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Centerstage

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Thing1 bestowed his first real smile on me when he was about six weeks old, and it was the most intoxicating thing I’d ever seen (This isn’t just my maternal bias talking either… Maybe just a little).

It didn’t take Thing1 long to figure out that his toothless smile could illicit the most effusive displays of adoration from family or friends or little old ladies on the train.  “He’s such a sunny boy,” our German neighbor would tell us in heavily accented English.  I’ll admit it – having people fawn over my firstborn like that, went to my head.  So, wanting to share what we’d created with the world, I sent a photo of him and his toothless grin to a modeling agency.  A few weeks later I got a reply from an agency in Albany (we had moved to Vermont by then) saying he was very cute, and how did we feel about driving to Boston or New York for jobs?

The Big Guy and I already knew how we felt about driving with Thing1 for trips longer than an hour (the Big Guy was already an expert on brands of hearing protection), and Thing1’s showbiz career ended before it began.  Seeing the man that Thing1 is becoming tells me we made the right decision.  He’s still my sunny boy, but, at twelve, he balks at any clothing that isn’t first and foremost comfortable (clean is optional), and he’s currently working on his entry for the Guinness Book’s Most Reluctant Snapshot subject.

Thing2 is another story.  He is just as sunny but his photo isn’t at an agency.  The only theatre he’s been a part of was a children’s workshop at our local community theatre and arts center, Hubbard Hall.  And, even though I long ago decided my being a Stage Mom wouldn’t work for our family, Thing2 has turned me into one.  It was a point he made decidedly last night when he came home from school.

It was the end of a short week, thanks to MLK day, and a traveling children’s theatre company was visiting Thing2’s school.  They were recruiting actors for an upcoming workshop and performance and hoped to inspire the kids with a makeup demonstration.  The makeup artist scanned the audience for potential victims, but Thing2 had already volunteered.

He was picked to be the second model and had some time to think of what he wanted.  A recent trip to Boston has turned him in to a style maven, and he was already dressed up in a button down shirt, tie and vest.  He wanted the creation to work with his outfit, and when the makeup artist suggested giving him a black-eye, Thing2 latched on to it.  He was still struggling to contain his delighted wriggling when he came home, determined to trick me into thinking he was really hurt.

The joke was just about worn out by dinner – he had come to each of us saying Thing1 had given him the black-eye – and I thought he might be tiring of his schtick.  But by dessert he had recharged – his marred eye twinkling with devilish delight as he dove into his watermelon.  I grabbed a quick pick, hoping preserving the scar in photos would be enough to convince him the show was over, and he needed to wash his face.   When his nighttime bathroom routine was over, however, he came back to the table with clean teeth, clean hands, and a face that had been scrubbed hard almost everywhere.  But not quite everywhere.

Thing2 wanted to save his scar to show his friends at basketball practice, and, as thrilled as we were at the idea of our child flaunting a fake black-eye in front of a rightly suspicious world, we gave in.  Like most of his characters and costumes, this will run its course, and he’ll be on to the next act before the weekend is over.  And, while I’m sure there will be a few shocked whispers when we walk into Bob’s Diner this morning, I am okay with that.

His commitment to his craft is my daily reminder to not let the fear of those whispers govern whether or not we live or half-live out our lives.  Thing2 instinctively seems to understand that the world is a stage, and he is ready to play on it, exploring as many parts as he can.  So now, to my surprise, I have become a stage mom, and it’s turning out to be quite the education.

Uncovering the Universal

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From the moment one of my grandmother sent me and my sister a boxed set of the Little House books (remember when you could get them in hard cover?), I’ve been a book addict.

Aside from the Big Guy and my kids, reading has been one of my few healthy addictions, and, even though now my schedule and energy level rarely align enough for much more than a quick novel here and there, I actually relish getting sucked into another world or era even more.

When I was younger, other worlds were my drug.  I loved fantasy and science fiction.  As I became a real aficionado, I found that it was not just the escape I loved, but – especially with the science fiction – it was the way other writers explored what it might mean to be human in a technological landscape.  The covers of my Tolkien collection turned to ash as I followed Baggins and Frodo on their journeys and finally realized that Tolkien wasn’t writing about elves and hobbits – he was writing about what it meant to be human and to make moral choices.

