As per usual, I knew all of the words on the test. I spelled them all correctly. My teacher made a smiley face at the top of my test and wrote, "Can't wait for our pizza!" On the day of the spelling bee, however, I was nervous. I was going through a self-conscious phase, and I was not thrilled by the prospect of sitting on a stage in front of the whole school. My parents were coming. Fifth graders don't like seeing their parents in public. But there was nothing I could do. The writing, as it were, was on the wall.
When the gymnasium full of kids had finally been silenced, we were a row of fidgety middle schoolers facing the crowd. We had been instructed to write our word each round on a strip of paper given to us for the purpose, then hold it up facing out, so the other kids, teachers and parents could see it. The first few rounds went smoothly. A few kids were eliminated, then a few more. And then it was my turn again. The words had been easy; I had forgotten about the crowd; I was feeling much more confident now. I looked out and made eye contact with each of my parents. I smiled.
When the MC read my word, I smiled. I started writing immediately, so quickly, in fact, that I was asked if I'd like to have my word repeated. No, I shook my head. P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N, I wrote, then turned my strip out, held it up above the desk as we'd been instructed. The room fell quiet, and my classmates, who had been cheering for me each round, looked crestfallen. I met fifty-five pairs of disappointed eyes. But I knew there was a mistake. Anybody could spell "position." It shouldn't have been in the bee.
Next thing I knew, as my face grew hotter and my stomach tighter, the word P-H-Y-S-I-C-I-A-N was being spelled by the MC, and I somehow made it off the stage. Later, back in our classroom, nobody mentioned the spelling bee. "Tough break," the teacher murmured, patting me on the shoulder. But her heart wasn't in it. I could tell.
I was never in another spelling bee. But I am always very careful when I spell the word "physician."
Blog Called on Account of Massive Work Deadline (Actually Three, But Who's Counting)
Now that I see there are SEVEN actual followers willing to go on anonymous record (complete with shadowy generic silhouettes), I feel worse than ever doing this. But know that I'm trying as hard as I can.
Oh! I just thought of what I can write about tomorrow: My fifth grade spelling bee.
Oh! I just thought of what I can write about tomorrow: My fifth grade spelling bee.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Crafty
For some reason, although I have not devoted one iota of thought to holiday shopping, and I break out in hives every time a relative asks me about plans for my daughter's December birthday, I have found myself thinking about the gifts my sister and I started making around this time of year in our basement craft room.
My mother turned half of our large basement into a craft room for us when we were around seven and eight. She cleared the space, put a large, old, oak table in the middle of it, and lined the walls with shelves that held every imaginable type of craft material: art supplies, fabric, beads, clay, Styrofoam, rocks, shells, doilies, pipe cleaners and much, much more. My sister and I would spend hours down there, "working." She gave us a big cardboard, under-the-bed storage box and we turned it into Boston's Colonial Theater, complete with stage set with a scene from the production of "Annie" that had recently hypnotized us. There were rows of tiny seats with little pipe cleaner people sitting in them. It had curtains. I have rarely been as proud of a creation.
But each year, what we really looked forward to about the craft room was the holiday gift-making bonanza. Like many children with socially conscious parents we had been raised to believe that there was nothing better, more special, than a homemade gift. We took this with a grain of salt, while understanding the principle. We believed that it was more appropriately, should we say, applied to the gifts we made for others, not so necessarily those that we received.
It didn't start on such a large scale, but after a few years, our gift-making operation had grown out of control. We were making gifts for our immediate family, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, second cousins and first cousins once removed. I kid you not. As the gifts were finished, they were accounted for and filed on a shelf or in the drawers of the table. There were lots of rock paperweights, painted or with alphabet noodle messages or names glued on. There were paintings, and pencil holder cups, and lipstick holders, and doll clothes and pots with lids--if someone had told us we had to make gifts for all of Middlesex County, I feel as though we would have looked at each other, stood straight, and asked: By when?
