Family

A Day with the Boys

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the boys

Once upon a time I would have traded blood and organs for the chance to be a Work At Home Mom (WAHM).  A few years ago, I stumbled onto the right ad on Craigslist and, without making any deals with the devil, joined the growing legions of moms who work from home.  For the most part it’s been a win-win.  I’m home on snow days and sick days.  There’s no dry-cleaning to worry about, and the gas and rubber saved is significant.  It has also, however, taught me a lot about the difference between quality time with my kids, twelve-year-old Thing1 and six-year-old Thing2,  and simply more time.

Our town has school choice, so Thing1 and Thing2 go to different schools in different towns.  The schools are a mile apart, and, while the calendars often overlap, there are somedays when one school is closed and the other is not.  Yesterday was Thing2’s day off, and, enjoying a unprecedented state of organization last week, I remembered to schedule a day off for myself.

The kids are in school full-time now, but summers and holidays mean that I’m often scrambling to entertain them while I work.  More often than I’d like, this results in kids playing on iPads or computers and me snapping at them to stop fighting over this or that toy.  It’s more time together, but it is not quality time.

Ironically, spending more time with my kids has fueled my desire to carve out more special days with one or the both of them.  It’s a tradition that started when Thing1 was still Thing-only.  Mommy-Thing1 days started with a special breakfast and then a visit to a museum or even just a day on the couch watching a movie of his choice.  It’s one-on-one face time, and it’s become a sacred ritual for both kids.

Thing2 and I started the day with breakfast and haircuts.  Money he had earned was burning a hole in his pocked, so we took a quick trip to the toy store and then went to visit a friend who’s recovering from surgery.  By the time we got home, my day with Thing2 was drawing to a close, and a planned evening with Thing1 was about to begin.

The Dorset Theatre was in its final weekend of its production of The Crucible, and, since we don’t have a regular babysitter, the Big Guy and I had decided to take turns attending.  We’ve been dragging Thing1 to plays for a while now (with increasing levels of enthusiasm), and I decided we would go out to dinner before the play.  Thing2’s palate is getting more adventurous so we ended up a Thai place in Manchester, VT.

The restaurant was a little more upscale place than we usually go with either child, but Thing1 warmed to the subdued atmosphere.  Absent distractions, we began to have a different Mommy-Thing1 day.  Thing2 is still at that stage where Mommy and Daddy are at the center of his world, and our special days are basically one big mental cuddle.  But Thing1 is at the border of adolescence, and the independence that accompanies that stage of life means that our special days have changed in content and character.  Last night, as our special day consisted mainly of  very grown-up dinner conversations about technology and society and later about the play and the performance, I began to see for the first time how that change is bringing us closer.

What This Blog Is

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A few weeks ago, my frustration with a writer’s block born of the down side of my Bipolar life led me to write about it. It was the first time in my life I had ever written about it overtly. Not knowing how it would be received, I purposely picked a post day when I thought no one would be on their computers. I worried about losing readers, but I was desperate to get past depression and back to writing, so I took a chance. The response to my gamble was overwhelming and, for me, completely unexpected.

Even then, however, freed from the fear of letting the world know that somethin’ ain’t exactly right, I was adamant that this would not become a bipolar blog. But a recent email exchange made me realize that, while I didn’t know exactly what this site was, in many ways it has always been a a bipolar blog -even if I couldn’t see it.

When it began last summer, I thought it was a mommy blog (for extremely disorganized mommies). I thought it might also be a rural mommy blog. For a while I thought it was an illustration blog. It was a cartoon platform and a poetry outlet. And, of course, it was a blog about family.

For months it was all of these things because I was. I was flying, and the blog and I were keeping each other aloft in the stratosphere. When my flight ended, however, the crash came, and the blog became part of my lifeline. It, like the other part of my lifeline – my family – needed me to get out of bed each day and nurture it. Like my kids, it needed care and feeding, even on the many days that I wonder if it and they would be better off with someone more competent or stable. And as my self-soothing visits to my fantasy work became more frequent, my blog became a depression blog, interweaving itself with the only other blog theme I could and needed to sustain – my family.