We didn’t get the classics at our high school much, but my grandmother and one of my aunts were also voracious readers, and most Christmases my sister and I found books we never would have chose under the tree.  I got a three inch thick encyclopedia of classical mythology one year.  I had plowed through everything else on my shelf, so I opened it, and found another realm to explore.  Another aunt sent a collection of mysteries along with the text of a speech on women in writing given by author Sarah Paretsky at her alma mater.

Paretsky’s speech discussed the challenges faced by female authors –  the Bronte’s and Jane Austen never married and wrote in a climate that told women it was unladylike – as well as the often deprecatory ways in which women are depicted in literature.  She exhorted her listeners to read for themselves and then go out and create – whether or not they could find rooms of their own.  It was my first ‘I could do that’ moment (I went to my graveyard shift with a pad and pen that night), and I got hooked on detective novels for a while – especially when they included three dimensional female characters – something that is sadly lacking in some of the otherwise wonderful classics of science fiction.  To be sure, there are many amazing female Sci-fi writers, and they have been fleshing out the female residents of that realm for some time now.

As my aunts and mother and grandmother continued their suggestions my way, I wanted to find characters that reminded me of them.  I wanted to find strong women.  I wanted to find people who were passionate about family but also ideas.  I wanted to find flawed women.  And I wanted to find their histories and the people in them.  And then I met Austen.

I don’t remember if it was watching one of the zillion remakes of Pride and Prejudice before heading to the used bookstore or if it was the now deceased copy of Sense and Sensibility that altered my addiction so profoundly.  For some reason I had finished Brit Lit in high school without reading her or the Brontes, but from the words “It is a truth universally acknowledged…,”  I was hooked.  I think it took two weeks to get through all of her bo

oks and then onto the Brontes.  Then I came back and read them again.  And again. And again.

 

At first I thought I loved the manners  (Doesn’t everyone say they love that first?).  Then I decided I loved the window into the way things were done once upon a time – I had always loved the how-to segments in the Little House books.  Then I thought the tortured romances were the attraction.  But as I’ve replaced copies of my Austen novels since I’ve become a wife and mother myself, I realized that I was attracted to a deeper universal truth.

 

Ultimately, Austen was writing about family and the ties that bind.  Their ties were stretched by the demands of making one’s fortune through marriage, but in the little circles of Bennets and Darcys and Dashwoods the knots were tight – despite the internal squabbles that all families have.  I’ve thought about those ties and those knots as I’ve gone back and re-read my favorite novels and discovered new favorites.  And I’ve discovered that even though the configuration of the circle may change from author to author or book to book, classics (regardless of age) are classics because they managed to uncover that universal, even if the pimply kid that was reading them didn’t know it.

 

Now I’ve got less pimples, and I’m hoping to be the author.  For the last eight months, I’ve been chasing the stories close to my life, and it’s helped me focus on what has brought the most meaning to my life.  I’ve just begun sifting through those stories, and while, at the beginning, I worried that the stories about my family and what often seems very drab life would be boring, I’m just now realizing that I haven’t enjoyed writing them in spite of the topic.  I’ve loved it because, like so many of my favorite writers, it’s the the pursuit of something universal.

 

The Next Course

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I’m having a thirty-minute mini vacation at Bob’s Diner in Manchester today.  It’s our usual spot on Saturday mornings, but on a weekday without family in tow, it’s just unusual enough.  It’s five below and sunny right now, and I’m noting how much colder a diner is when it isn’t packed with skiers and a grill working overtime to feed that crowd.  The sun’s streaming in, though, and people don’t seem to mind the cold that much.

Me?  I’m plotting.  Over home-fried potatoes I’m mulling past steps and next courses.

As I’ve written in the past, this blog is the result of an ongoing writer’s workshop at Hubbard Hall, a vibrant community theatre and arts center.  The workshop’s leader and mentor extraordinaire, Author Jon Katz, assigned the blogs on the first session.  They were to be a way to share out work (with each other and, hopefully, readers at large)  They would also become our progeny – labors of love that only grew and matured with regular care.  And, as our fearless leader has told us many times, they were an excellent first course at a literary buffet that has gone digital in a big way.

Over the last few months, our blogs have been everything he promised.  They have been conduits between group members and then between writers and readers.  They have called each of us to practice our craft with persistence – trying new flavors as we do.  They have helped me find my stories and sometimes my sanity, and I’ve enjoyed every bite of this feast so far.

But now, still gorging ourselves on the appetizers, we are each trying to decide on the next course, with our mentor encouraging us forward.  For one of our members, it’s becoming a research project.  Others are considering books.  I’m working on a play and along with my game plan to make the jump from writer to working author.