I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this now. It may be because the holidays, although I am fighting them away with a stick, are looming. It may be because I am dissatisfied with the play room I set up for my girls and know it needs more creative oomph. Or it may be neither, just that I am remember wistfully, fondly, the days when my sense of industry could be so easily and purposefully fulfilled.
My mother turned half of our large basement into a craft room for us when we were around seven and eight. She cleared the space, put a large, old, oak table in the middle of it, and lined the walls with shelves that held every imaginable type of craft material: art supplies, fabric, beads, clay, Styrofoam, rocks, shells, doilies, pipe cleaners and much, much more. My sister and I would spend hours down there, "working." She gave us a big cardboard, under-the-bed storage box and we turned it into Boston's Colonial Theater, complete with stage set with a scene from the production of "Annie" that had recently hypnotized us. There were rows of tiny seats with little pipe cleaner people sitting in them. It had curtains. I have rarely been as proud of a creation.
But each year, what we really looked forward to about the craft room was the holiday gift-making bonanza. Like many children with socially conscious parents we had been raised to believe that there was nothing better, more special, than a homemade gift. We took this with a grain of salt, while understanding the principle. We believed that it was more appropriately, should we say, applied to the gifts we made for others, not so necessarily those that we received.
It didn't start on such a large scale, but after a few years, our gift-making operation had grown out of control. We were making gifts for our immediate family, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles, second cousins and first cousins once removed. I kid you not. As the gifts were finished, they were accounted for and filed on a shelf or in the drawers of the table. There were lots of rock paperweights, painted or with alphabet noodle messages or names glued on. There were paintings, and pencil holder cups, and lipstick holders, and doll clothes and pots with lids--if someone had told us we had to make gifts for all of Middlesex County, I feel as though we would have looked at each other, stood straight, and asked: By when?
I'm not sure why I'm thinking about this now. It may be because the holidays, although I am fighting them away with a stick, are looming. It may be because I am dissatisfied with the play room I set up for my girls and know it needs more creative oomph. Or it may be neither, just that I am remember wistfully, fondly, the days when my sense of industry could be so easily and purposefully fulfilled.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
It's Almost All Out of My System, I Promise
From Barack Obama's Boston convention speech four years ago:
"Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Today, my fellow Americans, I am burnt out. I am burnt out on Halloween candy and work for hire. I am burnt out on feeling angry and feeling tired. I am burnt out on cutting food into tiny pieces and to-do lists that never get smaller. I am burnt out on coffee and emails and arguing with people less than 3 feet high. And yes, I am a weency bit burnt out on politics.
I overdosed, and now I'm feeling hungover. Our elections are weird that way--you make history and then sit around for a couple of months twiddling your thumbs. But that's fine. I'd just not like to see electoral maps behind my eyelids every time I close my eyes.
But I did want to print this excerpt from the speech that brought Obama into the national spotlight because it was the part of the speech that lingered for me, and because I heard echoes of it in his acceptance speech, and because although I go around saying that I don't care if we are divided as long as my side is on top, the truth is I hate that the United States thinks of itself as these two groups with nothing in common except citizenship, and I love that Obama seems to agree this is worth not being glib about.
There are a few people I love whose politics are very different than mine. Many people I love have loved ones whose politics are even more different than mine. And the truth is, when I look close up at these people who come to mind easily, it's not fair or right or helpful to simply condemn their wrong-headedness. I don't ever want to be a one-issue American, even if I'd like to punch California in the gut right now, and send Arkansas off to Rikers for 15 to life.
I have tried over the course of my lifetime to bring people around to my way of thinking by arguing, pontificating, cajoling, pleading, mocking and commanding. Not so successfully. A few times in my life, however, I have changed people's minds, and that has always been by action, not words. I think this is Barack Obama's plan. I hope so.
"Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."
Today, my fellow Americans, I am burnt out. I am burnt out on Halloween candy and work for hire. I am burnt out on feeling angry and feeling tired. I am burnt out on cutting food into tiny pieces and to-do lists that never get smaller. I am burnt out on coffee and emails and arguing with people less than 3 feet high. And yes, I am a weency bit burnt out on politics.
