Floor Pie

Rotten Made of Cotton

2012-02-24T17:07:00.009-08:00

Let’s be clear about this. I oppose bullying as much as the next parent. I was bullied myself as a tween, and it took years to get out from under it. Being objectified and intimidated by one’s classmates is a rotten way to go through school, and I absolutely support any effort to take bullying seriously and put a stop to it.

What I don’t much care for is this Townspeople-of-South-Park level of blind fervor and crippling lack of nuance that drives the dialogue. Or maybe it’s just the Internet I don’t like. No, I see it in real life too. Parents are so riled up against bullying and so vigilantly on the lookout for potential bullies that they do so at the children’s expense. There’s little or no consideration given to age, developmental stages, social skills, or special needs. It’s plain and simple Us vs. Them. And with particularly young children, it’s often in the eye of the beholder.*

Two babies, not even sitting up yet, lie side by side on a rug while their parents take pictures. One baby starts to practice her new rolling-over skills, inadvertently flopping into the baby next to her and poking him in the eye. She continues her attempt at rolling despite the other baby’s wails, only slightly perplexed by this noisy obstacle. It seems like the parents are joking when they start calling the rolling baby a bully. But there’s truth and anxiety behind that joke.

By preschool, it’s not so funny anymore. We’ve been warned by countless headlines, had our hearts broken by tragic suicide stories, been admonished by the news media to be on the lookout, always. (But don’t be a helicopter parent! That’s bad! Make up your mind, media.) And here he comes, a two-year-old on a mission. He snatches a toy out of another child’s hands. He runs up behind a child just as she’s reaching for a book and pushes her flat on the ground. He grabs a boy who accidentally bumped into him and bites him on the back of the head.

By the time they’re four, they run in packs and gather in circles. Friendship is a relatively new thing for them, and the power of belonging and not belonging is fascinating. “This slide is just for girls,” they might say. Or “You can’t be on our team because you don’t like Star Wars.” They might flout every well-meaning preschool rule and turn their fingers into guns (or volcanoes or freeze rays) for imaginary classroom assaults. And, sadly, they might single out a classmate to chase or tease.

How awful to be the parent of that kid who’s getting chased and teased. It awakens something visceral in us, unearths all our childhood baggage and brings every “Beware of Bullies” article we’ve ever read into terrifying focus. I remember consoling a fellow parent in this situation. “They’re just mean!” she said, hopelessly. I knew how she felt.

What I didn’t say was that I knew how the “mean” kids’ parents felt, too. Believe me, the only thing more horrifying than seeing your child become a target is seeing your child become part of the pack that’s doing the targeting. There’s this notion that the bully’s parents are oblivious, proud, perhaps bullies or queen bees themselves. Maybe there’s some truth to that in some cases, but it seems a little too convenient and unfair.

I don’t see myself that way, but I guess I can see how other parents might. I’m probably a touch on the spectrum myself and I tend to miss social cues, talk about myself too much, state an opinion where one clearly isn’t welcome, use bigger vocabulary words than, perhaps, the situation warrants. Or else I just plain keep to myself, which can arouse all kinds of suspicions of “She thinks she’s so great.” I guess I could see how someone might mistake me for a queen bee.

The Boy was four, just coming into full steam with his as-yet-undiagnosed Aspergers and all the sensory-seeking, socially challenged, lack of impulse control that goes with it. Or, you know, being a “bully.” Potato, potahto.

Somehow, that made it okay for a preschool dad to unleash a torrent of verbal abuse on us both on the playground after preschool. I’m sure that guy went home and posted on Facebook about how he totally mama-grizzly’d some bully’s mama on the playground and received all kinds of accolades and support. Meanwhile, I spent the rest of the year feeling isolated, intimidated, and ashamed. But I suppose the average Internet reader would agree that as the alleged queen bee parent of an alleged bully, I deserved it.

Well, folks…life is just a bit more complicated and nuanced than that. There are no heroes, victims, or villains here. Just people. School is an incredibly complex social landscape for anyone. And yet, we somehow expect even the youngest children to navigate it with the idealistic aplomb of liberal arts college sophomores who’ve just been to the rape-awareness fair.

But young children, let’s face it, aren’t quite there yet. Have you ever observed an elementary school recess? The power dynamics shift on a whim, and everyone (yes, even your kid) takes a turn being truly awful to someone else. You know when people use the line “He’s just doing it because he likes you”? I know it reads as a blow-off line, and I understand why people (including this blogger everyone was linking the other day) find it infuriating. But in many cases, especially with very young children or children with special needs, it is absolutely true. Children who struggle with social skills do tend to initiate play or friendship with inappropriate overtures like pushing, touching hair, shouting, and teasing. I see it all the time.

The good news is, young children also have boundless capacity for empathy and learning. And they can learn how to navigate the social landscape if we approach them with empathy, realistic expectations, patience, and forgiveness. We need to leave our baggage at the door and remember that a two-year-old (or a four-year-old or an eight-year-old) is not a future Columbine shooter or the kid who pulled down your pants in 4th grade. Children can and should learn socially acceptable ways to engage. But they don't learn it overnight, and slapping our narrow adult misreadings and baggage on the situation is not helping anyone.

The bit about parents being oblivious or thinking our little snowflakes can do no wrong? That’s just not true. Just because a parent’s first reaction may be defensive; just because a parent has built up a high tolerance for her active, possibly autistic or ADHD child’s antics and chooses her battles carefully so as not to be in a constant state of battling; just because a parent who has to hear every day what jerk her kid is chooses to instead emphasize his strengths…well, you just don’t know the whole story, do you?

And the bit about teachers not caring? Maybe some of them truly don’t, but lots more of them do. But the best teacher is the one who’s got every kid’s best interests in mind, not just the “good” ones or the ones whose parents’ wheels squeak the loudest. The best teacher isn’t going to knee-jerk assume “bully” when something goes awry. The best teacher isn’t going to use shame and ostracism and scapegoating to put the so-called bullies in their place. The best teacher is not going to commiserate with you about what a little shit someone else’s child is. The best teacher is going to help all the children develop the skills to handle the many complex social challenges they face. And as parents, that’s the best thing we can do, too.

Easier said than done, I know. I don’t always get it right even half the time myself. But I’ve read a lot of books and taken a lot of parenting classes over the years. Here are a few whose advice and insights I've used consistently with very positive results:

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child by John Gottman

Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads by Rosalind Wiseman

Be Different by John Elder Robison

“Social Lives of Our Children” – a lecture by Julie Metzger (Summarized here. I strongly encourage you all to read it.)

*A few weeks ago, I wrote about our dreadful experience at The Boy’s first elementary school and characterized what happened to him there as bullying. What I neglected to mention is that everyone else thought HE was the bully. And they weren’t entirely wrong. Stuff like this is seldom black and white. More on that later.

Within Marriage

2012-02-12T17:00:00.001-08:00

UPDATE: After last Thursday's anti-birth-control extravaganza, I posted an updated version of this story over on Open Salon. It's gotten a ton of traffic over there...almost like this issue resonates with people or something. Check it out if you like. I'll have something new up here soon.

Okay, people. I didn’t want to have to write this today. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love to delve into a good lady-parts story as much as the next gal. I just didn’t think I’d need to do it in response to this particular issue.

Really…birth control. How can birth control still be controversial in 2012? And yet, it seems like I can’t look at the news without reading about it. I thought it peaked last week, during the controversy over whether Catholic employers should have to cover birth control in their employees’ health plans. I kept sputtering half-articulate outrage at the computer like a freshman who’s 3 weeks into her first women’s studies course while Mr. Black rolled his eyes and reminded me that this is actually good news. A return to the culture wars means the economy must be improving.

I was sure we’d heard the last of it when President Obama worked out a compromise. Catholic employers who object to providing birth control won’t have to. Health insurance companies will have to provide it instead (which should be fine with them, since birth control is a hell of a lot less expensive than pregnancies). It seemed like the dust had settled and it was time to move on to greener culture war pastures…like whether marriage equality will force us all to marry our bacon cheeseburgers.

But then today, I read this:

Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.

And let’s not forget this, from popular Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum:

Many in the Christian faith have said, ‘Well, that's OK, I mean y'know, contraception is OK.’ It's not OK. It’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be within marriage.

Sigh. Okay, here’s the thing, Republicans. And I’m speaking from “within marriage” now, not pregnant at the moment but plenty barefoot; just a baby-loving, home-owning, field-trip-chaperoning, cookie-baking, husband-adoring, Target-shopping stay-at-home mom. So listen up:

Women like me need birth control too. Without birth control, I wouldn’t even be a mom.

When I was 24, my ovaries were covered with endometrial cysts. The biggest one was the size of a baseball, practically swallowing the ovary whole. It could have made me infertile. Even after surgery and hormone therapy, those cysts can always grow back and wreak all kinds of havoc. But my doctor knew a simple way to manage the endometriosis – birth control pills. Tell us all about it, WebMD:

Birth control pills are the first-choice treatment for controlling endometriosis growth and pain. This is because birth control hormones are the hormone therapy that is least likely to cause bad side effects. For this reason, they can be used for years, while other hormone therapies can only be used for several months to 2 years… Birth control pills can also be used to stop or further slow endometriosis growths after endometriosis surgery.

And that’s how I was able to heal up the lady-parts and go on to spawn these little cuties. Birth control and family values. Huzzah!

But it doesn’t end there. It doesn’t even begin there, really. There were miscarriages, too. Early ones, thankfully, but devastating losses nonetheless. Before The Boy, I lost three pregnancies in an 8-month period.

And then, when he was only 10 months old, I had my first and only unplanned pregnancy. Damn near immaculate conception, really. We were amazed, a little freaked out, and so happy. The most encouraging thing of all was that, without even knowing I’d been pregnant, this pregnancy had lasted longer than any of those earlier ill-fated ones. I’d made it safely past the “danger zone” where I would typically miscarry. Dreamily, I started shopping for all my old favorite pregnancy foods and thinking up baby names.

One week later, there was spotting. A blood test confirmed that the pregnancy had stopped growing. An ultrasound showed nothing but an empty embryonic sac. I was instructed to go home and wait for the inevitable miscarriage. They warned me that it wouldn’t be like the other ones, which were only slightly worse than an extremely heavy period. This one was going to hurt. Call us if there’s a lot of blood, they said. They even gave me a few maxi pads to take home. Um…thanks.

Because nothing happens around here without a little gallows humor, miscarriage #4 came mere minutes after the Philadelphia Eagles lost the Superbowl. I’d been lying on the living room floor letting the baby play with my hair and feeling crappy in general while Mr. Black watched the game. Suddenly, it was go time.

And it was awful. It hurt like labor, complete with contractions and dilation and pushing. With every wave of pain came a grisly expulsion of gnarly clumps of blood and tissue. We’d left the TV on, and the premiere of American Dad cavorted in the background. Mr. Black held my hand and rubbed my back, which was incredibly comforting but also reminded me that the last time we did this, we ended up with a baby. Overall, I’d have to say Worst Superbowl Ever.

Somehow, going through all that only strengthened my resolve to have another baby. But when we were finally lucky enough to welcome Little Grrl to the family, there was no doubt in our minds. The baby factory was now CLOSED. I have had all the miscarriages I am ever going to have. I don’t ever, ever want to go through something like that again. Hello, IUD.

Look, there are obviously lots of reasons to be in favor of birth control beyond my little middle-class-married-mama story. But do I really need to list them? Is it really anybody’s business in the first place? Honestly, I might as well write about why people should have access to penicillin or Vitamin C or something. Isn’t it obvious? Birth control makes us healthier and safer. It helps us build our families. It puts us in control of our bodies and our lives. And, let’s face it, birth control prevents abortions.

Why do I feel like the minute I start making arguments like this one, we’ve already lost? Why is it up for debate at all? I hope Mr. Black is right, that this is simply the latest song-and-dance number in the culture wars now that the economy is on the mend. Because a 42-year-old mother needing to defend her IUD is just a little too ridiculous.

We're Gonna Have More Fun and Be Less Weird...

2012-02-03T21:44:00.000-08:00

It's a new day! No new post, unfortunately, but a new day nonetheless. In that spirit, please enjoy this song and dance number from our good friends at Greendale Community College:

New stuff coming soon. Really!

Star Belly Schools Revisited

2012-01-29T22:09:00.000-08:00

Actual poster in actual school hallway. Seriously.

When The Boy first started kindergarten, we got into one of the nicest public schools in the city through Seattle’s now-defunct school choice lottery. I was so excited, because this was an alternative school that touted its commitment to social justice and empathy building. This was in our pre-diagnosis days, back when I still harbored a secret hope that The Boy would somehow stop being so volatile…but worried like crazy that he wouldn’t. Getting into a school like that gave me great hope. “He’ll be safe here,” I thought.

Two years later, we left. I tell people it was because our neighborhood school offers a service model that can better meet his special needs, as well as an advanced learning program to meet his academic needs. I tell people how wonderful it is to walk to school every morning instead of driving across town four times a day. And all of that is true.

But the deeper, more painful truth is this: There was a deal breaker, a last straw that drove me to finally pull him out of the school I’d loved, the school I’d been so happy to get into. He was being bullied. And the school – this social justice/empathy-building school – believed that it was his own fault.

It’s funny how reluctant I’ve been to call it “bullying.” Just like other, more serious forms of abuse, the situation was never quite black-and-white enough to feel entitled to that label. These were boys he’d been friends with, boys he probably would still consider his friends. He’d really wanted a playdate with this new kid Dudley (fake name), but Dudley’s dad was extremely uncomfortable with that. He was worried about Dudley’s safety. He wanted to see some references first – references from other parents of kids who’d been to our house without any major incidents.

I should have told the guy to go jump in a lake, but The Boy kept asking when Dudley was coming over. What was I to say? We’d talked to him about his Aspergers by then, but I simply wasn’t ready to talk about the fear and prejudice that sometimes comes along with it. Instead, we invited Dudley to his birthday party. And it actually went really well.

But the Monday after that birthday party (The Boy’s actual birthday, incidentally), I got a call from the principal that The Boy had been in a fight. Apparently, Dudley told another kid to hit The Boy, and The Boy fought back. Both were sent to the principal’s office. Not Dudley, though.

Every day that week, there were calls from the principal with some Dudley-related incident. Dudley’s best friend Millhouse (another fake name, but an apt one) was involved now, too. They weren’t in The Boy’s class, luckily, but all three of them were in the same reading group that met in the library every morning. And that’s where it always happened.

On the walk to the library, they’d get out of line to be right behind him. They’d whisper and laugh and refuse to tell him what they were saying. He’d try to talk to them and they’d hold their ears, pretending they couldn’t hear. They’d wait in the bathroom and jump out at him as he was walking by. They’d push him when the teacher wasn’t looking. Eventually, he’d melt down, lash out, and the reading teacher would send him to the principal’s office. Dudley and Millhouse were having a ball.

We had an IEP at that point, but it wasn’t enough. There were no teacher’s aides in the building, and the special ed teacher was spread incredibly thin. The reading teacher was this softspoken older guy who firmly believed that The Boy had a discipline problem. He’d been to every team meeting and knew about the Aspergers diagnosis, but all he wanted to talk about were “consequences.” He’d send notes home with The Boy, telling me about the latest meltdown and lamenting how hard this is for the other students. You know, the normal ones. There’s that empathy building.

The principal defended Dudley and Millhouse. This is normal behavior, she told us. The Boy would simply have to learn how to handle it. And without even thinking about it, the words just came out of my mouth.

“If that is considered normal behavior at this school,” I said, “then I think it’s time for us to start looking for a new school.”

The principal was only too happy to get the ball rolling on that. I’d always assumed she was a hands-off kind of person, because she’d been so passive and silent at all the team meetings. But now she was springing into her proactive best, being extremely helpful in getting us the hell out of her social justice school. (At least this was better than the previous principal, who’d actively tried to discourage a friend of mine from sending her Down’s syndrome daughter to the school in the first place.)

We agreed to let The Boy finish out the school year, but I wanted him out of that reading group post haste. Again, the school was happy to comply. The special ed teacher agreed to teach him one-on-one in the resource room. He loved it. His behavior improved dramatically.

Everyone at the school, even those I would consider our advocates, made it out like The Boy had such an “extreme” case of Aspergers that he belonged in a more intensive special ed program. I know now that is simply not true. They told me the sort of teasing he had to endure was “normal” and he must learn to handle it. I know now that not all schools see it that way.

Last fall, he was getting teased by some girls at his new school. His teacher and the principal both took it very seriously. They had a class meeting about it. At pick-up time, the teacher took me aside and thanked me for reporting it. He was glad they had a chance to address it before it got out of control. I haven’t seen those girls tease him since. I’ve even seen them playing four square together.

Meanwhile, on the other side of our neighborhood, there is another Very Special school sort of like our old one. Instead of social justice and empathy, this school’s gimmick is foreign language immersion. They are hugely popular and, from what I hear, about as welcoming to special ed students as our old school was. In my darker moments, I can’t help but wonder if that’s part of the appeal. Whenever the topic of schools comes up among the neighborhood mommies, ours often gets unfavorably described as “too urban” or “ it just doesn’t feel like the neighborhood.” Indeed.

But now, that immensely popular international school has gotten so overcrowded, the school district just reassigned a good portion of the neighborhood to attend our school instead. And oh, the righteous indignation that has ensued. I watched the testimony at the school board meeting on TV (because I’m geeky like that). They sounded even more upset than I was last year when The Boy was being bullied. One guy was close to tears, talking about how his son will have to watch all the neighborhood children walk past his house to school while his son, a new kindergartener, will be told “No. You can’t go.”

What this guy doesn’t realize is that it’s already happening. There are already children being told “No. You can’t go” to the fancier, more popular public schools in our city. Last year, in response to strong parent advocacy, the school district commandeered another nearby school and changed it to a foreign language immersion school. When special ed parents complained that this wouldn’t work for their children, they were callously told to simply transfer to our school.

And now that these unhappy families who wanted the international school have been reassigned to our school too…you can tell where this is going, right? There’s talk of changing our school to foreign language immersion as well. “Clearly the parents want it,” the school board says.

Well kiss my grits. Just take over our “too urban” school and force us out because the important people want it. They don’t seem to have given a thought to what they’d be replacing. Never even crossed their minds. Or perhaps they assume we’ll greet them as liberators.

I’ll tell you what parents really want. How about, before we colonize any more Very Special Schools, we get all the special ed students in Seattle the teacher’s aides and speech therapists and OT services that they need? How about instead of telling them to suck it up and be bullied and stop being so autistic about it, we give teachers the tools to help them? How about instead of saying “Maybe you and your autism would be more comfortable over there at that less popular school…oh, until we decide WE want it for OUR purposes,” we could focus on serving all kids at all schools.

Yes, a lot of parents want these fancy schools. But we’re here too. And sadly, a lot of us aren’t speaking up. Some fear retaliation from the school district or from their queen bee neighbors. Some simply believe, on some subconscious level, that as special ed families we deserve to be treated as “less than.” Some are just too tired and overworked to have the luxury of speaking out. But make no mistake: we are here. And our kids’ needs matter too.

Take Your Baby to Paris

2012-01-22T22:29:00.000-08:00

“No, it was easy. I’ve had worse times taking him grocery shopping,” is what I’d tell people to ease their surprise and concern. And then they’d relax and nod, understanding. Taking an 11-month-old baby who’s just discovered walking is an astounding feat anywhere, really. Why not a three-day train trip to Paris in the middle of winter?

Why not, indeed. We’d been visiting my old grad school friend and her family near Portsmouth, England. How could we travel all that way from Seattle and not go to Paris?

On the train to London, we sat in an aisle seat next to a woman preparing a resume, and I tried my darnedest to keep The Boy contained in my lap as he opened and closed the tray table with joyous abandon. He was desperate to get his hands on our seatmate’s sweet, sweet pen, and we locked ourselves in stifled combat as he reached and I restrained. This went on for pretty much the entire train ride. I was thankful for the group of raucous football fans on board, making us look downright prim by comparison.

At Waterloo station, they took one look at the baby sleeping peacefully in my arms and bumped us to the front of the line, I suppose because the risk of him waking up and wailing was simply too great to leave to chance. While we waited for the Eurostar train, I let him toddle wild in his little turtle Robeez all over the station. On the train, a French girl amused him with a rousing game of peek-a-boo.

And how amazing and sublime, seeing France for the first time from a train window, snowy fields punctuated with trees in perfect willowy lines. Mr. Black’s face lit up like Christmas morning as we rolled into Paris, remembering his last visit. We walked through the dusky drizzle to our hotel. It seemed as if the whole city were made of pastries.

I don’t speak a word French. Mr. Black taught me how to say “Je ne parle pas francais,” and I could barely even manage that. But it was a strange child-like luxury of sorts, letting the others do the talking; basking in the dreamy isolation of only being able to look, smile, and drift.

The next day was sunny and so cold and absolute perfection. I bundled The Boy into his snow suit and Björn’d him all over Montmartre, where he had his very first carousel ride ever. Later that afternoon we saw the Arc de Triomphe and wandered in and out of shops on the Champs Élysées, where The Boy laid waste to Virgin Mega Store’s punk section. We wisely decided to skip the Louvre, letting him toddle around in a nearby sandbox instead before heading to the Eiffel Tower.

He took his naps on the go – every Metro ride was like a magic snooze machine for him. At dinner in a small Latin Quarter restaurant, there were no high chairs. But a friendly waiter set a bread basket right in front of The Boy, who spent the rest of the meal happily gnawing.

“Ça va?” the waiter asked The Boy, grinning. “Ça va?”

“Oui, ҫa va,” Mr. Black answered for him in a squeaky voice. The Boy grinned right back.

The next day was less adventurous, sleeping late and devouring coffee and pastries in the hotel room. We spent the afternoon in a fancy department store, where my friend and I shopped while Mr. Black hung out with The Boy in the play cafe. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the train station.

And that was it. My one and only trip to Paris.

A few weeks later, I was back in Seattle getting ready for The Boy’s first birthday party. He’d mastered walking and would soon move on to running, climbing, and carrying huge sticks everywhere he went. As the months went by, I found myself increasingly grateful that we’d taken that trip when we did, because this kid could no longer be contained. He was fierce and wild and free. No Baby Björn could hold him.

Even now, at a sober seven-and-a-half, it’s hard to imagine hauling him and the rest of this crew back to Europe. Legoland and the Oregon Coast were challenging enough. Between The Boy’s Aspergian challenges, Mr. Black’s recent Crohn’s diagnosis, Little Girl’s tearful refusal to use any bathroom but her own or eat anything but bread when we travel, a geriatric cat with kidney disease whom I’m very reluctant to leave behind, and my own recent bouts of raging anxiety…well, it looks like we’re just going to be homebodies for a while.

But, you know…we’ll always have Paris.

It Takes a Village, People

2012-01-12T13:44:00.000-08:00

I’m shivering on the concrete steps, huddling in the last winter afternoon sunbeams. Halfway across the school playground is The Boy, playing an impromptu game of soccer with a dozen other boys and girls from his class. They organize themselves into teams and positions. They kick and run, argue and resolve. There are parents all around, but we’re on the sidelines – chatting, reading, or just trying to stay warm. The kids are a little society unto themselves, Peanuts-style.

I’m on the edge of my seat, of course, knowing The Boy could lose it at any moment. The other team scores and scores again. He breaks a rule he didn’t understand and a girl loudly corrects him. A little sister runs amok through the game, throwing everything off course. I brace myself. But he stays calm and keeps playing. Later, they organize themselves into a kickball game.

An ordinary scene, but it feels like a small miracle. These kids accept him. And he accepts them. He even follows their lead, acquiesces to their rules, high-fives a teammate who scores. He plays until most of the other kids have gone home, and his good mood lasts for the rest of the day. When I think about it, I realize that his meltdowns are getting fewer and farther between. And when they do happen, they’re much more easily managed.

I know we’re just going through a good patch right now and I shouldn’t get too cocky. There’s no “cure” for Aspergers, after all. One doesn’t outgrow it. I know the moods and meltdowns are lurking not very far beneath the surface. But I want to stop and give this good phase the same attention I’ve given to the rough spots. I want to go ahead and be proud of him, and proud of myself. And I want to recognize that while I did a lot (a lot!) to get us to this point…I didn’t do this myself. Not even close. Meet the village:

Parent Advocate Pioneers
Other special ed families’ struggles make ours look like a trip to Hawaii. There’s a parent at our school who’s been a particularly fierce advocate in the face of some pretty extreme adversity. But she managed to convince them that her son needs and deserves to participate in an advanced learning class with special ed support.

By the time we were reassigned to this school, I was too exhausted to fight for advanced learning placement. I was ready to back down and not push for it if they said no. But because this parent paved the way, all I had to do was ask the principal about it once and she said yes. And what an incredibly positive difference it’s made for The Boy to be in a class that truly challenges him. He’s reading classic children’s literature instead of those dry committee-generated readers. He’s learning the multiplication tables and long division. And he’s in a classroom full of kids who are psyched about math and science. (And Harry Potter. Holy moley do those kids love Harry Potter.)

I wouldn’t have fought for any of this. But another parent did, so we get to reap the benefits. I’ll remember that the next time I’m tempted to back down.

Teachers
Of course, the credit for this particular class goes to The Boy’s excellent classroom teacher. He’s the kind of teacher who calls after the kids as they’re heading for the buses “Don’t forget to watch the lunar eclipse tonight!” He genuinely likes them, and they like him right back. They have this incredible energy together.

He’s been very flexible and understanding with The Boy, and he’s been welcoming and open to feedback from me. But the really wonderful thing this teacher has done – the thing I absolutely couldn’t have done myself – is hold very high expectations. Not in a mean, Tiger Mom-ish way. Just simple and firm. “He can do this.” And most of the time he can. He’s so proud of himself. And I’m learning how to gently, kindly, set the bar a little higher for The Boy than I used to.

Special Ed Support
Words fail. These people make it possible at all. The teacher’s aide who helped The Boy through those first terrifying weeks at his new school. The special ed teacher who talks him through his meltdowns and bouts of crippling perfectionism; who gives him unbridled encouragement when he tries something new; who called me at home on the first day of school to tell me he’s having a great day. The teacher’s aide who researches topics he’s interested in so they can have conversations about it. The resource room teacher at our old school who was The Boy’s sole advocate, who wrote him a great IEP and helped us get him to a school that was a better fit. Their depth and breadth of knowledge, their empathy, their infinite patience. Where would we be without them?

Viewers Like You
I owe my relative sanity and overall well-being to every friend, family member, and reader who’s ever listened to me talk or who’s read and shared my writing about all this. So many of you have given me such generous room to vent, ponder, cry, head down a completely wrong path and backtrack to square one, worry, and ponder some more. You’ve given advice, offered resources, validated my feelings, challenged my perspective, helped me feel strong and capable. Thank you.

School…When it Works
We had a “Getting Ready for Kindergarten” parent meeting at Little Girl’s preschool earlier this week. Our parent educator asked those of us with children in elementary school to talk a little about our experiences. I don’t think any of us intended to scare the pants off the first-timers. We all love our schools, and the kids are having a great year. But it took some of us a while to get here.

We had to stand up to teachers and systems that misunderstood or undervalued our children. We had to improvise solutions. We had to teach our children even stronger coping skills, and deal with our own disappointment. It wasn’t easy. But I believe that every single one of us came out of it stronger and smarter from the experience. You don’t always get it right the first time. But human beings are incredibly resilient.

Yesterday afternoon, we gathered in the elementary school library for cupcakes and popcorn to honor the teachers who are doing special ed inclusion in their classrooms this year. The special ed teacher had prepared one of those “You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” Powerpoint slide shows, featuring heartwarming photos of the students all working, learning, and being part of the group under the gentle guidance of these teachers.

My favorite part, by far, was watching the audience’s reactions. Some of the teachers looked close to tears. Some had the biggest smiles on their faces. The Boy was delighted to see a slide of himself, hard at work writing a story at his desk. At the end of the slide show, the principal did a mock collapse, showing how incredibly touched and proud she felt.

School isn’t perfect. Life isn’t perfect. I know there are challenging times ahead, maybe even later today. But at this moment, I’m feeling so happy for simple moments like that after-school soccer game, and so grateful to everyone who’s helped us get here.

Luck

2012-01-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

I poured my carrot juice a little too fast at breakfast, and the flash of orange triggered a split second of memory and panic. I know this kind of thing is supposed to make you seize the day and hold your babies tight in breathless gratitude. But this morning, all I wanted to say was “Dear kids: Mommy almost burned her face off last night. Please cut the bullshit.”

I didn’t say it, of course. There were pink (NOT ORANGE!) vitamins and half a bagel with cream cheese (NOT TOASTED!) for Little Girl, and a frozen waffle (toasted! no, cold! no, toasted! no, cold!) for The Boy. Making the eggs was the biggest challenge, of course, returning to the scene of last night’s New Year’s Eve grease fire. And so we meet again, Mr. Stove.

I’d been trying to make popcorn for the kids’ movie night while talking on the phone with my mom. When I saw smoke pouring out of the pot, I stupidly took the lid off and then, even more stupidly, tried to extinguish the flames with a big cup of water (that also happened to have a sponge in it), making the flames flare up dramatically. When I started to move the pot off the hot burner, the flames shot nearly two feet in the air, in the general direction of my face.

Mr. Black came in and put the fire out as quickly as it began. The Boy was in the living room, high-pitched and panicking until we reassured him that the fire was out. But there would be no popcorn tonight. That was the last straw for Little Girl, who burst into tears and kept on crying.

What the hell just happened here? I saw the sad old blackened pot, abandoned in the backyard. My breath felt smoky and my face hurt. Mr. Black was standing on a chair, scrubbing smoke stains off the kitchen cabinets. I noticed a huge burn on my wrist, and my right eyelid felt like it was burning, too. Wait a minute, I thought. Didn’t flames just shoot at my face? Perhaps I should seek medical attention.

No waiting at the ER. You want speedy service, just have a seat at the check-in window and tell them you’ve been in a kitchen fire. There was a young, fresh-faced doctor, followed by his supervisor – an older gentleman, kind and jolly, dressed in a tux to make the most of having to work on New Year’s Eve.

“Was it smoke?” he asked, examining the burns on my face.

“Flames,” I said, and he looked at me with worry and surprise. “I was lucky,” I added. He nodded solemnly.

I had to wait for an eye exam, and wait some more while they consulted with the burn center at another hospital. And the longer I waited, the more the reality of the situation set in. This could have been a lot worse. Really, it was miraculous that it wasn’t a lot worse.

I felt a perfunctory impulse – almost an obligation, really – to thank God, or G-d, or the Universe, or Jesus, or Santa, or the spirits of my ancestors. Somebody. But the gratitude felt hollow. To believe that some divine force of good intervened to save me from my own stupidity, from an accident that I caused, is to believe that I am somehow more worthy of being saved than the next unfortunate accident-prone mother of two. And how can I believe that? What does that say about the person who isn’t so lucky? What sort of false hope does that provide? How will you comfort yourself when that benevolent intervention doesn’t happen?

The chilling fact of the matter is that this simply happened. I made a mistake. I started a fire. The flames burned just high enough to burn my face a little with their heat, and that was all. It could have had a different outcome. But it simply didn’t.

And so, I join the ranks of all the other New Year’s Eve survivors of bad choices – the DIY fireworks injuries, the drunken tumbles down the stairs, all manner of accidents that shouldn’t have been. And I go back to my life very much as before, hair and eyesight intact, living to kvetch and ponder another day. Lucky.