Now I’ll sift through the stories I’ve uncovered and search for the themes that dominate. We’ll all keep sampling the appetizers, though, knowing they’ve just been whetting our appetites for more.  The next course at the banquet looks delicious.  I just hope my eyes aren’t bigger than my stomach.

The Eternal Tourist

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My parents weren’t hippies exactly, but I always thought that the social upheaval of the sixties was at least part of the wanderlust that infects both of them to this day. Intensely curious about cultures and socially conscious, my parents began roaming the world almost as soon as they said, “I do.” My dad finished his medical studies in Montreal. Later, the army would move them south to Texas, and while my dad served out his tour there, they became frequent visitors to Mexico and the surrounding states. Their curiosity took them on shoestring holidays to Europe and research-based stints as expats to Peru, and neither of them seemed to think parenthood was a good reason to slow down.

Riding in baby-backpacks and cars that would be condemned by modern child services agencies, we traveled across the country and out of it. We drove from the Eastern Seaboard to Central America. As we got older we started to fly to visit family in Europe. When we moved from the East Coast to the Midwest, my parents explored the heartland in earnest.

With all of that traveling and moving, it was inevitable that my sister and I would become infected with that same wanderlust that still takes my parents to the other side of the globe. I have fed the infection with multiple moves and travels of my own. And, while I am always eternally grateful to my parents for this affliction (I hope to pass it on to my kids someday) and these experiences, I think there was an unintended side effect.

When we moved to Peru, we knew we were visitors. Even when we learned the language, we spoke as foreigners and we were tourists as often as my Dad’s work schedule permitted. When we came home to the states the second time, though, I still felt a little like a visitor. We moved to the Midwest, and I felt even more like a visitor. We continued to travel, and I found I was happy visiting and observing and absorbing.

With one or two exceptions, I have loved most of the places we and I have visited and lived in, but looking back I realize I have spent most of my life feeling like a visitor. Even now, comfortably ensconced in the mountains of Vermont, I still wonder if we’ll be here for the long haul. I wonder what it would be like to live in Vancouver or Iceland or Italy – and if we will find out. There is always a sense of not completely belonging. For a long time, I lived as a witness, and that sense used to make me wonder if writers (as I wanted to be even then) or artists were supposed to be witnesses rather than full participants.

This question bothered me for years. After all, some of the greatest writers have been intense participants in the game of life.  One of my favorite exchanges in any movie was between Private Epstein and Jerome in Neil Simon’s Biloxi blues touches on this, and I think Simon was speaking to all artists when Private Epstein tells Jerome, “You have to take sides. You have to fight the good fight… Any fight. Until you do, you’ll never be a writer.”  It was a commentary that nagged at me for a while.

That was before the Big Guy came into my life.  His presence fed and nourished my wanderlust along with my heart, but I knew that, deep-down, I was still just a visitor in the places we lived. I was still an observer.

Then Thing1 came into our life, etching our family circle in stone. Thing1 was born on the road (we were living in Germany at the time), and at the time the Big Guy and I were long-term visitors together. But, thrown together on the endless adventure of parenthood, neither of us could remain casual observers – whether or not we would have wanted to be.

With the Big Guy’s help, Thing1 (and later Thing2) yanked me off the sidelines of life. I still wonder if I’ll ever belong to a place, but now I belong to a group of our own making.  Over the years it’s pull has grown stronger than any sense of place I’ve had, and because of it, I’m finding that Private Epstein was right. Fighting the good fight of growing our family – regardless of the theatre – has opened the door to becoming a real writer.

Pup Up with the Joneses

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Most mornings when I drag myself out of bed for my 5AM display of writing discipline, I head to our study and shut the door.

Now that winter has finally arrived, however, something in me craves the company of the wood stove (it’s a want, not a need – our earth-sheltered house keeps the temps pretty steady), and I’ve been making my way out to my kitchen-study.  On these mornings, a soft jingle greets me as Katy, the wonder dog surreptitiously hops off the big green recliner in the family room, and I start the morning with a chuckle, amazed she still engages in the charade, if only once a day.

When I was a kid, my parents had a big black Lab named Rurik (my mom was studying Russian history then).  Their house was decidedly neater than ours – the neatness gene went to my sister – and there was never a question of whether dogs should be allowed on furniture.  Rurik was not.  Still, while he never openly challenged this rule or appeared to disobey at night, my mom would sometimes find a mass black fur on the burnt-umber sofa cushions after a day out.