I overdosed, and now I'm feeling hungover. Our elections are weird that way--you make history and then sit around for a couple of months twiddling your thumbs. But that's fine. I'd just not like to see electoral maps behind my eyelids every time I close my eyes.
But I did want to print this excerpt from the speech that brought Obama into the national spotlight because it was the part of the speech that lingered for me, and because I heard echoes of it in his acceptance speech, and because although I go around saying that I don't care if we are divided as long as my side is on top, the truth is I hate that the United States thinks of itself as these two groups with nothing in common except citizenship, and I love that Obama seems to agree this is worth not being glib about.
There are a few people I love whose politics are very different than mine. Many people I love have loved ones whose politics are even more different than mine. And the truth is, when I look close up at these people who come to mind easily, it's not fair or right or helpful to simply condemn their wrong-headedness. I don't ever want to be a one-issue American, even if I'd like to punch California in the gut right now, and send Arkansas off to Rikers for 15 to life.
I have tried over the course of my lifetime to bring people around to my way of thinking by arguing, pontificating, cajoling, pleading, mocking and commanding. Not so successfully. A few times in my life, however, I have changed people's minds, and that has always been by action, not words. I think this is Barack Obama's plan. I hope so.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Awakening
I spent the day with my friend in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, walking the streets of a lower, lower middle class neighborhood, making sure that every self-professed Democrat had voted or had a way and a plan to get to the polls. We were warned at Campaign Headquarters that the neighborhood we were headed to was full of "rednecks" who might "harass" us with racial invective. I have always hated the word "redneck," had a visceral reaction to it as ugly and classist and mean. However, after hearing a few choice epithets today, I decided that if used to describe a raging bigot, it's perfectly okay.
And as we walked, we encountered some rednecks, some lost souls, some raised middle fingers from behind lace curtains, and some very angry, teeth-baring guard dogs. We saw NRA stickers and posters, several men in military garb, the by now familiar plastic children's pails full of cigarette butts on porches and lawns. But at each house we approached, we encountered citizens, Democrats and Republicans and Independents, who had exercised their right to vote and voted for Barack Obama.
Most people we met had already voted. I couldn't wait, was a common sentiment. We were there before the polls opened, another. You folks again? another still. To my shock, at many of the homes we'd been assigned to stop at, there was evidence of one or two or even three previous visits by Obama campaign workers over the previous days. When I heard this evening on ABC that 59% of Pennsylvania voters were contacted by the Obama campaign IN PERSON--not over the phone or by mail or email but by an actual human being--I was both blown away and somehow not surprised. There were a lot of familiar faces out there on the streets today.
I will never forget this election cycle. I feel awakened as a citizen, as a member of society, as an American. I have always considered myself politically active and patriotic, I have always voted, followed politics, local and national, spoken out on behalf of what I believe. But never before have I left my comfort zone and taken to the streets. This, this is a world in which I want to raise my children. I can never go back. I won't.
I grew up hearing my father talk about waiting late at night as a boy in the freezing cold on his little town green to shake the hand of John F. Kennedy, a man his Jewish immigrant parents believed could speak for them. I grew up hearing my mother talk about marching on Washington with Martin Luther King in defiance of her parents' wishes, the safe confines of her small hometown. Someday, now, I will be able to tell my girls that on the day America finally redeemed itself, I was meeting the Americans who made it happen. I was one of them myself.
Tomorrow is another day. I will wait, along with the rest of the world, to see what kind of a president Barack Obama will turn out to be. My expectations for him are high, exceptionally so. I think he will change the world. I think he already has.
And as we walked, we encountered some rednecks, some lost souls, some raised middle fingers from behind lace curtains, and some very angry, teeth-baring guard dogs. We saw NRA stickers and posters, several men in military garb, the by now familiar plastic children's pails full of cigarette butts on porches and lawns. But at each house we approached, we encountered citizens, Democrats and Republicans and Independents, who had exercised their right to vote and voted for Barack Obama.
