Bugs are Good for the System, Too

It had a bug in it, and I drank it anyway.

That might be the subtitle of my collection of parenting essays. It is certainly the subtitle of my evening.

The "it" in question is the glass of wine I drank up on the roof deck a few hours ago as I sat by myself in the twilight, high above the city streets, surrounded by rooftops and thousands of windows, behind which likely sat some other parents with their own glasses of wine, equally desperate for an hour--just a hour--alone.

I say this is likely, but in fact I know it to be true for at least five or six parents around the country, for as I sat up on my roof deck, in blissful solitude, I made a few phone calls when it grew too dark to read, and every single person I reached, between the ages of 30 and 60+ expressed to me some level of angst about their children, about the job they'd done this day in particular regarding them, and this in spite of the fact that parenting was neither the covert nor ostensible reason for my call.

I have to say, this made me feel a little better about the fact that I had been pushed out of my own front door by a groundswell--a tidal wave--of exhaustion, defeatism, anxiety, anger, and sheer grime the instant I closed the door behind me after depositing Annika unceremoniously in her crib. This day was like any other, twenty-four hours long, but it felt like eighty, and suddenly I couldn't take it, being a mother, for one second more.

My provisions: aforementioned glass of wine, still bug-free, the most recent New Yorker magazine, my phone. I forgot the Hershey bar with almonds I'd bought guiltily at the drug store while picking up a prescription--guiltily because I spend so many hours explaining to Lily why we don't eat junky candy from the drug store and then buy and hide it like a CIA operative with a career-threatening sugar addiction. And I don't even like candy that much.

The funny thing is that nothing out of the ordinary even happened today, except for the fact that I didn't work in daylight hours, meaning that I was actively on parenting duty all day, from daybreak--literally--to that moment of flight. Lily had a friend over, and they covered themselves from head to toe with what looked like Native American tribal signs in magic marker. When I told them both that they should know better, they blamed each other. Annika followed me or Lily, variously, around the apartment, screeching. She fell twice, once forward, once backward, part and parcel of the whole learning to walk thing, but no less traumatic for being a stage. We went up on the roof for lunch. Lily and her friend dumped water on each other. Annika ate some dirt. Lily explained to her friend that her mother thinks this is okay because it's good for the "commune system." I wondered how long it would take Lily's friend to tell her parents that Lily's mom lets their baby eat dirt. And on and on.

But by the time Ben got home, I was ready to comb the banana out of my hair, stop explaining why rice cakes aren't dinner and burn all the board books in the middle of 16th Street. I understand that repetitive sounds are good for language acquisition. It's just that they kill brain cells in those over the age of 35. I made it through dinner, through my 500th reading of Strega Nona, through the agonizing tooth-brushing session during which I suppressed what I always suppress: the intense desire to reveal that brushing your teeth three times a day for the ridiculous length of time advocated by our overpriced "pediatric dentist" will not actually guarantee admission to Yale. And then, I fled.

As it turns out, one of the conversations I had up on the roof, the final one before my Dante-esque descent, did in fact make me feel grateful, intensely, profoundly so, for my two little devils. But the knowledge that every day, in every year, for the entire duration of the proposition, holds the possibility of agony made me feel in my today, a lot less alone. It's really hard to be a parent. It's really hard for everybody, and--bite your tongue, I am telling myself--it's hard if your kids are ten months old or 38. I'm not an age concealer: that's meant to be a nod to you, Mom and Dad. Thanks for never saying to me: My god. It never ends.

Which brings me to the last scene of my roof deck adventure. I will switch unsubtly to the present tense to underline the experience for you.

It is 9 o' clock. I am standing by the elevator door on the sixth floor waiting for the elevator to arrive. My phone and my keys are in my pocket, my unread New Yorker under my arm. I am holding my not quite finished glass of wine--alas, even under the most stressful circumstances I am only driven to drink in minuscule amounts. I notice, casually, that there is a tiny bug in the wine. Then I spot another. I consider the tiny bugs. I flick them out with my forefinger. And then, I drink it anyway.

It was just that kind of a day.

Struggling...

I have been working and working at this essay on a Word document and was planning to post what I had at the end of the might, but it's just not there yet, and I'm not sure what to do about it. I really need to finish this asap, like tomorrow, but I keep running into my familiar enemies: generalizations, vagueness, platitudes, and they're not being stamped down by my positive qualities. I'm going to keep at it tomorrow and post what I have no matter what, as maybe the fear of posting something bad will spur me on to quality work. We'll see.

Any and all advice appreciated. To refresh your memory, this essay is about the end of a relationship with a longtime babysitter and how it mirrors--and doesn't--a traditional break-up.

Which Came First?