We had this same pattern of rules and quiet, civil disobedience with our first dog after we moved to Vermont.  We acquired Josie, a Spoffordshire Terrier mix, from the local shelter while we were still under the influence of the German suburban sensibilities we had absorbed a couple years earlier while living just north of Frankfurt.  While our international experience hadn’t pumped up my cleaning mojo much, we did come back with certain ideas about how dogs should behave, and reserving furniture for humans was one of them.  Like Rurik, Josie had her ideas too, and she obeyed when we were there and left the telltale black-and-white fur on the sofa while we weren’t.

But the longer we lived in Vermont, the more suburban sensibilities we shed.  After the second year, we both abandoned any interest in restoring the front door of our then 200 year-old farmhouse and creating a formal entrance – the default entrance in Vermont is through the mudroom.  We both enthusiastically embraced the Vermont version of business casual (wearing your good jeans or newer Carhardts to work), and as we visited homes and got to know more of our neighbors, I unconsciously noticed that many people let dogs on furniture.

When we got Katy, we still stuck to our old ways – more out of habit than conviction now, but after a  year I found the evidence that she had taken up the dogs-on-furniture banner.  We caught her once or twice and shooed her off, but I clearly did not express my position well enough.  I wasn’t sure what my position was now.

She must have sensed a possible change in doggie fortunes in our house because soon after I brought home the green recliner from a tag sale, she staked it out as her spot.  The Big Guy shooed her off multiple times.  I did it a few times.  But each time she would return, soon not even waiting for us to leave before she slid one paw and then another onto the seat and then her body the rest of the way onto the chair.

I’ve chosen my big battles at this point.  The only ones I wage seriously now are to be sure Thing1 finishes seventh-grade English with as few psychological scars as necessarily and that Thing2 takes off the rainbow wig before school.  It might be because the Wonder Dog looks relatively cute sitting on that chair, but now, when I go over to give her a little petting, I realize that I’m getting almost too good at letting go of little battles.  Some people might call that laziness, and maybe I am lazy.  We’re not just not keeping’ up with the Joneses, we’ve given up on the whole race.  And while that may be a sign of our sloth, it does give us a chance to look around and enjoy the journey.

Cursing the Disco

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A few sleepless mornings ago, my gloom was closing in on me so tightly that if I had started lighting candles to keep from cursing my darkness, I could have burned down our house – no small achievement when you consider it’s mostly concrete.

We’d come home late from a sad trip the night before.  I knew the upcoming work day would likely go long, to be capped off with an evening session of  ‘Are You Smarter than a Seventh Grader’ with Thing1 (complete with commentary by Thing2).  I was exhausted before I even got the kids up for school.

But the insomnia that was the door prize that came with my depression turned out to be a blessing (or a curse if you ask Thing1).  As I tossed and turned counting the minutes of sleep I wasn’t getting I suddenly remembered that there was a pile of new, unplayed songs on my iPod.  As I  had mapped out our trip a few nights before, I’d clicked back-and-forth between iTunes and the map site, absentmindedly clicking the ‘Download’ button here and there.

The thing I love and hate about iTunes is that it’s so dang easy to engage in a little retail therapy without wondering where to hide the bags or if I want a song badly enough to be willing to dust it later.  That’s how I ended up with 30 new songs in the time it took to print my maps and reserve a hotel (I think that’ll hold up in court).

So with an hour to myself before I needed to get the kids up, I hopped out of bed and pulled my purchases into a new playlist, hoping the songs would be safer than using fire to fight off my funk.

I find that when I’m in a bad mood, I tend to get a little nostalgic about my music choices, and my indulgence in retail therapy a few nights before was not a sign of a good mood.  And, when I saw that bunch of Earth, Wind & Fire tunes for $2.99, I clicked on it.  I love those songs because they evoke memories of my dad’s mix tapes painstakingly recorded on reel-to-reel, as well as images of the god-awful clothes of that era that are still preserved in photographs for eternity and future blackmail.  But, as anyone who’s heard the songs knows, they’re also killer dance tunes as Thing1, my twelve-year-old (much to his horror) was about to discover shortly.

I got my playlist loaded and synced just in time to push the kids out the door.  Most mornings Thing1 is the arbiter of musical taste in the car.  He’s currently in a two-year Beatles and Stones phase, and when Boogie Wonderland came on, his hand automatically moved to the forward button.  But I was ready for this and intercepted him.

“Leave it,”I ordered with the mock seriousness it takes to command his obedience.

“Okay, Mom,” he laughed, pretending to be in awe of my display of authority.  My mood brightened as we jokingly argued about my musical choices.  I turned up the volume, and, in the rearview mirror, I could see six-year-old Thing2 in his carseat bopping his head happily to the beat.  It was infectious, and I started dancing a little too.  I knew I might have lit one too many candles at that point.

Real fear crept into Thing1’s eyes, and I knew what was going through his mind.  Would the song end before we hit the school parking lot?  Would Mom hit the rewind button?  Would Mom still be drive-seat-dancing when we arrived?

We got closer to town and the song switched, but to Thing1’s chagrin, there were no Beatles tunes in the on-deck circle.  Thing2 and I continued to dance, though I restrained myself a bit as we got closer to town and the traffic got thicker.

“Mom.”  Thing1 murmured as we turned onto the school street.  “Mom.” He grew insistent as we got closer.  A stalled line of cars came into view ahead of us as we approached the school, and my own dancing ceased.  Thing1’s confirmed belief is that his authority over my behavior is in direct proportion to his proximity to middle school, but in reality, I just remember how much middle school sucked, and the threat of my dancing or singing in public is an empty one.  Today, though, it would have been fun to keep that fire burning a little longer.

I drove him up to the door and wished him a good day.  I told him I loved him, and as he climbed out of the car, shaking his head, he muttered what so many young people climbing out of Pintos and Pontiacs shaking under the weights of dancing middle-aged moms with too many choices on the eight track or cassette must have muttered before him: “I hate Disco.”

Ablaze at Both Ends

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photo5

I one of the lucky few.  Most days I like my job.  Every day I like my coworkers.  But there are some days, when I’m on a writing roll (in quantity, not necessarily quality) that I begin wondering how much I could get for a slightly dented, c-listed kidney so I could finance a writing life.

I joined a writing workshop with author Jon Katz at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY, a community theatre and arts center back in May of 2012 with the idea of improving my skills and, hopefully, finding to make a writing life.   I was nervous about both aspects.  The workshop had an application process, and, while I think any artist has heard him or herself say, “I could do that” when embarking on a new work, I was secretly terrified that, surrounded by real writers, I would find out that maybe I could, but I shouldn’t.  I was equally terrified that Mr. Katz would (as a few workshop leaders in the past had) have to explain the unpleasant facts of the writer’s life to us and make us understand that only a select few can ever enter that special circle.

Mr. Katz has had an long and successful writing career, by any measure, but, like many people, has seen his career go through rapid changes with the onslaught of the digital age.  I went into the workshop aware that the internet had driven down the incomes of many creative professionals – stock photos can be had for $1.00 a piece regardless of their production cost, ebooks at $.99 abound – and I was doubtful that anyone could still make a living writing unless they were already an established author or a movie star with a scandal to sell.  But Mr. Katz had invited us to Hubbard Hall to peddle optimism and encouragement – not negativity.

He spent the first hour of the first workshop talking about all the opportunities for writers – established and emerging – and by the time we took a break, I was ready to race home to my computer and wear down the keys a bit.  I still hadn’t figured out what I would write – his first assignment to us was to create our blogs – but I knew something would come.  And then he gave us a piece of advice which has – for the most part – wiped out writer’s block for the last 7 months.  “Look for the stories that are close to your life,” he said.

I thought about that for the next few weeks as we set up our group page on Facebook and each of us began testing the waters with our blog ideas.  The blogs began evolving, and we could see each other developing as artists.  I stopped calling myself a wannabe-writer, coming to the conclusion that writing is where I belong.

So now it’s Monday morning, and work is about to begin.  I’m sitting at my kitchen table watching the snowfall and getting ready to sign on to my employer’s group chat, but before I do, I burn a little of my writing candle.  I’ll work till I can’t see the snow anymore, and after dinner is done and homework for the kids is checked, I’ll burn a little more.  At one point I wondered if burning the candle at both ends was a good idea.  At some points I tell myself it’s just until I can have a full-time writing life.  The reality is, though, that this fire at both ends does not consume me, it sustains me, and it’s just enough to keep the dream alive.