Now as I continue to cling to the “This Too Shall Pass” mantra that helps me manage my stay in Melancholia, I realize that this has always been a blog about mania and depression. It has always been about the simulataneously intoxicating but precarious highs and the sometimes crippling lows. But it is also a blog about how the journey between those places affect the family I chose to join and build – for good or ill – and how they have come to affect it by saving me every day of my life. Even on the days I don’t think I need it.

A Good Egg

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It was a little after 6 when my shift ended and I turned off the computer and emerged from my office into the family room. Thing2 was hanging out with the Big Guy on the couch while Thing1 listened to music on his iPod. Without thinking, I launched into my litany of reminders.

“Is your homework done?” I asked both boys.

“Yes.”

“Yes”

“Firewood in?” I asked Thing1, getting ready to remind him that if he wanted to earn money for this necessary chore he had to be completely responsible for the bin staying full.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Dishwasher emptied?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Did you take Katy out?”

“Yes, Mom,” He didn’t bother to look up from his iPod at the last query, knowing he had stopped me in my tracks. He had but not for the reason he thought.

As I stirred the leftover stew on the wood stove, it hit me that my once slightly serious but still impish boy is evolving into a responsible young man. And, while I want to keep the real world from denting that bliss that exists in all of us when we’re ignorant of the world, I am also realizing that I may need to find a new nick name for my first born.

It’s been sightly less than a year since I introduced my kids to this blog with their nicknames – Thing1 and Thing2. At the time, I was searching for stories close to home, and my 12 and 6 year old’s antics provided much of my fodder as well as their blog names (I didn’t want to use their real names on a blog). Thing2 is still very much an imp, but he has acquired a second nickname over the year – SuperDude – as the joyful theatrics that characterize his age became more colorful and creative. Little impishness is obvious in Thing1 anymore, however, as he gets closer to the edge of his childhood.

He’ll be thirteen in August, and he’s been towering over me since before his last birthday, but the changes in him over the last year are more than just physical. Thing1 went through his joyful, leaping stage when he was six, and, when he’s hanging out with his brother, he is reminded that the joy and leaping still lurk beneath the surface. But Thing1 has always been a more deliberative child, and he seems to be continuing on that path, accepting new responsibilities with little complaint. In short, he’s a good egg.

We’re seeing some of the expected displays of independence and boundary testing, but, remembering how I put my own parents through the ringer as a teenager, I was – and still am – ready for much worse. For now, though, we seem to be enjoying calm. It will probably storm at some point, but rather than fear what I can’t foretell, I’m realizing I need to begin marking this next phase in my oldest son’s life. I know that, like the last twelve years, it will fly by, and how and what I write about the person he is now will play a huge part in keeping that time in my memory. It makes his new nickname all the more important.

Sanity Sunday… or Not

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Organization is not a hallmark of our family life, but over the years we have managed to stumble on a few rituals.  Lately, it’s been Taco Friday –  neither kid objects to it because they make it themselves.   When Mom is dieting it’s Meatless Monday (the diet almost always begins and ends on Monday).  Six-year-old Thing2’s addiction to Shake ‘n’ Bake means at least one night of the week is dedicated to pork chops.  Saturdays are dedicated to morning sports and breakfast at Bob’s Diner in Manchester, Vermont in the winter and dragging the kids to the latest free art exhibit in the summer.  Sundays have been a bit nebulous, however.

We’re not religious, so our Sunday mornings tend to be wide open.  Some weeks we head to back to the diner, other days the kids will ‘inspire’ the Big Guy to make corn cakes.  Yesterday, however, we thought we might have found on a new candidate for our Sunday routine.

Our boys, twelve and six and affectionately nicknamed Thing1 and Thing2 after the imps in Cat in the Hat, still share a room whose hamper not long ago acquired magical properties that prevent dirty clothes from entering.  A recent ruling by the Big Guy made indoor Dodge Ball with the smaller, ‘softer’ red ball in their toy box permissible, and now a carpet of clothes and dodgeball casualties litter the room.  Still, until Friday night, I had put the mess at a mere Defcon 4.  Level 4 usually causes a double-take when I walk by the room but doesn’t inspire me to intervene.  Friday, however getting from the door to the bunk bed for a goodnight kiss had become an act of death defiance, and I raised the alert to Defcon 2.   After a snuggle with Thing2 and an almost-deflected kiss for Thing1, I let them know it was time to engage in cleaning maneuvers before I had to go nuclear and clean everything OUT.