Most people we met had already voted. I couldn't wait, was a common sentiment. We were there before the polls opened, another. You folks again? another still. To my shock, at many of the homes we'd been assigned to stop at, there was evidence of one or two or even three previous visits by Obama campaign workers over the previous days. When I heard this evening on ABC that 59% of Pennsylvania voters were contacted by the Obama campaign IN PERSON--not over the phone or by mail or email but by an actual human being--I was both blown away and somehow not surprised. There were a lot of familiar faces out there on the streets today.
I will never forget this election cycle. I feel awakened as a citizen, as a member of society, as an American. I have always considered myself politically active and patriotic, I have always voted, followed politics, local and national, spoken out on behalf of what I believe. But never before have I left my comfort zone and taken to the streets. This, this is a world in which I want to raise my children. I can never go back. I won't.
I grew up hearing my father talk about waiting late at night as a boy in the freezing cold on his little town green to shake the hand of John F. Kennedy, a man his Jewish immigrant parents believed could speak for them. I grew up hearing my mother talk about marching on Washington with Martin Luther King in defiance of her parents' wishes, the safe confines of her small hometown. Someday, now, I will be able to tell my girls that on the day America finally redeemed itself, I was meeting the Americans who made it happen. I was one of them myself.
Tomorrow is another day. I will wait, along with the rest of the world, to see what kind of a president Barack Obama will turn out to be. My expectations for him are high, exceptionally so. I think he will change the world. I think he already has.
Monday, November 3, 2008
To be totally honest, I started a number of entries today on other subjects, but none of them went anywhere. Usually, if I force myself, I can get somewhere, even if it's not my ideal or imagined destination, but today? Nothing. Bubkes.
I think it is fair to allow myself participation in the first example of collective anxiety I can remember. At least I cannot deny that I am feeling it--not anxiety, exactly, as I am feeling pretty confident that this election will go the way I want it to, but an intense distraction and even edginess, as though I am waiting for life-changing news, which I guess in a way, I am.
The truth is, I am finding this collective emotion thing rather inspiring. After 9/11, I suppose, I felt part of a larger group, connected to the people around me and around my city in a different way. But the event itself was so finite, so awful, so impossible to process in the immediate days after it happened, that I can't say I felt caught up in a collective response, which would have had to be rage? Intense sorrow? At least at first, nothing good. Later, there was a sense I know was shared by others of newfound commitment to the belief system and liberties we take for granted--which actually may have something to do with the way people are responding to this election--but not a movement, a tidal wave of effort and determination and perseverance the likes of which I have never actually seen. Until now.
Today, I will confess, I had a weak moment. I was riding on the subway, and I was late for my next appointment, and hungry, and disgruntled. I had finished my book, so busied myself studying the faces of the other people on the subway car, as surreptitiously as I could. There was a woman seated across from me who looked pretty downtrodden. Not homeless: she had a jacket and a handbag, but bone-tired, with worry lines deep in her brow. Her clothes were shabby, and when she pulled an envelope out of her pocket, I noticed she was sorting coupons, which I don't think I have ever seen anyone do here in New York.
And for a sour, bitter, low, low moment, I thought to myself, and I do feel as though I am confessing here, So what? Why, really, should this woman care? The truth is, this won't change her life at all.
I don't know what changed in me, why when the woman got off the subway and walked away, to a life I actually know nothing about, I didn't feel this anymore. Nothing had happened; it was a thought, it had occurred to me, and then been whisked away for no apparent reason. I didn't even have to talk myself out of it: I simply didn't believe it anymore, or think it true, and I was relieved.
Because at heart, at the very core of the things I believe, is that we must think things are possible, for the people they are actually possible for, and for the people they are most likely not. For when we give up hope for the downtrodden, the struggling, the least fortunate among us, we give up hope for us all.