And yet…There’s a part of me that still very much wants to believe that I am a loved and treasured child of a universe that knows I’m here and wants me to stay. Whether it’s objectively true or not (and really, no one can know for sure), it’s a belief that can make all the difference in how happy you are to get up every morning and face the day’s fears and frustrations. It’s a belief that got me through some of the most challenging times of my life. It’s a belief that just might make it possible for me to sleep better tonight, and maybe cook again without anxiety. It doesn’t hold up to scrutiny or logic. But I think, for the time being, I just might hold it in the back of my mind anyway.

That, and some basic fire safety know-how. Best wishes for a lucky 2012!

Sub-Q Christmas

2011-12-18T01:40:00.000-08:00

People keep trying to tell me, in the nicest possible way, that the cat doesn’t have much time left.

I know.

Really, it never takes much for me to imagine any given situation taken to its most dramatic and heartbreaking hypothetical extreme. This one doesn’t require much imagination. I’ve seen her blood work. I’ve spent the hours sitting around the emergency vet’s waiting room, sipping bad coffee and watching the accident-prone dogs and very, very sick cats come and go. And I’ve seen this all before with other pets – childhood pets, friends’ pets, family members’ pets.

I’m there. I’m ready to say goodbye.

It’s just that she doesn’t seem quite ready yet. She was overjoyed to come home from the vet’s on Thursday night. Just the way she sniffed the air was delight itself, moving her head this way and that, craning her neck and taking big enthusiastic sniffs like she can’t quite believe she’s back here. As if she’d begun to think maybe she’d dreamed the whole thing. She ran to her scratching post and gave it the scratching of a lifetime. She ran to Mr. Black and jumped in his lap. I woke up the next morning, as I have most mornings over the last sixteen years, with a sleepy, purry kitty on my head.

Once a crazy cat lady, always a crazy cat lady. In the beginning – before Seattle, before kids, before any of this – it was just me and this cat in a Philly apartment. We were like Mary and Rhoda. Anyone who knew me knew all about my cat.

Earlier this week, when she was still at the vet, when I thought we might be losing her sooner rather than later, all I could think of were those early single-girl years. Getting a pet back then was such an act of affirmation. It said “Okay, I’m here, and this is where I’m going to be for a while.” Her feisty little presence filled in the uncertain spaces so beautifully; a fundamental layer between bored loneliness and the chaos of human company. And at the end of every absurdly bad date, every exhausting day at work, every disappointing job interview, every hilarious night out with friends…there she was.

And here she is now. Each front leg has a little bald patch where the IVs were. She spent most of that first day home sleeping under my desk while I hovered around her helplessly, wishing she’d eat and drink more, bringing her little meals and bowls of water to no avail. Occasionally I’d try to put her in my lap, but she’d just give me that one-ear-back look and return to her spot.

After the kids were asleep, Mr. Black and I made our first attempt at administering subcutaneous fluids. Have you heard about this? Here, let Dr. Mike explain:

So, there you have it. Set up a hospital-style fluid bag, jab a nice sterile needle under the cat’s skin, and let those fluids flow, all in the comfort of your living room. I’m going to be honest: There isn’t a component in that process that doesn’t fill me with dread.

Mr. Black and I bumble around with it every night, just like the very earliest days of parenting when we’d team up for every diaper change. We try so hard to stay calm and professional, but we’re both in way over our heads. We had to bring a wobbly old floor lamp up from the basement so we’d have somewhere to hang the bag. Sometimes the cat lurches and squirms, nearly working the needle out, getting tangled in the line. I actually stuck myself with the damn needle tonight and had to start over with a fresh one. I just hope the floor lamp doesn’t come crashing down on my head one day.

But in spite of all the awkwardness and absurdity… we’re doing it. I think it’s working. She’s so spry all of a sudden. That first night, the minute we were done with the fluids, she walked right over to the dish of food she’d ignored all day and started chowing down. Then she hopped into our laps and the three of us all just sat on the couch in a daze.

We were supposed to be flying back east next week for the Big Christmas Visit Extravaganza. But I can’t leave her now. I want to make sure she stays well. And if she doesn’t…well, I don’t want to hear about it over the phone from a cat sitter. On the one hand, it feels a little embarrassing and very crazy-cat-lady of me. On the other hand, it feels absolutely essential.

My parents and sisters have been incredibly understanding and supportive. The kids were disappointed at first, but they quickly warmed up to the idea of spending Christmas in their own house. So, haul out the rain boots and foam up the lattes, because it’s Christmas in Seattle this year.

My Girl

2011-12-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

Little Girl turned five yesterday, the same day as our preschool trip to see The Nutcracker. It doesn’t get much better than that.

I had a little moment there, just as “March of the Children” began, when I turned my attention from the lavish production on stage to her mesmerized face in the dark. She was perched on the edge of her seat, holding an armload of stuffed animals, clearly recognizing the song and delighted to see it come to life so vividly in front of her. I nearly started to cry.

There’s a joy in this girl that just about breaks my heart sometimes. It’s so pure, so free from the fears and self-doubt that come later in life. She throws herself into the things she loves with full force, unapologetically. She is my girl in motion – swinging on the playground for incredibly long stretches, mired in a gorgeous world of imagination. She adorns herself in mismatched pinks and sparkles. She narrates as we go about our daily business, or holds conversations with stuffed animals and imaginary friends. And her joy in her real friends is enormous, especially when they join in her story-playing. She’s even got The Boy doing it. They can play for hours, those two, just making up stories and acting them out.

I see so much of my childhood self in her, it’s a little scary sometimes. Scary, because I know what comes next. You turn all that love and imagination and intensity loose on the world and, well…mixed results, at best. There will be people who get you and love you for being your rather unusual self. Others, not so much. She has no clue yet, bless her heart, about people who want to take others down a peg with rigid standards of “normal” and “feminine,” or just plain competition. She can’t begin to fathom that there will be people who won’t love her as much as she loves them. Knowing that this awaits her is almost too much for me sometimes. Will her spirit survive it?

Well…yes. I think her spirit will do just fine. She’s got so much of it to begin with, not to mention a mother who’s been through the woods and back and could maybe help show her the path, if she’s willing. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. Might as well enjoy that unbridled innocence while we have the chance.

Happy birthday, Little Girl.

Beauty School

2011-11-13T22:01:00.000-08:00

One recent rainy morning, I dragged my reluctant self to Rudy’s for a much-needed haircut. I was half-asleep in the chair when Fleetwood Mac’s “You Make Loving Fun” came on. And suddenly…it was 1979 and I was back in the old orange-and-brown, potted-plant-flocked hair salon where it all began.

After a dreadful experience in which my adorable little sister was given an unwanted and most unfortunate bowl chop, our mom was extremely selective about who cut our hair in our small town. We tried some locally famous guy’s salon at the strip mall, where I got my first-ever Dorothy Hamill. But then he got to be too much of a big shot to do kids’ hair. We found another place that worked for awhile, until our stylist moved to Texas. She referred us to a new place that was supposed to be great.

It wasn’t at all like the kiddie salons of today, with their pony-shaped chairs and smoke-free environment. This was a grown-up salon, and it was the late 70’s/early 80’s, baby! My new hairstylist was – from my childhood frame-of-reference – like Johnny Fever meets Sam Malone meets Vic Ferrari. He was proudly single, clever-ish, gregariously self-absorbed, maybe just slightly on the seedy side. My mom respected him, though, so I felt compelled to at least try to figure out what I was missing. What was there to like about this guy?

Maybe it was simply his talent. No bowl chops at that place. This guy knew what he was doing. When he got a job at another salon, we followed him there. (Goodbye orange and brown, hello royal blue and gold!) And then, in the late 80’s, he and his fellow stylists started their own place. (Hello mauve and white!)

I never felt entirely comfortable in any of the venues. I didn’t like feeling obligated to talk to him, trying to make the kind of conversation he wanted to have, trying to somehow pass as the hair salon version of “normal.” Meanwhile, your mom’s standing over your shoulder telling him to give you a haircut that’s easy to manage because of your obvious hygiene and basic-personal-care failings. Jokes at your expense, always, and the sense that you had to go along and somehow see the humor in it…or at least pretend that you did.

And the hair, more often than not, was some dreadful version of early Princess Di. I wanted long hair. “But what will you do with long hair?” my mom would ask. I never had an answer to that. So, Princess Di it was. Well, Princess Di with giant 80’s glasses.

As if the mother/daughter growing pains and introverted adolescent discomfort wasn’t enough, there were some real eyebrow-raising moments going on at that salon. There were jokes, probably intended to flatter, about our developing bodies and hypothetical boyfriends. There was the time our stylist showed up very late for a morning appointment, complaining about what could only have been a hangover and detailing how he’d finally managed to get the vomiting under control. (And then proceeded to do my hair. Ew.)

One time a teenage girl with Farah hair and a long, flowery dress showed up with her dowdy friend in tow and hovered around his chair for my whole haircut, flirting and begging him to join them on some adventure. Before they finally left, she actually kissed him on the lips. Twice. I saw it in the mirror. The stylist was clearly embarrassed, politely trying to deflect her and cut my hair at the same time. I was deadly embarrassed too – not for them, but for myself. At age ten, I felt so dwarfed by her; so ridiculously late-blooming. (What’s wrong with me? I should be dressed up and flirting with some old guy instead of stuck here with my mom. I’m so lame.) My mom, for the record, was mortified. But she blamed it entirely on the teenage girl, and we kept going back.

And then there was the stripper! Yes, there was an honest-to-Zod stripper there one time, right while I was sitting under the heat lamps letting that perm solution do its work. The other stylists had hired her for his birthday as a hilarious surprise. She was older, very heavily made-up, with hair like Gwen Verdon and a sparkly tux. She barely stripped. Just took off the jacket, hat, gloves, and boa; did a bawdy-ish dance to some poorly-recorded show tune on her boom box. Afterwards, unraveling the perm rods from my hair, the stylist told me how uncomfortable it made him, and how he found the whole stripper thing kind of sad. I couldn’t tell if it was sincere or not, but I appreciated the effort. My mom was off doing errands and missed that one. I’m pretty sure I never told her about it.

I have to say, though, the guy wasn’t so bad. He did tasteful perms (well, tasteful by 1980’s standards). He had some interesting stories to tell. He had his own version of “telephone,” making up ridiculous urban legends to his clients to see how long it would take the story to get back to his chair. He mellowed a lot over the years, eventually getting married and talking mostly about his step-kids and horses.

I changed, too. As I got older my mom stopped hovering behind the chair, relieving me of the awkward-daughter persona, freeing up a new version of self to explore. Grown-up conversations became a pleasant challenge instead of a cringe-fest. I was proud of myself as I worked to figure it out, learning how to fake interest in some totally uninteresting story, how to intuit a person’s sense of humor and make a joke that they’d like, how to sound happy and chatty when you’re actually bored assless and getting a headache from the smell of perm solution and cigarette smoke, how to playfully deflect teasing, how to act like you’re okay with it when a man stops the conversation to flirt with another woman in front of you, how to pretend you think Don Johnson’s sexy, how to guess what they want to hear and then say it…how to act like someone who enjoys getting her hair done.

For better or for worse, I came of age under those dryers and in front of those mirrors. My hair went from Princess Di, to tidy little perms, to lush huge perms, to a sleek early-90’s bob. It was my go-to salon all through college, all through grad school. I was well into my twenties before I finally cut the cord and went to a different place (although there was plenty of DIY henna and Clairol happening in various apartment bathrooms before that). And years later, for my first Christmas as a new mother myself, my mom’s gift to me was a cut and color at the old salon.

I don’t really do salons anymore, unless there’s a special occasion or a gift card to Habitude involved. But I love how they’ve evolved into these nurturing spaces with a peaceful, healthy vibe. And I’ve finally realized that you really don’t have to do the inane chatter thing with the stylist. Just let them know you’re there to relax and bliss-out, and they’ll let you.

No, there’s not much to miss about the old smoke-and-Top-40-infused salons of my youth. But somehow, sitting there in Rudy’s hearing that old Fleetwood Mac song, it made me so happy to remember those awkward hours spent in that chair. I was peering into the adult world, gradually trying it on for myself, taking it more seriously than any actual adult ever would. It all seemed so dangerous and out-of-my-league at the time. So illicit. And now, somehow, it seems downright innocent.

Where Do You Go From a Thanksgiving Layoff?

2011-11-06T01:37:00.000-07:00

Down the hall in the break room, every inch of counter space was packed with various crock pots and pies. The smell of turkey wafted through the air. But first, our entire branch filed into the training room for an impromptu meeting.

Here we go again, I thought. The whole time I’d worked there – nearly four years at that point – there’d been rumors of downsizing, departments closing, even the entire branch closing. Nothing had ever come of it. They’d call us up to those meetings, amid a heavy mood of anxiety, just to announce personnel changes or some new policy. Surely today wouldn’t be any different. Who would announce a branch closing right before the Thanksgiving potluck?

And yet, that’s exactly what they did. “You’re all fired. Have some turkey.”

Okay, it wasn’t quite that harsh. They tried to let us down easy. They told us the office would be open through January, so there’d be plenty of time to look for new jobs. They let us know we were welcome to apply for jobs at corporate headquarters in Atlanta, or apply for retail jobs in any of the big box stores our office supported. They answered our questions as best they could. All around the room, you could hear people quietly crying.

Finally, we adjourned to the break room for one very stunned and surreal Thanksgiving feast. I think I ate about five desserts and very little else. We let each other vent. We wondered what we’d do next. We debated whether to call our husbands and wives now, or wait and tell them at home. Some of us were stoic, some were anxious, some were angry. Everyone had their own unique way of coping.

As for me, I was a little bitter, a little worried, a little ashamed, but mostly…overjoyed! So happy! I was pregnant with The Boy after nearly two years of trying and three early miscarriages. In fact, I’d just found out it was a boy that very week. I knew I’d miss my co-workers. I knew I’d miss a good job and a steady paycheck. But really, I was dying for a break. I wanted to stay home and start nesting, take walks, indulge my urge to nap at 3pm, maybe attend a weekday prenatal yoga class that wasn’t packed to the rafters like the Saturday one. Losing one's job while pregnant is an unfortunate situation. But I could barely suppress a wild, childlike sense of “YAY!!! NO SCHOOL!!!”

The bizarre thing is, that feeling lasted for nearly eight years. Every time I told the story of my layoff, it was with a “Can you believe my good fortune!” tone. I loved being a stay-at-home mom. Was it tedious? No more so than pricing water heaters for the monthly catalog. Was it mindless? No more so than chanting the corporate loyalty cheer at quarterly meetings. Was it a waste of my education? Please. I have a Masters in English literature. Anything that doesn’t involve analyzing food motifs in late 20th Century fiction is technically a waste of my education. No question about it. SAHMing rocked. And if I hadn’t been laid off, maybe I wouldn’t have had the courage to try it. No regrets.

Until recently. You see, I never intended to stay out of the game for quite this long. I did some freelance work here and there over the years, but The Boy is seven-and-a-half now and I have yet to set foot in another office. Little Girl starts kindergarten next year. It’s almost time. I’ve got to start getting ready to leave my own nest.

And as I look over my prospects and start dusting off the old resume, I can’t help but wonder…what if I hadn’t been laid off? What if I’d taken my little three months of unpaid maternity leave and gone right back to the old job? Would I still be there? Would I have developed new skills and made connections to get myself into an even better job? Would our finances be in any better shape than they are now, or would most of my money have gone to childcare?

More to the point: Would childcare have even accepted my little Aspergian toddler? When I was hoping to expand my freelance work, I tried sending him to a drop-off daycare. They kicked him out for crying too much. “This is a happy place,” the director explained as she refunded our tuition. I tried another daycare with a better reputation, but he hated that one, too. They didn’t kick him out, but they called me to come get him whenever he had a meltdown, which was often. After a while, I gave up on daycare and quit the freelance work altogether.

Again, no regrets. The Boy’s early years with undiagnosed Aspergers may have put me through the wringer, but I came out of it with all kinds of parenting superpowers and a fierce commitment to special ed students and teachers everywhere. I’ve learned so much, and I’m learning more every day – from his teachers, from his occupational therapist, from special ed activists and writers, and from the children themselves.

Lately I’ve been thinking I ought to put that to work instead of my mad corporate communications skillz. If it works out, then maybe that Thanksgiving layoff really was for the best.

This is Your Marriage on Hospital Drugs

2011-10-21T07:59:00.000-07:00

The euphoric combination of Not Cancer and hospital drugs lasts maybe 24 hours, tops. And what a lovely 24 hours it is.

We drive home, all four of us, like we’re coming home from the airport or something, weary from some journey, more excited than usual by ordinary things. I find some recipe on the Internet and he tells me over and over again how good it is. The kids go off to play and we have a talk, a real talk, in which we challenge ourselves and think outside our respective boxes, trying on the roles of Grown Up Husband and Wife at the height of competence, taking challenges head on, discussing solutions.

The next day, though, it’s all about pharmacy bills and deductibles and how the hell are we going to pay for this business of aging, of holding ourselves together? Maturity wants to give way to petulance, and maybe that’s really the most logical path because you know what? It’s not fair. No fair.

I always thought it would be me. It always has been me, hasn’t it, from migraines to miscarriages to the various cysts and scares. And who knows, it still could be. But him. He’s too smart for all this somehow. Too logical. The sober yin to my raging yang. How did he get here? Neither of us quite knows how to handle this perverse role reversal.

While he retreats into Stoic Adolescent, I stumble upon an old role, the role of Woman About to be Left. It’s a strange place to inhabit again, after all these years. The lying awake through sheer exhaustion and exhilaration, an awkward nestle into an odd angle of his shoulder, yearning to sleep but savoring every minute holding this sleeping person, feeling his impending distance.

Which is ridiculous, on the one hand, because nobody’s actually leaving. There are dishwashers to unload, checks to write, tedious arguments to have, emotional cues to miss, lunches to pack. It’s not like the old days. When a relationship used to make you this sad, it meant the other person was Wrong For You and the only logical course of action was to move on, set yourself free into that world of possibilities, that sea full of fish.

But now? He is just that into you. And you’re just that into him. But sadness, sometimes, just goes with the territory anyway. It’s impossible not to grow through a lifetime together and not occasionally – unintentionally – break each other’s hearts. As long as there’s still love on both sides, as long as there’s still fundamental respect and kindness…you stay.

Does it hurt more, knowing that when we do ultimately “leave” each other, it won’t be by choice? Oh yes. Hurt doesn’t even come close to describing it. Decades away, we hope, but it seems to loom so near when we get these little hospital gown’d glimpses of mortality.

So…we put it out of our minds as best we can. Enjoy each other, savor all the little poetic moments, carpe diem and so forth. And…well…keep standin’. Through love and absurdity. Stój zawsze przy nim.

Destination Wedding

2011-10-14T00:51:00.000-07:00

2001. Ours was the third in a series of family weddings that year. Boston in August, Newport Beach in September, and the grand finale in New Hope, Pennsylvania in October. We were living in Seattle by then, but most of our friends and family were still on the east coast. Destination wedding!

We’d just gotten back from the Newport Beach trip feeling so happy. Even on the drive to work that morning I couldn’t stop smiling, remembering all the fun we’d had and anticipating my own wedding – only a month away now. Even the AIRPORT CLOSED sign didn’t raise much concern or curiosity. Good thing we’d flown in the day before, I thought. I was handing out Disneyland souvenir pens to my co-workers when I first heard the news.

One sobering month later, we locked up our house in the dark and loaded our wedding-couture-filled garment bags into the airport shuttle van. It seemed wrong, somehow, to completely indulge the giddy anticipation and visions of sugarplums. The airport was nearly empty and eerily quiet. No one spoke as we waited to board our flight.

In Pennsylvania, American flags abounded. They hung on doorways, from cranes on construction sites, on lapels in ribbon form. Back in Seattle, we’d seen the same shocking images on CNN, felt the same deep sadness and confusion. But here in the northeast, it was raw. Real.

Somehow, though, a wedding was exactly what was needed. There were my sisters, my parents, and my old beloved Pennsylvania autumn. There was the man I loved so much, together for nearly four years at that point but still very much in the early wide-eyed throes of it. Everyone was so excited, so ready to come together and just be happy again, throwing ourselves into the joyful project of pulling this wedding together.

And pull it together, we did. Sunflowers. Baked brie. Falling leaves by the Delaware River. Chocolate raspberry cake. The best, most wonderful circle of friends and family. Pure fun. Pure love.

Life moved on pretty quickly from there. Our dreamy wedding gave way to the realities of marriage, and the dreamy “United We Stand” mood of the early post-9/11 weeks gave way to…well, you know.

Funny how those dreadful political years became the backdrop for some of the happiest, most monumental moments of our lives together. We were watching Fair Game the other night and I kept mentally comparing the story’s timeline to our own. That’s when we got married. That’s when I found out I was pregnant with The Boy. Et cetera.

Ten years.

I guess it feels like ten years – personally and politically. I can’t quite believe where we’ve been. I can’t quite fathom where we’re going. There will be joy and distance, absurdities and hope, setbacks and triumphs. It reads like a narrative, but really it’s a process.

Happily ever onward.

Above Average

2011-10-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

“ELL, Special Ed, and an assortment of behavioral problems are mainstreamed on the backs of average students.”

This from the school board candidate I was supporting. I’d put up a yard sign and everything. Now it looks like I might have to go out there in the rain and rip that sign out with my bare hands because, excuse me, “mainstreamed on the backs of average students”?!

Sigh.

I mean…I get it. I do. Teachers are spread incredibly thin. The more variables you dump on them, the less time and energy they have to actually teach. And, for what it’s worth, I was that so-called average student back in the day, sitting stoically through the chaos, sometimes learning, sometimes not, counting the minutes until the dismissal bell. And now I’m an average mom with an exceptionally brilliant, anxious, super-charged, sensitive, anything-but-average little Aspergian.

I didn’t mainstream him on anybody’s back. I hadn’t intended to mainstream him at all. Believe it or not, we special ed parents are just as afraid of “average” students as you are of us. You think I want to expose my little boy-child to the teasing, the judgment, the scapegoating, the willful ignorance, the ostracism? I pulled him out of general ed last year, not even knowing where the hell the school district would reassign him and not caring, because I knew it had to be better than where we were. I had no idea he’d end up right back in another general ed classroom at a different school, mainstreamed before we’d even had a chance to de-mainstream.

But you know what? It’s working for him. With a supportive principal, a caring and dynamic classroom teacher, support from a well-equipped special ed staff, and one very, very engaged mother, inclusion is working for my son.

Is it working for his “average” classmates, upon whose backs he’s supposedly been mainstreamed? Hard to say. I’ll admit that sometimes The Boy can be a downright pain in the ass. But having spent a fair amount of time in that classroom, I’m quite confident that he’s not the only one. Kids bump up against each other in all kinds of ways in a school setting. They cry, they tattle, they tease, they shove, they make the most unpleasant sounds and smells.

It’s not so much that the “average” ones have to endure the different ones; it’s that they’re all enduring each other. For the most part, they really do adapt to each other’s quirks and differences. They adapt a whole lot better than the adults do, that’s for sure. And they adapt especially well when the adults set a tone for acceptance.

Inclusion doesn’t work when the teachers resent it, the principals don’t support it, and the special ed services are spread thin-to-nothing. It sure as hell doesn’t work when other parents regard our very presence in the classroom as a threat to their “average” students’ academic success.

But here’s the thing: Inclusion isn’t going away. The school district wants it, most of the special ed parents want it, and it’s on the right side of the law. You can complain about it, you can hightail it to private school, or you can get on board to help make it work. Advocate for better special ed services and support for classroom teachers. Educate yourself about your child’s classmates’ disabilities. Volunteer in your child’s classroom.

Or…just take a moment to smile and chat with the special ed mom on the playground, even if she doesn’t have a friendly look on her face. Chances are she’s too nervous to reach out to you. Let her know she’s welcome. Because she’s a lot like you. And there may come a time when your child finds herself on the wrong side of “average.” How will you want to be treated by other parents when that time comes? Will you want to be seen as a burden, a label, part of the problem? Or will you want acceptance and a sense of community? Might as well pay it forward.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a yard sign that needs removing.

Fresh Start

2011-09-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

So, here’s a new one:

Last week, mere hours before we’d planned to leave for Big Family Final Beach Weekend of the Summer, I had a meeting at The Boy’s new school. (I know, what a great way to get psyched for a beach trip. Pass the tanning butter.)

So, I gathered up The Boy’s IEP and behavior plan, the handout they gave me back in June, my list of concerns – oops, I mean, “questions” – about this program and its appropriateness for him, and marched into that school ready to advocate.

Except…I didn’t really need to.

Somehow, over the summer – maybe thanks to the tireless advocacy of pioneer parents before me, or because school district lawyers successfully managed to explain “least restrictive means” to the administrators, or perhaps a rare alignment between school district politics and my child’s best interests, or maybe just plain dumb luck – the program changed. For the better.

It is no longer a behavior intervention program.

Enrollment in the program is now 80% autism/Aspergers students.

The Boy is in a regular 2nd grade “gifted” classroom with support from an instructional aide

The old self-contained classroom is now a "learning center" where special ed students have access to pull-outs for extra support, as needed.

If I could have designed a program for him myself, this is pretty much what I would have done. Well…I’d have the day be a little shorter, the class size a little smaller, include a big block of time for Lego-building in the afternoon, and tell the parents about it in freaking JUNE so they wouldn’t have worried about it all summer long! But otherwise, it’s pretty darn close to ideal.

So, now what? There’s plenty more to worry about, of course. How will the pearl-clutching “not fair to the other kids!” anti-inclusion parents react to his presence? What if the “gifted” curriculum is too hard? What if the other kids exclude, or tease, or bully? What if he lashes out at them? What if this simply…doesn’t work?

But now, with the long-anticipated first day of school finally behind us, there’s a lot to feel optimistic about, too. The Boy was so excited to walk to his new school this morning. He’s so proud to be a second grader. His classroom teacher is a guy who seems to genuinely love teaching and was positively glowing when I picked The Boy up at school today. He’s happy to have The Boy in his class. The special ed teacher actually called me at home to tell me The Boy was having a great first day. (After I recovered from the shock and panic of seeing SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS on my caller ID, I was delighted with the news.)

I know it could all go terribly wrong tomorrow, or next week, or months from now. All the more reason to savor it today, I suppose. And keep hoping for the best.

Back to the Prairie

2011-08-12T02:29:00.000-07:00

My summer reading list has been a strange combination of Aspergers this, special ed that, and…Little House on the Prairie? Not the books. Not the TV show. Books about the books and the TV show.

The best by far was The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure, in which the author and her boyfriend set out on a series of road trips to visit all things Little House. McClure delves into the beloved books of her youth, examining history and nostalgia; the books’ cultural impact and wide variety of fans; which parts were fictionalized; whether the books were mostly written by Laura Ingalls Wilder herself or by her daughter Rose; the books’ occasional cringe-worthy racism and politics; the sweetness and absurdity of Little House tourism; and the author’s own need to connect so deeply with the Little House world again in the first place. Loved it.

The other two books were more beach reads and Hollywoody than I usually prefer. But how could I resist Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim, who played Nellie Oleson on the TV series? Delicious. I wish I’d stopped with that one instead of slogging through Melissa Gilbert’s Prairie Tale, which read like a Twilight book without the vampires. Likeable enough, moderately introspective, but in the end I didn’t much care about all the boyfriends and Lifetime movies that followed her Little House career. Sorry, Half Pint.

Rather than plunge into Melissa Anderson (Mary)’s poorly reviewed The Way I See It, I’m thinking I might go back and read the later books in the Little House series: Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. I read them both during the summer between 5th and 6th grade – an awkward, searching, “crossroads” kind of time in my life for which I’ve recently, inexplicably, become rather nostalgic.

Then, as now, I was an anxious dreamer – yearning for adventures, but ultimately too freaked out by the whole business of dealing-with-other-humans to do much about it. So I wrapped myself in the comforts of bookworm solitude and the notion that things must be so much better on the prairie (or in Narnia, or Marilyn Sachs’ Brooklyn, et cetera).

The Little House books exemplified the very “simple country life” dream my family was striving for, with Emmylou Harris on our stereo and a brooder full of chicks in our living room. Reading those books was simultaneously escape and home…or escape to an idealized version of home. We already had the old stone farmhouse, the woods, the fields, the antique rocking chairs. All I had to do was glorify the mundane spaces with Laura’s wide-eyed narration; apply her pure sense of joy and wonder to my ordinary life.

That summer, as middle school drew nearer, I immersed myself even further in the Little House fantasy – imagining my shirts were long dresses, that our station wagon was a horse drawn wagon, describing my surroundings to myself in third person narrative prose. I’d read all the earlier Little House books about Laura’s girlhood. Now it was time to read about Laura as a teenager. It was the safest way to dip my toes in my own impending adolescence, wrapped in layers of braids and calico, buggy rides and sociables.

I remember holding on to the Little House fantasy well into 6th grade, willfully blurring the edges of my reality into a nice, gentle fictionalization. Maybe I was scared or overwhelmed, but I don’t remember feeling that way. I think I just really wanted life to be that joyful, instead of the raw mess of clanging lockers and flailing hormones and insecurities.

Looking at the covers of those later Little House books sends me right back there again, reading in my nightgown, yearning for my almost-teenage life to start but holding dearly to my summer. And – come to think of it – holding dearly to my childhood. Because, really, that was the last true summer of my childhood. The calm before the storm.

It’s nothing I’d ever want to relive. Yet I’m strangely, strongly compelled to revisit it now. Perhaps I’m just nostalgic for a time when I had the ability to escape and imagine. To delve into a jarring situation and soften it with idealizations and hope.

This isn’t the last summer of my children’s childhood. Not even close. But it feels like an end of sorts, at least with The Boy. I’m striving to see him, the real him, not my hopes and disappointments, not my advocacy for him at school, not the politics of Aspergers. Him.

And part of what I’m seeing is that even now, even at age seven, he’s miles beyond my grasp. I can’t impose peace and happiness on him any more than I could impose it on those noisy middle school hallways years ago. He is on his journey, not mine. I’ve always known that. But I’m only just now feeling the sharp truth of it.

Is it any wonder I find myself grasping prairie-ward again, seeking the comforts that got me through the first steps on my own path? Fasten your sunbonnets, pioneers. We’ll get through this one, too.

Welcome to the Cracks

2011-08-02T13:20:00.000-07:00

Ever sit around just reading your kid’s IEP, trying to imagine how it actually translates to a happier child? And let me be clear…I’m not complaining about The Boy’s IEP. It was written by an excellent special ed teacher who was his biggest advocate and strongest support last year. She herself expressed frustration with the rigid nature of these things.

You can dictate what a child needs and what the school must provide – to a point. They can have X minutes of services here, Y minutes of services there. They can have a teacher with a special ed degree (or, apparently, a Teach for America recruit who’s successfully crammed for a special ed test). They can be in a small classroom with a high ratio of adults to students. They can have access to an aide (just hope you don’t get the bitter, disgruntled type).

It can look good on paper, but so much slips between the cracks. Because you can’t dictate human nature. You can’t dictate empathy, common sense, or even the slightest real understanding and acceptance of Aspergers beyond its stiff, inadequate textbook definitions.

Welcome to the cracks.

It would appear that I have been ever-so-slightly misled. Some of the misleading, I’m afraid, was my own doing. I was desperate to get The Boy out of his old school and into a situation where he’d have more support and understanding. So, I enthusiastically accepted a spot at our neighborhood school where, my contact from the school district acknowledged, it wasn’t exactly an autism-specific program and it wasn’t exactly an inclusion model. But she, the principal, and the special ed teacher offered enough reasons to make me believe it would be a good-enough fit, that they’d be flexible and do their best to meet his individual needs.