A Moment on the Soapbox

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I spend Inauguration Morning 2013 trying to write and thinking about inaugurating another diet for the umpteenth time.  (There have been multiple first diet days since the first of this year.)  It seems an strange day to be dwelling on something so mundane.  It’s MLK-day after all.  Our country’s first African-American president is getting worn in for the second time.   And yet, somehow, letting the mundane absorb the three members of our family who got to stay home for the holiday is oddly appropriate.

I’ve lived on two other continents in two different hemispheres.  Thanks to my parents’ wanderlust, I had the opportunity – at a young age – to see how bad it can be but also how the good we have isn’t necessarily isolated.  We got to plenty of countries where elections happened peacefully and where political debates are lively.

As youngsters, however, my sister and I also had the chance to travel and live in South America at a time when election results were often in dispute and transfer of power wasn’t always peaceful. Widespread poverty (and depending on the year, dangerous conditions) was a common symptom of the political instability, and I have memories of walking with my mother in Lima, Peru and noticing many beggars parked between street vendors.  My parents still maintain the friendships they made there, and I remember hearing occasionally of one friend or another having to leave the country quickly even after a relatively peaceful election.  It was anything but mundane.

I thought of that today as I took the kids to Bob’s Diner in Manchester Vermont for a treat.  Always hopping, it was a mob scene on this holiday morning.  The bulk of the dining population was of the tourist variety, but – as always- there was variety.

There were well-heeled flatlanders in perfectly coordinated ski pants and jackets sitting shoulder to shoulder with burly plow drivers in their customized jackets.  There were Obama stickers on pickup trucks and Ron Paul and Romney stickers on slick new SUV’s from ‘down south’.  There were T-shirts with slogans ranging from the peaceful to the political to the profane, and it was just another Monday at Bob’s.  Even after an election season completely characterized by cynicism and bitterness, even in the face of an increasingly strident debate on gun rights (and privacy and religious rights), this confluence of humanity – with its politics on its sleeve in some cases – was not only civil, but jovial.

Thomas Jefferson once wrote that the Tree of Liberty would need to be refreshed with the bloom of patriots.  I don’t question his courage or passion for his country, and I know he and his suffered to sow the seeds of our liberty.  I also don’t think those words were written without an understanding of their potential consequences.  But Jefferson did come of age in an era when duels at twenty paces were still considered a reasonable way to settle a dispute.

Now, when I look at events around the world and see the human consequences of refreshing each country’s soul by pitting citizen against citizen, I know there has to be a better way.  And, listening to one of Bob’s cheeky waitresses cheerfully debate the issues of the day with a hot-headed regular, hearing their banter rise above the clattering of dishes and cries of ‘Order up!’, I realize that we have it, and it starts with hotcakes and coffee and a side of home fries.  It may be mundane, but there’s something to be said for that too.

Cutting the Strings

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A friend recently (and humorously) observed that I have a dark side.  The size of this tumor is usually in direct proportion to the amount of news I’m consuming at any given time, but nothing helps it metastasize like an injection of maternal paranoia.  Today’s dose was courtesy of Thing1’s desire not to sit through a second stint of basketball practice.

Thing2’s (our six-year-old) coach had announced a lunchtime tournament at morning practice.  Having sat through one practice, Thing1 had promptly responded that he would not be attending regardless of any promise or threat on our part.  So the decision was made that at twelve-going-on-thirty, Thing1 was old enough to stay home alone for an hour.

Now our town – a bustling metropolis of about 300 – has a motto.  Whatever happens here stays here… but nothing ever happens here.  And, as apt as it is, for some reason, as we drove Thing1 back to the house, I found myself checking my mental list of escaped convicts and serial killers-on-the-loose (I have been watching too much news lately).  With each turn, I rattled off one more rule for Thing1.

“Keep the phone with you.   Keep the doors locked.  Don’t answer the phone…”

“Don’t shower while you’re making toast,” interjected the Big Guy, attempting to deflate my paranoia.

Thing1 listened to my missives with good-natured patience, certain as all immortal preteens are that all would be well for the upcoming hour.  We got back to the house and I walked Thing1 in and laid out the rules once more.  I had grabbed my sunglasses and was heading for the door when Thing1 emerged from his room once more.  He bent down and gave me a big hug (something that only happens when no one he knows is around).  I hugged him back tightly, remembering for a moment – as I often do at these moments – a time when I was able to hold him as a bundle against my shoulder.

Then he straightened and patted my shoulder and said, “You’ll be fine, Mom.”  And he disappeared into his room to pretend to study for the 30 seconds it took me to leave and double-lock the door.  And, as I got back in the car, that dark side I’d been feeding too well lately started to shrink.