So tonight, I go to sleep thinking this, and believing it, as profoundly as I have ever believed anything before: Tomorrow, the world is going to change. Not just because we will be electing a new president, and he will be a good president, a brave president, a brilliant and thoughtful and empathetic president, but because for the first time in my life I have felt the power of what we can do when we do it together, part of a groundswell of change. Dare I say it? Part of the very best parts of the human race.
I think it is fair to allow myself participation in the first example of collective anxiety I can remember. At least I cannot deny that I am feeling it--not anxiety, exactly, as I am feeling pretty confident that this election will go the way I want it to, but an intense distraction and even edginess, as though I am waiting for life-changing news, which I guess in a way, I am.
The truth is, I am finding this collective emotion thing rather inspiring. After 9/11, I suppose, I felt part of a larger group, connected to the people around me and around my city in a different way. But the event itself was so finite, so awful, so impossible to process in the immediate days after it happened, that I can't say I felt caught up in a collective response, which would have had to be rage? Intense sorrow? At least at first, nothing good. Later, there was a sense I know was shared by others of newfound commitment to the belief system and liberties we take for granted--which actually may have something to do with the way people are responding to this election--but not a movement, a tidal wave of effort and determination and perseverance the likes of which I have never actually seen. Until now.
Today, I will confess, I had a weak moment. I was riding on the subway, and I was late for my next appointment, and hungry, and disgruntled. I had finished my book, so busied myself studying the faces of the other people on the subway car, as surreptitiously as I could. There was a woman seated across from me who looked pretty downtrodden. Not homeless: she had a jacket and a handbag, but bone-tired, with worry lines deep in her brow. Her clothes were shabby, and when she pulled an envelope out of her pocket, I noticed she was sorting coupons, which I don't think I have ever seen anyone do here in New York.
And for a sour, bitter, low, low moment, I thought to myself, and I do feel as though I am confessing here, So what? Why, really, should this woman care? The truth is, this won't change her life at all.
I don't know what changed in me, why when the woman got off the subway and walked away, to a life I actually know nothing about, I didn't feel this anymore. Nothing had happened; it was a thought, it had occurred to me, and then been whisked away for no apparent reason. I didn't even have to talk myself out of it: I simply didn't believe it anymore, or think it true, and I was relieved.
Because at heart, at the very core of the things I believe, is that we must think things are possible, for the people they are actually possible for, and for the people they are most likely not. For when we give up hope for the downtrodden, the struggling, the least fortunate among us, we give up hope for us all.
So tonight, I go to sleep thinking this, and believing it, as profoundly as I have ever believed anything before: Tomorrow, the world is going to change. Not just because we will be electing a new president, and he will be a good president, a brave president, a brilliant and thoughtful and empathetic president, but because for the first time in my life I have felt the power of what we can do when we do it together, part of a groundswell of change. Dare I say it? Part of the very best parts of the human race.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Spaces in Your Togetherness
Over the course of the last twenty-four hours I sorted through three closets worth of clothing and created a pile 5 feet high to give to charity. I did two loads of laundry, went grocery shopping, prepared all of our winter coats, scarves, mittens, hats and gloves and put away all lingering summer items in organized storage boxes. I rid my desk of a frightening stack of paperwork, I wrote ten thank you notes which are stamped and in my bag, ready for the mailbox. I called my parents, talked to my grandmother, cleaned the coffee maker, did six hours of work on two unwieldy projects, wrote, printed and readied four invoices, secured diapers, oiled the wood of the dining room table. I even watched one Daily Show and one Iron Chef, and last night--after two nights of feeling lousy--wrote an entry here.
How did I accomplish these feats of wonder, you may be asking yourself. Adrenaline? Heavy doses of caffeine? No. I've been on the herbal tea, and my adrenaline is on temporary leave. It is as simple as this: I was alone.