Hoping to encourage them to manage their own time a little and recognize that mother and maid are not interchangeable terms, I gave them the weekend to get the room presentable.  It didn’t have to be Grandma-and-Grandpa-are-coming clean, but the mess couldn’t just move under the bed either.  And I set a deadline – high noon on Sunday or there would be consequences.  There would also be no access to electronic media Sunday morning until the work was done.

Saturday morning we had basketball practice and went to breakfast.  The boys decided that was an iron-clad excuse not to clean in the morning.  They had a few hours in the afternoon, but decided to use it dawdling until we went out for a brief visit to friends.  By the time dinner rolled around, they had rationalized the entire day away.

By seven A.M. Sunday, the procrastination began to acquire heroic proportions.  Zero hour was approaching so they woke early and immediately began arguing about how to divvy up the work.  Between settling rounds, the Big Guy and I began quietly debating what the consequences should be.  Then, shortly after a breakfast of thoroughly-chewed cereal, the room at the end of the hall became eerily quiet.  I wondered if victory might be in our grasp as griping morphed into the sounds of things being picked up.

Then it stopped.  I got up to lay down some law but was stopped by the opening riff of ‘Ticket to Ride’.  The Big Guy is usually the source of homemade music, but his guitar was still in the utility room.  The radio was off, and as I got closer to the minefield, I realized that Thing1 must have rediscovered his guitar under a pile of clothes or toys.  I knew this was just another diversion on his part, but this was the first one that was remotely constructive.  Suddenly Thing2 bolted out of the room and into the utility room.  He emerged with his guitar and bounced over to the Big Guy.

“Daddy,” he breathed, “can you show me how to play that Beatles song?”  The Big Guy is always happy to pass on his love of all things Beatle to the boys, and obliged.  Thing2 disappeared into his room, and I sat down on the couch with my co-parent, marveling at how, deprived of all privileges and electronic entertainment these two had finally found something creative to do.

“I think we should make them do this every Sunday,” I said.  The Big Guy nodded, and we both listened to the chirping (Thing2) and picking (Thing1) in the other room.  For a few brief moments sanity reigned. We both agreed the noon deadline should still stand, and, for the moment, I thought we had found a new ritual.

Two minutes later the chirping stopped, and it wasn’t long before the picking ceased and cries of “You started it” resumed.  The Big Guy and I closed our eyes.  I think he was the first one to speak after an exasperated minute.

“So, how about the art museum next Sunday?” He said.

Deflating Fantasy

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“You and your wife shall have good fortune in your journey together in life,” read the fortune from the cookie. I knew it was a sign, and, while the very small rational part of my brain kept insisting the fortune was merely confirming my wisdom in deciding to get take out on a week night, the party of my brain that runs the fantasy department had decided that this message was a directive. On the reverse side of the little paper slip were a set of lucky numbers, and the message so clearly meant that this particular set should be played. The big jackpot wasn’t a record breaker last night, but, deciding that the Big Guy and I would be happy to settle with only $40 million, I plunked down my $2 and bought an evening of fantasy. The problem is, the cost of the tickets has inflated, but the fantasy has not only not kept pace with inflation, over the last few years or so it’s deflated.

Once upon a time, I’d indulge in my $2 fantasy whenever the jackpot reached record-breaking status and come home for a few hours of ‘what would I do’. The obvious paying off of any bills and not worrying about how to pay future debts and college were up first on the list. Even, when we were too poor to be gambling, I’d still gamble, dreaming about the house we’d build and the clothes I would buy (and somehow magically look better in because the winning lottery ticket also bestows the winner with instant weight loss). I’d dream about the cars we’d buy for our family and the fleet we’d own – a different vehicle for every purpose – and the traveling we’d do.