And who knows. Maybe it will work. But it’s not what I was expecting. For one thing, autism is a relatively new thing to this classroom. Half of next year’s students will be on the spectrum, but traditionally it hasn’t been that way. Traditionally, it’s been a self-contained classroom for neurotypical kids with behavior problems, and it’s still very much run that way – with the teacher and aides kind of figuring out how all this applies to autistic kids on the fly.

So…not an ideal fit. Hopefully not a flat-out freaking disaster, but not an ideal fit. I wanted autism inclusion. I was led to believe (and very much wanted to believe) that this program was similar enough, but it isn’t. Meanwhile, the school district wants to phase out autism inclusion programs entirely. I don’t know what’s going to happen going forward, but I’m puzzling out the details of Plans A, B, C, and D right now and there are several possible outcomes. Time will tell. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy.

But in the meantime…welcome to the cracks.

We will start second grade at this school, in this program, as planned. The things I liked about it two months ago are still mostly true. And there’s still a chance that it might be a good fit for The Boy. My first action won’t be whisking him out of there. My first action will be trying to see if we can settle into these cracks we’ve slipped between and make it work for the time being. I’ll be navigating the system, but I will have both eyes firmly on the child himself. How will he thrive? What strengths can we build upon and what coping skills can we teach? Where will he find his small comforts and joys to help him through?

We made incredible progress last year. This coming year presents a whole new set of challenges, only some of which I can anticipate. Maybe someday we’ll have a school year where I can just put him on the bus and relax into my own day, but this isn’t going to be it.

On the plus side, maybe this will be the year I earn my Ms. Special Ed Parenting America crown. Stay tuned…

Me and Disco Stu

2011-07-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

“You have to go to the Tin Angel!” everyone insisted when I told them I was moving to Philadelphia. What can I say? I ran with a folksier crowd in those prairie-skirt wearing, WXPN-listening days.

So, after some early weeks feeling under-pierced and just plain lonely in the big city, I set out to find this place. I was such a country mouse in those days, I didn’t even understand about bars being closed on Sundays. Or that it wasn’t just a bar, anyway, it was a venue and I’d most likely have needed a ticket to get in. So, now what?

There was a coffeehouse/deli next door that was open. I decided to just sit with a big juicy mocha, contemplate this latest setback, and head back home in the spirit of “better luck next time.”

The place was nearly empty except for two middle-aged guys. One looked ordinary enough. The other was…well…the second coming of Saturday Night Fever. White suit. Baby blue shirt, half buttoned. Immaculately coiffed John Travolta hair.

His name was Phil. He introduced himself with exaggerated charm and immediately started hitting on me. I immediately started deflecting his advances with my trademark smirk and dumb-guy-repelling big vocabulary.

“Are you an intellectual?” he asked, throwing me for a loop. Raise eyebrow, hope he’ll go away. “Oh, be intellectual! It turns me on!”

I must have looked flustered, because his friend intervened at that point, trying to redirect the guy. Realizing it wasn’t going to happen, Phil turned around and yelled at me “You know what your problem is? You missed the seventies!”

“No, I loved the seventies,” I said. “I mean, I was only eight, but…”

And Phil Seventies went on a rant about how my generation isn’t any fun, with our “safe sex” and “irony” and “grunge” music/fashion. We just didn’t get it. His friend apologized and ushered the guy out the door.

Alone again. I supposed solitude was better than letting Phil Seventies seduce me with his disco-era charm simply because I was the only woman around on a slow night. No regrets letting that particular opportunity slip away.

But I wondered about him. How did he come to be in Philadelphia on a Sunday night trying to get laid in a John Travolta costume in an empty Food Tek, pissed that it’s not the seventies anymore?

Years later, I told the story to Mr. Black, who found it every bit as funny and baffling as I did. Was the guy really that clueless? Had he recently arrived in 1994 in his Delorean time machine? Was he coming from a costume party and just really, really committed to staying in character? My theory was simply that he was recently divorced, hadn’t been single since 1978, and assumed nothing had changed since then. But is that possible?

“It would be like you going to a club dressed as Kurt Cobain and yelling at everyone that they missed the nineties,” I joked.

And then we realized…oh wait. It is possible.

Well, not the going-to-a-club and yelling-at-people part. But in our own small way, we are now every bit as antiquated as Phil Seventies was back in 1994. We still dress in irony-T’s and flannel. I haven’t bought a new album since Sleater-Kinney’s last one. Today’s youth culture makes us cranky. We were watching the Homerpalooza episode of the Simpsons the other day and realized that we are Homer in that.

Bart: Dad, please. You're embarrassing us.

Homer: No I'm not. I'm teaching you about rock music. Now Grand Funk Railroad paved the way for Jefferson Airplane, which cleared the way for Jefferson Starship. The stage was now set for the Alan Parsons Project…

Replace those bands with Screaming Trees and The Cranberries, and here we are. We don’t even watch the Simpsons-of-today anymore; we just watch our old favorites from the early seasons on DVD. Hand me the Geritol.

I guess I can see why Phil Seventies was bitter. Aging really sneaks up on you. I feel every bit the same “me” that I was in my cute, smirky youth. But now I’m walking around in this fortysomething body with all these weird aches and pains in the morning. My spirit hasn’t changed, but everything else is changing all around me, constantly. And time seems to move so much faster.

I’m sure Phil felt like the same “Phil,” too. He used to feel at one with his time and place, and now it had just slipped away, replaced by a lonely weekend and some smart aleck hippie wannabe loner who wouldn’t give him the time of day. No more discos, no more Farrah hair, no more wild unbridled seventies-style fun. No more youth.

I get it, Phil. I still don’t want to sleep with you, but I get it.

Not Done Yet

2011-06-25T00:42:00.000-07:00

“Are you done?” a friend recently asked me.

It took me a little longer than it should have to realize she meant “Done having babies.” To which the answer is simply “yes.” The good folks at Paragard are helping me see to that.

But when she first asked the question, before I knew what she meant, my first thought was “No. Not even close.”

School ended on Tuesday. By Thursday, I found myself luxuriating on our crummy old beach blanket with a fresh pedicure, watching The Boy and Mr. Black build a sandcastle while Little Girl made up a story with a pair of plastic shovels. It was a rare peaceful moment, complete with the sparkling, crashing waves of the Oregon Coast Pacific in the background.

Nine months ago we were right here on this very beach, enjoying one last adventure before the start of school. I can’t help but sit back and marvel at all that’s transpired between then and now.

First freaking grade. Who would have thought? I guess on some level, I’d known we were in for a wild ride of a school year. I’d already scaled back my volunteer duties at Little Girl’s preschool in preparation. I’d been warned by The Boy’s awesome kindergarten teacher that first grade is a whole different ballgame. I didn’t know exactly what to expect, but I had a vague, foreboding sense that a huge pain in the ass was in store.

The last time we sat on this beach, I had no idea The Boy had Aspergers. But I knew something was up with him, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to fix it before school started. At that point, I was still kind of hoping it would somehow fix itself. Well…it didn’t.

The amazing thing is how incredibly positive I’ve been feeling about this crazy year. And not just because we’re sitting on a beach. Even before we left I was elated, on the phone with my mother trying to explain that no, really, it was a good year! A growing year! Look at how far we’ve come:

We have a diagnosis. We have an IEP. We won over his classroom teacher – who started out the year disgruntled and overwhelmed – and watched her really learn and start to get him as the year went on, patching things together with common sense and empathy even before there was an IEP in place. We stood up to kids who picked on him and parents who didn’t want their kids to associate with him. We got him out of a disastrous reading group and watched his behavior improve dramatically as a result. We got him reassigned to a school that routinely serves students on the autism spectrum, where he’ll have the professional attention and understanding he’s needed all along. Let’s face it, people: We kicked ass!

And no…we’re not done. But it’s awfully nice, after all that, to just sit by the ocean again.

Watching my happy little nuclear family on the beach reminds me of another Oregon Coast trip a few years back. The Boy was two, and I was pregnant with Little Girl. So pregnant, in fact, that I wore one of those dreadful maternity belts under my tank top so that I could walk on the beach without being sabotaged by preggo-related sciatica.

But I was so joyful the whole time. The baby-to-be kicked merrily when her brother-to-be ran around the hotel room, as if she couldn’t wait to get out and join the party. I watched other families with multiple school-aged children, imagining ourselves in that place in a few years. There was this blissful sense of “Soon Our Family Will Be Complete.” Or something less cheesy than that. I don’t know.

And now, here we are. Brother and sister, Aspergian and neurotypical, Legos and stuffed animals. Complete.

But not done.

Spark

2011-06-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

Shuffling into a crowded Barnes & Noble today with Little Girl, I caught sight of two bookish, endearingly young guys standing by the door. They were about to part ways, feet pointing in different directions, but their eyes were absolutely locked in the sweetest twitterpated gaze. Earnest smiles, avid nodding. One described his job and co-workers to the other, both of them speaking and listening with far more fascination than the subject matter warranted.

They don’t know it yet, I thought, smiling as my girl tugged me into the store. But they’re just on the cusp of realizing. Maybe they’re realizing it at this very moment. Or maybe they’ll both lie awake tonight mystified and intrigued, wondering if they imagined that flicker in the other’s eyes. So obvious to the passer-by, but it eludes them because the very notion seems to defy the law of gravity: Mutual! The guy you adore adores you, too. Impossible.

I miss that. It’s one of the few things I truly don’t have anymore, that I probably will never experience again. That innocent moment when a gaze lasts just a little longer, when you can’t quite break eye contact; when the corners of your mouths creep up inanely while you talk about bus schedules or whatever mundane topic you’d been discussing.

I’m not talking about flirtation. Flirtation is contrived, often insincere, and kind of annoying, frankly. I’m talking about spark – a connection that happens in spite of your best manners or even your best interests. Like the old cupid’s arrow thing in cartoons, eyeballs turning into hearts and so forth.

I know, I know. Thanks to reality dating shows, the word “connection” has been rendered even more meaningless and silly than the eyeball/heart thing. But seeing those innocently enamored guys today makes me remember that it’s real. It just doesn’t happen as often as pop culture wants us to believe.

Spark was always my favorite, even in the single days. Especially in the single days, when more often than not, spark was as good as it got. It was that one simple, perfect moment before you learn that the guy’s allergic to telephones. Or mean to his ex-girlfriends. Or kisses entirely with his tongue, no lips at all. It’s that one lovely impression of bliss before the awkward mechanics of actually disrobing and attempting orgasm with another sweaty human being. Or, Zod help you, attempting a relationship with someone whose compatibility falls far short of spark’s initial promise.

Come to think of it, spark is a pretty lousy predictor. It’s mostly just projection, really. You think you’re seeing this incredible connection, but really you’re just seeing mutual physical attraction and wild, careless hope. Even under the best of circumstances, there’s nowhere to go but down. It’s either a failed relationship or the arduous, pioneering work of a successful one.

But spark for spark’s sake? Is that even possible? Can you have a mutually recognized attraction that goes unfulfilled? Or does that only exist in fairy tales like Lost in Translation?

Gaah…love that movie. Love. It.

Anyway. I wish those guys from Barnes & Noble the best. I kind of hope they didn’t realize the mutual attraction today. I hope they get at least a week or two to savor the anticipation, search for clues in conversations and glances, blissfully agonize about it over drinks with friends, feel just on the verge of that spark, but not quite there just yet. It’s the best part, guys. Enjoy it.

Lost and Found

2011-06-12T23:54:00.000-07:00

I met my parents at the King of Prussia mall and borrowed my old car back from them, carless as I was in those days. It was dark by the time I hit the road. I had no plans. Not one. I just started driving north, because north.

I made it as far as New Paltz that night. The next day I decided to spend the rest of my vacation in the Adirondacks. Drive a little, hike. Drive a little, swim in a lake. Drive a little, find a motel for the night. Wake up, put on a sports bra, and go for a real hike.

This woman on the trail reminded me of Ingrid. Even her voice had that same lilt to it, and that joyful enthusiasm. Insistent. The trail was flooded, but she knew another way. Come on! Funny how you can fall into your old role with a completely new person, just like that. I followed her. She had a compass and a trail map. She seemed so sure of the way.

The real Ingrid was gone, of course. Never came back to work from her vacation, cleared out her apartment, took her last paycheck and disappeared. It was all so surreal. I kept remembering how our strange little girl-crush friendship unraveled over the summer. She went from adoring me to being aggressively distant, to being just plain irritated with me…well, irritated and distant with all of us, really. I knew it wasn’t about me, but still. I wondered. I hypothesized. I went back over past conversations, searching for clues.

Mostly, though, I just missed her so much. Walking through the city at night, I’d stare up at the glittering office windows against the dusky sky feeling as if she had just evaporated up there somewhere. It was even more perplexing than the “what happens when you die” question, because she wasn’t dead. She was somewhere, not wanting to be found.

And now, I was getting lost in the woods with some woman who reminded me of her. She became less and less certain, but no less enthusiastic. It’s this way! And we’d charge up a hillside, whacking branches out of our way. No, wait, it was actually that way! Charge, whack, etc.

And then she just stopped. She didn’t know anymore. Panic! She took out a whistle and blew and blew. Nothing. She called shrill, terrified calls for help. Nothing. It was so quiet.

I was every bit as lost as she was, but somehow I felt completely calm. “I’m going to have some water,” I said, keeping my voice low and reassuring. “Would you like some water, too?” She nodded, we sipped. I don’t remember what I said after that. I just kept speaking with composure and certainty, even though I had no freaking idea where we were or how to get us back to the trail.

But it worked. She picked up her map again, and together we retraced our steps back to the point where we’d gone off the trail. Her boyfriend was there. She stayed with him while I followed the official detour around the flooded trail.

Soon I was back on the trail, taking long, delicious strides up the side of the mountain, thinking about not much at all. Sun. Pine needles. Boots. Sky. I was happier than I’d been all summer. Traveling alone is so intensely free. You can just drift with your own whims, explore your senses uninterrupted.

At the same time, I’d never felt so grounded. All that summer I’d been so lonely and tense and sad, uncertain about whether to stay at my job or even whether to stay in Philadelphia. Somehow, Ingrid’s leaving made me realize I was already entrenched; more stable than I ever could have known.

Just like that stranger on the trail. I’d followed her, trusted her, believed that I needed her. But in the end, I was the one who had to lead. And I could find my own way pretty well, it turned out.

Drinking the Skool Aid

2011-06-01T00:48:00.001-07:00

The worst part is, I knew better.

It’s written all over the notebook I brought with me on the kindergarten tour. I’d been skeptical when they trotted out the panel of meticulously multiracial 5th graders. I’d been embarrassed when the panel’s only white boy did all the talking, and rather amused by the touring parents who eagerly asked these 10-year-olds question after question. I sat out the excited murmuring when they mentioned 3rd grade Shakespeare plays and 8th grade homeless role-play “empathy building” activities. Even the gorgeous library rubbed me the wrong way.

I tried to explain it to Mr. Black afterwards, but he takes everything so damn literally. Gorgeous library, Shakespeare plays, great test scores. What’s not to like?

“You don’t understand,” I tried to explain. “Everyone was so happy there. So self-satisfied. Like nothing could ever go wrong there.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s good if it works for you,” I said. “But what if it doesn’t? What if your kid is in the midst of all this feel-good Shakespearian high-test-score empathy building and he still has problems and doesn’t fit in? How do they treat people who aren’t happy?”

Back then I didn’t know The Boy had Aspergers. In fact, the first therapist who evaluated him assured me that he didn’t. I didn’t know he was academically gifted, either, although I had my suspicions. Mostly, I just knew we were having a truly horrendous final year of preschool. The teacher didn’t get him. Some of the other parents didn’t even like him. There were serious looks of concern when I’d mention he was headed for kindergarten in the fall.

I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. That’s why I was so determined to send him to the Absolute 100% Best of All Possible Public Schools. Of course, none of the schools we toured fit that description. How could they? It’s like looking for Mr. Right. There’s no such thing. But I’d pinned all my hopes for The Boy on this notion of the Right School. I guess it stood to reason that, sooner or later, I’d have to start believing the hype.

I wasn’t expecting to get into that super-nice school with the Shakespearian 3rd graders. It’s hugely popular, open to the whole city by lottery alone. Everyone warned me not to get my hopes up. No one gets in.

Except…we got in.

I didn’t realize how much I’d wanted it until it was right there in front of me on the school assignment letter. I actually dropped the letter in shock. Everyone was amazed and delighted for us. Even our preschool friends who got into the coveted foreign language immersion school were impressed. You’d think the kid had won a full scholarship to Yale or something. But it felt so good to have people happy for us for a change. I felt vindicated, somehow.

And then…I kind of started to lose sight of reality. Somehow, I conflated all the praise and congratulations with The Boy’s actual state of well-being – which, let’s face it, hadn’t changed just because we’d lucked into a prestigious elementary school. But I couldn’t make myself slow down and see that.

There’s a lot to like about that school, for sure. It sits on a woodsy hillside overlooking Lake Union. The kindergarten was nurturing and fun. He sang in a coffee house holiday concert, performed in a shadow puppet show, participated in a salmon migration parade, sang in the chorus of a Shel Silverstein musical revue. He made good friends. He learned some sign language. He was happy and proud to be there.

But the tension was never very far below the surface. Poor little guy. It’s hard work to have Aspergers when none of the adults in your life know or understand. He didn’t need a gorgeous library or a salmon migration parade. He didn’t even need “empathy building.” He needed teachers and a staff who’d seen kids like him in action before and knew what the heck to do with it. Or, in school district lingo, he needed a “more intensive service model.” He was more than halfway through 1st grade before I finally figured that out.

Of course, these “service models” typically aren’t offered at the fancier, more prestigious public schools like Empathy Building Central, here. Coincidence? Are these schools considered “good” in the first place because there’s conveniently no room for kids like mine?

If you believe the rumors in the special ed community, a previous administration did all it could to keep special ed students out of this school. I can’t say if that’s true or not, but it would certainly go a long way toward explaining some of the cluelessness we’ve encountered there. Kind, well-intentioned cluelessness. How would you know what to do with Aspergers if you’ve never seen it in your classroom before?

Next year, he’ll attend a school that’s walking distance from our house. They have a special ed inclusion program that’s taught by an award-winning teacher. He might even be able to participate in gifted classes. If I hadn’t been so stuck on finding him the Best of All Possible Public Schools two years ago, we could have just sent him there in the first place. But our new school, for whatever reason, is not very highly regarded by parents. And again: coincidence? Is it considered “not good” because there is room for kids like mine?

Well, we’ll see. Meanwhile, at the risk of pouring myself a new flavor of Kool Aid, I have to admit that I’m pretty excited about the new school. The Boy’s excited about it, too. And yes, we know by now that there’s no such thing as the Right School. This isn’t going to fix anything. It’s part of the process, not a happy ending.

Although…gosh. After all we’ve been through, maybe for now I’d like to just imagine that it is.

Interlude

2011-05-26T20:53:00.001-07:00

Even then, it was an old song – an old song on an old cassette tape with old ties to a past life. Several lives ago, by then. It didn’t break my heart way back then, and it wasn’t breaking my heart now, either. Just kind of tugging at it around the edges, like poking at a loose tooth or something. The little thrill of making it bleed. Another goodbye…one I hoped would be temporary but knew was necessary.

Mr. Black sat next to me in my car in his alley, waiting to be dropped off but indulging me for some reason, letting me rewind the song and play it again. And again. Turns out he knew the real story behind the song, and we sat there talking about this old band for a while, as if that were all there was to talk about.

Philly summers are the worst. The absolute worst. The whole city kind of hangs under a hot, grey, polluted haze of humidity. I won’t miss this, I kept thinking, though it was hard to imagine anything else. I couldn’t quite see beyond the immediate months ahead, when he’d leave for Seattle and I’d be stuck behind in this stark city, alone. Again.

We took a trip to New England that summer, sweeping each other temporarily away from it all. A sunny small-town 4th of July parade Vermont, a freezing cold picnic in New Hampshire, days of rocky hikes and violet-blue sea in Maine, swimming in a motel pool at sunset.

I had marriage proposals on my mind, even though I knew he never would. I couldn’t help it. There’d been so many office wedding showers and engagement parties that summer, it was hard not to imagine my own relationship in those terms. This would be the perfect place, I kept thinking, standing on various rocky edges in the midst of some breathtaking scenery or other. He didn’t ask, of course, and I didn’t dare bring it up.

You don’t fall in love with someone at age 28 expecting it to be perfect. Although Mr. Black and I came awfully close in those days. It felt like a small miracle, after all the dating angst and absurdity I’d been through, that I could simply meet a wicked-smart pop culture geek like myself and fold so uncomplicatedly into couplehood. It seemed to defy gravity.

So when, after about three months of dating, he told me he’d be moving to the west coast that summer, I wasn’t too disappointed. As other shoes go, that one was a relatively light drop. He took it seriously. Asked me if I wanted to stay together. Said he’d be up for the long-distance thing if I would. And maybe…just maybe…I’d be interested in joining him there someday.

We didn’t even consider moving together. It seems strange to think about it now, but in those days we clung to our independence almost superstitiously. Moving with him would have been too…establishment, or something. I guess I just wasn’t ready to leave yet. Wasn’t ready to toss all my eggs in that basket. But I was ready to take a big New England road trip with him that summer. And, apparently, I was ready to at least fantasize about marriage proposals.

We spent that last night in Boston, staying with friends of his from college. Out of nowhere, his old girlfriend’s name came up in conversation. He was visibly rattled – way more than was polite, really. I pretended not to notice. But…you know. I noticed.

The friends went to bed and we stayed up late on their living room floor, talking about her in the dark. I used to do this sort of thing full-time when I was younger and, perhaps, stupider. Spent hours talking to men I loved about the women they loved, being the Good Friend. But that night in Boston, doing the same old thing with the guy I loved more than anyone, ever – the guy I thought was different, the guy I wanted to follow to Seattle – well, I didn’t quite have the stamina for it anymore. I was nervous and shaking, nauseated. Finally I told him we had to stop. He was kind about it. Surprised. Reassuring. Still, I felt like I’d been split in half.

We drove back to Philly in silence the next day. One more month. I drove him to the post office to ship his boxes (and boxes!) of books. I helped him make posters for his yard sale. I tried not to let the ex-girlfriend thing haunt me, but it did, of course. There were long, needling conversations seeking reassurance. There was sitting in my car in his alley, listening to that song over and over again. There were plenty of light-hearted moments too, beach trips and such. But mostly it was just him preparing to leave and me preparing to be left.

There was an indignity to it, for sure. But I looked it in the face and swallowed it down –the first of many, many compromises this relationship would demand of us both; that any long-term relationship demands. I’ve learned, since then, to speak up. Straight from the heart in the language of reason. I can’t imagine holding back from him now the way I did then. But I was still finding my way back then. I was learning how to trust another person with my feelings, erring on the extreme side of caution, waiting for someone else to make the first move, hoping they’d get it right.

And so, one miserably grey, stinking-hot August day, I found myself standing in the Philadelphia airport with my forehead pressed against the window, watching him walk across the tarmac toward the tiny plane that would take him to Newark to catch a direct flight to Oregon, where he’d spend some time with his parents before the big Seattle move. He was wearing his suit so he wouldn’t have to pack it, and it contrasted adorably with his fringy too-long hair blowing in his eyes as he looked back toward the airport, squinting, maybe trying to get one last look at me.

And then it was me. Just me.

But not for long.

Beyond the Broom Closet

2011-05-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

“It was basically a glorified broom closet,” the speaker says, recounting her own experience as a child in a special education classroom. She describes sitting in that room day after day with the other children who didn’t fit the mold, sometimes completely unsupervised. There wasn’t much learning going on. They were there to be kept out of the way. She’s not sure, even now, why she was assigned to special ed in the first place. Perhaps some quirks of temperament mistaken for a disorder? Perhaps the fact that she was a late reader?

It’s heartbreaking, of course. Maybe a little less so in the context of this multi-speaker presentation, which is a self-congratulatory parade of our city school district’s accomplishments in special education. We’ve come a long way, baby, from those broom closets. Special ed students are in general ed classrooms at their neighborhood schools now! And the teachers (who are totally happy to have this new challenge and never say hurtful insensitive things to the kids’ parents or mistake their disabilities for discipline problems, right?) are coming up with innovative ways to nurture and teach them! We even have instructional coaches to help schools get the inclusion thing right! Except…well, we just lost funding for that last one.

Somewhere beyond the broom closets and the mess we’re in now, I know The Boy’s going to be okay. Although I doubt he’d be okay under our district’s new “Send ’Em All To General Ed and Let the Teachers Figure It Out” plan (or ICS – Integrated Comprehensive Services, as it’s officially called). No, even at our Very Special Alternative School with a truly amazing resource room teacher, it’s been a tough year. Wonderful as she is, that resource room teacher is spread incredibly thin. And the rest of the school’s teachers and staff? Variable at best. Kindergarten was great. First grade? Well…

Let’s face it: Aspergers isn’t easy. It doesn’t look like a disability. Sometimes, frankly, it just looks like a smart little boy being a tremendous asshole. Sometimes it looks like any other Lego-loving kid. He can almost blend right in.

Until there’s a fire drill. Or an unexpected break in routine. Or anything that involves handwriting or drawing within the lines. Or classmates who have figured out how to tease and provoke him without getting in the least bit of trouble themselves. Or a principal who writes off that teasing as “normal” behavior and tells me this boy – who is trying so hard just to show up every day and be at school like the other kids – just needs to learn to deal with it.

At first, I didn’t want to change schools. This is his school, I thought. You guys step up. We’re here, we’re on the autism spectrum, get used to it! Which, I guess, isn’t much different from what the school district is trying to do. Cram these kids down an ill-equipped school’s throat because, in theory, the schools should be able to handle it.

Then I learned that some other schools in our district offer a middle ground between the broom closet and ICS. They have autism inclusion programs. The kids are still in general ed, but there’s more adult support. There are more services and pull-outs. Unlike our current school, where he’s expected to blend in and see the resource room teacher twice a week, these kids are an intentional part of the community. The teachers, the principals, the other kids and their parents – while still variable, I’m sure – know what Aspergers looks like. And he wouldn’t be the only one.

I broached the topic with The Boy. How would he feel about moving to a new school next year? One where there are other kids with Aspergers, too? And The Boy – who typically freaks out at the slightest change in routine, who’d wanted nothing to do with that “highly gifted” school he also tested into – got a very hopeful, thoughtful look on his face, and said he would like that a lot.

By the time I learned of these programs’ existence, there were only a few days left in the enrollment period to make the change for next year. With help from the resource room teacher and an old preschool friend who teaches at one of these schools, we raced through the obstacle course of red tape at break-neck speed to get his paperwork to One School Board Plaza by the deadline. And now…I’m on week 5 of the 7-week wait to find out which school he’ll be reassigned to. I’m feeling exhilarated and cautiously hopeful.

Too bad the school district wants to phase out these autism inclusion programs. They’re just too broom closety, I guess. Or too expensive, maybe. I really don’t know why.

But I do know the district’s gotten a big pushback from autism parents around the city, and there’s some indication that they’re starting to at least think about listening. Although there wasn’t a whole lot of listening going on at that presentation, touting ICS’s success at a handful of schools where it’s actually working. At least the director of special ed acknowledged, with an apologetic look on her face as she encouraged us parents to keep faith in the program, “We know it’s not perfect.”

Driving home, it’s the broom closet story that sticks with me. The speaker had marveled in outraged disbelief that self-contained special ed classrooms still exist, as if we were talking about dunce caps or something.

But it’s not the self-contained part that makes it a broom closet. Those rooms have dedicated special ed teachers who see the good in these kids and help them overcome their unique challenges without the distraction of a crowded, chaotic classroom. I don’t buy the “All Education is Special” line any more than I would buy “All Doctors are Surgeons” from my health insurance company. (Not to give them any ideas!)

Throwing my boy into a general ed classroom to see how he fared was worth trying. There were definitely a lot of positives, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity. But we’ve learned that without an experienced teacher who sets the tone for acceptance, without extra support from adults who get him – it doesn’t work. Aspergers is, absolutely, a special need. We’re not ashamed of it. It simply is.

A separate program doesn’t have to be stigmatizing. In fact, I see it as empowering. We’re not slinking off in shame. We’re taking our business elsewhere. I refuse to have our metaphorical wheelchair forced up a flight of stairs when we know there’s a ramp somewhere.

And in a few short weeks, we’ll find out which “ramp” it’s going to be. Stay tuned…

Deadbeat Club

2011-05-18T00:13:00.000-07:00

Twenty years ago today, I bobby-pinned on that mortarboard with the little ’91 tassel and lined up with my fellow V’s and W’s in the back corner of campus by the dining hall. The day itself was sunny and green, but stark somehow. Removed. There were bagpipes. Archways of blue and green balloons. Our families in the audience, our dorm rooms packed up and nearly vacated. But not quite.

We’d pretty much spent that whole year saying goodbye. Fall began with fretting over GREs and What Will I Be When I Grow Up and “Holy shit now we have to grow up” and all the accompanying undergrad angst. The eighties were over. Bush the Elder’s kinder, gentler Gulf War was looming, which seemed like a much bigger deal at the time. (How were we to know?)

So we formed our own comedy troupe and performed in the campus coffee house. We wrote plays, or acted in them, or directed. We walked around campus with a giant inflatable dinosaur. We covered the living room floor with all the mattresses and slept there for a week. We made terrible, terrible puns. We rescued a broken plaster pizza guy from the trash and named him Luigi. We watched MTV and Saturday Night Live, idolizing Dennis Miller. (How were we to know?) We embraced all things ironic and absurd, all the while clinging to each other rather self-consciously with the distinct sense that this might be as good as it gets.

And what were we so afraid of? Growing up? Selling out? Losing each other to geography? Forfeiting an identity that had only just begun to emerge?

Here’s what it was for me: The feeling that you could be weird and fabulous; geeky and popular; absolutely 100% yourself and people would still find something to admire about you. That’s what I was afraid of losing. I think I really believed that if I lost the people who helped me learn that in the first place, I’d lose it for good.

And I guess in some ways, I really did. That time, those friendships – it truly did end. Whether we stayed in touch or not, whether we found each other on Facebook again or not, that level of idealism and sheer mad joy simply cannot be sustained over time. It just doesn’t go that way.

I remember going to a party my first year of graduate school where they played the entire B-52’s Cosmic Thing album and not one person got up to dance. Too busy name-dropping or canon-bashing, no doubt. Too busy undermining each other’s confidence. I had to learn, of course, how to be the first one to get up and dance. It wouldn’t be long before I’d lead a small band of rebels out of a stuffy English department function to splash in the fountain outside.

These days I rarely have the energy for such insurrections. Sometimes I think my grasp on irony and absurdity is slipping, giving way to earnestness with age – and a guarded earnestness, at that. Love used to pour right out. I guess that’s easy to do when you know it’s all going to end in a matter of months anyway. Now if I catch myself feeling anything with the old naïve open heart, I tend to keep it to myself.

But I have managed to bring the spirit of my old tribe with me. That place, those people, those years – they made me see that it was possible at all. They inspired me to hold uninhibited joy as an ideal, and to seek it and appreciate it when it happens. And yes, even in Real Life Adulthood, it does happen. In cubicles and lunch hours with co-workers. In writing workshops. At Teacher Tom’s co-op preschool. On Offsprung, the parenting Web site that inspired me to start writing again. And at home, of course, with my dear Mr. Black.