I used to be alone quite often, because I lived alone, or because Ben was traveling and I was home alone, but it never suited me well. There are things I like to do alone--read, cook, watch movies--and I would do them, but when left to my own devices for too long, I would generally remedy the situation. When I lived uptown most recently, first by myself, then with Ben, my friend Caroline lived a block away. Sometimes I would go to her apartment, with Johnson the dog, at 10 o'clock at night, just for some companionship. And take-out. We ate a lot of take-out. On the list of the 1000 best things about Caroline would be: Just because she ordered a burrito an hour ago does NOT mean she's not up for a little Chinese. But I digress.
My point is that I took being alone for granted. When being alone took more than a couple of hours I sought out my "people," the handful of people who require nothing of me but my presence, and me of them, making it kind of like being alone but with laughing and food. Now, I am rarely alone. A big part of my late night ways is that I need the time to do work, but an almost equally big part is that I crave some solitude, that feeling, however artificial, that the air around me is mine.
Because I was still feeling so lousy all Saturday morning and into the afternoon, Ben offered to take the girls out to Connecticut to let me sleep. I wasn't sure about this idea, and neither was Lily. But I couldn't get off of the couch, and the girls (and the dogs) were confused by my uncharacteristic lethargy. So I said okay, and after hugs and promises to call, and the packing of the usual round-up of unnecessary items, they were off, and the door closed behind them, and for a moment I was stunned by the sound: the resonating cymbal clap of being alone.
And I did rest, too. I didn't say that at the beginning because I was so pleased recounting all I managed to do. But I went to bed relatively early, and I got up relatively late, and I watched Jon Stewart with a lap full of miniature candy bars, and although I'm still a little sniffly and a little more lethargic than usual, I can safely say that I am more well rested than I have been in quite some time.
In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell: You don't know what you got 'til it's gone. I mean that both ways. I was very glad when everyone came back.
How did I accomplish these feats of wonder, you may be asking yourself. Adrenaline? Heavy doses of caffeine? No. I've been on the herbal tea, and my adrenaline is on temporary leave. It is as simple as this: I was alone.
I used to be alone quite often, because I lived alone, or because Ben was traveling and I was home alone, but it never suited me well. There are things I like to do alone--read, cook, watch movies--and I would do them, but when left to my own devices for too long, I would generally remedy the situation. When I lived uptown most recently, first by myself, then with Ben, my friend Caroline lived a block away. Sometimes I would go to her apartment, with Johnson the dog, at 10 o'clock at night, just for some companionship. And take-out. We ate a lot of take-out. On the list of the 1000 best things about Caroline would be: Just because she ordered a burrito an hour ago does NOT mean she's not up for a little Chinese. But I digress.
My point is that I took being alone for granted. When being alone took more than a couple of hours I sought out my "people," the handful of people who require nothing of me but my presence, and me of them, making it kind of like being alone but with laughing and food. Now, I am rarely alone. A big part of my late night ways is that I need the time to do work, but an almost equally big part is that I crave some solitude, that feeling, however artificial, that the air around me is mine.
Because I was still feeling so lousy all Saturday morning and into the afternoon, Ben offered to take the girls out to Connecticut to let me sleep. I wasn't sure about this idea, and neither was Lily. But I couldn't get off of the couch, and the girls (and the dogs) were confused by my uncharacteristic lethargy. So I said okay, and after hugs and promises to call, and the packing of the usual round-up of unnecessary items, they were off, and the door closed behind them, and for a moment I was stunned by the sound: the resonating cymbal clap of being alone.
And I did rest, too. I didn't say that at the beginning because I was so pleased recounting all I managed to do. But I went to bed relatively early, and I got up relatively late, and I watched Jon Stewart with a lap full of miniature candy bars, and although I'm still a little sniffly and a little more lethargic than usual, I can safely say that I am more well rested than I have been in quite some time.
In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell: You don't know what you got 'til it's gone. I mean that both ways. I was very glad when everyone came back.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Mood Change
On Friday, Lily and I were a few minutes late leaving for school. I was in a bad mood. She had stalled and stalled over breakfast, and I had kept saying: Now I'm not going to say this again, and then said it again and again, and none of the nagging actually sped up the breakfast consumption.