The fantasies reached their height when I was still paying off a mountain of medical bills and trying to find a job with better health insurance. Then, a few years ago, I hit the job jackpot. I found a job at a place that not only offered the one benefit I really needed, but let me work at home and do something I was already doing for a lot of friends and family for free (tech support – get your minds out of the gutter).

I came for the regular paycheck and the insurance, but I had only been at the company a week before I realized there was a hidden benefit that had not been mentioned at the interviews. My coworkers and I all work remotely, but during the day, we congregate in a private chatroom. The chatroom is primarily for sharing advices, but, as anyone who’s worked with computer geeks can attest, the Monty Python and Tolkien references also fly thick. I’ve always marched to my own beat, and I quickly learned that most of my coworkers had each brought their own rhythm section to our band of tech rep. For one of the few times in my life, I felt like I really fit in, and my $2 fantasy suddenly got a little smaller – I might be able to work part time, but I could never leave this group for good (we all feel that way, btw).

One of the side effects of keeping your own beat in your head is that your not always in sync with what’s in style. For me that’s just about never, and the shrinking of my fortune fantasy accelerated as each session began another realization. The problem became that not only do we live in the perfect house – for us – but, as unmatched and unkempt as most of our furniture is, almost every piece has some memory attached to it. So, I had to scratch the multi-million dollar, un-earth-sheltered McMansion from my fantasy. Suddenly these tickets seemed more expensive.

I’ve been scribbling in little notebooks for most of my life. And, while the fortune fantasy requires a ticket infusion to get going each time, my once-secret and sustaining fantasy was to be a real, published author. The ridiculous end of this fantasy is somewhere in J.K. Rowling territory, but the more usual one is to be living in an off-beat, off-grid house in Vermont, making enough money and having enough legitimacy to keep scribbling away. For many years the ‘any money’ part was fantasy.

However, as I began writing more as part of a group and then found a writing workshop that made a writing life seem possible, the potential realization of my $2 fantasy – however remote a possibility – began to seem like even less of a blessing. After all, hitting a multimillion dollar jackpot might get you a spot on the Today show, but it does not make you a better writer.

So Saturday, as I went to play our lucky numbers, the little voice called to me from behind the mostly-locked iron door at the back of my brain was still, trying to lure me back to my world of fantasy. But as I stood in line ticking off the things I would do if we won, I realized the list had grown depressingly short. We’d still pay off the bills and future college graduates. We’d still buy a couple of veggie-vehicles, fulfilling our longtime fantasy of converting a car to run on waste vegetable oil (the Big Guy also has his own rhythm section). But that’s it. I really couldn’t think of anything we’d do.

I still bought the ticket of course – no one will ever accuse me of being too rational. But instead of thinking about all the problems it would magically solve, I walked out thinking about the things that I really want from life and how even a winning number could never give me most of them. It occurred to me that the problem with the deflating $2 fantasy was that I’ve become the author and fulfiller of my own fantasy over the last few years. And it’s still the one that sustains me.

Secrets and Stories

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There are stories in any life that are too damaging to tell.  And, while the stories that come later will help to fill a mind with less painful memories, the ones that can’t be told remain.  They are the small hard lumps in a heart. 

Mine planted false flags, and, in an unwitting effort to exorcise that story from my soul, I followed them – even after I knew they were leading me astray.  Spiting only myself, I continued on the wrong path, creating more stories so filled with my own decay and debauchery that, for many years, I only told them to myself and then only as fiction.  

Like all little girls, I read fairy tales as a child.  As a girl I once dreamed of being rescued by a prince – he didn’t even have to be handsome.  Then I dreamed, not of being rescued, but of being worth rescuing.  I dreamed of being beautiful or wise or good like the often passive but always pure and morally perfect ‘heroines’ of these tales.  

I finally did choose a new path that led me to a new town and to a prince.  But even after I began creating new stories, I wondered if they were just another part of the fantasy where I was wise and good.  My rescue didn’t come until several years after I married my prince, and it didn’t come with a dramatic fight or breaking of a spell.   

Instead, my salvation was in those years.  It was in learning to trust someone.  It was in being a partner.  And when we became parents, responsible for another life, it was, for me, in realizing that I was in the process of rescuing myself – whether or not I was beautiful or good or wise.