As for the part that really is over…the risks I’d never take again, the dreams I’ve stopped chasing, the friends I’ve truly lost… How glad I am to have had even a glimpse of such love and excitement. That was our time, and it always will be. It can be over. It can be twenty years past.

Funny how the mere thought of being 40 someday was enough to make us all go fetal in those days. But now? Well, I’m sitting here forty-one and, honestly, a lot happier than I was 20 years ago. Yes, I spend a lot of time thinking about my family and our mainstream pursuits, cutting the crusts off sandwiches and so forth. So what? Turns out it doesn’t actually rob you of all that’s unique and wonderful about you. It’s still there. And my kids will always, always get up and dance to Cosmic Thing.

Happy 20-year reunion, my Deadbeat Club.

Niagara FAIL

2011-05-06T17:15:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it: I’m kind of a bitch. I don’t notice it most of the time, you know, since I’m me and can’t help but empathize with myself, well-versed in all the little nuances and justifications. But there have been times when that bitchiness was so over-the-top that I cringed in embarrassment even as it was happening, stuffing it away in the brain’s shame closet forever after.

Which is why I’ve never told you the Niagara Falls story. But now, I think it’s time.

First of all, in my defense, I was 23. In geek-girl years, that’s like 12 or 13. I was more or less happily single, in my final year of grad school, sharing a wacky apartment with a good friend in a sleepy university town in New York.

This was in the early 1990’s, long before the dawn of Facebook. If you wanted to get in touch with old friends, you had to call them. Or write them a letter. Or actually visit them, which involved unfolding actual paper maps and driving for hours while listening to your cassette mix tapes.

It wasn’t unusual to have platonic male friends from past lives sleeping on our living room floor on any given weekend. And, from time to time, it wasn’t terribly surprising if said platonic male friend ended up sleeping, well, not on our living room floor. Very rarely, if the planets aligned just right, that friend might make a few more visits. Next thing you know, you’ve got yourself a boyfriend. You didn’t plan it. You didn’t even particularly want it. But having romantic companionship is so much nicer than not. Why not give it a try?

I wasn’t unattracted to him. Ages ago, when we’d first met, I’d actually had a flaming crush of doom on the guy. It broke my silly teenage heart when he wanted to be “just friends.” So why, having finally won him over, did I cringe when he put his arm around me walking down the street? Why did the charisma and endless stream of jokes that once impressed me now mostly just exhaust and annoy?

I tried to outsmart my own resistance. There were good things here. He was creative and funny and cute. We’d do stuff like walk to the public library in the snow and check out armloads of children’s books. We even tried on funny hats together, romantic comedy montage style. There was so much to like. If I could just get past my not-completely-attracted-to-him problem, we’d be perfect together.

A sensible person would have cut their losses and set the guy free. Instead, I decided we needed to go on a road trip together. To Niagara Falls. The same weekend that weather forecasts were predicting the blizzard of the century.

Obviously, it was an idiotic plan from start to finish. Let me try to make sense of it: Ignoring the forecast of snow? We’d had a few “false alarm” weather reports that winter calling for pounds of snow that never actually fell. And it was March now, almost spring for Zod’s sake. I was certain – absolutely certain – that it wasn’t going to snow that weekend. As for the road trip itself? I don’t know. I just loved “the road” so much in those days. I guess I’d hoped the exhilaration I felt for road trips would somehow spill over into my feelings for him. Besides, I’d never been to Niagara Falls.

That first night we zoomed across the state of New York under a clear night sky, laughing and telling each other stories. It was working. I was happy and excited and truly enjoying his company. We were positively giddy when we finally rolled into town, driving down the deserted streets, looking for a hotel.

But the next day, things took a rapid turn for the worse. Still no snow, but the blizzard was imminent. At least that’s what everyone was saying at the hotel. Somehow, I stubbornly believed that snow was just an idle threat. He wanted to head back home before the blizzard hit. I wanted to at least see the waterfalls first. So we drove out to Goat Island and strolled into the bitterly cold morning.

Years later, I would tell this story to an incredulous, sputtering Mr. Black. It wasn’t the fact that I’d dragged some poor boyfriend to Niagara Falls on the eve of the Storm of the Century that bothered him. It was the fact that we’d made it all the way to Goat Island and somehow – don’t ask me how – never actually saw the waterfalls.

We looked. Really, we did. At one point, we thought maybe we saw waterfalls off in the distance, but we were mistaken. All we could see was a nice little picnic park, the churning river, and an ice-white sky getting ready to dump ten tons of snow on us. We must have been looking on the totally wrong side of the island. Maybe if we hadn’t been so busy worrying and bickering over what to do, we might have tracked the damn waterfalls down.

Instead, we decided to drive home in the hopes of beating the snow. There were just a few stray snowflakes falling. I’d driven in worse. But it got heavier quickly. I’d never seen snow fall so fast, in fact. It was relentless. About an hour into the drive, it was blowing all across the road, barely a scrap of pavement in sight. Stubborn as hell, I pulled into a rest stop imagining we’d wait for the snow to stop and then drive home. But after many cups of coffee and futile staring out the window, the boyfriend convinced me to book a room at a nearby Days Inn – a short but incredibly harrowing drive.

Looking back on it now, with my recently-acquired fretful mother sensibilities, it feels even more harrowing. What if there hadn’t been a hotel nearby? What if we’d had an accident? What if I’d died in Middle of Freaking Nowhere, NY with a soon-to-be ex-boyfriend just because I’d been so driven, so stubbornly determined to escape boredom and restlessness at all costs? Stupid, stupid girl.

That Days Inn would be our home for the next two days as the Storm of the Century raged on. I tried to get some schoolwork done in between bouts of staring dejectedly at the Weather Channel. Eventually I gave up and switched to cartoons, a Mary Tyler Moore marathon, and getting my butt repeatedly kicked at Scrabble by the boyfriend. Any lingering delusions of happy couplehood had pretty much faded for both of us, but we nursed it along anyway. The sheer boredom of being stuck in that beige bedroom miles from anywhere was a bitter little aphrodisiac.

Bitter irony, really. With the right person, getting stuck in a hotel room for days on end could have been a fantasy-come-true. Instead, I found myself yearning for the drudgery of singlehood apartment life. I wished I was watching stupid TV with my roommate, or stomping through the snow to one of our town’s many eccentric old diners for coffee and a grilled corn muffin. Even when my roommate told me over the phone about her ordeal trying to borrow a snow shovel from the cranky neighbors, I yearned for home.

On day three, the sun returned and the New York State Thruway opened again. We drove home in relative silence. I don’t remember when or how the official breakup happened, or if we ever officially acknowledged it at all. All I remember is an awkward brunch in one of my favorite diners, slogging through the slush to my Shakespeare seminar, and never seeing the guy again.

I didn’t feel much guilt at the time…just glad to be out from under the weight of his disappointment and the aftermath of my own terrible, terrible decision-making. But I did take notice. I spent a lot of my dating career being the one to get hurt. But I did my share of hurting, too. I’m not sure which is worse. When your heart is broken, all you have to do is heal. But when you’ve hurt someone else – with selfishness and stubborn, misguided determination to turn winter into summer through sheer will – well, the path is a little less clear.

I never did make it back to Niagara Falls. Living in Seattle now, it seems pretty unlikely that I ever will. I still can’t believe we were right there and never saw it. Traveled all that way and then just left without getting what we came for, only to get stuck in the snow and face up to an uncomfortable truth: Sometimes it’s just better to be home alone. I guess there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

Life is Like a Box of . . . Tulips

2011-04-04T00:11:00.001-07:00

Maybe it was a rare moment of male “nesting.” More likely, some sale on mystery tulip bulbs at Fred Meyer was too good to pass up. Whatever the reason, Mr. Black spent one autumn afternoon in 2003 planting bulbs all over the front yard. Our neighbors gave us some of their extra bulbs, too.

I was pregnant with The Boy, just entering the dreamy second trimester and blissfully ignorant of so many things. I didn’t know what color those tulips would be when they came up. I didn’t know I’d be losing my job in a few months. I didn’t know our underground oil tank was leaking, or that we’d discover this fiasco mere weeks before the baby would be born. And I certainly didn’t know how intense and relentless the undertow of parenting a new baby was going to be.

I didn’t know how much I was going to love it, either.

Mr. Black drove us home from the hospital in my trusty old Volvo. I sat in the back with The Boy in his infant seat, bracing myself in terror each time we hit a bump, checking to make sure the baby was still okay. He was, of course, snoozing away with those velvety eyelids. Soon, we were home.

And there were the tulips! For weeks I’d been watching them inch their way up from the ground. Now, seemingly with the birth of our son, they’d burst into bloom – red, yellow, orange, pink, scattered amid the cool greens and greys of the shrubs and bare branches on that cold spring day. Welcome home, little baby.

Those tulips would return every year, blooming just in time for his birthday. I’d see them and instantly remember the early baby weeks: Those first tentative walks up and down the street with him in the sling. Marathon breastfeeding sessions in front of “Love Boat” and “Little House on the Prairie” reruns. The psychedelic depth and dimensions of sleeplessness that the mere word “sleeplessness” doesn’t even begin to describe. The near simultaneous waves of anxiety and overwhelming love.

With each birthday, though, we get a little further away from the baby nostalgia and a little closer to “Who is this kid and what is he becoming?” The day before his third birthday party, for example, I had to drag him out of a group playdate for ferociously tackling the other children. Before his fourth, I was getting e-mails from his preschool teacher about his aggressive behavior and tantrums. Right before he turned five, we had our first diagnosis – an incorrect one, it turned out, that only caused more confusion and worry than necessary.

Even now, knowing that it’s simply the gifted/Aspergers combo and not some demonic possession or epic parenting fail…it’s still hard to get the birthday warm fuzzies for this kid. There’s lots celebrate, of course – his joy and sweetness; his pure love of math, Legos, and any kind of building project; his burgeoning interest in all things non-fiction, from world religions to oceanography; the fun he has with his little sister.

But I’m so worried about him, too, and the worry tends to override the other things. He still hits. He blurts out hurtful observations. He delves into his interests to the exclusion of just about anything or anyone else. He can be moody and sullen as any teenager, using his sharp vocabulary to pick semantic fights with me. Sometimes I try to talk to him and all I hear is the voice of a nagging, ineffective mom with a screw coming looser every day. I’m glad we finally have access to services at the school, because much of the time I have no flipping idea what to do.

But last fall, when things were particularly bad, I was sure of one thing: I wanted more tulip bulbs. The old ones hadn’t been blooming much lately, crowded out by the encroaching trees and shrubs. And when they did bloom, that clash of colors that I’d found so charming before just didn’t work anymore. I didn’t want mystery tulips scattered all around. I wanted unique, color-coordinated tulips that I picked out myself. So, while I sat at my desk hoping the school wouldn’t call that day, I pored over pages and pages of tulips online. I studied and compared, finally deciding on a girlish cotton candy pink and a subtle, creamy yellow fringed variety.

The Boy helped me plant them. He insisted on making a pattern with the pinks and yellows, which wouldn’t have been my choice. But I let him do it anyway, because it was good to see him feeling so proud and self-assured about something…anything. We even worked it into a homework assignment about patterns, and he did a very detailed drawing of each bulb in the ground.

And now, just in time for his seventh birthday, here come my new tulips! Except…they’re not what I ordered.

Instead of the yellow-creamy-fringey ones, we’ve got these coral pink ones with pointy petals. They clash with the cotton candy pinks, which are a little more two-tone than they looked on the Web site. And we planted them way too close together. It’s not what I was expecting at all.

Well. Is any of this what I was expecting? I suppose not. Turns out those tulips are my own little version of Forrest Gump’s box o’ chocklits. You never do know what you’re gonna get, do you? I know, I know. But when real life gives you a heavy-handed metaphor like that, you take notice.

My tulips are a well-intentioned, joyful mess out there. But The Boy is so proud of them. And I’m so proud of him, quirks, challenges, and all.

He’s working so hard to adapt and cope. Think of how hard it is to change our own thinking about something (even something minor, like letting one’s partner load the dishwasher the “wrong” way). Now imagine doing it as a first grader. Seems damn near impossible, doesn’t it? But he’s doing it. I can see him putting his new coping skills into practice. Every professional he’s worked with remarks on how sweet he is, how eager to please. And they’re right. There’s a lot of love in this kid. Joyful, messy, imperfect love.

Happy seventh birthday, little boy. Let’s see what comes next.

Floor Pie on Salon

2011-04-01T17:38:00.000-07:00

Gentle readers, I had my first piece published on Salon today. Couldn't have done it without your support and encouragement! Go check it out if you like, and I'll have something new up here in a few days!

More Than a Shark Jump

2011-03-24T10:48:00.000-07:00

I’ve been into Happy Days lately. Like, really into Happy Days, far beyond typical Comfort TV indulgences. I skip The Daily Show so I can catch bad Season 9 reruns on The Hub. I seek out those cringe-inducing musical numbers on YouTube. I pore over the episode guide on Wikipedia, trying to get the series narrative straight. Somehow it’s become hugely important to learn things like: How many episodes featured Suzi Quatro’s Leather Tuscadero, and was I in 3rd or 4th grade when they aired?

What can I say? I’m a midlife-crisis-bound Gen X girl, and Happy Days is my Rosebud.

There wasn’t a lot of TV in our house when I was a kid. Maybe my sisters and I watched the occasional Mary Tyler Moore or Rhoda with our mom. But that ABC Tuesday night line-up was all ours – our first childhood foray into prime time “appointment television.” And when The Fonz jumped that shark, we were on the edge of our freakin’ seats. Cynicism would come later.

We loved Fonzie’s folk heroism, the delightfully predictable jokes and catchphrases, the comic mayhem. We loved the 70’s girl power of Pinky and Leather (and occasionally Joanie and Marion). We loved that the show let us identify with teenagers – they’re like grown-ups, but they’re still kids! They went on dates. They had wacky adventures. They helped their local restaurant owners out of jams. It was everything a child might wish for her teenage future: adventure within the safe status quo, all under the guidance of a nurturing-yet-hilarious support system.

Ironic, then, that the real “shark jump” of the show (not The Fonz’s literal water-ski jump over the shark, but when the quality went downhill) coincided with the onset of my actual adolescence. Just as I was realizing that tweenhood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Happy Days’ representation of teenhood started flat out sucking. Recycled plots, or downright improbable ones. Everything seemed a little less full; a little more contrived. And Joanie’s 1980’s good-girl perm looked as awkward on her as it did on me. So disappointing.

Maybe by age 10 or 11 I was simply becoming a more sophisticated viewer. But I think the show was taking a pretty serious nosedive by anyone’s standards. I mean, come on…Richie leaves and his cousin Roger moves in? But Lori Beth keeps hanging around, eventually marrying Richie in by proxy? And then Joanie leaves and her cousin moves in? Really?

It was like the loss of childhood innocence itself. The stuff we used to take at face value now seemed absurd and suspect. The circus, Disney movies, even our beloved Jersey Shore – nothing amazed and delighted quite like it used to. Though I didn’t have the words for it at the time, I remember having a distinct sense that my life would never be quite as simple and joyful as it was when I was a little girl. And so it was with Happy Days.

The one bright light in all of this, of course, was our generation’s Bella and Edward:

Now there’s an area where I was still willing to suspend disbelief! So much was wrong for me in 7th grade. But the notion of Joanie and Chachi, with those intoxicating gazes into each other’s eyes…somehow it just lifted me up.

It wasn’t about Scott Baio. Maybe I’m the only one, but I never had a crush on the guy. (And you know I’d tell you if I did!) No, I was just deeply intrigued that such captivation with another person was possible…that one could adore that much and simply be adored back. It was a glimpse of intense romantic love, wrapped in the safe context of a prime time parent-approved family sitcom.

And that’s all fine for a 12-year-old girl in the early 80’s. I just wonder why I’ve been so intent on reconnecting with these shows now? Why all the late-season Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi? Why the nostalgia for the unhappy chapters in my girlhood and the lame TV shows that got me through it?

Maybe that’s the answer right there. 41 is the new 12. Once again, I’m facing a transition of sorts. Not only are the carefree 20’s long gone, but so are the 30’s – my years of early marriage, early parenthood, and the novelty of “Hey, I’m mainstream now! But I’m still cool. Check me out, blaring my Sleater-Kinney on the way to the pediatrician’s office.”

Sure, there’s still plenty of joy to be had. But none of this will ever be new again. The challenges just keep on coming, and they’re only going to get bigger. In the midst of this tough year we’re having, it’s downright comforting to remember how similarly stark my tweenhood was…and how I managed to hold it together and find little joys and comforts throughout.

My sudden fascination with Happy Days is more than just pop culture geekery. It’s about reacquainting myself with my childhood innocence, and how I stayed strong through the loss of it.

Smart for Smart's Sake

2011-03-18T00:37:00.000-07:00

Didn’t we just do this two years ago? Another public school cafeteria, another stack of multi-colored handouts, another gathering of fresh-faced parents with carefully prepared questions for the principal and tour guides. But it’s a little different this time. Everyone kind of looks like they just won the lottery.

There’s a cluster of moms at the end of my table who all know each other, and they’re happily – almost giddily – comparing their children’s test scores. “But what was her combined score?” Et cetera.

There’s a dad whose daughter looks about The Boy’s age. “You’re the only kid here!” the dad tells her, brimming with joy and pride…and maybe just a hint of smugness.

“No I’m not,” she says shyly, glancing around the room at the unlucky babies and toddlers who’ve been dragged along for this.

“Yes, you are! You’re the only kid who came on the tour! Want to meet the principal?”

She doesn’t.

Although the principal seems like a nice enough guy. Young. Hip glasses. Way better dressed than your average Seattleite.

He asks how many parents are here for the highly gifted program. (They call it APP – Accelerated Progress Program.) Nearly all of us raise our hands.

He asks how many are here for the special education program or whose children are “twice exceptional.” I proudly raise my hand again. Highly gifted with a side order of Aspergers. That’s my boy.

My hand is the only one raised. The moms at the end of the table giggle at the term “twice exceptional.” I raise my hand a little higher.

It’s not easy, this business of having one foot in “special ed” and the other in “gifted.” Quite the roller coaster ride. One day, I’m talking to the school’s occupational therapist about The Boy’s labor intensive handwriting. The next, I’m getting a call from the school district’s Advanced Learning test provider to let me know The Boy’s made it to the next round.

“Yeah…about that. He’s going through a lot of evaluation this month to qualify for an IEP. Can we just opt out of this?”

It was like asking if we could opt out of our golden ticket to Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. She was appalled. Why would anyone want to opt out? Ultimately, she persuaded me to keep him in so we could at least have his test scores on record with the district. Besides, The Boy actually likes those tests. “Logic puzzles,” he calls them.

Sure enough, in between an e-mail from a teacher about his latest meltdown and a round of phone tag to schedule his evaluation meeting, we got this in the mail:

The Advanced Learning Review Committee has determined that your child is eligible as a student who is academically highly gifted and qualified to enroll in the Accelerated Progress Program (APP).

I’m not going to lie…that was a pretty damn satisfying letter to get. Like, Jane Austen satisfying. The kid had four years of play-based preschool, never saw a flashcard in his life, raised the eyebrows of many a judgmental parent on many a playground – and he gets into the APP program simply by being his own wonderful self. Delicious.

We had no intention of actually enrolling him. That would mean uprooting him to a whole new school. But once we had that letter…well…we might as well take a little peek inside Wonka’s chocolate factory, right?

There’s a lot of material out there to suggest that highly capable kids do best in programs designed to meet their academic needs. We’re all familiar with that trope – the smart child who acts out simply because she’s bored. In fact, The Boy complains about being bored by his school work all the time. “He probably is bored,” observed Mr. Black, an erstwhile Little Man Tate himself. Fair enough.

The school’s handouts made a similar argument, with a persuasive emotional appeal:

These children need each other as much as they need the differentiated curriculum. They need to be surrounded by other children who pursue special, often idiosyncratic interest in depth, who read widely, who see multiple sides to an issue. Without a supportive peer group, our children can experience painful social isolation and learn at an early age to hide their gifts and abilities.

Gulp. I remember feeling like that as a child. Heck, I remember feeling like that as an adult. No parent wants that for their kid.

But as I followed our fashion-booted tour guides down the halls, it wasn’t clear to me how this school would be a haven from “painful social isolation.” The playground was just a playground. The gym was just a gym. The kids were just kids. And the classrooms looked a lot like the classrooms at our current elementary school. They even use the same district-mandated materials and lessons – although a teacher explained that they provide a unique approach and go into a lot more depth than in an ordinary classroom. And, of course, they’re working a grade level or two ahead.

I asked about other students with special needs in the APP program. What was their experience like? No one seemed to know. I was hoping that at least one person would know of a classmate or parent. I was hoping for a welcoming attitude or some version of reassurance. What I got was a bunch of blank faces. Ask the principal, they all said.

He was nice. And frank. He said we could meet and go over the IEP; talk about what they’d be able to replicate at this school. There are students with Aspergers in the APP program, and their success varies depending on the kid. Some thrive. Some struggle. Ultimately, he advised, we should send The Boy to the school where he’ll get the most support.

I’d made up my mind even before the Q&A was over. Time to click those ruby slippered heels and keep The Boy at his current elementary school. We’ve had our struggles there. But he’s also made some good friends and connected with some talented teachers who genuinely like him and want to do everything they can to help him succeed. He’s made so much progress since those rocky early weeks of first grade. Might as well stick around and build on that success.

But here’s why I’m no better than those smug prospective parents on the tour: I’m just slightly – ever so slightly – disappointed that APP isn’t going to work out. There’s a small, superficial part of me that felt vindicated by the designer label, if only to stick it to all the people who’ve ever made me doubt my boy or doubt my own parenting.

I know it’s wrong. Being able to say “My kid tested into the super-giftedy-gifted school, so suck it, yuppies!” is fun and all…but fleeting and mired in bad karma. It’s only the start of a rat race I could never hope to win, because nobody wins. And it takes the focus off of my actual kid and what’s actually best for him. I know that.

Still…the external validation was nice while it lasted. I’m totally saving that APP letter.

New Hope

2011-02-28T18:55:00.001-08:00

There was a plum tree in the front yard, heavy with silvery-purple fruit, and a haze of fuzzy bumblebees hovering around the lavender. Everything there had a deliberate storybook quality to it, including myself, I suppose. This was the very intentional direction I’d taken. Put myself in a different place, found a room in a sleepy vacation town’s suburb and waited to see what would happen.

It was summer. Still no teaching job lined up for the fall and no opportunities to sub, so I patched employment together with tutoring and taking classified ads for a newspaper whose office was in an old barn. That’s the thing about Pennsylvania. There’s regular country and Fancy Country. You know you’re in Fancy Country when the 7-11’s and car dealers are shaped like old barns, and the actual old barns have been repurposed into law firms and “shoppes.”

But I loved it there. Towns, not cities. That’s what I preferred in those days. You could walk from one end to the other, sit on a bench and have your coffee in the sun while the tourists streamed by in all-too-colorful scarves and crafty jewelry. The locals were either wealthy married/traditional or artsy eccentrics.

I was happily in the latter category, and in good company in that house. The woman we rented from was a former model with her own jewelry business. One roommate was bound for the Peace Corps in the fall. The other didn’t last very long after almost setting the place on fire one time too many. But we, the remaining three, fell into an easy orbit of intermittent support and friendly solitude. All three of us in flux, not quite settled into jobs or relationships, not quite sure what was coming next.

The roommate and I would hike sometimes, driving deeper into the country in search of trails less-traveled. Or we’d just drive, winding around the back country roads she knew, losing ourselves in conversation. More often I’d set off by myself, to hike or haunt the colorful streets of the tourist towns; to sit alone at a poorly-attended poetry slam, watch a wistful folk singer or a cringe-inducing one-man show about some dude’s path to enlightenment.

It was lonely, for sure. But the loneliness felt strangely okay. It was a welcome quiet. A retreat. I have no photographs from that summer, but when I think back on it I get a very distinct sense of just…leaves. Bright green ground-to-sky leaves upon leaves, with the golden sun pouring through.

Those Pennsylvania summers. You just swim through the humidity sometimes. But at night the air is heavy with seedy, sultry tiger lily pollen and sweet honeysuckle. The stone house stayed cool, especially on the back porch. We’d sit there together some evenings, sprawled on the wicker furniture to share the day’s exhilerations and frustrations; share our stories, insights, advice. And talk about sex. Of course.

And I remember thinking this is what I need. Women friends who understand, who think, who are strong and insecure, who live and feel. Men are lovely, but you don’t get that from them. They make you doubt yourself. You want their love, so you buy into their bullshit and blame yourself, when really all either of you need is space and freedom from the pressure to be each other’s everything. And I started feeling better. Like I could do this living-on-my-own thing after all.

There were no resolutions. But things were winding down. The Peace-Corps-bound roommate moved out. One boyfriend disappeared; an ex resurfaced. My summer jobs ended. And the owner of the house decided he wanted to move back in with his daughter in the fall. It was time for me to move on.

My sister had an extra room in her new Philadelphia apartment. It was mine if I wanted it. Did I want it?

It’s the city, I rationalized. More job opportunities. Better-attended poetry readings. And – let’s face it – more single men. I could have stayed in that town, found another room to rent, another quirky job, another orbit of like-minded women. But in the end, I decided my chances would be better in the city.

And so, I went. Traded the tiger lilies for bricks and concrete; the verdant peace for hipster cacophony. It would be a whole year before I’d make Philly my own and feel truly home there. What lay ahead was more of the same lonesome transition I’d begun in the small town, but faster-paced with some spectacular disappointments in store.

I never questioned my decision to leave the small town. I’d moved there that summer with the hopes that something would happen; that somehow my life would just start. Nothing happened after all. Then again, everything happened. I had my first taste of really living independently, without being tied to school or family or a boyfriend or even friends. And I brought that newfound independence to my new city, struggled and floundered and failed for a while and then…things got better. I was on my path.

Seven years later, I married Mr. Black in that same charming little town. I’d lost touch with my old housemates from that nascent summer, but they were there in spirit in the leaves and the flow of the river. Moving on again.

One of the old songs. I couldn't resist.

Cowboy Dan is Coming

2011-02-12T02:35:00.000-08:00

So here’s a new exercise in geekery: Lately I’ve been watching the TV show Parenthood pretty much just for the Max scenes. Let’s face it – I’m practically waving a “Max” pennant when I watch that show. It’s just so oddly comforting to see glimmers of my real life on TV, and a kid like mine portrayed with frankness and empathy.

So comforting, in fact, that I can almost look past the Hollywood blondie-ness of the mom, or the fact that she can win back Max’s friend who dropped him by inviting the kid over for a therapist-supervised playdate (while she and the reluctant other mom have wine).

At least that’s better than Mary Steenburgen’s mom character in the original 1989 Parenthood. Now there’s a mother for you. She drifts through that whole movie, beatific smile on her face, barely ruffled by the chaos and confusion around her. She loves her kids, but you hardly see her actually interact with them.

Steve Martin’s the one who gets puked on. He’s the one who grapples with doubt, fear, helplessness, ambiguity about the joys of his own children, and downright disappointment in his troubled son. Give him a red dye job and some glasses and I am Steve Martin in that movie. And Cowboy Dan is coming. He’s coming.

Sigh.

My heart is a little on the broken side today. Like…teenage-first-unrequited-love broken. It’s making me want to listen to Suzanne Vega’s “Cracking” for the first time in 20+ years, that’s how broken. And, just like getting over that first teenage heartbreak, I’ll get over this too. I’ll develop a schema for it. Grow stronger and more savvy. Cynical.

He was just the nicest guy. Nice as could be. Empathetic, well-spoken, polite, willing to listen. Nothing like that preschool dad who yelled at me and my son on the playground two years ago. Nothing like the judgmental types you run into on parenting message boards. Just a nice, ordinary guy who’s worried about letting his son be friends with my son. He just kind of needs someone to reassure him, that’s all. He means well and I wish him only the best.

It was just a little surprising, is all. I was beginning to think I’d lost my ability to cry. I guess not.

Is this what Steve-Martin-in-Parenthood would do? Seems to me there ought to be a little more comic mayhem involved. Or comic ranting. Something. But this is real life. The leader of The Boy’s social skills group won’t be coming over to facilitate any playdates. And it won’t be like the movie, when Kevin saves the day at the Little League game and gains such confidence that he can later joke about being in therapy. Cowboy Dan? Might not be coming after all.

Still…it’s only first grade. Might as well pace ourselves and try to keep things in perspective.

These disappointing little episodes happen against a background of such joy. There are plenty of other friends in The Boy’s life, and a world of Legos and family trips and library books. School is going a lot more smoothly now. As far as I can tell, he’s blissfully unaware of the behind-the-scenes parenting nonsense that preoccupies us grown-ups so. Tomorrow we’ll work on our valentines and maybe go out for a big family Pre-Valentines-Day lunch. And so it goes.

Brunch

2011-01-23T22:37:00.000-08:00

“What is it about brunch?” Mr. Black asks, Spock-like, bemused by this strange alien custom.

Brunch. One of the few things we don’t have in common. He never saw the point. It was mildly disappointing, but easy enough to let go in our early days of apartment sleepovers. Sure, I missed the twentysomething urban ritual of it – huddling into a booth, pleasantly hungover, cozy and hopeful with a new dare-we-call-him-a-boyfriend! I missed the pancakes, too. But not so much that I was willing to risk rocking the boat just yet. Brunch-apathy aside, this guy was promising! So we’d sleep in and eat leftover restaurant pasta from the previous night’s date instead.

I wish I had a better answer for him now, better than my giddy “Because it’s brunch!” as I take in a glorious forkful of gingerbread waffle with orange-honey butter. I ought to be able to explain this better.

“Remember in college,” he asks, “when two people would suddenly start showing up at brunch together, and that’s how you’d know they were a couple?”

“Fire drills, too,” I smirk. We went to different colleges, but the experience is universal. Even the menu picks up on the strange, sultry implications of brunch with a bold all-caps wink, urging customers to “Order a Bloody Mary! You earned it last night!” Ha.

Lots of different demographics go out for brunch, of course. But the height of my own brunch-going experience was in my carefree twenties, either newly coupled or with a merry band of revelers from the night before. After a while, I started dragging Mr. Black to brunch, too. We’d moved to Seattle by then, sharing an apartment with vague plans of continued cohabitation. He loved me so much, he could haul himself out of bed once in a while and have public pancakes with me.

We’ve attempted a few brunches with the kids over the years, but with the long waits for a table and the long waits for food, trying to keep crayons interesting for that long . . . it just wasn’t worth it. Might as well try to take them to a show at the Crocodile. Funny to be back here after all this time. Just us, enjoying a rare Saturday to ourselves. Nice of him to agree to it, even if he still doesn’t get the whole brunch thing.

What is it about brunch?

A sip of mimosa and an unexpected flash of remembered passion and tumbling of only a few hours ago. Sigh. Yearn. But he’s right there, hunched over a plate of eggs in his grey sweater, looking sleepy and scruffy and absolutely divine. This, I want to say, is what it is about brunch. This juxtaposition of wild decadence and the simple domestic act of sitting down to breakfast together. The weird optimism that used to come with it. Feeding yourself on love, and then on hash browns. It’s life affirming.

Except now, when I reach my hand across the table for his, he pulls away. Just a little. It’s barely perceptible; instinctive, almost. The remarkable thing is how truly okay with it I am. I get it. I’ve done it myself enough times to understand that it’s not personal. Sometimes, we pull away just when the other partner is finally ready to reach out. It happens. But here he is, still, mid-anecdote with a friendly voice. I’ll catch him the next time.