So we were flying up the street on our way to the subway, me ragged and irritable, Lily ragged and faux remorseful, and as we got to the curb the light changed, so we couldn't cross the street to get to the uptown subway entrance we were headed for. At just that instant one of the new "smart car" taxis slowed to a stop just in front of us. Lily looked up at me, expecting the no; I could see it in her eyes. She knew she'd given me a hard time, but she had been wanting to ride in one of these particular cabs for a while, and we both hate being late for school; it throws off the rhythm of her day.
I nodded at the driver, and opened the door for Lily, who announced as she entered, "I can't believe it's my first time in a smart car taxi! I will always remember this!" which made the cab driver look in the rear view mirror with a smile and made me smile, too, in spite of myself. As Lily dealt with her seatbelt, I settled into the seat, exhaling for what felt like the first time all morning. It was then I noticed the music: The Rolling Stones' "Time is on My Side."
The Rolling Stones are my favorite band. For some reason I haven't been listening to them much of late. In fact, I realized, as I sung along to the words very quietly, I haven't been listening to music much at all. Lily noticed me singing and asked me who the group was. When I told her the name and added how much I loved their songs, the cab driver met my eyes in the mirror and asked me if I wanted to hear the song from the beginning.
"It's a CD?" I asked, surprised.
"Yes," he said. The Stones are my favorite band. I saw them play in Hungary, where I am from, about four years ago. It was one of the great nights of my life."
"I saw them too," I said. "In Boston, for my aunt's sixtieth birthday, with my aunt, my sister, and my dad." We sat in silence listening to the rest of "Time is On My Side. When it had finished, the cab driver said, "Now I will play you a very beautiful song." I recognized the opening chords to "Lady Jane." When this was over, the cab driver asked me if I wanted to pick a song. There are so many I love--it was the Greatest Hits album. I could have chosen any one of a dozen.
"I think I'd like "Time on My Side" again, I said. And as the cab driver, Lily and I sang softly along, it seemed like it actually was.
So we were flying up the street on our way to the subway, me ragged and irritable, Lily ragged and faux remorseful, and as we got to the curb the light changed, so we couldn't cross the street to get to the uptown subway entrance we were headed for. At just that instant one of the new "smart car" taxis slowed to a stop just in front of us. Lily looked up at me, expecting the no; I could see it in her eyes. She knew she'd given me a hard time, but she had been wanting to ride in one of these particular cabs for a while, and we both hate being late for school; it throws off the rhythm of her day.
I nodded at the driver, and opened the door for Lily, who announced as she entered, "I can't believe it's my first time in a smart car taxi! I will always remember this!" which made the cab driver look in the rear view mirror with a smile and made me smile, too, in spite of myself. As Lily dealt with her seatbelt, I settled into the seat, exhaling for what felt like the first time all morning. It was then I noticed the music: The Rolling Stones' "Time is on My Side."
The Rolling Stones are my favorite band. For some reason I haven't been listening to them much of late. In fact, I realized, as I sung along to the words very quietly, I haven't been listening to music much at all. Lily noticed me singing and asked me who the group was. When I told her the name and added how much I loved their songs, the cab driver met my eyes in the mirror and asked me if I wanted to hear the song from the beginning.
"It's a CD?" I asked, surprised.
"Yes," he said. The Stones are my favorite band. I saw them play in Hungary, where I am from, about four years ago. It was one of the great nights of my life."
"I saw them too," I said. "In Boston, for my aunt's sixtieth birthday, with my aunt, my sister, and my dad." We sat in silence listening to the rest of "Time is On My Side. When it had finished, the cab driver said, "Now I will play you a very beautiful song." I recognized the opening chords to "Lady Jane." When this was over, the cab driver asked me if I wanted to pick a song. There are so many I love--it was the Greatest Hits album. I could have chosen any one of a dozen.
"I think I'd like "Time on My Side" again, I said. And as the cab driver, Lily and I sang softly along, it seemed like it actually was.
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