Practice Makes Peace

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It’s amazing how such a little thing can pull you out of a funk, and I’ve been in a deep one for weeks.

The recent weeks have been flooded with flu’s and funerals and pneumonia, and at a few points I was ready to stop treading water and just sink to the bottom of the black cold pond of life, letting the ice close over if only to get a little quality sleep (I’d given up on the reset button on Friday).  I was still feeling funky Saturday morning as we raced to make it to Thing2’s (our six-year-old son) basketball practice.

Neither the Big Guy nor I had thought to set the alarm Friday night, and when I opened my eyes and looked at the clock, I realized we had 21 minutes to get everyone up, dressed, and chauffeured, to a school 20 minutes away.  I raced to the kids’ room yelling, “Up! up! up!,” half-aware that my twelve-year-old son, Thing1, was already up and locked in a video game (as I threw clothes at both of the kids he calmly explained that he also doesn’t pay attention to clocks on weekends).  Surprisingly the wild goose chase that constituted the rest of our getting ready and on the road did nothing to penetrate my gloom.  But when we walked into the caferia-turned-gym of the elementary school, the ice over my head began to melt a bit.

We live near Arlington, VT.  Their school and the elementary school Thing2 attends in the next town is so small that they have to combine with each other to get the minimum four players needed to form a team.  The kids are all in first and second grad, and, with no million dollar sponsorships on the line, it’s often a toss-up as to whether we’ll arrive at a Saturday game or just an extra practice.  Five minutes after we arrived, we stopped wondering if the other team might just be late, and relaxed as we realized our panic had been completely unnecessary.  Today was a practice.  We grabbed a few folding chairs and found a safe spot at the edge of the cafeteria to wait and watch.

Like most parents, my butt already has a permanent flat impression from years of waring the bleachers at ballparks and gymnasiums, and I am not proud of the fact that part of my routine includes indulging in a little smart phone therapy (I know, I know, I should be committing every play and bounce to memory for the mental scrapbook).   But today, as the coach drafted another parent and a few players’ siblings to participate, something made me put away my phone and pull out my pen.

Thing2’s team is a bit rag-tag in style as well as size.  None of the kids have fancy sneakers, and several play in jeans or whatever the weather dictates.  The kids are competitive but never cutthroat. They’ll share the ball as often as they steal it.  While the coach maintains structure, he’s enthusiastic about the game, not militant about discipline.  When his enthusiasm infected Thing2 again this overcast Saturday morning, SuperDude, Thing2’s evolving, multi-talented and perpetually joyful alter-ego, exploded onto the court and, with a twirl and a leap and a dancing ‘dunk’, yanked me through the hole in the ice, out of my funk and back into life.

Watching him twirl and run, stopping occasionally to climb the makeshift rock wall with a teammate, reminded me once again just how good the rag-tag chaos we call life is.  It reminded me how even the things that fomented my funk are mostly indicative of our blessings rather than any host of misfortunes.  And, as they wrap a tied practice game of two on six (one coach + one parent vs. four players + two sib’s), I am amazed again at how life can breathe itself into you when you least expect it.  And maybe that’s the time you need it most.

Till Death Do Us Part

/ Picking My Battles / Leave a comment

Most days I don’t stop. I may stop doing the things I want to do, but, like most people, I tend to forget about the work-life treadmill I’m on until something blows a fuse.

Saturday night the entire circuit breaker popped when I returned home from my writing group to hear of the death of an old family friend. This friend was at our wedding, standing up as a surrogate father to my husband whose own parents had died several years before. Our friend had lived a full life but had been plagued with chronic health problems at the end of his life, and, while the news saddened both of us, it was not unexpected.

I didn’t cry Saturday night, however. Nor did I cry last night as we rushed to pack and get on the road for a four hour drive in hopes of beating an inconveniently-timed winter storm. I didn’t even cry as we were driving to the cemetery. As we drove from the entrance of the cemetery to the site of the service, however, and I began to think of our friends saying their final goodbye to their father and husband and grandfather, I did cry.

It was raining and snowing, and the service was brief with words of ritual from the rabbi and words of remembrance from our friend’s family. It was only as the ceremony ended and the attendees formed lines of comfort for the departing family that I realized that all my tears had been for the family and their loss but not for this man whom we loved so much, and it was not until we regrouped for the more informal memorial in the afternoon that I understood why.

Our friend’s daughter had arranged a luncheon following the graveside service. The atmosphere was subdued but not somber as his friends and family stood at the podium and offered their memories of this man. As we nibbled at our lunch we heard from his fellow World War II vets, former classmates, and friends about his contributions and his kindness.

And with each story from an old comrade-in-arms or former co-worker, one thing that stood out was the fact that this man and his now-widow had been married for almost 60 years. Almost every old friend at the podium had been married equally long. In a country with a fifty percent divorce rate, my husband and I were surrounded by couples who had been married for more years than we had been alive. To be sure, there were some exceptions, but the prevalence of long-married couples in the room got me thinking about why I had cried so little and about my own expectations from life and marriage and love. Here were people warmed by the memories of their friend and buttressed by each other.

I began to realize that I could not cry for this man that we love. I can cry for the people who lost him (our family included), but to live and die surrounded by people you love and have loved for most of a long, productive life is a life and and end very few people ever achieve.

Years ago, on our wedding day our friend stood up to wish us and our guests ‘Nachus’, the hebrew word for joy. I think of his words often and never more so than today when we witnessed exactly what he was talking about. He had lived for his family and friends and in deriving joy from them, had given it back exponentially. So, as we left, I was not thinking about the things we lost but the lessons and blessings we will keep with us forever because we were friends.

The Conductor

/ Picking My Battles / 4 Comments

Every six-year-old has wondered – if not aloud as he’s being sent to bed then surely as he feels Mom’s eyes boring into his back as he’s heading into school – if there is not some top secret shindig that needs only his absence to begin.  Our six-year-old (nicknamed Thing2 for his super human chaos creating capabilities) has certain wondered it (he intimates it every night at 8 PM regardless of his level of exhaustion), but yesterday, as we were taking down the Christmas decorations, he decided that he would be in charge of any shindig that happened in our cave at Minister Hill.

It all began when I was crumpling up some of the paper snowflakes I’d hurriedly cut out to cover this year’s oversized tree.  Appalled that I would so casually dispose of such a seemingly intricate decoration, Thing2 cried out and grabbed the crushed paper from my hand.  His gaze fell on the other crushed casualties of my Christmas clean up, and he scooped them into his arms protectively.

“Mo-o-m!”  He protested, “I wanted to save these!”  And he moved them to another table for resuscitation and rehabilitation.

“You can save them if you get them out of the living room,” I said, moving on to remove the strawberry walnuts we acquired from a friend this year.  Thing2 stared at me for a minute and then asked if I had any tape.  I did, and the tape and snowflakes disappeared into the room he shares with his older brother.  A few minutes later he reappeared to claim the chains of paper ginger-people.  I was not paying attention when he made his third decoration retrieval trip, but on the fourth or fifth trip, I noticed the decorations on the table were fewer in number, and I realized someone had misinterpreted the goal of the tree takedown.

As it happened, he had simply come up with his own purpose because as I began to unwind the lights from the tree and re-knot them before packing them away, Thin2 reappeared in his shinest red superhero cape and announced that there would be a party on the lower bunk at 2:30PM.  Thing2 went from me to Thing1 to the Big Guy issuing his invitations, not waiting for RSVPs before he moved on.

“Okay, Honey,” said Thing1 and I.

“What can I bring?” asked the Big Guy, raising his head from the recliner in the den.  And Thing2 knew he had found the right victim/guest.  Thing1 and I turned back to disemboweling what was left of the tree and sweeping up the carpet of needles, completely oblivious to the party preparations that now began directly behind our backs.

The Big Guy helped Thing2 tape up a few party decorations and arrange a few chairs below the lower bunk.  He even helped Thing2 find a few snacks to serve at the party.  Finally, when the time for the party rolled around, the Big Guy whipped up a few cups of hot chocolate and told Thing2 to summon his guests.

We entered the room, festooned with discarded Christmas decorations and (I can’t believe it either) cleaned up.  Thing2 was already dancing to the music that continually plays in his head, and when he saw us enter, motioned us to the spots he had picked for us.  We enjoyed our hot chocolate and candy and cheese doodles for a little while, chatting and laughing.  Thing2 even offered to go get my iPod so we could all dance (I put a stop to this as his creativity has already claimed the lives a one or two pieces of electronic equipment), and when it was over, he thanked us for coming. And last night, as he passed out and was carried to bed, he snored secure in the knowledge that a shindig might commence when the bedroom door closed, but it wouldn’t top anything he could come up with.