At the next table, two women ponder whether they’ll ever want to get married. Another table of merry post-grads discuss Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (is anybody not talking about that book these days?) and jokingly speculate about what kind of hapless parents they’ll probably be someday.

Funny. We used to do that too. So much of our time was spent wondering out loud what our life would be. We didn’t realize how much we’d find ourselves looking back on that time, nostalgic for what our life was then. Open. The uncertainties that caused us so much worry actually made life more exciting and free.

And now? Well, we have our answers. The crazy scavenger hunt for a life resembling adulthood is just about wrapped up. Some days, I’ll admit, I think of it that way and start to feel the grey cloud of midlife crisis looming near.

But that’s not it. Part of being “over the hill” involves hanging out at the top for a little bit first, right? Enjoying the view? Now that we’re here, why not spread out and just . . . be. 40 and 41. Parents. Introverts. Thinkers. Writers who will probably never quit their day jobs. Two unique human beings who find enough joy and comfort in each other to keep putting up with each other’s bullshit year after year. Let’s just luxuriate in that for a while, because it’s a lot, after all.

And while we’re at it, let’s order some more pancakes.

Baggage

2011-01-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

I’ve seen an upside-down hot tub once before. It was one of the more remarkable absurdities we’ve witnessed along I-5 over the years, making the journey to Oregon to visit Mr. Black’s parents. We couldn’t tell what it was at first . . . just this huge, amorphous, pale yellow heap with forlorn bits of PVC pipe sticking out here and there. Reminded me of terrible scrambled eggs. As amusing as it was, there was something a little horrifying about it, too. How did it get there? How must it feel to lose one’s hot tub on a major interstate highway?

We had a hot tub of our own, believe it or not – an old classic from the 1970’s built into the back deck of our crumbling Seattle bungalow. And it worked. Well . . . after a little maintenance it worked. We used it every night that first year, scarcely believing our good fortune.

I guess we felt that way about a lot of things in those days . . . those soon-to-be-married, first-time-homeowner days. We had a dishwasher! And our own washer and dryer! And a yard! We could hear birds singing and neighbors having barbecues instead of the ambulance pulling up to Meth Towers Apartments down the street. Life was sweet.

It’s adorable, really, to remember how charmed we were that first spring and summer in this house. This. Damn. House. With its leaking oil tank. A bathroom with no insulation; just decorative paneling nailed to the studs. A prolifically leaking basement. A huge window that slipped out of its pane during a particularly cold December.

And on and on it goes, the never-ending parade of repairs and shortcomings. It’s like marriage itself; the constant evolution and falling-apart and rebuilding. And yet, you still love. You still have these flashes of remembering how you found each other and made each other so happy. And you want to keep trudging along, making it work.

This year, it was the back porch. We’d known for a while that it wasn’t in the best shape. I remember when pieces of its roof blew off. I was up late nursing infant Little Girl in the rocking chair, gazing up at the Christmas tree while an epic windstorm ripped through our neighborhood.

“Hmm. Maybe we should do something about that,” Mr. Black and I thought when we saw the damage the next day. But there were more pressing home improvement fiascos to attend to. Not to mention the new baby. Every year, we’d patch it up here and there, but neither of us wanted to do a full-on deck rebuild. We didn’t even want to do it this time. But the damn thing went and fell down.

Because real life has no writer’s workshop telling it to tone down the heavy-handed symbolism, this happened during the same week as The Boy’s gifted/Aspergers diagnosis. It was eerie, actually, how well that metaphor fit. Not because a child with special needs equals a falling-apart house. Not at all.

More like...something about the house wasn’t working. It needed special attention. It needed major repairs. But for years, we said “Oh, we’ll just give it a fresh coat of paint. We’ll just wait until summer and then replace those rotten boards. We’ll just send it to public school and hope for the best. And if the over-worked school psychologist tells us he doesn’t qualify for services and he’ll probably “outgrow” his very Aspergersish behavior, we’ll just conveniently believe that. Because if there really were a problem, then surely the school will be understanding and forthcoming with free services.” See?

Anyway. A patch-up job wasn’t going to do it for that porch. We needed to tear the whole thing down and build it right. And so it is with The Boy's situation. We had to face it. And the minute we did, we began the process of building something strong and functional for him. Cheesy, extend-o-licious metaphor, for sure. But impossible to avoid when the guys were right there every night during those post-diagnosis weeks, like Eldin on “Murphy Brown,” banging away on our new porch while I contemplated life’s circumstances.

And what of the hot tub?

We had to let it go. Our contractor was pushing for that option from the start, and he had a point. The thing was old. We’d had to detach the plumbing during the Great Basement Waterproofing of ’04, and never had the finances to get it up and running again. I worried that if we ever did get the hot tub going again, it would be a drowning hazard. Or a lock-your-friend-in-it hazard if it stood empty.

Even in the glory days of the hot tub, it was a hassle. The constant maintenance, the water bills, that Disneyland-water-attraction smell. And that night when one of the pipes cracked and we had to bail the whole tub out in our pajamas while water sprayed all over our basement floor. Why not trade all that for a nice big back porch?

Next thing you know, that fallen hot tub on I-5 all those years ago was in the middle of my backyard. There was some interest on Craigslist, but in the end it was the junk haulers who took the thing away.

The right choice. But still a little unnerving to see that hot tub go. We’d spent time and money on it, cared for it, loved it, sang bad renditions of Eddie Murphy’s “James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party” to it. And there it goes, into the back of the junk truck. Gone.

And here I am, in the same old living room we painted together that first spring, before we’d even moved the furniture in. Such incredible hope we had back then, and so much of it was actually realized. We don’t live our days in starry-eyed “How did we get here?” wonder anymore, but maybe we should. One look around this room strewn with Playmobil figures and library books proves how lucky we are. Yes, things are constantly evolving. It’s never finished, because there’s always something else about to fall down. There is persistent imperfection and impermanence. But such joy, too.

I’ll try to remember that the next time something breaks.

Dive

2011-01-06T13:11:00.000-08:00

We were piled into a booth at our favorite hipster-dive in Philly. The guy across from me was sneering music snobitude about a band I’d just admitted to liking. I could have ignored it. I could have smiled and nodded, pretending to be illuminated. Instead, I cut this guy I’d just met down to size. That’s how I rolled back then. Don’t even remember what I said, but I do remember how incredibly satisfying it felt to let that weasely hipper-than-thou smart-ass have it. Then I excused myself to the ladies room line.

What’s wrong with her? How damaged must she be to just attack like that, he wanted to know. Asked everyone at the table. Nothing wrong with her, one friend replied. You’re just bitter that you lost the argument. Of course, he wouldn’t accept that. Ever.

Maybe if I’d had time to go back to the table and make nice, things would have been different. But while I was waiting in that ladies room line, some of our friends got into a territory dispute over our booth. It came to blows and the whole lot of us got kicked out of the bar.

We went our separate ways after that. Didn’t see the guy much, but I’d hear about him from mutual friends. He was still stewing over it. Still trying to make sense of it, trying to ferret out whatever secret vulnerability he believed his music-snobbery had unleashed.

I was hugely embarrassed, of course. The truth is, there was some vulnerability there, but it was nowhere near as intriguing as he’d imagined. It was simply that I’d spent the last few years being madly in love with someone who was madly unattainable. These were the last days of our sad, staggering little un-relationship, and I was in no mood for anyone else’s bullshit. Especially not this guy’s.

We started to cross paths more often. I didn’t like the guy, but I didn’t see much point in committing to that position. We had enough mutual friends that I figured it would be better to just get along. So I’d try to act well-adjusted and breezy. He could say some unbelievably lecherous and insulting things, but I’d suppress every eye roll and try to find a friendlier path to conversation. He was still trying to Figure Me Out, but I may not have been aware of that at the time. Something slightly more pleasant than tolerance was blooming between us.

One night he and my friend Clyde came up to my apartment after a night out. Clyde was teasing me, trying to take my pillow. Next thing you know, the two of them were fighting over the pillow, spilling cranberry juice all over my futon in the process. This is just sad, I thought, flashing back to my school bus days. But the junior high absurdity had only just begun.

“He likes you,” Clyde insisted later over the phone. “That’s why he was trying to get the pillow back from me in the first place – because it was your pillow and he was fighting for you!” And then he teasingly burst into a rousing chorus of Chicago’s “Glory of Love.”

“I AM A MAN!
WHO WILL FIGHT!
FOR YOUR HONOR!”

I was mortified. Mor.ti.fied. And…okay. Maybe just the littlest bit intrigued.

The guy was in a My Bloody Valentine-ish band, and one winter night a bunch of us went to see them play. They were good. Really. He played a baby-blue guitar with his back to the audience, which totally charmed me at the time. Later I found out the guitar wasn’t even his; he didn’t even like the baby blue. But that night after the show, we went to a diner and did some smiling across the table. There was some silliness. Some flirtation.

I wasn’t attracted to him in the least. There was something decidedly reptilian about the guy, plus that lecherousness was never far beneath the surface. But there were glimmers and shades of potentially appealing qualities here and there. Plus, I’d just seen Sense and Sensibility and had this notion that what we were doing was somehow Jane Austen romantic. You know. Detesting each other with a spark.

Mostly, though, there was this horrified rush of being attracted to someone that…well…I wasn’t the least bit attracted to. Didn’t even like him very much. But the wrongness of it made it intriguing. Confusion sparks with loneliness, and the next thing you know there’s a little rush of excitement for the guy. Ill-gotten, misguided excitement, but excitement nonetheless. In other words, it felt good just to be feeling something.

The balloon man came along shortly after that, followed by a brief flurry of suitors that spring. But by summertime the guy and I were casually orbiting each other again. There was a comfort to it, undermined by a nagging sense of This Is Wrong. Did we really like each other, or were we just the nerdiest two friends in the bunch, stuck with each other?

And he was still, still stuck on that argument we’d had about music and what it All Meant. He was still reading between my lines for some haunted, damaged woman to rescue. I was getting a stronger, darker sense that this Save The Crazy Bitch thing was a big part of his attraction to me in the first place. And I didn’t like it one bit.

We were waiting at the bar for Clyde to show up one summer night. The guy was sad and world weary, just coming back from a particularly awful experience at his social services job. Our conversation took a dangerous turn past the superficial.

You know that feeling where you know you’re lost, you know you should pull over and ask for directions, but you just keep following the road out of morbid curiosity or stubborn determination that everything’s going to work out? That’s what this conversation was like. By the time Clyde showed up, I was like Clark Griswold in that conversation. The guy was saying things like “I’m attracted to your mind.” He was doing that “Let’s get married if we’re both still single at 40” thing. I was alarmed. But I kept on going. (“When they close a road they put up big signs. Like this one.”)

Next thing I knew, we were leaning in for a kiss. An instantly-regrettable, dry reptilian-lipped kiss. Panic! What was I doing? Still lip-locked, I started nudging Clyde on the bar stool next to me, hoping he’d intervene somehow. But Clyde was chatting up the guy next to him and figured I didn’t need rescuing anyhow. Humiliated, I wrangled myself free from the kiss.

I don’t remember him minding my resistance very much. Maybe he was just as horrified as I was. Or, more likely, the kiss was just part of his patronizing, unfounded “research” into my psyche. Who can say. But there was no mention of it from then on. By the end of the summer, I was dating someone else. Meanwhile, the guy went out and bought himself a Delorean (you know, like the car in Back to the Future). Apparently that car was getting him all kinds of laid.

And that was pretty much that. We’d cross paths occasionally while I was still in Philly, and he’d be up to his old tricks – trying to root out some underlying sadness in me, trying to plant seeds of doubt about whoever I was dating at the time. At least there were no more kisses.

He’s so vain, he probably thinks this post is about him. The truth is, I’m not sure why I remember this whole story and suddenly felt compelled to write about it after all these years. But really, it’s not about him. The man himself was never that important to me. Barely knew the guy, really.

It’s more about that old looming emptiness, and what you’re at risk of filling it with if you don’t watch your step. Love is a lot less wild and elusive than it used to be. It holds us up with a simple, no-nonsense grip, but it no longer holds a dreamy promise. It simply is. Our adventures are past, and the struggles that remain are of a more serious nature. Sometimes it’s not easy to settle into that. Some days I think I can hear my midlife crisis pulling into the driveway.

So I remind myself what it was really like, what my options really were. Because even in those days of hilarious singlehood misadventures, there was emptiness swirling around the edges and in the background; a kind of desperation that threatened to sweep us up with a single bad choice at any weak moment. Part of the thrill in those days was simply dodging it.

Those were the days. But these are the days, too.

Four Candles

2010-12-08T22:53:00.001-08:00

Four years old. How did this happen?

There’s always this fear with the youngest child that you’re sort of missing them. It goes faster. There’s still wonder and little reflective moments, but they’re fewer and farther between in our faster-paced, schedule-driven life. Not much time is spent just sitting and gazing anymore. There aren’t as may firsts. There’s still amazement, but it doesn’t command the attention it once did.

Especially this year. Little Girl’s got a real Sixteen Candles thing going on, between her brother’s recent Aspergers diagnosis and some home improvement absurdities (more on that in a future post). We usually plan our birthday parties weeks in advance, including a delightful trip to Display & Costume to lovingly pick out the favors and napkins. Not this year. I don’t have a cake planned. I haven’t even bought her a present! I guess we’ll still find time to do all that, but still. Can’t help but feel a little guilty, being so preoccupied with all this other stuff as my sparkling girl turns four.

Despite our best efforts, she’s lived a fair amount of her life in big brother land. The first princess she knew about was Princess Leia. Baby’s First Laugh happened when he accidentally threw a beach ball in her face. One of Baby’s First Words was “Dine!” – thanks to her brother’s love of dinosaurs. She’d even try to say the actual dinosaur names: “Da-BILL-a-dot!” Potty talk, sass back, and Santa agnosticism all started at an earlier age for her. But man, you should have seen her hold her own that first year in preschool.

She’s been a prominent force in The Boy’s life, too. These last few months, something’s really clicked with them and they’ve become such friends all of a sudden. They act out Pokémon and Captain Underpants (there’s that big brother influence again). But he’s been known to play “hairstyle” with her, too. He reads to her. They build forts. They crack each other up.

It’s a beautiful thing to see unfolding – every bit as beautiful and wondrous as the baby gazing of yesteryear. But now, instead of languidly pondering the velvety eyelids of a sleeping infant, I’m overhearing snippets of priceless dialogue as I make dinner or drive them home from school or (yes) catch up on Facebook. It’s a less intentional kind of wonder. But it’s still there.

I love catching glimpses of her dancing to Imagination Movers in her car seat when she thinks I’m not looking. She’s got this great head-bob/finger-pointing move. I love overhearing her intricate imaginative games with her stuffed animals and Playmobil figures. All those different voices. She keeps changing their names. “Little Foal” becomes “Magical Glitter” becomes “Sugar Grape Pie.” I love her quirky love of florist catalogs and the recipe pages in magazines.

And I cautiously love her ever-increasing feistiness. I’m not sure, to be honest, if I’m ready to deal with the amount of feist that’s coming our way. But I’m glad for her. She’s going to need that strength and spirit.

Happy birthday, my big Little Girl.

Full Circle

2010-12-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

Her office is around the corner from our old apartment building – my first address in Seattle and the first place Mr. Black and I lived together. This can’t be a coincidence…can it? It’s such an unlikely location for an office like this, amid the hip furniture stores and hip coffee shops and hip apartment dwellers. How strange for us to be back here again after all these years, like the Ghost of Relationship Future haunting the younger version of ourselves.

On the days when I come here with The Boy, I try to point out some of the old landmarks to him. There’s our old building. That’s where we used to rent movies. He nods politely, but he’s way more interested in the new ice cream store a few blocks up the hill. Outside, I’m the only one with a school-age kid. But in the waiting room there are earnest, sensitive kids and their earnest, sensitive parents. I try to chat sometimes. Mostly, though, I just sit there reminding myself to breathe. I’m way more nervous than I ever thought I would be. The heart just pounds in spite of all the mind’s best reassurances.

At the end of the month, we officially confirm what we’ve already suspected. First of all, our boy is one “gifted” little dude. Tested off the charts. Literally. She had to map his results in the top margin of the page. He’s so gifted, in fact, that I’m taking the quotation marks off that braggy, antiquated term. I’m going to own it: Gifted. So there.

Oh, and one other thing. Aspergers. I’m going to own that one, too.

Funny how two years ago I was fighting so hard to prove it wrong. His preschool teacher was the one who first suggested it – at pick-up time, with my toddler girl asleep in my arms and The Boy running wild on the playground. Apparently, she’d sprung a last-minute fire drill on them the day before, and he’d had the king of all meltdowns.

A four-year-old melting down over an unannounced fire drill seemed like insufficient cause for this level of intervention. But the teacher was insistent. She had other reasons, too. Like his refusal to be hugged. Or his anguish at last-minute changes in the routine.

I was livid. I thought she was being awfully quick to label, and awfully unprofessional just springing it on me at the end of the school day like that. I was determined to prove her wrong.

Mr. Black, Zod love him, reminds me about it as we drive home together. “You realize this means that preschool teacher was right,” he teases.

“She was right for the wrong reasons,” I answer.

In those days it was all about Being Ready for Kindergarten. No one seemed to think The Boy was “ready,” and it pissed me off to no end. Really, “Is he ready for kindergarten?” was the wrong question. Might as well ask “Has he changed into a different person yet?” I knew something was up with the kid, even then. I decided to do an evaluation before the school year ended so I could send him to kindergarten armed with a diagnosis, naively expecting the school would roll out the red carpet of free services to help him. Isn’t that adorable?

Well…things didn’t exactly work out that way. I picked a therapist who was within our price range and available to do the evaluation immediately. Which is not how to pick a therapist, folks. File that one under “Don’t do what Donny Don’t does.” Her official diagnosis was “anxiety and depression,” which made sense at the time.

But it wasn’t enough to get the elementary school psychologist to take us seriously. The Boy's kindergarten teacher was supportive and tried to help me advocate for him, but to no avail. They chalked his meltdowns up to typical kindergarten anxiety. They said his academics were good, so this wasn’t really a special education issue. The school year was nearly over before we finally got our team meeting. With good friends, an excellent teacher, and a classroom aide (who was there for a classmate with Down syndrome) he still managed to have a good year.

But first grade? Not so much. Never before have his differences been so heartbreakingly pronounced (or, at times, so heartbreakingly misunderstood). I should have seen this coming, but I felt completely blindsided. It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I think all along I was secretly hoping he’d outgrow this. Somewhere in the deepest, most childlike part of myself, I believed that with just the right context, maybe the Aspergersish behavior would just…stop. But in those first weeks of the new school year, it became brutally clear that this wasn’t going to happen.

This time, it was a trusted friend who suggested we have him evaluated. This time, I went to our pediatrician first and got a referral. This time, I’ve had nearly two years to get used to the idea and the label doesn’t feel like a punishment or a cruel misunderstanding. It feels…fine. It fits. In many ways, it’s an incredible relief.

I don’t want to fool myself by imposing a sense of closure on this story, but it does feel like an end of sorts. Or a beginning. Or a really nice rest stop. Something. We have a clearer path and a tentatively emerging support system. I have a new level of acceptance for my son that, I guess, maybe wasn’t there before.

Next week, I’ll be making one last visit to the old neighborhood. I’ll catch a glimpse of our old apartment building and the window where I used to sit and wait for the UPS truck to arrive with my boxes from Philly. Here’s your future, Younger Self, I’ll think. Reader, you married him. You bought a house, you had kids, and now you’re walking down that same street to pick up copies of your son’s evaluation for his school.

And here’s some more good news – the old pizza place is still there. Let’s grab a slice and see what tomorrow brings.

The Accidental Staycation

2010-11-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

Somehow, without even trying or even necessarily wanting to, the Floor Pie family appears to have mastered the “staycation.”

I’m as surprised as you are.

When the snow started falling on Monday morning I was just the littlest bit irritated, even as Impy and Chimpy joyfully scrambled into their puffy coats. For all my do-whatcha-feel quirkiness I’m actually a rather linear thinker, easily ruffled when plans go awry. We had a Thanksgiving trip to Oregon to prepare for, co-op preschool classes to attend, plates to spin.

But snow in Seattle is a rare occurrence indeed. Between our city’s apparent lack of snow plows and a landscape of crazy-steep hills and floating bridges, we tend to shut down pretty easily. As it turned out, the only thing that wasn’t cancelled that first snow day was my parent-teacher conference at The Boy’s elementary school. Afterwards, with Mr. Black home with both kids, I walked down to my favorite coffee house in that neighborhood and just sat, warming my hands on a pumpkin spice white mocha and watching the snowflakes swirling around.

It didn’t matter that I was only a few blocks from my kid’s school and a short drive from home. It didn’t matter that dozens of loose ends and unanswered questions lay in my mental inbox. For the moment I was deliciously alone, anonymous, with all the time in the world.

You’d think that feeling would disappear the minute I had to haul myself home in the now-heavier snow. But it didn’t! I walked in the door to find Mr. Black on the computer and the kids immersed in some game in the playroom. After a minute or two, I actually picked up the library book I’d been saving for our trip and curled up by the window to read. (To read! A grown-up book! During the day!)

We passed the hours with all the whimsical luxury of a family renting a quaint cottage in some vacation town, easily changing companions every few hours for a new set of amusements. The Boy and I walked up to the hardware store to buy birdseed. Little Girl and I read stories while The Boy catapulted shovels full of snow in the backyard. The Boy and Mr. Black played Civilization. Mr. Black and Little Girl played Bird Bingo. The four of us walked up to Kidd Valley for lunch. The only thing missing was an exotic landscape…although an all-day snowfall that doesn’t melt the next day is exotic enough in these parts.

Snow day after snow day, I expected the cabin fever to set it. We did have some isolated flare-ups – not unlike the sort you have when traveling with your family. But for the most part, that luxurious vacationy mood remained. Even now, the night before Thanksgiving, there’s still a delicious sense of laziness in the air.

When we’re trying to pack the car tomorrow I might be cursing the loss of my usual pre-Oregon-trip bustling. But I’m hoping that, instead, all this blissed-out laziness has somehow brought me closer to some True Meaning of Thanksgiving sentiment (I’m thankful for family!). Or at least some anti-holiday-stress sentiment (I’m thankful for having avoided the mall this week!).

Whether the feeling lasts or not, it’s just really, really nice to feel this relaxed when we’re this close to the holiday of 1-5 traffic and pie fails. It’s such a rare time of year for living in the present. More than anything, I’m grateful for that.

You Are My Rain

2010-11-07T00:52:00.000-07:00

It’s so easy to lose the thread these days. And then when I find it, it’s not really him at all anymore; not the him I’ve come to know. I used to doubt so much, and yearn. I used to not know how to ask for things. I used to worry and miss him. I used to curl into him, filling every space, renewed.

Did we really love the rain as much as I remember, or was that some affectation of the recently-moved-to-Seattle? Because that’s what everyone warns about before you move to Seattle, isn’t it? So we told them all the rain’s no big deal, and then we kind of had to commit to that. No car in those days, so we’d wait at rain-swept bus stops and street corners. I used to imagine a wedding announcement featuring us in our soggy jeans at the corner of Pine and Boren, waiting for the light to change.

So many different snapshots of our early love are rain-drenched, even before Seattle was on the horizon. The night we met, I walked to that party from one end of my Philadelphia neighborhood to the other in an eerily foreshadowing misty warm January rain. And when I knew he was moving, I’d study the rainy days and try to imagine myself in his new city. It seemed so distant and unlikely, but the next thing I knew it was real. Damp grocery bags in our hands. Drizzle-speckled used CDs from Cellophane Square.

The music we fell in love to was rain itself. Hooverphonic. Air. Massive Attack. Stereolab. Love Spirals Downwards. All those dreamy, fuzzy layers; dozens of neutral shades blurring sensually into each other. All these years later and I still catch my breath when one of those songs comes on, and an ordinary drive to the store is suddenly transformed. I notice the skyline again, and remember what it felt like when this was the landscape of a romantic adventure; not the landscape of errands and commutes.

Yes, by now the novelty of all this rain has worn off a bit. Complaining about the rain in Seattle is about as useless as complaining about the heat in Texas. But that doesn’t stop us. Sometimes it’s downright worrisome, the way it pours down on our little old house. Sometimes we’ll have days and days – weeks, even – of relentless downpour, and I’ll think this just can’t be good for us. But there are moments when the rain unexpectedly locks me into the old optimism.

Like last week, when I had to run some paperwork into The Boy’s school. The last thing I wanted to do was leave my cozy little car-cocoon. But the minute I set foot on the sidewalk and felt those soft raindrops in the warm breeze, it was like stepping back in time. The colors – vibrant reds and yellows of the autumn leaves popping against their black branches and the milky grey sky. Suddenly, I wasn’t in as much of a hurry. I was feeling that same wet, fresh, ripped-open sensation of when I first arrived here and everything felt so new – rain-drenched, uncertain, discouraging at times, but unmistakably hopeful.

It isn’t just nostalgia that links my love to the rain. Rain is struggle. Rain is sacrificing convenience and comfort for the sake of just getting outside anyway and going where you need to go. Rain drives you crazy, making you adapt to its quirks. Rain is familiar. Rain drives you back inside. It gives you permission to go slowly and take care of yourself. (Have some tea.)

Rain is imperfection itself, in all its disappointment and unexpected beauty.

When Sister Got Hitched

2010-09-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

It was ten years ago – ten! – that my sister married her longtime boyfriend. In the years that followed, there would be an avalanche of family weddings, including my own. But hers was the first. And hers was the one that ushered in a new era in which we learned to stop worrying and love TheKnot.com. (Or maybe it was Gloria Steinem’s marriage, six days earlier, that paved the way. That didn’t hurt.)

In those days our generation, or at least our little corner of it, just wasn't that into weddings. And when they did happen (with the exception of a few good friends, of course), it felt somewhat alien. I knew girls at work who talked endlessly about their weddings. They were typically the same ones who talked endlessly about dieting and looked with disgust at a plate with anything resembling cheese on it. This was the same sort of person who would ask if I minded that my younger sister was getting married first.

Um . . . no. But thanks for your concern. Have another olestra chip.

I truly wasn’t the least bit jealous or upset. But my sister’s engagement opened a door of sorts – a door I’d assumed was mostly meant for neat and polished people who were happy in cubicle land, who raced toward the superficial trappings of adulthood like we raced toward the prom in high school; those color-coordinated girls and their housebroken boyfriends who obediently wined and dined and sent elaborate flower arrangements.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t attract this sort of boyfriend myself. I simply hadn’t the least bit of interest in such a man. The guys I fell for were all mired in existential angst, darting their eyes and tossing their heads like frightened horses at any notion of conventional cubicle-bound adulthood. They were in academia, or performing arts, or underemployed slackerdom with vague artistic ambitions. When I met Mr. Black, for example, he was teaching one college course a week, working on a novel, and writing music and movie reviews to make ends meet. Sure, he’d thrown in the towel and started applying to law schools, too. But even that meant three more years of studenthood. Sign me up!

I loved the slacker life. I loved my old apartment with its dark brown shag carpeting, I loved my Nick at Nite (which prominently featured “Rhoda” and “Mary Tyler Moore” reruns in those days), I loved the open-ended adventures in hilarious absurdity when I went out with my friends. I didn’t want my life to change very much. I just wanted a little romantic companionship – someone who would lie around with me all weekend instead of running off to go do something, someone who nevertheless had remarkable depths of intelligence and wit, and someone (this was the trickiest requirement with these guys) who even wanted a girlfriend.

Mr. Black embodied all of these things and more, and I’d followed him into the misty, cloud-mottled sunset of Seattle to co-slack forever in harmony. The notion of marriage seemed a bit beside the point.

And then, suddenly, one of my own was crossing over. I don’t ever remember my sister yearning or aspiring to marriage for marriage’s sake. Right up until the day she got engaged, we used to commiserate about people asking her when she planned to tie the knot. But she absolutely wanted to be with her guy. They’d been friends for years and together through all sorts of post-grad adventures. In lots of ways, they’d grown up together, and he was already a de facto member of our family. The fact that there hadn’t been a formal celebration to acknowledge it never occurred to me.

But now that there was a formal celebration on the horizon, we were quick to embrace it! Flowers, cakes, dresses, decorations – these were no longer superficial trappings, but an elaborate palette with which to create our very own two-part season finale Wedding Episode. This wasn’t just some wedding; this was our sister’s wedding, and we planned it with the joyful abandon of all our childhood Christmases, birthdays, and Halloweens put together.

My long-held aversion to All Things Girly began to soften as I ventured into previously unknown territory. I tried on sleek gowns at Nordstrom. I bought my first (and last) pair of high heels. I even bought a copy of Martha Stewart Weddings magazine and started squirreling away ideas for my own hypothetical wedding . . . and started hinting to Mr. Black that I kind of wanted one. And, the day before the wedding, I joined my sisters and cousins at the nail salon for my first pedicure ever. (This girly stuff wasn’t so bad after all. Except for the high heels.)

The wedding and reception took place on an idyllic university campus where the bride, groom, both sisters of the bride, and many of the guests went to college. Just to ratchet up the nostalgia factor even more, we were all staying at the same fancy hotel that anchored a once-ritzy mall and movie theater that were popular destinations back in the day. I’d seen Fatal Attraction there. And Who Framed Roger Rabbit? And Graffiti Bridge.

Old familiar places are usually so evocative for me. On a visit to Philadelphia, for example, I was walking across Rittenhouse Square and felt suddenly overcome by a sense of longing and loss – for what, I couldn’t say. But when I lived there, I did tend to wander around that part of town while sorting out this or that heartbreak. Perhaps I was feeling the cumulative sense of those wanderings; a visit from the Ghost of Drama Past.

I expected to feel something similar, being back on my old college campus after all those years. But I didn’t. Nothing. It just felt like a place, like any other place. And there was a wedding to rehearse, a Pablo Neruda poem to practice reading, high heels to break in. All the old spirits were either at rest or exorcised by the presence of our older, relatively wiser selves. The past was, well, past. One star in an elaborate constellation.

At the reception, I stood on the porch where I’d received my diploma nine years earlier, gazing out at a sunny lawn flocked with aunts, uncles, parents, cousins, and friends from every era. And I realized just how optimistic it was, this whole wedding thing. It wasn’t just about the event, or even marriage itself, necessarily. It was simply the living, breathing affirmation that – married or not – we could form our own center. No more kids’ table, no more adolescent eye-rolling at the fringes. We could be adults in the conventional sense, without fear or ironic detachment; without losing our spirit or our individuality.

You don’t need a wedding to do that. But it took a wedding for me to fully realize it.

Happy anniversary, Sister.

The Midlife Climb

2010-08-31T18:41:00.000-07:00

At my forty-first birthday dinner, over one too many delicious tequila-based cocktails, Mr. Black tells me he wants to climb Mount Rainier.

I wait for the smirk, or the air quotes, but neither are forthcoming. He’s serious. What can I say but “Why?”

“Well,” he chuckles a little self-consciously, “because it’s there.” And then it dawns on me.

“You’re having a mid-life crisis!”

He smiles and shrugs. “Yes, I guess that’s part of it.”

I panic a little. How can this be? He’s always so even-tempered and content; the Spock to my Joan-Cusack-in-Broadcast News. And now, after all these years, the male existential angst raises its head and he wants to do the hiking equivalent of buying a red Corvette?!