I thought about this yesterday watching the BillionRising videos and posts from around the world as women (and many men) spoke out against sexual assault and violence against women.  I thought of the women who can’t tell the stories of their lumps because of shame and fear.  I thought of how many of them, trying to make sense of their stories, have wandered from the paths they started on when they were girls. I thought about how many still wonder if they can or should be rescued.  And I thought about the way we talk about the stumbling starlets, misguided girls in the midwest, and even the women who have had their stories brutally ended at the back of a bus or irrevocably altered in a dorm room.  As a warning to others not to slip or be pushed, we call them slut or tramp or trash, admitting to the world that those tales – and sometimes even their owners – should be discarded.

The small, hard lump in my heart never goes away.  I don’t think it can.  But for me, the key to living with it was to stop giving into the conventional wisdom that a fallen woman can never get back up.  The BillionRising reminded me how important as it is to safeguard the stories of the girls who are just starting their journeys.  But it also reminded me, yet again, how important it is that – whether they trip and fall or have a push of any sort – every one of them has the chance to rescue herself when she’s ready because we are all wise and good and beautiful enough to be saved.

Laugh, Cry, Diet

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It’s the eleventh of February which makes this almost the 41rst first day of my new diet.  

It’s not a fad diet.  I know those don’t work.  The only ‘diet’ that’s ever worked (for me) was keeping a journal on paper or on my iPod and keeping myself accountable.  But the part of dieting I really hate is not the calorie and fiber tracking.  It’s not the preparation – I’m a surprisingly decent cook for someone who’s built a blog around being a bad housekeeper.  It’s not the exercise which can be addicting once you get going (those endorphins are better than prozac).  It’s not even the food itself – a lot of healthy food is actually pretty tasty.  

The thing I hate about dieting is that it’s not a diet.  It is recognizing that the bag of sour cream and onion chips I’m having for breakfast really does have to be off the list – forever. (Maybe not for everyone, but for me the salty sweet stuff is like crack to a drug addict.)  It is accepting sensible portions for the long haul.   It really is about making a life change.

My early adult years were characterized by many things, but one of them was not restraint – in any part of my life.  I played. I partied.  I sinned.  And I ate.  I ate anything I wanted.  Food – especially good food – was my drug.  When the Big Guy and I first married, we moved to Boston’s Italian North End, and I denied my palate nothing.  When we travelled, indulging in local flavors was as much a part of the experience as the art and the sights.  In my early twenties, youthful metabolism and a lifestyle centered around dancing and walking helped my body combat the effects of my food lust.  I look at pictures of myself from back then and can’t believe I thought I was fat as a size 6 or 8 (does anyone ever NOT thing they’re too fat).

A few years after we were married, I took an office job that had me driving to and from work for an hour a day.  Not surprisingly, retribution had an easier time catching up with me in a car than when I was walking to work everyday in the city.  But when my jeans got tighter, I didn’t get wise.   I got new jeans.

Now, many years and sizes later, I’m still trying to get my fat butt on the diet wagon and find a way to keep it there.  I know that my issue food is not just about flavor.  It is about fullness, however.  I know that there’s been an empty part me for as long as I can remember, and I am sure I am not the only person who uses food to fill that void – even when my body is crying uncle.  The worst part is, the more you try to fill it, the bigger it gets because you’re also filling it with shame and loathing.

I used to tell myself the big jeans didn’t matter.  Being good at my job matters.  The Big Guy matters.  Thing1 and Thing2 matter.  

But as I watch twelve-year-old Thing1 pour out my Diet Coke when he thinks I’m not looking (don’t let your kids read about all the things that could cause their mother cancer or diabetes), I realize the big jeans do matter.  So far, I’ve dodged the diabetes bullet and a lot of the other ailments that go along with being fat.  What I don’t do, however, is get out on the ice with my kids at skating practice.  I don’t go one walks or take slides down the sledding hill because I’d have to climb back up it.  And worse, I let shame dictate how I interact with the people who interact with my kids, and that does affect them.