Among the many subjects that are of great interest to Lily these days are chickens and death. The other night we were eating chicken for dinner when she remarked, casually, "These chickens had to get made dead for us to eat them," or something to that effect. "And they probably don't like it." I thought for a second. "Well, they don't know we're eating them. They're already dead," I said. She cleaned her plate.

Tonight, when I was putting her to bed, she said, "Mama, I love you so much that I will never stop loving you." I was touched. "Me too, Lily," I said. "I love you that much too." She furrowed her brow. "But I guess we'll have to stop loving each other when we're dead," she said. "I will love you forever," I answered immediately, hoping there was no chicken component to this conversation.

And yesterday, in the car, as the two of us were driving somewhere, the firm voice from the way back seat. "Mama?" I caught her eye in the rearview mirror. "Yes?" The characteristic gesticulating. "How do chickens make eggs?" Forgive me for not launching into a detailed ovulation explanation. We were in the car; I have to speak really loudly for her to hear me when I'm driving. I was distracted; I could tell she was just making idle conversation anyway. "Inside their bodies," I said. "We'll read a book about it later. I'll explain it better when we're not in the car." She nodded, already onto something else. But then, a few minutes later. "Mama? If the egg comes from inside the chicken, where did the first chicken come from?"

Oh, Lily. If I only I knew.

On Fireworks

No nitty-gritty work today: too much cooking, which I guess for me is what the Fourth of July is about for now. Pecan sticky buns, lobster rolls, avocado and white peach salad over greens, potato salad with hard-boiled eggs and cornichons, baked beans cooked on the grill with wood chips, bratwurst in a beer, butter and grilled onion bath, blueberry pie with thick whipped cream. From the garden? Chives, tarragon, parsley, oregano, onions, baby peppers, baby zucchini, the blueberries, the greens. Relevance factor? Zero.

I know I need to get to work, but everybody went to sleep, although they all seemed pretty well-rested and chipper, and I am sitting here by the window feeling groggy and itchy, thanks to my part-time gig yesterday as a mosquito feeding trough. When they first went upstairs, one by one, I was lying on the couch with one of my 365 unread New Yorkers over my face, shielding it--my face--from the light. My father had spent most of the evening trying to get around the fact that we don't have cable by willing the television to show the Red Sox game he wanted to watch. When he finally gave up and made his unceremonious departure--the last to leave--he left the television on.

Fireworks celebrations in New York and DC, with appearances and introductions by grade B celebrities and pans of the ooing and ahing crowd. Personally, I have always thought there was something off, really misguided, about fireworks on TV. After all, the whole point of fireworks is their immediacy. Seeing them reproduced on the small screen, with control over the volume, makes me think of the tourists at museums taking video footage of the paintings. What's the point? Or so I've always thought.

And still do, but somehow tonight as I peered out from under my New Yorker face hat to see the display--I don't think they could make stars the last time I saw fireworks--I felt at the very least a kind of good nostalgia, a little spark of joy, pun intended, all the way. Possibly my nostalgia was exacerbated by the fact that the fireworks were accompanied by a Jerry Lee Lewis concert (I thought he was dead, said Ben, echoing the thoughts of tens of thousand of Americans around the country, I suspect), as well as orchestral performances of Fats Domino and Chuck Berry numbers.

But I also started thinking about how in this age of insta-communication, social networking sites, downloadable photos, texting, movies on demand and on and on and on, there is something inescapably simplistic about fireworks. In spite of those tricky little stars, they really can't be much improved. In other words, fireworks are what they are. There can be more of them, in more colors, and they can be shot up in the sky for shorter or longer periods of time, and they can be simpler or more elaborate, but at essence, they are what they are.

It's kind of like a sandwich. You can put a slice of fois gras between two pieces of fine brioche, but it's still a sandwich. This makes me happy. Fireworks can't be digitalized (although apparently the way they are they set off can be, and is, but this doesn't affect the results). They can't be "enhanced" or "streamlined." I suspect for generations they will continue, alternately, to delight and terrorize small children, provide a romantic backdrop for teenagers ripe with summer vacation, and fill sleepy, otherwise distracted, bug-bitten adults with a flashback to summers before, just a little needed jolt before closing down the joint.

Confessions of a Former Baton Twirler (Got Your Attention, No?)

It occurs to me now, on the eve of the Fourth of July, that this used to be a pretty big holiday for me. When I was a kid, we had traditions for this day as well-established and consistent as those for Thanksgiving and Christmas. At noon, we would join what felt like the rest of the town for the parade. There were a few years when I was actually in the parade, once--and I have not thought about this in a solid thirty years--as a baton twirler. That's something that nobody I know now knows about me: that when I was in first grade I knew how to twirl a baton.

Then, after the local Bluebird troops had marched (I was one of those too) down the old Boston Post Road with the Rotary Club, the Town Selectman, and so on, we would meet up at the centrally located home of some good family friends for a post-parade get-together. After that, to my grandparents' house, to the pool, to convene with our cousins for a cook-out. And finally, to fireworks, always fireworks: sitting on a hill with some assortment of friends or relatives for a display set off by the local fire department.

It was a day I looked forward to, a real holiday, a celebration. One year I rode on an antique fire truck in the parade with a bunch of my friends. Another year my aunt sold silk-screened T-shirts she'd made at the fair in the park on the parade route. I still have two of these: Lily and Annika will wear them tomorrow. Hot dogs on the lawn of the First Parish Church, running for candy thrown by the teenagers on the lumber company's extravagant float, s'mores at dusk with my cousin Andy, and the climactic and yet definitively final event of the day: lying on the grass with my hands behind my head looking up at the black clear sky, waiting for the first burst of light.

When did I stop caring about the Fourth of July? In college? I can't remember. The truth is, I am even a teeny bit patriotic. Okay, more than that. In fact, although I occasionally become disgusted with a wide variety of government officials and policies and threaten to move to France, I am also the granddaughter of three immigrants who came here under fairly desperate circumstances and seemed grateful for the opportunity until the day that they died. I think as a child, my now sort of embarassing patriotism was linked to the Fourth in my mind; in other words, it wasn't just about the hot dogs and the parade.

Is the Fourth of July a kids' holiday? Lily doesn't seem too into it, but then again, I have given her no traditions or sense of meaning for the day. Ought I start? I don't know. It seems somehow exhausting and artifical to start making a big fuss, for a number of reasons. I think I will explain to her tomorrow that we are celebrating the birth of the country in as simple a way as I can, and see what she has to say about that.


This feels super boring to me. I apologize. I will be back to the nitty gritty work tomorrow. I'm feeling it a little bit, though, writing this. Happy Fourth of July.

Why I Write?

"From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books."

This is a quote by one of my favorite writers, George Orwell, from his famous essay "Why I Write." Like Orwell, I also knew from the age of 5 or 6 that I should be a writer. Unlike Orwell, I have never really tried to abandon the idea. My consciousness of my "true nature" has never wavered, although my faith in my common sense certainly has.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of being a writer for me is the fact that the work is never finished. I mean this in every sense; each sentence, paragraph, essay, chapter, book, is never finished, and the work in general is never finished. In other words, there are no concrete, finite tasks. Because of this, I sometimes become consumed by concrete, finite tasks; this is why, for example, I play online Scrabble, do crosswords, enjoy loading the dishwasher, used to relish math homework. You do it; it's done. There are answers, and there are rewards for questions answered correctly. No editing required.

One way I have, over the years, come to fend off my feelings of anxiety and inadequacy as a writer is to cook. Cooking is as concrete, as finite, as anything else, albeit more creative. But the way I cook when I am under the gun with a writing assignment is neither concrete nor finite, it is a way to prove to myself that I can start and finish something that will be worth the effort, and that there are an infinite number of ways to finish, and none is better than the other.

When I was in graduate school, and writing more than I had before or have since, I used to cook a lot, the same things over and over again. During one rough patch, I made fudge. Fudge is tricky, involves candy thermometers, boiling sugar, a cool setting place. Every time I took a perfectly set pan from the cool setting place du jour, I felt a sense of satisfaction that eluded me when I wrote and rewrote and threw away the draft and wrote it again and rewrote and on and on and on. Endless loop instead of done. I'll take done every time.

This is all by way of saying--and I am assuming it is by now clear to you that it takes me a mighty long time to get to the point somehow--that in the last month I have made a Barefoot Contessa recipe for onion dip six times. I have also made a green garlic souffle, a sour cherry pie with a lard crust and a labor intensive shrimp risotto. But it is the sixfold onion dip that makes me shake my head in dismay. Boy, do I have an awful lot of work.

A Quiet Revolution

My mother just had her last day of school. It feels so strange to write that, to imagine my mother as a separate entity from her school, that I'm not sure I can even explain what I want to say in a way that makes sense. But I will try. To me, my mother--her essence, all of my memories of her, her identity itself--is inextricably linked with her schools, and none more so than her current school, the school she conceived of and built from the ground up, that embodies all of her most deeply held beliefs about elementary education. Yes, she had a lot of help. Yes, the school exists thanks to the efforts of so many hardworking, like-minded people. But if you know my mother, and you know her school, you will know what I mean when I say it is hers--a structural translation of who she is as a person that exudes her philosophy from every brick and tile.

My mother is not really retiring. Anyone who knows her knows this. She is moving on to another stage in her life because this is what people do, what life does: we move on. We change. And my mother's school will go on, too. But as my mother's daughter, a person who has followed her career as closely as is possible for the last 38 years, anyway, I would like to express my thoughts about this particular moving on, this change: what my mother has meant to thousands of children and their families.

Do you remember your first grade teacher? Of course you do. And every kid who was in my mother's first grade classes remembers her because for decades we heard them tell her so: at restaurants, gas stations, airports, she was approached by men and women of all ages who wanted to say, "Thank you. You made me love school, and you changed my life." Seriously. It started to seem like an extended Candid Camera episode. And then she went back to school, which she would have done earlier if not for us, and extended her reach, transforming entire communities.

But do you remember your principal? A looming presence or faded bureaucrat who rarely emerged from his office but for occasional assemblies or disciplinary cases? You didn't go to my mother's school. My mother, she of the neat blonde pageboy and unfailingly tidy dress, spent the last twenty odd years riding a scooter, throwing tea parties, harvesting and housing hermit crabs, wearing costumes, distributing apples and shells, celebrating birthdays, saving pennies, hosting auctions, defeating bullies, fighting for the underdog, educating teachers, and falling in love each fall with a whole new universe--with the undiminished enthusiasm, energy, creativity, sense of justice and celebration of learning that she brought to that school building every single day.

It took me a long time to understand why my mother worked so hard, such long hours, on weekends, all summer, on every vacation we ever took. Many people think education is a field for those who like summers off, early dismissal, dinner at home. These people have never met my mother. I can safely say I have never encountered anyone, ever, in any field, at any stage of my life, who gave as much to their job as my mother did to hers. And when I finally did come to understand, to see that my mother was one of those rare individuals in this world who found what she was meant to do and did it as well as a human being possibly could, I also understood that she was lucky, but not as lucky as those who reaped the benefits.

In brief, my mother can make a child who hates school, has been labeled a "problem kid," has been thrown out of another institute of learning, steals, lies, cheats, beats up other kids, is a social outcast, is suicidal, is literally destitute, into a child who spends the rest of his life respecting and living up to her values: wanting, needing, to learn, and treating other people with kindness. Unequivocally. How do I know this? Because I saw her do it over and over again, up close and personal, met the children whose lives she transformed, not just the downtrodden ones but the average ones, who never felt average under her gaze, the show-offs and overachievers, who learned how to be humble and kind under her tutelage.

Life is unfair, and my mother knows this, but she must have decided at some point that her school, anyway, was going to buck the trend. There was never any room, not so much as a crack, in her school for the popularity contests, bullying, "mean girls," raised Cains, teacher favoritism, sucking up or playground hierarchies that infiltrated every school I ever went to in some way or another. People always say you can't control these things, that kids will be kids, and we need to let them hash it out amongst themselves. My mother, I know, has always found that lazy, sloppy, unacceptable. How do you have a school full of children who treat each other with kindness? You make it the fundamental guiding principal of the school, the Core Value, as my mother would say, and everything else falls into place.

Guess what? It works. Ask around, Nobody's ever bullied twice, been bullied twice, in my mother's school. Dick Cheney himself would surrender after one visit to her office, where the only disciplinary tool is a conversation based on empathy and respect. Children left that office transformed. Again, I saw it myself, with my very own eyes, over and over again. And when children feel safe, when teachers and staff feel safe, and supported and encouraged and respected, the door swings open so wide that the learning is limitless. For everybody.

How many of us can say that we have made the world a better place in a practical, hands-on way? How many of us can say that we have changed the trajectory of thousands of lives by virtue of the work that we do? My mother, a woman who singlehandedly, personally and unilaterally ensured that no child in her school ever missed a meal or wore clothes that were not clean, warm and suitable in every way, a woman who vacationed on an island with a school with no library and built them one herself, a woman who was just invited to the wedding of a boy I knew decades ago when he was a student in her class who told her, when she had to decline the invitation, "That's okay. You'll be there anyway"--and a woman who has never mentioned any of these things and so much more to another soul, who has never asked for attention, let alone accolades, for the awesome work she has done--she can.

She won't, of course. She never would, never will. And she will be angry at me, on some level, for doing so myself. But I don't care. My mother is many things, not the least of which is: a tough act to follow. Her standards for herself are unimaginably high. Although it is inconceivable to me, I suspect she doesn't quite fathom what she hath wrought. I would like her to know that the work she has done will reverberate for generations, not just in her school and its community, but far beyond those parameters. She has accomplished nothing less than a quiet revolution, and every teacher, custodian, nurse, secretary, volunteer, parent, sibling, and most of all student who ever had the privilege of working with her, will never forget. And neither will I.