I take a long sip of my drink and blurt out “Couldn’t you just have an affair?”

“Do you want me to have an affair?”

“No. . . no, of course I don’t.” And it’s true. I really don’t. But somehow I think I could cope with the heartache of his infidelity better than I could cope with the heartache of his taking a bad step into an icy crevasse. So I try to explain myself.

“It’s just that, with an affair, you’re so much less likely to . . . well, die.”

Immediately we start trying to out-geek each other with amateur actuarial speculation on the likelihood of death due to an affair vs. climbing a mountain. You could get shot or stabbed by a jealous husband. You could have a car accident on the way to her place. You could contract a deadly STD. Ah, there’s that ironic detachment. The conversation moves on.

We agree that he’ll start by joining a local hiking group that helps midlife crisis guys prepare for their eventual feats of strength. None of this driving-to-a-trailhead-on-a-whim nonsense. And he acknowledges that he might decide not to climb the whole damn mountain in the end. But in the meantime it will be nice to kick his hiking up a few notches with some new challenges and maybe new friends. Nothing wrong with that.

But later that night, I can’t sleep. Suppose he really goes through with it?

Worst case scenarios flash through my mind. To calm myself, I lean against his sleeping back and just listen to him breathe for a while. He is here, I remind myself, not on a mountain, not lost to some rocky wilderness. I wrap one arm around him and bask in the simple presence of his body. And then I imagine that same body, just a body, striving and inconsequential against miles and miles of glacier and sky. I hold him tighter and try to just breathe.

I wasn’t always so fearful about the whole Man vs. Nature thing. I used to embrace it, in fact. Nature was – still is, in many ways – one of the deepest, most comforting, most spiritually fulfilling things in my life. I discovered hiking in graduate school, escaping with my friends to the Catskills whenever we could manage it. I loved the rush of pure strength in my legs as we pushed our way up those steep climbs, the air so clean it felt a little sharp going in. And I loved my boots like some people love their cars.

Even after I moved to Philadelphia I tried to keep the spirit alive, walking everywhere in any weather, setting off on hiking-related vacations – Colorado with a good friend, Maine with Mr. Black, the Adirondacks by myself one summer. Moving to the Pacific Northwest felt like a paradise of sorts, where we’re literally surrounded by snow-capped mountains and wild, rocky beaches; so many opportunities to lose oneself. Those early days were incredible, exploring the edge of the continent with the Man I Loved.

I imagined we’d be one of those many Northwest families who take their babies camping and hiking. We did manage to get some hiking in with The Boy in the early days, back when he was portable.

But now, with two rather anxiety-prone children ages six and three who have a hard time abandoning routine and creature comforts . . . well, let’s just say we’ve put the dream on hold.

We tried to do kid-friendly versions of our old trips, with moderate success. We’d stay in motels. We’d spend the rainy days exhausting limited indoor attractions – local cheese factory tours and museums featuring pioneer artifacts and taxidermy. But last year, on a relentlessly cloudy Oregon Coast vacation, I was going stir crazy. It was just a little cloudy – okay, it was a lot cloudy – but it wasn’t actually raining. Couldn’t we do something outdoorsy before heading home to the city?

Mr. Black suggested Oswald West State Park, remembering that their trails were family-of-tourists-friendly, with a nice beach for sandcastle building nestled between the rocky hillsides. I guess Mr. Black’s idea of “tourist friendly” is not my idea of “tourist friendly,” because I decided to bring Little Girl’s stroller along.

It seems ridiculous in retrospect, but you have to appreciate the whirlwind fog of traveling with small children. She was two at the time, too heavy to carry and too, well, two to walk along. It was a small umbrella stroller, light and pretty easy to navigate. We did fine for most of the trail. I even made it over a narrow, bumpy wooden bridge with some maneuvering. But when we hit the beach, there was the usual barrier of rocks and driftwood to climb over and down. Why hadn’t I thought this through?

Mr. Black carried the empty stroller while I inched my way over the rocks and driftwood carrying my impossibly heavy two-year-old, willing away back pain and silently praying for a safe descent. How the hell am I going to make it back over those rocks, I wondered, when Mr. Black pointed to a staircase built into the hillside on the other side of the beach. Stairs! We’re saved! We sat back and enjoyed our cloudy beach day.

But when it was time to head back, those stairs proved only slightly less challenging than the pile of rocks and driftwood. Her little two-year-old body got heavier with each slow, deliberate step. My neck and shoulders ached, and I was growing crankier by the minute.

At the top of the staircase I unloaded Little Girl back into her stroller and started crabbing at Mr. Black about something. I don’t remember what. It was one of those conversations where one person’s being deliberately vague while the other is deliberately obtuse. You know: “What? That. What!? That! What?! THAT!!!” One of those. We were about ready to start pummeling each other with the nearest sand shovels.

Suddenly, I realized how close to the edge of a cliff we were standing. And how the brakes of Little Girl’s stroller were not on.

Calmly, steadily, I pushed the stroller away from the edge and up the trail, still pissed about whatever minutia we’d been arguing about. But horrifying images teased at the edges of my mind. What if I hadn’t noticed in time? What if The Boy had accidentally bumped into the stroller and sent it rolling? What if my sweet little girl, in her diaper and mismatched Gymboree outfit, my sweet little girl with her adorable laugh and love of books, my sweet little girl who hated the damn beach and would have been so much happier staying home with her stuffed animals, had met a terrifying and dramatic end all because of my own selfish attachment to stupid cloudy Pacific Northwest goddamn wilderness? Screw you, Nature.

Yes, this was an overreaction of sorts. It wasn’t Nature’s fault, after all. A little common sense could have prevented tragedy. And we did avoid tragedy, didn’t we? Looking back on it, I can’t even trust the memory. How close to the edge of the cliff were we, really? How real was the threat of her falling?

But nothing can match that horrifying vision of “what if,” or the realization that I’d brought my little daughter into harm’s way through my own poor judgment and misguided love of being in a thrilling but dangerous spot where we had no business in the first place.

Seriously, why do we need to stand at the edge of rocky beach cliffs and mountaintops? These places aren’t here for us. Why do we keep trying to have them? Is there not enough to satisfy our bodies and our spirits in the homes we’ve created, in the cities we’ve built? Maybe the kids have the right idea after all, missing the comforts of home while we drag them down the trail of pristine natural beauty (that we paved and drove our cars to get to) in an attempt to reclaim something that never belonged to us in the first place.

And yet, I do still love to hike and immerse myself in breathtaking mountain scenery. What’s not to love? There’s a certain peacefulness and strength out there that just isn’t at the mall, or even at a city park. It’s in the soft air, the quiet, the motion of branches and waves. It’s the feeling in your legs when they just have to stretch and climb, literally elevating yourself one big step after the other.

I’m less compelled to drag the kids along now, at least until they’re older. As for Mr. Black and his midlife climbing aspirations . . . Well, I won’t stop him. I can insist that he proceed with safety and extreme attention to detail, but I can’t hold him back. As midlife crises go, this seems like a pretty benign one. Might as well let it unfold.

Go Back Up

2010-08-19T02:00:00.000-07:00

These bike-path dudes all look the same. Hip and healthy, shaved heads under their slick helmets. If I weren’t so distracted, I’d be feeling comparatively dowdy in my old jeans still spattered with glue from a day-camp art project. But that’s kind of irrelevant right now.

Everyone who passes by does the same thing I did – pause in disbelief, start to briskly and righteously move away, and then . . . look up again and freeze, helplessly. Bystanders. Some people take pictures with their phones. I already feel tacky for standing here and watching this, so I take some small consolation in the fact that at least I’m not that tacky.

She’s right in the center of the Aurora bridge, on the other side of the railing, just standing there, facing the long drop to the water and police boats below. I can see a few police officers on the bridge with her. It looks like they’re talking. She gestures wildly at them from time to time.

Then she turns around, squats down and lowers one foot, as if she’s climbing down a ladder. But there’s nowhere for that foot to go. It just waves there, impossibly small against the vast expanse of bridge and air. One of the bike guys near me bellows “GO BACK UP!”

And she does. Not all the way, but she lifts her foot back up and steadies herself on the ledge again. Now she’s squatting, with her face in the railing and her back turned to the jump.

An Argosy sightseeing ship passes by, awkwardly, skirting as far away from the scene as possible.

I know I shouldn’t stay. I have no business here. None of us do. But I want to see her climb back over that railing to safety. I feel responsible for seeing this situation resolved, somehow. You can’t just walk past a suicide attempt and never give it a second thought, can you? After watching her lift that foot back up, I’m almost certain she won’t go through with the jump. But I want to know for sure.

I’m feeling rather stoic – until I actually talk to someone and feel my voice shaking and repeating my words. I can’t yell like the bike guy did. But I’m talking, actually saying the words out loud, in the same kind-but-firm tone I use when one of my kids is wildly upset and needs some redirection: “Go back up. You don’t want to do this. I know you don’t. Go back up.”

Which feels kind of lame. I overhear a woman talking to her friend, abstractly comparing herself to the person on the bridge, and saying she understands. I wish I understood. But I know that I don’t. I couldn’t possibly. The closest I can get to empathy is recalling my old embarrassingly frequent public displays of adolescent angst, and the accompanying adolescent outrage that the world, in all its shallowness, didn’t come to an empathetic halt to acknowledge my suffering.

Now I’m finding strange comfort in that very shallowness. I look around at all the people who aren’t attempting a suicide jump. The cops, the commuters, the bikers and joggers on the trail, that woman with her bag of groceries, that mom who leans in to quietly explain it to her son before gently urging him on. I look at the lights on all the houses in the surrounding hills. And past the bridge, I can see my son’s elementary school.

It’s getting dark. I had no business being here in the first place, and I definitely have no business staying this long. I have to believe that she won’t jump. I have to know she won’t. So, I “know” it as best I can and start walking home.

But when I get there – when I sit at my computer and learn that this bridge that’s walking distance from my house is the second deadliest “suicide bridge” in the United States; that at least two people have died jumping from the bridge just this summer – I still feel frozen in my tracks.

“Go back up,” the bike guy yelled. And she did. That’s what I keep thinking about. I didn’t have the presence of mind, or the courage, or the vocal chords to do that. But I’m so glad someone did.

Update: She's safe.

The Art of Getting Lost

2010-08-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

Back east, in an old friend’s kitchen, she finds an address book of hers that was a gift from high school. The cover is padded with a light blue Laura Ashley-like print and trimmed with lace (so touchingly not her style), and she reads me every address I’ve had since age 22. We talk about a mutual friend who was also my boyfriend for a short but serious while, and though I wish him only the best, I’m breathing a dozen sighs of relief that we went our separate ways.

Funny how those roads were all leading somewhere. I never gave it much thought in that wild, uncertain time full of intersecting souls and paths. Relationships – platonic and otherwise – were intense, meaningful, and routinely transitory as we moved on and beyond and through. This guy was a blaze of warmth and stability, older than me and more certain of his way. He would have married me. The lure of security was huge, but the fit was just . . . off somehow. I didn’t trust it. In the end I fought my way out, breaking his heart. It would be years before anyone would want me that much again. But those were good years. I was on a path, too.

It’s so maddeningly easy to get lost when I come back east for a visit. My sister reassures me this is just what it’s like here – tiny country roads dipping over hills, through forests and farms, appropriated and cobbled into one confusing-as-hell state road. I keep pulling over, poring frantically over the map, sure I must have missed the turn. No. The turn just hasn’t come up yet. Keep going. You’re fine.

I feel like I used to be so much better at this, but I wasn’t really. Yes, I did a lot more long-distance driving in my early 20’s than I do in my early 40’s. I was always taking off to see some friend or boyfriend in some other state. But I wasn’t much more adept at it than I am now. Wrong turns, dead ends, misread maps. I’ve been to the Jersey Shore by way of Delaware and I’ve taken more than one wrong/long way around a DC beltway. It didn’t bother me as much, though. Getting lost and confused was simply part of the process; part of the adventure. The destination wasn’t half as exciting as the journey.

There wasn’t much “home” to miss, either. Sure, I loved every one of my single-girl apartments, but I didn’t miss my stressful jobs and empty answering machines. The further away, the better. And, obviously, there were no kids in the backseat in those days, with their Bunny Grahams and Laurie Berkner CDs and adorable little need for routine and security. It’s amazing how “When are we going to be there? Are we ever going to be there?” can throw off the whole On the Road spirit.

I leave my friend’s house later than I’d intended, kids in their pajamas and an inadequate Google Maps print-out on the passenger seat. It’s dark, and I’ve made my first wrong turn before we’re even out of the neighborhood. I sniff out a new way back to the main road, turn onto it with a sigh of relief, only to zip right under the bridge for the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Come on!

But there’s a gas station right there. The heat and humidity wraps around me like a blanket as I fill up the tank, planning my next move and watching my kids’ sweet, trusting little heads in the glow of their They Might Be Giants DVD. What an adventure this is for them, driving all night back to grandma’s house in Pennsylvania. There’s a small thread of my old spirit that can vicariously enjoy it with them, but mostly I’m a bundle of neurotic-mom nerves.

We make it back to the Baltimore-Washington Parkway easily enough, and the kids are asleep before long, but I can’t seem to settle into the drive. Did I miss my exit? Is this right? It’s so late and I’m so tired. Should we stop at a hotel? Is that lame? Will we have an accident if I don’t stop? Beltway, beltway, beltway. Let’s just wait until we get to 83. Where’s 83? Shouldn’t we have hit 83 by now?

And when we finally do hit 83, I still can’t decide. I see a sign for a Comfort Inn and exit, but the road is so dark and I don’t see it anywhere. And then the road closes for a passing train. Rattled, I turn around and get back on 83. A little further along, there’s a sign for a Hampton Inn, which looms majestically over some retail village. It takes me three tries to get on the right winding road to the top of that hill. When I finally reach the merry glow of the lobby, it’s swarming with high-school kids just as bright-eyed and giddy as my own kids at the prospect of travel. It’s adorable, really. Too bad they’re filling up the entire hotel and there’s not a single room left.

So, the hell with it. I put in a Sleater-Kinney CD, soft enough not to wake the kids but loud enough to keep me going, and soldier on to my parents’ place. 83, 30, 222, 183. And gradually, it starts to feel fun. It’s a summer night, I’ve got my music and a familiar stretch of roads in front of me, rolling past it all. In motion. In process.

I used to thrive on this – the constant movement, solitude, and sense of possibility. Even when I did decide to settle down, it was with a man who was moving to Seattle, and a whole new journey began. Now, instead of traveling to boyfriends, I travel to my sisters and parents and old friends. And now, for the first time on this crazy-busy east coast trip, I really miss my husband. If he were here, he’d have navigated me through all this with his trademark stoic reassurance. Yes, this is the right way. No, let’s not stop for the night. I can drive if you’re too tired. It’s nice to know I can still do this without him. But it’s so much better when he’s here.

At last, I make my way up the last stretch of country hill. Pulling into my parents’ driveway, I imagine I can hear the reassuring sound of a plane’s wheels first touching the ground after a long flight, bumping wildly but never breaking their stride. Home.

Summer Reruns

2010-07-10T22:57:00.000-07:00

Well, gentle readers, I’m outta here for the rest of the month. In a few short days, I’ll be hopping on a plane with Impy & Chimpy to visit all our wonderful East Coast friends ‘n’ family. Computer access – and time to write, for that matter – will be in short supply, so I figured I’d put up some delicious summer reruns for now. These are some of my favorites, all summer-themed in one way or another. Read ’em up. If you haven’t seen it, it’s new to you!

Red, White . . . Blue
Some people have ironically melancholy Valentines Days. I have ironically melancholy Fourths of July.

The Pennsylvania We Never Found
Visiting my childhood home with my own kids, I remember the initial promise and reality of “farm” life.

Fling One and Fling Two
Two summer flings remembered – one heavy, one light. Grab some orange popsicles and lemonade and enjoy.

Beach Tale
Observing a young, wacky couple in what could only be the earliest stages of love.

New Twilight Novella: the Ultimate Clueless Mom Fantasy
I know, summer’s here and you’re probably up to your eyeballs in Twilight hype/criticism by now. But this essay is about the new novella The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner – which is to the Twilight saga what Fire Walk With Me was for “Twin Peaks.” Hopefully there’s something in there for Twilight lovers and haters, alike.

A Letter to My Preconceived Notion

2010-07-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in February, 2002, for the child I had only just started hoping for.

It began simply. I left the pink plastic case in the drawer, figuring it would be no big deal – business as usual, minus one little blue pill at bedtime every night. If it happens, it happens.

But nothing, baby, nothing swings like these moods. I’ve got the sex drive and depression of a high school girl, perched on the brink of some pitfall or other. Which will it be? Conceive and be a breeder, a Mommy, a sweatpants-wearing ghost in a house full of people who wish she would just shut up? Or the sorry infertile non-woman, so askew that her own errant ovaries know better than to pass it along? Which will it be?

Somehow, sweetheart, I simply know that I want you in my life. And yes, it’s probably for all the wrong, culturally inscribed reasons. Nevertheless, I love you dearly, though you’re no more than a theory; a hypothetical little genetic time bomb.

I can’t promise you a thing. You understand this now, existing only in my mind as you do. But when you are your own little being, you will forget. You will want the more expensive sweater, want your mother to stop crying, want to spend Christmas in your own house instead of on a plane bound for snowy Pennsylvania or in a car bound for rainy Oregon.

You will want the world to love you as much as I do and it won’t, baby, it won’t. You will navigate your way through the whole mess of childhood and adolescence, not knowing the rules until long after the game is over and it’s time to start a new one.

Some people will admire this particular quality or that. Some will instantly dislike you through no fault of your own. There is hate in this world and it permeates everyone. It is there. But there is love in the world too, my sad boy or sad girl. There is ebb and flow, calm and storm, a whole complex geography of being and becoming, knowing and wondering, learning, forgetting, and learning again. You will turn inward, want to write a poem but your feelings will be greater than a mere vocabulary can express. You will find, seek, separate, go your own way into the darkness and light, as I have, as everyone has.

You are asking me what is the point of it all if there is no vindication. I don’t know the point, or if there needs to be one. Most of us have learned to create meaning in those aspects of life we can measure – our jobs, our gardens, even a fist-sized lump in one’s uterus that will one day be a baby. But baby, find your own answers that make sense for you, and change them as often as you need to keep being happy.

And please . . . be sure to take these words from me now, because when you need a cup of juice, when you need help with your homework or braces or a ride to the mall, I won’t be able to say these words to you. I’ll be the last person you’ll want to hear them from.

And maybe I’ll never have you at all. Maybe you’d rather stay inside where it’s safe – part of my thoughts, part of my body, never quite taking your own definitive shape. And maybe people will misunderstand and pity me, or consider me flawed in some way. But these same people will, no doubt, have the same reaction when I let you dye your hair day-glo green and partake of whatever nasty elements of pop culture you choose. Either way, we won’t care what they think. These are your decisions. Be hypothetical, or be conceived. I will leave my pills in the drawer, and I will wait.

Bliss

2010-06-26T16:59:00.000-07:00

Funny how when we “reconnect,” as the parenting magazines call it – “put the spice back,” as it were – funny how that’s all it takes sometimes. My dog brain confusedly responds as if it’s in love with a new guy. Morning-after optimism skipping home. Ha. Hardly.

This is Mr. Black, my old man. He’s the guy who argues that the dishwasher is “fine” when it smells like rotting milk stuffed in an old sweat sock; the guy who gives me that annoyed, confused look when I know I’ve been perfectly clear; the guy who clumsily stomps on my feelings and acts all defensive about it when a simple “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to” is all the situation requires.

Trying to explain again wouldn’t be worth the aggravation, so I just check out. Float away on another widow watch of empty distractions, happily tethered but floating just the same. He’s floating, too, in another direction, and our house is filled with mutual, benevolent silence. It’s hard to be grounded all the time. It’s so much work, so fraught with embarrassment and uncertainty and unfulfilled (probably unfair) needs that can only be met in the netherworld of the imagination.

But I’m not actually going anywhere. He is enough. More than enough. He does so much, devotes so much time, makes this charmed life of mine even possible. He doesn’t electrify me with adoration and compliments. Never did. Never swept me away, even in the beginning, with that reserved no-nonsense Spock-logic. But I was swept nevertheless, not by any words or gestures, but by his presence and the mere prospect of love from a man like that. Him showing up and loving me was enough.

We had this long, glorious leap of faith that stretched from Philadelphia to Seattle; a bright, soundless soaring that made everything else seem distant and past. Then we crashed and bumped down, got on our feet, stumbled around for a while and eventually just started walking along. This is what marriage is. Other humans are maddening and imperfect. They can’t change to suit us. Change is next to impossible. Settling, though? Well, that’s easier.

There’s so much I don’t even try to fight about anymore. I know he loves and respects me. Most of his actions indicate as much, even though he lurks around like a sullen teen sometimes. Not only is this as good as it gets, but it’s really good much of the time. We’re good friends, good parenting partners, great . . . um . . . partners still (sigh).

It’s just a little disorienting, is all. I get these lovey/crushy feelings and nowhere to really put them. This guy can only take so much school-girl adoration from me before he’s gotta watch Wapner. And besides, this is more about me than it is about him. It’s always been more about me than whatever guy happened to be standing there. I just feel these feelings of – I don’t know – love, poetry, intuition, bliss, life . . . and I start looking for somewhere to put them. I’ve always sought a human outlet for them, glorifying even the most benign, clearly wrong-for-me little non-relationships, confusing a suitable temporary recipient for some Great Love.

As a young teenager, flying a kite in the empty fields near my parents’ farm or strolling through the impossibly sensual aroma of summer evening tiger lilies, I’d imagine how it would be to share all this with a boyfriend. But when the time came, something would always fall flat. They didn’t get it. Some of them tried, but nothing could match the intensity of imagined love versus an actual imperfect being standing there missing the point. I don’t know why I thought marriage would be any different. Even under the best of circumstances, my experience is not your experience.

But, you know, it’s all okay. Love is one thing, and I do and always have loved Mr. Black. But this bliss feeling? This is mine. No crush can hold it, no human can match it or satisfy it. This is my experience of love and life, and it needs no recipient to fulfill itself. It simply is. I love my husband. And I love.

Follow Up

2010-06-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well, the ultrasound was reassuring. That’s what the nurse tells me, anyway, after my whole week of pretending not to be waiting by the phone like some pathetic forgotten girlfriend. Checking and rechecking the answering machine, springing into action the minute the phone rings, sinking a little inside when it’s only that telemarketer again.

This morning, I promised myself I’d wait until the afternoon to call the doctor’s office. Ten seconds later, I was dialing the number, promising myself I was going to leave a breezy message. (“Iiiii’m breezy!” Remember that, from “Friends”? Sure you do.) Of course, my message was anything but breezy. I stammered. I repeated myself. And Little Girl threw me off even more, worried that I might be scheduling a doctor’s appointment for her.

The nurse called back soon afterwards to tell me that the ultrasound was normal. Reassuring, she said. Apparently they mailed me a letter earlier this week saying the same thing, although I haven’t received it yet. I hope they’re as efficient when it comes to sending the bill.

So, you know, hooray for good health. But while I’m relieved and embracing life and smelling the roses and whatnot, I can’t deny that I’m also feeling pretty cranky about the whole situation. I don’t like how it ends up reading like a Very Special Episode of some sitcom: “Oh, I might have a big serious disease. Oh wait – no I don’t. Roll credits. To learn more about female reproductive health, consult your local library.” I don’t like how it tugged at some pretty deep-seated fears (and possibly my readers’ fears when I wrote about it here . . . sorry, guys), only to make those fears seem silly and unfounded. It was a jolt we all could have done without, I think.

And, sure, I could have been more stoic about it in the first place . . . not written about it, not thought about it, not told anyone until there was a real reason to worry. But that’s not how I roll. By now, I might as well just accept the fact that I’m not breezy. Never have been, never will be. I’m all drama, love, and fear, wrapped in a crunchy cynical coating that flakes right off at the slightest provocation. If there’s the slightest disturbance in the force, I’ll be talking or writing about it. And if you tell me there’s a quirk on my blood test, send me in for a big juicy ultrasound, and then ignore me for a week only to say “Oh, you’re fine” . . . well, it’s going to take more than a “you’re fine” to restore my sense of peace.

But, you know . . . probably not much more. A nice walk and a delicious latte might do the trick. Maybe this past week just boils down to another embarrassing oversharing / overcaring incident to throw on the pile, but hey . . . what’s one more?

Meanwhile, I'm incredibly touched by all the support and kind words from you folks. Thanks, as always, for reading. You're the best. I'll be sure to post something funnier next time. In fact...why wait?

Ovary-action

2010-06-11T23:06:00.000-07:00

I’m probably fine. This is the way it always goes. Some anomaly pops up, some uncomfortable, invasive test is ordered and I sit around in some innocuously tasteful waiting room pondering my future. It almost always turns out to be nothing.

So, here we are again. The hospital sure is a drag when you’re not expecting a baby. I feel bad for the well-dressed gentlemen in the radiology waiting room who seem to be new to all this. They look so vulnerable and so bravely uncompromised in their work clothes, holding on to that last shred of their identity before it’s hospital-gown-and-probe time. Me, I can’t even sit down. They made me drink 32 ounces of water and hold it in before this test, and I’m standing on my tiptoes, shifting my weight from one foot to the other in a maddening internal struggle not to pee like Niagara Falls. Even the languid tropical fish tank is pissing me off. And a “Best of 2005” issue of Seattle magazine? That’s just plain insulting.

I don’t remember this being such a production the first time. My doctor had the ultrasound equipment right there in the office, and he let me look at the screen as he measured the ovarian cysts, instantly reassuring me that it didn’t look like cancer. Not today. It’s just me and the tech, and she’s got the screen turned away from me. I stare at the disturbingly sex-toyish instruments on the wall and try not to speculate. She presses my belly here and there, this way and that, presses until it hurts and won’t stop hurting. Probe, probe, click, click. I don’t want to ask.

I’m probably fine. Last time, sixteen years ago for goodness sake, it was only endometriosis. The biggest cyst was the size of a baseball and it swallowed one withered ovary like a fat burst of popcorn swallows its spent kernel. And it hurt. So much. Nothing hurts this time, so maybe there’s nothing going on in there after all. Or maybe my body’s so stretched out from the pregnancies and miscarriages and surgeries that it barely registers cysts anymore. Who can say? I could say, if she’d just turn the screen a few inches in my direction or let me know what she sees. But she doesn’t.

I was 24 last time, worried and fascinated. Endometriosis is no big deal. It’s just painful and inconvenient, and it can affect your fertility if it goes on unchecked. “If you were married, I’d tell you to have your children now,” my doctor had said. Gulp. I wasn’t married, of course. I’d just started dating some guy in a Grateful Dead cover band who, for all his pot-headed charm, was not what the kids call marriage material. Not that that mattered much to me. I was just barely getting a career off the ground, just barely setting up housekeeping outside of a university setting. Finding some guy to marry was the least of my problems.

But a few months later, waking up in the recovery room after my surgery, the first thought that flooded my consciousness was “I’m alone.” I wasn’t, of course. My mom was in the hospital waiting room, ready to take me back to her place to recover. But I was still young enough to take something like that for granted. All I could see was that I had no boyfriend (Grateful Dead guy and I had broken up by then), no real job beyond my various temping and tutoring gigs, and no children – not even the prospect of children.

I’m not sure why that mattered to me all of a sudden. I guess, like most female-reproductive-system diseases, endometriosis has an air of blame about it. It used to be called “working woman’s disease” because it mostly affects women in their 20’s and 30’s who haven’t started spawning yet. Don’t let your body make babies and the damn thing starts making little cyst-babies of its own. I guess on some level it felt like a punishment or a warning or some such. Mostly, though, it just underscored how very adrift and alone I was feeling.

So, all’s well that ends well . . . sort of. Yes, I ended up with a wonderful family and an easy, joyful life. But I’m still alone in this hospital. It’s pretty clear the tech isn’t authorized to tell me anything, so I start reading into her every move like it’s a first date. Did she take more measurements on the left side than the right? Is her stoicism a bad sign? Wouldn’t she say something reassuring if there were something reassuring to report? Finally it’s over and I’m sure a radiologist will come in and explain everything. No. But my doctor will have the results in 2-3 business days.

I patch myself together, put my clothes back on, and toss my hospital gown in a disgusted heap. I don’t go home. Instead, I drive a few blocks north to the neighborhood where Mr. Black and I shared our first Seattle apartment and wander around the old streets, trying to reason my way through it.

Sixteen years ago I was mourning the absence of a husband and kids. Now the saddest thing I can think of is dragging them along through whatever medical bullshit the future holds – maybe not this time, hopefully not this time. But someday. Didn’t I realize that it was better to be sick when it was just me?

I’m probably fine. This is how it always goes. Anomaly, invasive test, reassuring results, and back to life as we know it. I’m going to feel pretty embarrassed next week when my doctor calls to tell me I’m fine. But for now, for some reason, it’s hard to let go of the hypotheticals. Endometriosis doesn’t worry me. It’s not like they can scare me or shame me with tales of threatened fertility anymore. Bring it on. Just don’t let it be the other thing. The cancer thing. I don’t want that.

The chances of it being ovarian cancer are slim indeed. There’s nothing in the family history, and my initial blood test results weren’t that bad. I just wish they’d conclusively rule it out already, so I can put the worry away for good.

Two Years of Blogalicious Blogness

2010-05-17T22:09:00.000-07:00

Hey gentle readers, did you see that I had two pieces on the cover of Open Salon this month? One was a reworking of last year’s Mother’s Day post (which the editors chose to run under the heading “This Mother’s Day…treat yourself to some porn?”). The other was a book review of Emily Gould’s And the Heart Says Whatever. Which reminds me . . .

I don't remember the exact date of my blogiversary, but I think we're coming up on two years pretty soon. When I started, I hadn’t written anything in years (thanks to all those lucrative-but-mind-numbing jobs and all that not-so-lucrative-but-soul-consuming parenting of newborn babies). But I’d been reading a lot of memoirish stuff by writers my age or younger, including Gould’s infamous NYT Magazine piece. It was the sort of writing that people are always wringing their hands over: “Oh no, young women are writing about themselves! How dare they!”

I suppose there’s some inevitable and perfectly justifiable jealousy when someone gets a book deal for the same sort of stuff you couldn’t get away with in all those writing workshops. But instead of finding it discouraging, I was inspired. Not deluded into illusions of fame, you understand. Just really, truly inspired. I had all these hilarious coming-of-age “nothing happens” kind of stories floating around in my old journals, not good enough to spin into fiction. But maybe I could just . . . write them the way they were. And maybe people would actually read and enjoy them, just as I was reading and enjoying other women’s stories.

So, here we are. It’s hardly the stuff that 1980’s montages are made of, but I’ll take it. After all those years of struggling with it, I’ve found a medium that works for me and I’m simply writing again. I’ve loved having this little virtual open mic to try out my voice and share my thoughts. Thank you so much for reading. And stay tuned . . .

Kitty Witty Bitty

2010-05-06T00:42:00.001-07:00

“My cat’s breath smells like cat food.” – Ralph Wiggum

Oh, you knew there was a cat! How could there not be a cat? Mia’s been with me since the carefree Philly single days, and she turns 15 on Friday. (That’s right, I know my cat’s actual birthday.)

Anyway, I thought a few words might be in order to honor the little Brown-Brown. We’ve been through a lot together, we two. I was in my twenties when we joined forces, still relatively new in town, all underemployed and lonely, sharing a 20th-floor apartment with my sister. Getting a cat seemed like the next logical step.