Most of my diets start in the morning and are over by dinner.  Today I’m trying something different and clearing out the crap before the family comes home.  Dinner will be on a salad plate, and the kitchen will be closed at 8PM.  And when I’m tempted by the cookie jar, I’m going to get out my journal and write a note to myself that it matters because they matter.  

It wouldn’t be bad to be able to zip up that little number that’s been hanging on the back of my closet door for the last three years either.

 

 

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Lost Weekend

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Across the state, schools had closed on Friday.  Store shelves were being cleared as people prepared for a day of camping in on Saturday.  I stocked the pantry with chips and dip, the fridge with a massive casserole and whipped cream for hot cocoa.  Thing1 and Thing2 made sure their sleds were ready, and the wood bin was overflowing.

But, Saturday morning, the snow had not materialized.  We were expecting a blizzard and barely got a dusting in our little corner of Vermont (4-6 in Vermont is a dusting).  As we gazed out at the trees already stripped of snow by the howling wind, our entire family felt ripped off by the weather industry.

Everything had been canceled for Saturday already – basketball, breakfast out – and with a still-falling mercury, the Big Guy and I quickly decided to proceed with the camp-in as planned.  We fired up the DVD player and began our day-long homage to sloth.

I set out cereal and cinnamon buns at breakfast, and cheese and crackers and other snacks at lunch.  As soon as one of us got the notion to do something productive the rest of the family would intervene, re-issuing the proclamation that today was about doing nothing.  Computers were shuttered, homework was put away, and the phone was ignored.  The conversation never became more serious than debating whether there are more Monty Python or Tolkien references in Futurama.  Our bodies and our brains were only aware of the red hot stove and the person snuggling on the sofa next to us.

It was pointless.  It was unproductive, and it was glorious.

 

The Witching Hour

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Witching Hour

Sometimes, after wrapping up the end of a day doing tech support while refereeing Thing1 and Thing2 as they try to avoid homework and chores by revving up for World War III, I take off.  It’s only a short escape, and in the summer, it’s still light, and I’ll drive along the Battenkill River, absorbing the sights and smells of Vermont as the pinkish-gold light of evening makes everything magical.  Now it’s winter, and my mini vacations tend to lead me to the local country store for an extended errand.

A few evenings ago I used a forgotten ingredient as my pretext for a quick break.  Most evenings the Mom of the Mom-and-Pop store is there, guiding her crew as they make closing preparations.  Traffic comes in fits and spurts, and I’ll usually grab my purchase and head to the large round, oil-cloth covered table at the back of the store by the deli to peruse one of the magazines strewn about and to chat with Mom who is also a close friend.

Most mornings this Round Table is surrounded by her Knights.  These (mostly) men of the town – retired or on their way to work – convene in shifts for a couple of hours every morning as they solve the world’s problems and discuss the deer population (which is just as heated as the politics).  The other night, however, the circle at the back of the store took on a distinctly less knightly aura.

At my bachelorette party umpteen years ago, an aunt told me, “It’s not the big things that’ll kill a marriage, it’s the little things that drive you crazy that will do it.”  It was one of those little things that had driven me to the store in search of potatoes that night.  It was my second ingredient trip in two hours and the third in two days, and when I sat down I was ready for some commiseration.  My friend took a break from her closing chores, and we began trading our anecdotes of marital merriment and madness.  We had just started to vent when a mutual friend joined us with her own war stories to share.  It wasn’t long before the chatting turned to laughter and the laughter to cackling, and I realized we’d become a coven.

As our laughter rose and my friend’s employees patiently waited out our hysteria till they could ask the boss for guidance, I remembered that gatherings like this might once been subversive enough to spark a witch trial or two.  A casual listener might have heard our conversation and thought we were plotting the downfall of men and marriage.  The reality is that, in seeking company for our momentary miseries, we each left our gathering actually appreciating our situations – married or not.  Our shrieks of laughter had fallen over me like stolen fairy dust, exorcising my exasperation over the little thing that had propelled me out of the house.  It was just the bit of magic I needed to get back and finish dinner with a smile.

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.

 

Till Death Do Us Part

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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.