And maybe it was a coincidence, but somehow my life took a dramatic turn for the better when Kitten Mia moved into that apartment. Sure, I still had my crazy-lady boss and disappointing attempts at dating. But now I also had this furry little anchor of sorts, always there to stick her paw up my nose to wake me up in the morning. Even sitting around watching “Dr. Katz” felt more exhilarating somehow with a kitten leaping all over the apartment or purring on my shoulder. She made it feel like home.

My sisters and I anthropomorphized the hell out of her, of course. She was more Beezus than Ramona, we decided; a bookworm and a student of science. Even the vet joined in, claiming that if Mia were on “Friends,” she’d be Monica. At some point we imagined she preferred Celine Dion to our music. And she had a red gun like Agent 99 on “Get Smart.” You know . . . to scare away the dogs.

As the year went on, my job got better and my social life started picking up. That summer my sister moved to DC and Mia and I moved to a new apartment on Antique Row. We had the whole second floor to ourselves, complete with wall-to-wall shag carpeting and lots of windows for her to chatter at the squirrels and stalk passing busses. Best of all, there were real mice! All we ever had at the old place was the occasional cockroach or centipede. But this place had a steady supply of mice for Mia to chase and – occasionally – catch, wound, and release to die in the walls somewhere. Good times.

Mr. Black showed up about a year later. Mia was no fan of his at first, but eventually he won her over with his ability to open a can of cat food. Next thing you know, we were moving to Seattle. I got on that plane with just three suitcases, a purse, and one very confused little Mia in her Sherpa bag (which fit neatly under the seat in front of me). Other than some frantic digging when the plane first took off, she traveled pretty well.

Everything kind of blends together after that. There was another apartment for a few years, and then the house we live in now. There were bad jobs and good jobs, some neighborhood riots, an earthquake, a wedding, and lots of lazy days in between. There were babies, which Mia has recently forgiven me for bringing into her home. She’s even come to grudgingly enjoy the little man-cubs:

And now the old girl’s about to turn 15. Which seems so old, but at the same time it kind of fits. She’s been with me for practically my whole adulthood – through all those friends and boyfriends coming and going, through all my different hair-colors and glasses frames, from cuddling with me after a bad date to cuddling with me after the kids are finally asleep. She was the first member to join this little nuclear family of mine. She’s seen it all.

Aaand now she’s squawking at me to turn on the bathroom faucet so she can have a drink. I guess that’s as good a place as any to conclude.

Happy birthday, little Mee-loo.

Shrill Monogamy

2010-04-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

“I think I came to Cleaving expecting Powell to have my affair for me. Just like she cooked all those Julia Child dishes for me in her first book. So I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised that, instead of sweeping me away, Cleaving just made me . . . well, shrill.

Why does someone else’s story bring out such a strong reaction in the readers?”

Check out my review of Cleaving on Open Salon.

Clever As Clever

2010-04-04T01:10:00.000-07:00

But now I am six,
I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now forever and ever.
– A.A. Milne

Well, he’s six. I remember being a day camp counselor in high school and thinking the six-year-olds were so scary-little. I was glad to have the big tough third-graders instead. Maybe six hasn’t changed much since then, but it’s a whole hell of a lot bigger than my baby. Seriously. I look at this and I can barely believe it’s the same person:

Six, man. That’s well on his way to boyhood. Star Wars, burping contests, and sass-back are already among us. Peer pressure, too. There’s still so much innocence and sweetness left to enjoy, and I’m so proud of his emerging autonomy. But, you know. Boyhood has its challenges.

I love him so much. He is my Huck Finn, my Good Will Hunting, my Bart Simpson. And sometimes he’s the boys who teased me in elementary school, which makes it tricky to make peace with him but oddly easy to make a sort of peace with that part of my past. See? It wasn’t me being an oddball after all. It was them with their high-spirited temperaments and a school that defined them as “bad.” Karma’s a strange one sometimes.

And that’s our fundamental struggle, isn’t it? Him and me, anxiety’s mother-and-son. Only I’m all flight and he’s all fight. He puts me front and center when I’d so much rather blend into the background. And everyone’s got something to tell me about The Boy. He’s “mean,” he’s “gifted,” he’s too loud, he had another meltdown today, I should be spanking him, I should be putting him in a private school, I should be homeschooling him, I should try music therapy, I should leave him alone and stop fretting because he’s Fine. (And I still have post traumatic asshole disorder from that preschool dad who raged at us on the playground last year.)

Well. I don’t know what to make of any of that noise. At least his kindergarten teacher is empathetic and supportive. And when it comes to being his mother, I’m at my best when I turn off my targeting computer and use the Force. One small step at a time, learning from him as much as teaching him. The fact is, he does go against the grain and it is legitimately annoying to people. I’m trying to get better about not letting that break my heart.

Bottom line? He’s a good boy. Good to the core. He is kind and inquisitive, empathetic and earnest. He is wildly intelligent and absolutely must have math and building projects in his life. He thrives in the company of his friends. He has a precocious vocabulary and an adorably emerging sense of humor. He is fierce. And I love that he’s fierce. He has this incredible instinct to stand up for himself that I still don’t really have. So he doesn’t fit the mold. What kid does? People used to complain to my mom that I was too quiet. What can you do?

Put some candles on the damn cake and give him a hug, that’s what. I’d hide the Easter eggs too, but he insisted on doing that himself this year.

Happy birthday, young Jedi.

Finding Nyro

2010-03-13T23:04:00.001-08:00

Finding Nyro
There’s not much in my music collection that I can truly claim as my own discovery. Most of my favorites came through some zeitgeist bellwether or other – in the cool kids’ dorm rooms or some boyfriend’s mix tape, drenched in peer approval. My taste never quite followed the mainstream, but it definitely stuck to a rather predictable canon of late-1980’s-and-90’s alterna-chick music (Suzanne Vega, Kate Bush, Jane Siberry, Throwing Muses, PJ Harvey, Sleater Kinney, etc).

But Laura Nyro? I found her all by myself, almost by accident and perfectly backwards. A contemporary of Joni Mitchell, she predates all my college-girl favorites and influenced many of them. But it was the summer of 1997, just a few months after she died, when I heard her on the radio for the first time.

I was clearing out my cluttered non-profit office, preparing to move on to my first-ever corporate job. WXPN was playing all its favorite artists alphabetically for some reason. They were up to the N’s, I guess, because all of a sudden “Eli’s Coming” came warning, pleading, pulsating from the tiny radio speakers, stopping me in my tracks. That powerhouse voice; the seemingly endless layers of soulful harmonies, instrumentation, and Nyro’s wild piano all driving the anxious pace of the song . . . until it slows and swoons to a bittersweet surrender. “Eli’s coming, better hide your heart girl.” How did she know? I scrambled around for a post-it note and jotted down her name when the DJ announced it. I spelled it “Nero.”

Soon Eli and the Thirteenth Confession took up permanent residence in my CD player. I had a week off before starting my new job, and I was spending every minute of it practicing with the new graphic design software while Laura wailed in the background. “Poverty Train.” “Stoned Soul Picnic.” “Eli,” of course. That whole summer was a stark, lonely time of transition, but her music filled in every corner of the empty spaces. Sometimes I’d just lie on the floor right next to the speaker and bask in every nuance of her songs.

Cover Girl
I was surprised to recognize some hits I knew from other bands covering them (especially after I got Time and Love: a Laura Nyro Tribute Album). The Fifth Dimension’s “Wedding Bell Blues,” for example, used to irritate my socks off. Then I heard The Roches’ joyful version on Time and Love, infused with all the boisterous, wistful joy of unrequited love. “We used to hear this song on the radio when we were kids – that big Biiiilll! busting out of the speakers,” Suzzy Roche reminisces in the liner notes. And then I finally heard Nyro’s original version, thick with sunny harmonica, that syncopated piano, and her big voice. Never thought I’d love a song that pleads so unapologetically for marriage, but there it is. It’s one of my favorites.

And I was overjoyed to rediscover “Stoney End.” I’d first heard Barbara Streisand’s version in middle school aerobics club. (Yes, yes, drama club wasn’t offered that quarter. Shut up.) I was only 12 and not much into non-show-tune music, but the lyrics just grabbed me:

I was born from love
and my poor mother worked the mines
I was raised on the good book Jesus
’Til I read between the lines

Whoa. It was like a smoke signal of sorts. I was this vaguely intense little oddball, but I'd found a sign that such intensity really exists in the world and at least one grown-up was singing about it. After a few weeks, though, the aerobics teacher replaced the song with “Disco Inferno.” I kind of forgot about it over the years, especially by college when Streisand was definitely a signifier for “not cool.” How incredible to find “Stoney End” again after all those years, first through Beth Nielsen Chapman’s soulful, heart-breaky version on Time and Love and then Nyro’s gorgeous original with her breezy delivery of those heavy-hearted lines. How had I missed all this? How was I only just finding Laura Nyro now?

Who Was Laura Nyro?
Michele Kort’s outstanding biography, Soul Picnic: The Music and Passion of Laura Nyro, addresses that question pretty thoroughly. Many people haven’t heard of Nyro because, it seems, being heard-of simply wasn’t a huge priority for her. Being heard . . . making incredible music to be understood and appreciated on her own terms? Yes. But being famous? She didn’t really see the point.

She is known for supposedly bombing at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 at the very start of her career. Kort does a great job exposing that myth – a myth that Nyro herself seemed to perpetuate more than anyone. With her long gown and early-60’s-girl-group- inspired songs, Nyro’s style was out of synch with the festival (which launched such acts as Jefferson Airplane and The Mamas & The Papas). And from Kort’s description, Nyro’s performance fell short of her own expectations. The crowd was lukewarm; the house band had a hard time keeping up with her. Still, when you watch the clip she is positively spell-binding and the crowd is polite, if not enamored. And this supposed failure didn’t hold her back from joining forces with a young David Geffen, who adored her and oversaw her most successful albums.

Kort’s book tells the story of Laura as a wildly talented teenager who’d cut class at the High School of Music and Art to sing in subways with her harmony group. Just a few years later she was recording kick-ass album after kick-ass album with an enviable amount of creative control. She wore outlandish dresses, decorated the studio with candles, and rode a horse-drawn carriage across Central Park to her recording sessions. She was the quintessential over-the-top theater chick – but with overwhelming talent to back it up, turning out a uniquely amazing album a year from ages 19-23.

Nested
Those early songs are full of such fire . . . the wild joy, the unashamed yearning. I felt every minute of it during my first Laura Nyro year, wishing that I’d had her music with me for all my stormy years. I hadn’t exactly walked in her shoes, but I sure had cried at the corners of the squares. I’d savored the seedy-mellow bliss of “Blackpatch” and “Sweet Blindness”; the ripped-out tears and gritty urban poetry of “Gibsom Street” and “New York Tendaberry.”

There’s a whole collection of less-celebrated (and perhaps more homogenous) jazzy/ethereal albums from Laura Nyro’s later years. As Kort details in her book, she’d been through a brief marriage, followed by a head-over-heels love affair, finally nesting happily into single motherhood and eventually partnership with artist Maria Desiderio. Fittingly enough, I didn’t start paying much attention to those later songs until I was at a nesting stage myself.

As I was preparing to move to Seattle and couple up with Mr. Black for good, I found myself drawn to the dreamier songs like “Smile” or “Mr. Blue.” And when I was first stumbling through the earliest days of new motherhood, I’d prop myself up on the couch and nurse the baby in a sleep-deprived daze to Nyro’s later work. “To a Child” was an obvious favorite:

I’m so tired
You’re so wired
And I’m a poet
Without a poem

The songs are lush perfection; “easy listening” in the very best, most artistic sense of the term. Though the music is more subtle than Nyro’s earlier work, the lyrics still sneak up and grab me with every bit of the old intensity. Especially songs like “A Wilderness,” when she’s singing about herself as soft, ethereal mother and her wild child. Singing my life, in other words.

Many people pass by
Caught up in roles and rules
Many rivers run free
I don’t want to crush the wilderness in you, child
Or the wildness in me
How do we keep them both alive?

Which is pretty much everything I’ve been trying to say about me and The Boy all along. There are times when parenting tears me in so many different directions at once. And my boy in particular . . . so entirely mine but so confounding, always. Again: How did she know?

Why Chick Music?
I don’t want to get all fan-ish and imagine parallels between myself and this amazing musician I never met. Every introspective girl and her Birkenstocks over-identifies with at least one chick-music icon, and I suppose Laura Nyro is mine. But it’s not as cheesy as it sounds. It’s downright logical, actually. If you’re caught up in a haze of feelings and then some artist comes along and just sings about them, expresses them with this incredible poetic understanding. . . well, you’re going to want to latch onto that artist, aren’t you? Nothing wrong with that.

Anxiety, Art, and Head Lice

2010-03-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

It was an interesting weekend on the Internets for me. On Offsprung (my favorite parenting Web site), there was a good discussion about the realtionship between intelligence, creativity, and depression.

As someone who's dabbled in all three, I was inclined to argue against the notion that medication for depression and anxiety inhibit artistic ability. Sure, we might not want to imagine an art world where Van Gogh's on Prozac. But, as I said in that discussion, most of us aren't Van Gogh. Most of us aren't even that guy who paints on PBS. And depression and anxiety can be huge roadblocks for whatever creative potential is there in the first place.

But then I went over to Open Salon and saw there was an open call for stories about "Facing Your Worst Fear." (As if I could pick just one!) But when I was really honest about it, there is one fear in particular that's been sucking up more than its share of my energy, brain power, and mood. Could I do it? Could I write from a place of anxiety and produce something worthwile?

Well, I wouldn't call it Great Art or anything. But it did get an Editor's Pick on Open Salon. Um . . . hooray for anxiety?

Check it out:

Lice, Lice, Baby

Yes, it's about head lice...

Remembrance of Chimichangas Past

2010-02-27T23:56:00.000-08:00

I barely gave it a second thought when Chi-Chi’s restaurant chain went out of business a few years ago. What can you do when the favorite restaurant of your adolescence causes an outbreak of Hepatitis A with its filthy, filthy scallions? Not a whole lot you can do, really. Shrug and be cynical. It’s not like the restaurant was so great in the first place. I hadn’t been there in years, and when we did manage to go it was typically done with irony. One more facet of innocent youth falls from grace like Milli Vanilli. And so it goes.

If it hadn’t been so crowded at Gorditos today, old Chi-Chi’s would probably still be the furthest thing from my mind. But as I was waiting in line, my eyes wandered behind the counter to a stack of taco salad shells on a shelf. I gave them a fond smirk. Remember when those were such a big deal? No? Well, I do. I remember being positively enchanted the first time I was served a salad in one of those things. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania in the 1970’s and 80’s, and such delicacies were not widely known about in our neck of the cornfield.

I first heard about Chi-Chi’s from the hairdressers at the salon where I got my perms. (Yes, yes, it was the 80’s. Shut up.) They were a fun-loving bunch of WTF-are-we-doing-being-single-in-Berks County, PA folks always in search of an adventure. Sometimes that quest took them to comparatively cosmopolitan Allentown, where Chi-Chi’s was a favorite hot spot. (You overhear a lot of conversations sitting around with that perm solution on your head.) So, my 15-year-old self was pretty excited to learn that our local strip mall was expanding into an adjacent field, adding a Chi-Chi’s of its own.

Mexican food! Our town didn’t even have a Taco Bell in those days, and our school cafeteria had only recently added “tacos” to its menu. This was a very big deal. Such a big deal, in fact, that our Spanish teacher arranged a field trip to Chi-Chi’s for all her honors classes. We were going to immerse ourselves in the rich, vibrant culture of authentic Mexican dining. Sort of.

I was absolutely charmed. The faux adobe exterior! Painted tiles on the tables! Non-alcoholic blender drinks that looked just like real blender drinks! Appetizers! In retrospect, Chi-Chi’s was to Mexican food what The Olive Garden is to Italian food. But at the time, when “nice restaurant” meant “steak house,” the menu seemed exotic and authentic. I was so naïve, I didn’t realize that the entrees were named after Mexican resort towns. I thought “Cancun” really was the Spanish name for seafood enchiladas. Oh dear.

I described every detail to my mom that afternoon with all the girlish enthusiasm of an 18th century epistolary novel. A few weeks later, she took my sisters and me to Chi-Chi’s to celebrate the last day of school. I remember feeling so sophisticated, all pastel-eyeshadowed up, sipping that Nada Colada.

And thus, a cultural bridge to adulthood of sorts was formed. Chi-Chi’s was our place; the fancy restaurant we kids had discovered for ourselves. That’s where we went for Big Serious Dates with our love interests or Big Serious Talks with our best friends; that’s where we went with a group of friends before a formal dance or after a day at the downtown library working on our term papers. We weren’t full-fledged adults yet, but we were trying it on.

By the time I was in college, Chi-Chi’s was already becoming a joke. Nevertheless, it was our favorite spot for our Sisters Nights Out when we were all back at our parents’ place for school breaks. We weren’t so wildly impressed with it anymore, but somehow it still carried an air of the old sophistication that blended nicely with nostalgia for a time when adulthood seemed shiny and carefree. I got a taste of the real “adult” Chi-Chi’s experience during that year I spent living with my parents between graduate school and Real Life, joining my fellow WTF-are-we-still-doing-in-Berks-County friends for happy hours.

I even had my bachelorette party at Chi-Chi’s. That’s right. It wasn’t one of those wild, swinging bachelorette parties you’ve seen on TV. It was the kind of bachelorette party you have when it’s one month after 9/11, you’re 32 and already own a house with the guy, just flew back to PA from Seattle to get married in the few vacation days you were able to scrape up, and spent the last two days running around getting your marriage certificate and finalizing wedding arrangements. In other words, it was something of an afterthought. But it was perfect. Between the last-minute wedding-planning madness and actually walking down the aisle, it was so wonderful to just sit in Chi-Chi’s – the place where, in many ways, I’d found my adult self – with my fiancé and the sisters who’d been there for me through thick and thin. Pass the chili con queso.

I’m pretty sure that’s the last time I ever went to Chi-Chi’s. I’d visit home as often as I could, but there were other restaurants now. My parents favored a fancy new Italian place where the waitresses couldn’t pronounce the dishes, but the tiramisu was incredible. Visiting Friendly’s became a bigger priority, as good Mexican food is plentiful in Seattle but classic ice cream sundaes are practically non-existent.

Two years after my bachelorette party came the Hepatitis A incident at a Pittsburgh-area Chi-Chi’s. It was horrifying, actually. Hundreds of people were sick. One man underwent a liver transplant. A few people died. I was anxiously pregnant with The Boy at the time and trying to avoid obsessing over news stories like that one, so I put it out of my mind as best I could. (Although I remember avoiding scallions with near-religious fervor.)

Just a few months ago, I drove past the old Chi-Chi’s while doing some last-minute Christmas shopping. I felt just the littlest bit sad to see the once-glorious faux adobe building standing empty like that . . . such a cultural epicenter in its day. Now the whole strip mall is bit of a ghost town, anchored by a gutted Circuit City and an Old Country Buffet. But it’s flanked by newer strip malls everywhere in the former cornfields, featuring the stores we used to travel to Allentown and even Philadelphia for – Borders, Pier 1 Imports, Old Navy.

On the one hand, it’s nice to see the comforts of suburbia in my old home town. I’m glad that my parents don’t have to lug themselves to the next county every time they want to visit a big bookstore or enjoy a Starbucks latte. But at the same time, there’s something very bittersweet about the loss of those fields and that one-time “fancy” Mexican restaurant. Just like the late teen years themselves, I don’t miss it. But I miss it. Hasta luego, old friend.

Chocolate-Covered Absurdity

2010-02-09T19:49:00.000-08:00

In honor of Valentine's Day season, I've been posting some of my favorite dating mishap stories on Open Salon. Go on, check 'em out! Show your V-Day spirit by giving this blogger a little page-view love.

What We Did Before Match.com
In which a friend and I take a zany, sitcom-ish romp through the world of personal ads.

Older Guys: Still Just Not That Into You
In which I consider the benefits of dating an older guy . . . but what did he see in me?

All the Lonely People
It’s “Eleanor Rigby” meets When Harry Met Sally meets Punch Drunk Love. Sort of.

Balloonstruck

2010-02-01T00:14:00.000-08:00

The balloon animal vendor captured my heart. Maybe it was just one of those days when you’re ripe for unconventional inspiration. Or comfort.

That’s why I went to The Gallery in the first place that day. My mom used to take us there when we were kids. The glamorous downtown Philadelphia mall had seen better days, or maybe I’d just been too easily dazzled as a kid. But it still made for a nice little nostalgic lunch break for my slightly-jaded twentysomething self – disappearing into a crowd; sipping my old favorite Hӓagen-Dazs peanut butter vanilla milkshake; and admiring the tall, twinkly-eyed, auburn-bearded balloon animal vendor.

He seemed like the personification of everything that was right about the world. There he was, smiling and calm, making people happy while all the lunch-break suits and class-cutting teens streamed by him in a preoccupied haze. Maybe someone had slipped something in my milkshake. Or maybe I was just so bored, or lonely, or dreading going back to work that I just had to act impulsively. I’m not sure how it happened. One minute I was smiling at him from my bench; the next minute I was at his side.

“Do you like your job?” I asked. His smile was warm and genuine, not at all bothered by the crazy lady asking him personal questions while he was trying to work. And he liked his job quite a lot, it turned out. Until recently, he explained, he’d been a social worker. But it was heartbreaking work; he was completely burned out. He used to make balloon animals around the office as a way to deal with the stress, so he decided to start a business doing just that.

I was captivated. It was like a romantic version of Douglas Coupland’s Generation X “McJobs.” Here was a guy with a heart, and he knew how to follow it. He was older than me, but what did age matter when Monica was dating Tom Selleck on “Friends”? It was also sweetly reminiscent of Party Girl – when Parker Posey’s character falls in love with the falafel guy. I said goodbye to Balloon Guy and went back to work with an extra spring in my step.

For days I walked around with the delightful prospect of him in my heart, figuring we’d meet again. Everything had an extra note of joy to it. Then I realized I was going to have to do something about it. He knew my first name, but had no idea where to find me (if he wanted to at all, of course). Could I do it? Could I go back to his balloon kiosk at The Gallery and breezily ask him out for coffee?

Well, I would try. It was only a few blocks from my office, not much of a detour on my walk home. Just stop by after work, chat, and ask him out. I’d already struck up a conversation with him out of the blue. How hard could it be to take the next step?

Damn near impossible, it turned out. His kiosk was all the way at the west end of the basement level, right across from the Market East SEPTA station. I stood at the opposite end of the mall, lurking in the doorway of a store, camouflaged by a steady stream of shoppers. I could see him in the distance, taller than I’d remembered. And busy. I kept telling myself I’d head down there after the next wave of commuters poured out of the station. But I was positively frozen. What was I going to say? Would he even remember me? Just how lonely and desperate and pathetic was I, anyway? After a few false starts I gave up and went home, feeling just the littlest bit heartbroken.

A few days later, I regained my nerve and went back to try again. I took slow, deep breaths and walked purposefully toward his kiosk, forcing myself not to think about it too much until we were face to face. Step, step. Breathe, breathe. I came to the end of the row of kiosks, right where his should be. But it was gone. Gone.

No! Maybe he’d relocated to another part of the mall. I walked every floor, end to end. I had no idea the damn Gallery was so expansive. Turns out it went all the way to Strawbridge’s. Who knew? And, more to the point, where was my Balloon Guy? Nowhere, that’s where.

If I hadn’t come so close to asking him out a few days earlier, maybe it would have been easier to let it go. But at the time, it seemed to me there was a “carpe diem” lesson in there somewhere. He had been right there, but I was too overcome with shyness and self-doubt to speak to him. And now he was gone. I guess I’ve got to find him, I resolved.

I called the mall office from work, putting on my best approximation of a yuppie mom voice (which, ironically, I never use now that I actually am a yuppie mom), affecting the confidence and the “surely you’re going to help me” attitude that I hoped would cover my paper-thin excuse for calling. I pretended I wanted to hire him for a child’s birthday party, but all I had was his first name and a vague recollection of his kiosk’s location. It worked. They found his business card and gave me his number. Before I lost my nerve, I called him right up and left a message.

For our first date, we met at my “safe coffee house” – right around the corner from my apartment building, where it was easy to make a hasty retreat if things took a turn for the weird. No need for that this time. In fact, it was easily one of the best first dates I’ve ever had. No awkwardness, no “what was I thinking!” moments; just a happy, easy flow of good conversation. We could not stop smiling at each other. All I wanted was to crawl across the table into his lap, but I’d seen Sense and Sensibility recently and was going for a more Austenesque/ joie-de-repartee restraint. Instead, I went home, put on some music, and danced around my apartment like a bad chick movie.

Our second date was even better. Well, at least it started out that way. Joyful conversation, joyful food, joyful margaritas. We cuddled a little before the movie started, chatting happily. I remember right before the lights dimmed we were talking about The Producers. He told me how he’d seen Dick Shawn live, and how brilliant he was.

The movie was Othello – which, in retrospect, may not have been the best choice for a date movie. Yes, it scores points for being a lush, star-studded film version of a Shakespeare play. And yes, it was playing at the art cinema, which was practically a requirement for First Movie Dates of the 1990’s. But it was still Othello, with all its blinding bitter jealously, vicious manipulation, murder, and whatnot. When Harry Met Sally, it ain’t.

I could never be sure if it was the film’s subject matter that clouded his mood that night. Had he experienced that level of jealously himself? Or that level of manipulation? Or loss? It could just as easily have been my own chattiness about the film, and Shakespeare in general, as we walked home. Maybe the “too smart” thing alienated him. Or, just as likely, maybe my Shakespeare prattle came across as callow and naïve, illustrating our age difference in a way that hadn’t fully occurred to him until then. Or maybe he’d seen an ex-girlfriend at the theater on a date. Who could say?

But whatever the reason, something shifted significantly with him that night. He gave me a short, bearded kiss goodnight and tapped my arm playfully. But we never recovered our initial joy of each other after that.

There wasn’t a phone call for a while, which made me feel a little panicky, sad, and resentful. Valentine’s Day came and went. Eventually, I went back to The Gallery and found him at his kiosk, where I hung around like a high school girlfriend trying to chat and be breezy. I couldn’t help it. When I really like somebody, it’s puppy time! So much for Jane Austen. He made me a balloon flower – a belated Valentine’s Day gift. Sigh…

There were a few strained dates after that, and then nothing. In the end, I had to resign myself to the old familiar “maybe he’s not that into me / maybe I’m not that into him; I just want to be into somebody” refrain of the single smart girl. I was sad, of course. But it wasn’t the end of the world. It’s so easy to blame ourselves, but the fact is, dating is hard. People come with so much baggage, it’s rarely anybody’s fault when things don’t work out.

I suppose I could regard him as a “the one that got away” of sorts. But I doubt he was really “the one.” I loved the initial spark, but I barely knew the man himself. Ignorance is bliss, and sometimes an abrupt ending can be a blessing in disguise. Our brief encounter had all the joy and longevity of a balloon itself. Nothing wrong with that.

Love, Light and Dark

2010-01-21T21:59:00.001-08:00

Death ripped something open in me when I was 15 years old, and about 85% of my adult personality bloomed right out of it like a freaking Greek myth or something. I could feel it actually happening. Really.

Yes, it was my grandmother’s death, which may seem ordinary enough. But let me tell you, this wasn’t your typical central-casting grandmother. She was a painter, a spiritual poet, a humanitarian, and a big flaming liberal of a grandmother before “liberal” was an insult. She taught racial tolerance to school children in pre-MLK Philadelphia. She traveled through pre-war Europe on an art scholarship. She and my grandfather got a visit from the FBI during the McCarthy years. I don’t ever remember her baking cookies, but I do remember going to see Ralph Nader with her when I was about three or so. (Well, mostly I remember being bored beyond human comprehension. Still pretty cool, though, in retrospect.)

For most of my life, I just knew her as this wonderful grandma who made us paper dolls out of matte board and took us to the beach. She had this incredible capacity for joy and saw beauty everywhere. She used to stop us in our tracks to point it out: see how the light reflects on the insect’s wings? She was full of laughter and taught us to take joy in our mistakes. She lavished praise on us, just like the parenting books tell you you’re not supposed to do. But I loved it. I don’t ever remember anyone else but her calling me “beautiful” and “stunning” until years later when I started having boyfriends.

At 15, I was only just beginning to recognize what an exceptional woman she really was. One night, right before Christmas and at the height of our PBS station’s pledge drive, my mom and I were watching motivational speaker Leo Buscaglia give one of his talks. (Remember Leo Buscaglia?) That’s just like Grandma, I remember thinking. It was amazing. Here was this venerable, bearded fellow speaking so eloquently about love to a packed, adoring audience – popular enough to be run during pledge week, for goodness sakes – but to me, it sounded just like my grandmother.

“She would love this. I’m going to buy his book for her for Christmas,” I told my mom, and she thought it was a great idea. So we went to Waldenbooks at the mall that week and picked out a copy of Living, Loving, and Learning. And I felt so proud, realizing that my grandmother and I were on the brink of an adult relationship with each other.

There’s no writing workshop in the world that would let me get away with this next part. It’s cruel and formulaic to the point of being trite. But I swear, it really happened this way: Four days after I gave her that book for Christmas, she died. Heart attack. It was completely unexpected. Words fail.

The grown-ups were crying. I remember it was unseasonably warm for December, and the rain poured down. (Foreshadowing of Seattle, perhaps?) I remember feeling stunned and dark the whole time, drinking it all in but keeping my thoughts to myself. A plain casket, closed. That was her in there. How could that be?

We weren’t religious, but it’s amazing what you can come up with on your own when faced with death for the first time. I decided, first of all, that someday I would have a daughter and name her after my grandmother (which – remarkably – did actually happen 22 years later, almost to the day). And I decided that I would keep her spirit alive by trying to be like her. I would seek beauty and joy everywhere; I would keep fighting for justice in my own quiet way. The Leo Buscaglia book would be my guide.

Yes. Mere days after giving it to her for Christmas, I got the book back. So I read, read, and re-read until I somehow displaced all my jumbled existential despair and raw teen passion onto its author. It’s strange, thinking of it now, but I actually kept this writer in my thoughts more consciously than the grandmother I was grieving for. Walking in the fields near my parents’ house, feeling simultaneously empty and full, I yearned for him. Actual him. Not sexually, I don’t think. But not like a family member, either. There was an intensity to it that felt like love.

Had I made him into a guru of sorts? Did I want to sit at his feet and walk in his wise, benevolent shadow; a spoke in love with its wheel? I wondered: Was this the way religious people felt about their deities? Not the ideal sacred way you’re supposed to feel, but maybe something closer to Godspell’s “Day By Day”: that intangible yet total love that is so complete, joyful, and even fierce at times but can’t ever be attained or held. It’s not reverence, it’s not lust, it’s not apprenticeship, it’s not even love, really. It’s a bit of a mix of all those things and not quite any of those things.

I wrote to him once. He’d been the guest on some morning talk show and I scribbled his address down on a scrap of wrapping paper. After sitting on it anxiously for a few weeks, I finally sat down and wrote him the most banal little straight-margined letter that barely scratched the surface of my real feelings. I don’t think I even mentioned my grandmother. He or his office wrote me back, a warm and polite little response.

Eventually the whole thing started to feel embarrassing. I let go of my conscious attachment to the guy. But it was still there, inspiring me to pursue whatever unconventional, charismatic person happened to cross my path. I could carry the spirit of my grandmother, but I didn’t want to have to do it alone. I thought I needed someone to show me the way. Or maybe just someone to share it with who would understand.

Of course, unconventionality and charisma don’t always come from a heart of pure love and self-actualization, as I’d naively believed. Turns out there’s a whole lot of insecurity flying around there, too. They were either impossible to hold onto or they clung too tight. Most of them, to their credit, didn’t want to be followed. Their charisma was something of a coping device; they were just as uncertain as anybody else. But there were a few who absolutely craved an audience. They needed to be followed, but one special little follower like me would never truly be enough.

It was fun while it lasted, but gradually I gave up my pursuit of The Charismatic. Faced with a string of failed relationships and feeling out of step with the mainstream, I came to see myself as the Carrie Fisher to everyone else’s Meg Ryan. Something in me got tamed. The wild impulse to devote myself to The Charismatic simply turned into the desire to occasionally sleep with them. And not even that, really. Somewhere along the line, my attention shifted to The Aloof; the moon to The Charismatic’s sun; the vampire to their werewolf. (Yes, yes, a Twilight reference. We’re talking about female coming-of-age, aren’t we?)

In fact, I married the vampire. Or, at least, I married the geeky Gen-X version of him. He is cool and pale, almost supernaturally smart, barely eats, stays out of the sun. And when we met, he was a college instructor / rock critic getting ready to move to Seattle. Not sure how a wiggle-puppy like me even dates someone like that, let alone marries him, but it happened. (In all fairness, the guy’s got a warm side, too.)

Looking back on it all, I’m left feeling a little confused. Am I light or dark? Sun or moon? I’ve regarded myself as dark/bitter/cynical for so long, but there’s no denying my roots, my very spirit, soaked in innocent hug-seeking sun. Every once in a while I’ll come across someone who viscerally reminds me of the old Buscaglia days and it’s like a freaking magnet or something. I want to just . . . run to them. But I don’t.

And what about my grandmother? Am I keeping her spirit alive? Well . . . yes, I think. Not perfectly. Not always. But I do still stop and notice beauty in unexpected places. I do take joy in small moments and try to pass it along to anyone who might be willing to listen. And there’s my Little Girl, of course. Her namesake.

Those kids. That’s where my real sunshine is these days. They’re authentically charismatic and effusive and just so . . . present. They have no agenda; they simply love more than anyone could humanly possibly love. It’s what they do. And I can shine that love right back at them with reckless abandon. At least for now. I’m sure we’ll reach a point when they’ll be embarrassed by it, setting down paths of their own. All the more reason to enjoy it while I can, I suppose.

Resolutions

2010-01-09T01:27:00.001-08:00

I started making New Year’s resolutions about 15 years ago – the first time in my life when the calendar, and not the school year, marked a new beginning. I’d been living in Philadelphia for a few months, friendless and floundering around in various temp jobs, trying to get my feet on the ground. And just in case that wasn’t enough, I was also recovering from my second surgery to remove some big fat ovarian cysts.

“If you were married, I’d tell you to have your kids now,” my (male) doctor had said. Peachy. I didn’t even know if I wanted kids in those days, and being married seemed about as likely as taking flight. I’d had some casual boyfriends that year, all of whom would have left a boyfriend-shaped hole in the wall if I’d mentioned marriage, kids, or ovaries to them. I didn’t know what I wanted, exactly, but I knew things had to get better than this.

So I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote my first-ever list of resolutions. Some of them read like Stuart Smalley’s “Daily Affirmations” (“Find the potential for joy in each day”); some of them were practical and frank (“Know there are always alternatives. Do not marry or even couple out of desperation”). Cheesy or not, it was exactly what I needed to hear at the time, and writing the words myself somehow felt more powerful than reading them on a kitten poster or even hearing them from a friend over coffee. Scribbling away at my table, I was feeling more hopeful already.

And thus, a single-girl tradition was born. Not every year was as bleak as that first one, but every year had its own brand of absurdity and bad dates and pathos. There were jobs that drove me crazy. There were friends who were mostly just passing through. There were boyfriends I loved way too much, and boyfriends I wished I’d loved more (and plenty of unrequited crushes in between). My life was such a work-in-progress in those days, beginning a new year at Point A with very little idea where I’d be by the end. Each year required a fresh batch of strength and survival skills.

So, I’d make resolutions. They were mostly your basic “push out the jive, bring in the love” rhetoric with little variation from year to year. I’d resolve to stay healthy and be strong; to bring more energy and enthusiasm to my job; not to worry and hurt so easily; to seize the day. Some years I included more ambitious resolutions about branching out into the community (find a hiking group, a book club, etc). Funny how those were the ones I rarely kept.

One notable change is how, after a few years of solid self-focus, the resolutions expanded to include other people. One year, for example, I resolved to be a better friend to the important people in my life. Another year, I resolved to keep working on adult friendships with my family. And since Mr. Black came along, there’s always been a resolution to give him my full appreciation.

Yes, the single-girl tradition survived couplehood. Well, pretty much. Our first New Year’s together was right before I moved to Seattle to be with him, so resolutions were a no-brainer. The year after that, though, I didn’t do them at all. We’d been living together for nearly a year by then, and going through a major stretch of growing pains. That’s the thing about long-term relationships. You hit a rough patch and you have to either plow your way through it or retreat. I was journaling a lot during that time, but New Year’s came and went without mention on the pages.

I started doing resolutions again for the next couple of years, but it was more for the sake of the ritual than anything else. We were engaged, and then in the first year of marriage. Aside from some frustrations with my job, I was feeling incredibly happy, lucky, and . . . well . . . resolved, I guess. My world was blissfully smaller, more manageable, and full of easy joy.

And then everything kind of came full circle that next year. I’d had two early miscarriages and was on the verge of a third one as the new year began. It’s funny how all those years of single-girl struggle really laid the foundation for something like that. Losing a pregnancy isn’t really like losing a boyfriend, but the survival skill set is remarkably similar. While it's an actual tangible loss in one sense, it's really about the loss of hopes and dreams; the loss of an ideal. I never thought I'd feel that way again, but there I was. My list of resolutions was as long and affirmationy as it was that first year in Philly. Here are just a few:

1. Trust your own strength, smartness, and lovability. Go on. Trust it.

2. Recognize that Mr. Black is every bit as complex, reflective, fearful, and loving as you are. He is not your rock. He is your partner on this path, every bit as vulnerable as you are, needing you as much as you need him. Communicate your needs, fears, etc. Hear his.

3. Fill every moment with something good – a thought, a song, a memory, an experience, a hug.

4. In short . . . please be happy. Be at peace. You need these challenges in your life, and you can meet them. Someday we will know how this all ends. But we can be happy before we know.

Sure enough, the following year I replaced my New Year’s resolutions with a giant “to do” list to get ready for the new baby. And in the years that followed? If I made any resolutions, I didn’t bother to write them down. I think I had one about doing more yoga one year.

Too busy and active with “real life” for introspection? Or too mired in motherhood minutiae to focus on myself? No, I don’t really see it either way. It’s funny . . .when I was digging up all these old resolutions in the first place, I flipped through a journal from 1995 and then another from 2007 back-to-back. 1995: Analyzing the pros and cons of pursuing a particular guy. 2007: Making lists of everything I ate and how much blood was in the baby’s diapers, trying to track down the culprit (it was dairy).

And I had to ask myself: Are those two preoccupations so different? Relationship woes, diaper contents. Mr. Black says it’s only the difference between metaphorical and literal shit. Crass, but true (although the relationship stuff makes for more interesting reading).

Anyway. It’s all just a big navel gaze, I suppose. But since this is just some chick’s blog and not the front page of CNN.com or anything, I’m hoping you’ll forgive me the indulgence. And who knows, maybe turning all this introspection outward will do some good somehow, shining my little Stuart-Smalleyesque light of wisdom on the Internets. You never know.

So, for 2010 I’m starting up the resolution tradition again. These are a little more succinct than in past years, but they say all they need to say:

1. Do the work

2. Be present for my children

3. Trust myself

4. Be mindful of my body and take good care of it

5. Simply enjoy that life is good right now and do more of the things that help make it good

6. Let it be

Or, as they say in Wuzzleburg:

Chasing the New Year’s Eve Dream

2009-12-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

Which is worse? Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Eve? Both holidays involve culturally mandated fun. Both are loaded with unrealistic expectations. Both measure the success of one’s social life and tend to make you feel like a loser if you’ve got no plans.

In my earlier single days, I would have been quicker to say Valentine’s Day was my least favorite. There’s all that pressure to be coupled or, if you are seeing someone, all that pressure to validate the relationship with the perfect box of chocolates. Still, it’s easy enough to eschew the pink-hearted mushiness if you choose. Chances are there’s a group of like-minded friends you can join for ice cream or martinis and share the “We Hate Valentine’s Day” sentiment. One of my friends used to throw an anti-Valentine’s-Day party every year (ironically, one or both of us typically ended up hooking up with someone afterwards).

New Year’s Eve is trickier. It takes more than a dinner date or a cynical cocktail with friends to feel like you’ve met the cultural obligation of The Biggest Party Night of the Year. You’re not required to have a partner; you’re required to have a wild bunch of fabulous friends to help make it a night to remember. It’s supposed to be the most incredible, over-the-top fun you’ve had all year. The New Year’s Eve myth is harder to deconstruct, because it’s not as obvious as the couple-centric Hallmarky Valentine’s Day myth. Cynical as I am, I spent a good part of my 20’s chasing that New Year’s Eve dream.

I suppose it all started in the mid-1970’s for me, attending the Hickory-Farms-cheesiest New Year’s Eve party ever at my mom’s friend the Avon Lady’s place. I was only 7 or so, and I thought her house was the height of elegance because it was filled with fancy Avon knick-knacks and had those white fake fur things draped over the pea-green sofas. I remember settling into the comfy shag carpeting and gazing enviously at her bright blue eyeshadow, imagining she was a queen. The concept of New Year’s Eve was new to me, but I was instantly captivated by the romanticism of it all. You stay up until midnight and a whole new year begins, right there in front of you! And there’s fondue!

Unfortunately, my mom was keeping a close eye on our snack consumption. At our usual bedtime, we were sent to her friend’s daughter’s room with the rest of the kids. We all thought it was incredibly unfair. At first, we kept sending my littlest sister out to the party to sneak chips back to us, but the adults got wise to that pretty quickly. As the Avon Lady’s daughter played her Captain & Tennille and Donny & Marie records for us, I grew more bored and frustrated by the minute. The grown-ups sounded like they were having so much fun out there.

Every disappointing New Year’s Eve I’ve had since then has been some version of that first one – stuck in a dull room while the real fun appears to be happening elsewhere, inaccessible. I’ve attended several parties where I was the only female guest in a roomful of my hapless buddies and their bitter “Women Don’t Like Nice Guys” friends. Then there was the time my boyfriend and I were feeling too vaguely sick and weary to go see Poi Dog Pondering like we’d planned, so we ended up watching SNL reruns on his crappy old couch instead. We watched the VCR clock turn over to 12:00, but he thought kissing at midnight was too lame or “establishment” or something and flat out refused me.

Even those times when I did manage to scrape up some conventionally fun plans, it kind of left me cold. One year, for example, I spent hours waiting for my friends to call and tell me where to meet them. They finally got around to remembering me at 11:30 and it was shortly after midnight by the time I made it to the club.

The place was packed, smoky, and sweaty, but I found my friends easily enough. These were people I’d been going out with that whole year, and every time was such hilarious fun. But not this time. I had one guy nagging me to talk about my Problems so he could Help me with them. Two more guys were drooling all over themselves thinking my friend and I were a lesbian couple. Meanwhile, another friend staggered off to make out with some random dude. He tagged along with us to a diner after closing time, and you could tell she was already kind of sick of him.

Come to think of it, this wasn’t much different from any of our other nights out. I don’t know why I remember all those other nights so fondly but regard this one as being kind of lame. Expectations, I suppose. If this had been a spontaneous night out in March or August, it might have seemed more exciting. Maybe it was the “Amateur Night” factor, being out on the streets with all those neophyte partiers from the suburbs bumbling around trying to hail cabs and walking six-abreast down the narrow sidewalks. Whatever the reason, I still hadn’t found the elusive euphoria of New Year’s Eve. Not in parties, or clubs, or quiet nights with a boyfriend.

Until 1998 – my first New Year’s Eve in Seattle.

Mr. Black had been living here for a few months, and I was in town finalizing my plans to join him. I’d just signed the lease on a new apartment that morning. I’d be heading back to Philly in a few days to pack up my old place, get my cat, and join my love in Seattle once and for all. The whole thing felt so blissfully surreal. It was every moment in every romantic comedy that we’ve trained ourselves not to believe.

We’d been so wrapped up in our rain-soaked apartment hunting, New Year’s Eve was more of an afterthought. We went to the gritty U-District Safeway and bought a bottle of cheap champagne, poured it into a thermos, and walked down the Burke-Gilman trail to Gas Works Park.

That night was cold and remarkably un-rainy for a change. Boats adorned in Christmas lights sailed along the ship canal toward Lake Union. The closer we got to the park, the more people joined us on the path, heading down to Gas Works for a great view of the Space Needle fireworks. But it wasn’t crowded or obnoxious; just casually merry with a friendly neighborhood feel. We found a good spot to cuddle up, enjoy a perfect skyline view, and share our thermos champagne. Mr. Black’s not much of an “establishment” guy either, but he had no problems kissing me at midnight.

Now that’s what New Year’s Eve is all about. What could capture the true spirit of welcoming a new year more than that – standing on the brink of the biggest change in your life, next to the person you’re taking the plunge with, on the edge a lake full of festively-lit boats and fireworks. I haven’t even tried to top that one. How could I? That was the one time in my life when ringing in a new year really meant something.

This year, we’ll be flying home from Pennsylvania on New Year’s Day. I expect our New Year’s Eve activities will involve little more than packing up the suitcases, watching a DVD, and sharing what’s left of my dad’s Sam Adams holiday beer sampler. And as long as my guy still kisses me at midnight, that’s good enough for me.

Big Three

2009-12-09T00:22:00.000-08:00

It’s funny how a visit to the hospital still brings on the pregnancy déjà vu. I had a moment in the parking garage on Monday, checking to make sure I’d left enough room next to the other car to get my big belly through the door. Oops.

No big belly here. My “baby” turns three today, in fact, and I was only at the hospital for my “Hey, You’re 40!” routine mammogram. Nice to know that even though the baby factory is closed, there are still plenty of opportunities to slip on a hospital gown and get probed. Standing there at an awkward angle while the tech carefully spread out each breast on the cold surface like a homemade pie crust, it really wasn’t much different from all those ultrasounds and blood tests of yesteryear.

Except, of course, it was completely devoid of that deliciously giddy prospect of a new baby, which takes the edge off of just about any unpleasant medical procedure. Even now, walking around that hospital is like flipping through a photo album of precious memories. (Aw, there’s the waiting room where I downed that bottle of noxious orange stuff for the gestational diabetes test! And there’s the hallway where I had all those contractions while waiting to be admitted!)

Did I mention my baby girl is THREE today? Three. Older than her big brother was when she was born. I wrote about her baby days for her birthday last year, and I’m so glad I did. Reading back over it now, there are so many details I’d already almost forgotten.

Where did that baby disappear to? This past year she’s grown so beautifully into her child-self, from the full head of hair to the full-fledged love of Bill Nye the Science Guy. She speaks in complete, thoughtful sentences now, always with a pressing story to tell. She attempts jokes and responds to them with a finely honed fake laugh. She can sit next to us at Taco del Mar and chomp down a black bean burrito with no help at all. There are plenty of tears and tantrums, of course, but for the most part she is sunshine itself. Everything about her shines – her mischief, her imagination, her absolute joy in her favorite things.

I thought I would be missing babies by now. And I do, sort of. I’m always happy to see one bobbing along in his Moby wrap or flapping her arms joyously at something shiny. But at the same time, I can definitely feel my own baby window closing. In a good way. I can look at another baby without the compelling biological impulse to swoop it up and care for it. When I hold someone else’s baby, it doesn’t instantly zap me back to my own postpartum days anymore. It just feels like . . . holding a baby.

What I really miss is my babies. Or, rather, I miss the time I spent with them. I miss when it was enough to bundle them up in ducky pajamas and just sit around listening to each other breathe. I miss heading out for long, dreamy walks with a baby snoozing contentedly in her wrap. I miss when the “firsts” were innocent and easy. Baby’s first laugh. Baby’s first ride on the playground swing.

Mostly, I think I miss that intangible bliss of the transition to parenthood itself. Yes it was one of the hardest things we’ve ever done, and I wouldn’t want to go back to the sleepless nights. But the stretch of it all . . . realizing we were capable of raising a newborn at all (and then another one!), and finding those little corners of pure happiness amid the chaos . . . I’ve never experienced anything quite like that. I used to tell people it felt like getting pushed off a cliff at the very moment you discover you’ve had wings all along.

The Christmas season is already so evocative, with its twinkling lights, carols, and whatnot; ready-made for nostalgic warm fuzzies. And each year I realize a little more just how truly amazing and special that first Christmas season was, welcoming our new baby. Our daughter. Little sister. The final member of a nuclear family which, for a long time, had been largely hypothetical.

The previous years had been a rapid current of transitions – the move to Seattle, new jobs, the new house, the marriage, the miscarriages, the birth of our first child. And now, with this final tremendous change, with the nights getting longer and our loved ones gathering to celebrate the holiday, we were finally ready to settle here for a while. Things would still keep changing constantly, of course. But at least we’d established a setting and a cast of characters. And with that, a new chapter was ready to begin.

And here we are. Three years of driving a station wagon with two car seats in the back and saying things like “Don’t ‘But Mommy’ me!” without irony. Three years of gathering them both into my lap for stories and silliness. Three years of being a team with these incredibly smart, funny, constantly evolving little people. They never cease to amaze me, and these have been some of the happiest years of my life.

Happy birthday, Little Girl.

A Very ACLU Christmas

2009-12-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

Here's a holiday favorite from last year that I've edited and re-posted over on Open Salon. Enjoy:

A Very ACLU Christmas

Thanks for reading! I should have something new posted here in a few days.

"What the Oh?!"

2009-11-29T18:55:00.001-08:00

Well, here we are: the 10-year anniversary of the WTO’s ill-fated meeting. Does anyone outside of Seattle even remember or care? For that matter, do many of us in Seattle remember or care?

Well . . . yes, I expect. I mean, it was no 9/11 or 2009 Iranian election. But it’s probably the biggest thing to happen right here in our city, at least since I’ve lived here. Some of us got harassed by police or even sent to jail just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The city itself was a punch line for weeks, maybe months afterwards, and is still a one-word cautionary tale to other cities hosting controversial events: “We don’t want another Seattle.” The news media tied it up in a neat little package called “The Battle in Seattle” – that rhymes! (Incidentally, the movie of the same title does a great job retelling the story.)

I remember being very excited about the whole thing in the weeks leading up to it. Everyone knew it was coming. The local papers brought us up to speed on what the World Trade Organization even is and why people were organizing protests in the first place. On our annual Thanksgiving drive home from Oregon, we passed a bunch of Seattle-bound activist hitchhikers. One local news station was running a promo with footage of the pre-meeting protests and a goofy voiceover better suited to a dog food commercial saying “Protests! Traffic! Changes in your bus route! What the oh?!!”

I was tempted to participate in the AFL-CIO’s rally but, in the ultimate irony, I really couldn’t miss a day of work. Mr. Black wasn’t planning to participate either, but some of his fellow law students were donning gas masks and “Legal Observer” t-shirts to jump into the fray. I couldn’t help feeling like I was missing out, driving over the bridge to complacent Kirkland to work on my little magazine layouts while history was being made just a few blocks from our Capitol Hill apartment.

I kept checking the news all day, reading about the marching sea turtles and French dairy farmers handing out raw cheese samples in front of McDonalds. Somehow, the activists had actually managed to shut the WTO opening ceremonies down. A little less amazing and a lot more cynical: some protestors were smashing shop windows and looting downtown. Where was this going?

Mr. Black and I snapped on the news the minute we got home and watched the massive, unmoving crowd facing down police officers downtown. Huge white waves of pepper spray would inch the crowd only slightly backward. Another face-off. Another burst of pepper spray. And another. We watched with near-simultaneous feelings of “Power to the people!” and “Oh shit, here come the people!” Because we could see the direction the police were pushing the crowd: right up the hill, east on Pine Street. Right up the hill to our neighborhood.

Photo by Eric Draper

Surely the police would let up before they got that far, we agreed. There was a curfew in effect downtown, but not all the way up in Capitol Hill. I set off for my writing workshop in Eastlake without giving it much further thought.

Driving home just an hour or so later, I realized I’d made a big mistake. Two blocks from our building, a lone specter of a man stood right in the middle of Bellevue Street holding a rag to his nose and mouth, surrounded by a spooky haze. I inched cautiously along the road and found the next block swarming with neighbors and protestors packing the sidewalks in front of the mini-market, laundromat, and apartment buildings.

I parked the car in the little lot behind our building and impulsively hurried down the hill toward the action, ready to shake my rolling pin at somebody. Because, seriously, get the pepper spray out of my neighborhood. We live here. All at once, a misty cloud of hot peppery goodness wafted up the street and hit me in the face. Quick little sneezes came one after the other, followed by an unbearable burning in my eyes and throat. I was livid and wanted to kick the ass of whoever did it, but instead I ran watery-eyed back to our apartment. (Luckily, that news report we’d been watching earlier had told us what to do if you happen to get yourself pepper-sprayed.)

When I’d sufficiently doused my face and the noise outside died down, Mr. Black and I went up to the roof to see what was going on. The neighborhood was now eerily desolate, except for a group of police officers in full riot gear marching in ominous formation down Bellevue Street.

My suburban co-workers wanted to hear all about it the next day, especially the conspiracy-theorist guy who was always hepped up on “coffee.” We were driving to a meeting together and he talked excitedly about it all – how President Clinton was due to arrive that day and that’s why the city cracked down so hard on all the protestors last night. He enthusiastically insisted that Clinton wasn’t really staying at the Westin downtown amid all the chaos; he was probably right here in Kirkland. The words had barely left his mouth when we saw two low-flying helicopters, apparently departing from the nearby big fancy waterfront hotel. The guy nearly peed his pants with tinfoil-hat vindication.

The big boss sent me home early that night to beat the next round of neighborhood riots. Mr. Black and I sat cooped up in the apartment, uneasily watching TV, when we heard helicopters overhead. And lots of angry-crowd sounds. And more helicopters. And . . . gunfire?

The most unsettling thing was that the noise wasn’t coming from downtown or anywhere near the newly imposed “No Protest Zone.” The noise was coming from Broadway, east of our apartment and further up the hill from downtown, well outside the WTO area. Why? More helicopters. More gunfire. More shouting. Explosions. We didn’t dare go outside after my little pepper spray incident the night before, so we kept changing the channel in the hopes of finding a news report. Nothing. Hours later, we found out the gunfire and explosions were actually rubber bullets and concussion grenades fired by police in a riot whose origins are still unclear.

We never did see much about the Capitol Hill riot in the news, but there were lots of first-hand accounts from our neighbors suggesting there’d been nothing unusual going on that night until the police showed up and started sweeping the streets. Matthew Amster-Burton sums it up nicely in his essay:

A police helicopter buzzed overhead, and as we looked down the street, a line of riot cops materialized from out of the gas to look back at us. They were three deep marching up the street, flinging countless canisters and grenades at everybody nearby. A pair of armored personnel carriers pushed through, four cops hanging off each side. . .
[N]ot only was there no evidence of civilian violence, but I didn't see any protesters at all. . . . We watched out the windows as the police parked an armored vehicle on our corner and flanked it with officers. When our neighbors started to gather on the sidewalk across from them, we went back out to join in shouting for the police to leave our home. Ten minutes later, the police pushed back down the street, again beating and gassing as they went. The last battery of gas and grenades didn't end until 2:20 a.m. . .
An officer kicked a pedestrian in the groin, stabbed at him with his baton, then shot a beanbag point-blank into his chest. . . A man came out of his home to shout, "We are residents here!" He got a heavy dose of pepper spray to the eyes, courtesy of his local peace officer. A cop ordered two art students with a video camera to roll down their car window so he could talk to them, then sprayed them directly in the face.

Anyway. Things unraveled pretty rapidly in the days that followed. The WTO talks failed. The protestors and bystanders who’d been imprisoned were released. The police chief resigned and the mayor went on to lose an election. City council meetings were held, committees were formed, lawsuits were filed. But a few days after it was over, I was Christmas shopping downtown as if the whole thing had been some sort of vacation; the Disneyland version of life under occupation.

At the end of it all, I have no firm conclusions. The whole mess was just ten different flavors of bad. Egregious violations of civil rights, police officers thrown headfirst into a dangerous situation that they’d barely been prepared to handle, citizens attacked on their own streets. In a way, it strikes at the heart of what human beings are really capable of. All that ferocious insecurity and conviction. And where does it leave us? It ends with confusion and a series of anecdotes, and then it’s all but forgotten. What the oh.

Shambling After Kerouac

2009-11-14T00:33:00.000-08:00

Jack Kerouac almost caused me to drop out of graduate school. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. I wasn’t chasing any falling stars or yearning to follow some holy road. Not really. I just didn’t want to write a paper about the guy. And by “didn’t want to,” I mean I was seized with anxiety and self-doubt about the damn thing. (Ah, graduate school.)

I’d never read On the Road before. Somehow in my dreamy, bookwormy adolescence, I’d missed it. Maybe it’s not the sort of book a high school English teacher hands to a promising girl-geek. Flannery O’Connor, yes. Kerouac . . . better save him for those awkwardly brilliant golden boys. Somehow Kerouac and I never crossed paths in college, either, although I’d picked him up on my zeitgeist radar by then.

So, my first encounter with On the Road was in one of those early-1990’s hardcore take-a-book-you-love-and-obliterate-it classes which was the style of the time. It was a lot easier to do this with old familiar favorites like Shakespeare and Hawthorne. With a book that I’d never read before – especially this one – it was a frustrating venture.

Sure, there’s plenty of against-the-graining to be done in On the Road. But on some level I just had to say “so what”? There’s misogyny all over that book, upside down and backwards. You know what else? That book is printed on paper, too. And sold in bookstores. The misogyny just seemed so obvious, was all. Pointing it out felt redundant. Maybe if I’d kept at it I could have come up with a more interesting angle. But something else was holding me back.

Yes, I was a woman reader; a feminist reader. But somehow I couldn’t write about Kerouac without writing about myself. I knew there wasn’t a place for me in his late-1940’s world of gritty Benzedrine-and-jazz-fueled spontaneity. Heck, there wasn’t even a place for me in the 1990’s version of that world where scores of Gen-X boys wandered off to find themselves, leaving us girlfriends to heal our broken hearts and make our mix tapes. Forty years later, men still left and women still waited. And in my own way I was as screwed as Camille or Galatea or any of those On the Road gals.

“[She] would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop . . . I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

Still, I identified with the protagonist in spite of myself. Kerouac’s Sal Paradise – Kerouac himself, really – was drifting, brilliant, and stuck; trying to be a writer but coming loose at the seams; struggling to find his voice as he “shambled after” his mad and wildly inspiring friends from one road’s end to the next. Minus his actual talent, there was a lot there that reminded me of myself.

I went to graduate school straight from college because I had no idea what else I could do. It was a safe choice, prolonging studenthood for another two years while enhancing my employability. I thought it was a passionate choice, too. I loved literature. I loved being a student. This was exactly what I thought I wanted to do. But the minute I set foot on that campus, it all came crumbling down.

Everything – the classes, the people, the unfortunate architecture on SUNY-Binghamton’s campus – felt so stark and alienating. I couldn’t focus on my reading or pay attention in class, and the slightest setbacks would fill my eyes with tears. I was as strong, wise, intuitive, and spiritual then as I am now. But it was all so raw, so wild, so untested and full of self-doubt. I had no idea how to be in the world quite yet.

So what did I do? I drove. I had my parents’ old Oldsmobile sedan and I was behind its wheel at every opportunity. I’d drive three hours south to visit my parents or three hours north to visit my boyfriend, planning different routes every time to keep it interesting. I’d drive to other SUNY campuses to track down the books I needed in their libraries. I’d drive to Ithaca for cute-college-town window shopping. I’d drive nowhere in particular, through the hills and trees until it felt like I could be anywhere. Everything felt okay as long as I was in motion.

At the end of October my boyfriend set off to follow a road of his own, slacking westward toward Austin. I couldn’t quite follow him, but I couldn’t quite let him go. I wasn’t ready to embrace my new independent lifestyle, but I had no desire to abandon it, either. Months of limbo lay ahead. And driving. Lots more driving. The weather was rainier and colder, snowy at times, but that didn’t stop me. I could go for hours in my merry Oldsmobile, maps on the floor and cassette tapes all over the seat – REM, Throwing Muses, Morrissey, Lush, Jane Siberry, Concrete Blonde. Somehow I managed to pull off good grades anyway. Don’t ask me how.

And that’s pretty much the state I was in when I decided to write a paper for my “Narratives of Travel” class on On the Road. Given my current state of drifting, it seemed like a perfect fit. Unfortunately, I found myself enjoying the book way too much at face value to successfully pull off some “colonizer/colonized” reading. I’d sit down to work on it and get swept away by the wild, seamless flow of words; mired in the fantasy; outraged by the foreshadowing of 1990’s male angst bullshit depicted so unapologetically.

Still, I didn’t have an academically useful word to say about the book. The more I learned about Kerouac himself, the more I found myself genuinely liking the guy. I can’t say that I loved the book. But I loved its spirit and mythology, and at the time I wanted desperately to believe in that mythology even as the narrative itself eventually dispels it. My deadline drew nearer, the workload in my other classes increased, and I started to panic. Driving back from a weekend at my parents’ place one freezing cold afternoon, I felt my throat seize up with anxiety and a fierce impulse to drop out of school once and for all. Instead, I decided that I was simply not going to write that paper. In fact, I decided to drop the class altogether.

My only regret was that my On the Road experience was muddled in all that unpleasantness. Any enjoyment I might have found in the book was overshadowed by my gawky attempts at scholarship and a steady undercurrent of anxiety and doubt. I promised myself I’d read the book again someday, purely for entertainment this time. My old copy of On the Road is one of the few books that’s moved with me to every subsequent apartment and city with the best of intentions.

Well, here we are – seventeen years later – and I finally got around to picking it up again. The funny thing is, when I decided to blog about it I found myself just as blocked as I was back in grad school. I certainly wasn’t expecting that. What is it about this book? Maybe it just doesn’t want to be written about.

I’ll tell you one thing, though. Reading it now . . . oh, it’s incredibly sad. So sad. All that madness and frenzy; the starving; the left-behind children and women and friends; how it all goes zooming by with barely a pause. Time and again the protagonist himself gets left behind in a broken heap while his friends move wildly on. And then there’s this heartbreaking bit of insight about how children see their parents:

“I realized these were the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered, stabilized-within-the-photo lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless nightmare road.”

How did I miss this sadness the first time? Too mired in my own story, I suppose. Too wrapped up in my nascent scholarship and too eager to believe the mythology and dream of some magical “road” unfolding endless possibilities in my own life. I was more hopeful then, in spite of all the chick angst. How could I sense the weariness and regret in this book when I’d barely ventured into the world myself?

On the Road is simply a beautiful narrative and I’m glad I finally read it again. I’m also kind of glad I never tried to turn it into a paper. I mean, look at this guy. How can you academic-paper that?: