Twenty Years Early

Oh Look, a Goldfish!

2011-06-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

I used to be your standard, everyday, garden-variety procrastinator. I’d start folding laundry, and get distracted by the movie I was watching at the time, and keep watching the movie instead of getting the next load of laundry. I’d play computer games instead of paying the bills, cut flowers out of my rose garden instead of pulling weeds, and read novels instead of washing the dishes.

Now, though, my brain has ascended to a whole new level of procrastinatory subterfuge. Instead of finding myself suddenly in the mood for online Scrabble and British chick lit (which are easily identifiable time-wasters), my brain has a new strategy: USEFUL procrastination.

Oh, it’s devious. I have gradually gained the self-discipline to say to myself, “Self, NO. You do not need to knit a scarf for the homeless right now. Yes, that is a worthy activity, but you know perfectly well that you do it for fun, and that as soon as you put that scarf in the Salvation Army basket, you’ll start another one with that lovely fuzzy brown yarn you’ve had your eye on. Go do your work.” But when my brain tells me to clean out the fishbowl, I’m completely derailed.

The fishbowl? Really? I hate cleaning the fishbowl! It smells funny, and I always end up spilling stinky water on myself. Fishfish (official name: Leif Erikson, in honor of our Norwegian heritage and my daughter’s recent school project on our Viking friend) freaks out every time he’s moved. Since I bought a bowl that’s round on the front and flat on the back so that I can tuck it neatly up in front of my box of imported teas, it’s a royal pain to get my hand into the odd little corners and scrub out the algae. The little rocks fall into the sink, and they’re hard to gather back up when they’re wet. And then there was that heart-stopping moment when Fishfish made a break for it and came within a wiggle of going down the garbage disposal.

There is no earthly reason why I should suddenly be overwhelmed with the conscientious urge to clean out Fishfish’s bowl, but such was the case today when I sat down to the computer to work. I do occasional freelance editing for a local publishing company, and I just started work on a new manuscript. This afternoon I had a clean desk, a nice block of time, minimal interruptions from family, and a goal to get through Chapter 1. Perfect! Of course, I would need a cup of tea. (pause for ominous music)

Now this is where my old brain would have gone on vacation. “Oo, a cup of tea! Yum. Black tea or herbal? British Breakfast, Earl Grey, PG Tips, or Sainsbury’s Red Label? In a bag or loose leaf? Wonder Woman mug or bone china with hand-painted violets? This water is taking forever to boil, I’ll just lean on the counter and read a book while I wait. [Two hours pass.] Mmm, good tea, good book, I love a quiet afternoon!” But no. My new-and-improved brain, now in Stealth Mode, said instead, “It would be a good day to pull hundreds of dandelions out of the front yard!”

I was a little startled, needless to say. Some days I really like going at the dandelions, but it hadn’t crossed my mind for a while. My brain continued, “Or sort out the toys in the family room that have been half-sorted into bins for a year! Empty the dishwasher! Organize your scrapbook materials like you’ve been meaning to do for the last several weeks! Go do some laundry!” But then my brain, high on self-righteousness and reckless optimism, made its fatal blunder: “You want to clean the fishbowl!”

“Ahhh,” I thought. “I’m not THAT desperate to avoid my editing.” It wasn’t about motivation at all! I wasn’t really in the mood to pull weeds, and if I’d given myself permission to do so, I’m quite sure I would have gotten distracted and ended up reading a novel on the front porch instead. It was all about procrastination, and my clever subconscious had simply devised a more oblique route to its usual destination (tea and good books, and possibly knitting). I was onto myself. I wasn’t about to lose this one!

Sadly, I was smarter than I thought. Today I reorganized the kids’ toys, cleared a bunch of space in the family room, vacuumed, cleaned off the knick-knack shelves and dusted all of the precious items on display before carefully replacing them, did a load of laundry, drank a pot of tea (British Breakfast, loose leaf, Wonder Woman mug), read three chapters of my novel, and, I am embarrassed to admit, cleaned out the fishbowl. I didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t just leave that basket of toys sitting out, and … well, you see how that ended.

This evening I have a block of time, the kids are about to go to bed, and I even have a mug of tea right here. There is no reason in the world that I shouldn’t get that chapter finished, now that I’ve figured out my brain’s insidious new technique of suggesting useful activities to avoid real work. I will completely ignore it if, for example, it comes up with a ludicrous time-wasting suggestion such as “You should post on your blog!”

Know When to Hold 'Em

2011-05-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

"Know when to walk away, know when to run."

"A time for silence, and a time to speak."

One's Kenny Rogers and the other is King Solomon, but they were saying the same thing. Sometimes you have to speak up, but sometimes you do say it best when you say nothing at all. As a mom, I constantly struggle with this balance, especially having been blessed with a daughter who came from the womb convinced that every time is a time to speak.

Just ask my mom, though - Mary came by it honestly.

Some of my earliest memories are of watching my mother sew. In my recollection, I had a great view of the sewing machine and my mother's hands. But it wasn't until I was an adult that I discovered why my image of this activity wasn't from the vantage point of a little chair beside the sewing table, which is where my kids sit when they watch me sew. According to my mother, she sat on the front half of her chair and allowed me to stand on the back half of it, leaning over her shoulder watching her hands working the fabric and the machine, all the while chattering directly into her ear.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think I'd be able to do that with my kids for, oh, about THREE SECONDS. I simply can't imagine letting a kid quite literally hang over my shoulder while I worked, and my mother deserves a medal (or perhaps some nice chocolate truffles) for letting me do it. I remember talking to her while she baked bread, while she folded laundry, while she drove, while she did just about everything - my little voice had so much to say, and if I remember talking that much before my little sister was big enough to be a target for my long-winded discourses on stuffed animals and the neighbors' dogs and who knows what else, then my mother was probably the one listening.

She was good at it, too. She listened through middle school as I told her about the books I read, the classes I was taking, the teachers I loved and loathed. She let me tell her the same stories over and over (as I am still prone to do, if I don't catch myself), and listened every time. She listened to my high school woes of friendships and crushes and missing assignments, and listened to them again.

By the time I got to college, the listening had to be done over the phone, and I wasn't as good at checking in as I probably should have been. But she listened then, too - to the roommate disasters of my early college years, the hopeless crushes (still), the highs and lows of boyfriend issues (finally!), the missing assignments (some things didn't change much in college), and the endless discussion of what color of bridesmaid dresses I wanted.

Time went on, and she listened as I struggled to lose weight, hoped for a baby (MANY hours of patient listening on this subject), and told her about my piano students in my new and much-loved job as a piano teacher. She listened for hours about my frustrations with a musical group I was in, and listened again when I made the difficult decision to leave it. She listened even more when I was nearly keeling over with sleep deprivation when my children were babies, and if my lack of sleep made me incomprehensible, she politely didn't mention it.

There were years when I talked less than I should have, but I still knew she was there to listen. There were years when I talked far more than I should have, and still she listened. Now, don't get me wrong - she talked, too. We both talked, sometimes loudly and in frustration, sometimes joyfully, about everything from feminism to favorite authors to the best way to deal with a particularly tricky bit of sewing. (Her advice - read the instructions and take it slowly and carefully. My advice - sew really fast, and then backstitch all over it to hold it in place. My mother, needless to say, has neater corners on her clothing than I do.) Sometimes we talked at the same time, and when my sister was around, it wasn't unheard of for us all to talk at once - like Mom's sister explains, we get so much more said that way!

Mothering is full of trial and error, and all training is on the job. Mom seemed to know from the beginning, though, that one of the things children need is simply to be heard. To have someone say, "Yes. I see you. Your voice is heard, even when no one else can hear you, when the rest of the world is too loud and too fast and too busy, your little voice comes to my ears and I hear you." She knew, she knows, that simply listening can answer some questions better than talking, and that an open phone line and an email she checks every day can be a lighthouse in the dark.

I'm trying to talk more to her about things that matter, and less about things that don't. She listened to me for all of the thirty-seven years that it took for me to start figuring out that balance, though, and I'm doing my best to do the same. I listen now to stories about what my daughter thinks the cat is thinking, and about my son's elaborate plans to make a trap for moths out of Legos. (Don't ask.) And, wonder of wonders, I listen to my mom too.

Even with all this personal growth and soul-searching and maturing as a parent, though, I have my limits ... if Mom asks to stand on the back of my chair when I sew, she's outta luck.

Just Don't Land On Your Head.

2011-01-28T14:30:00.000-08:00

Before I find myself in the semi-finals for the Bad Mother of the Year Award, let me be absolutely clear: My children use seatbelts, wear government-approved safety helmets when riding their bikes, and I do not allow them to climb 30-foot pine trees just to see the view from the top.

I am, of course, willfully ignoring the fact that my sister and I safely rode on the floor in the backseat of the family car from Sacramento to southern Oregon, using the seat as a table for our art supplies, all of which could have become fatal projectiles in the event of an accident. We routinely walked and rode “around the block” (which in our rural area was a two-mile trip) without helmets, cell phones, or cans of Mace. And while I was not technically allowed to climb that particular tree all the way to the top, I never once fell out of it.

After the obligatory new-mother panic, I found myself settling into a more easygoing approach to parenting. Part of it is because I realized that there’s no definitive rule book that enables you to protect your kid from everything – I dutifully strapped Peter into his carseat and held his hand when we crossed the street, and he managed to break his arm by falling less than three feet out of a swing in our own backyard.

It’s also partly because you just run out of energy after a while. When I’m at the park lying in the sun half-reading a book and half-not, and the kids are laughing and screeching on the jungle gym, my default answer to “MOM! Can we … ?” quickly fades from a snappy “Absolutely not!” to a sun-soused murmur of “OK, whatever, just don’t land on your head.”

One of the main reasons I’ve loosened up, though, is that I’m not exactly a Safety First girl myself when it comes to things I really, really want to do. Especially if I’m taking pictures with my beloved little camera, my approach to rules gets a little … flexible. A quick flip through my favorite pictures triggers a stream of memories: “I was holding onto a tree and trying not to fall into Mill Lake when I took that!” “Haha, I was TOTALLY trespassing when I took that shot – had to climb over two fences to get it.” “Oh man, I came SO close to sliding off that cliff. Good shot though, huh?” And when my daughter has watched me look both ways for cars and stand right on Highway 101 to get a better shot of the Coos Bay Bridge … well, “Don’t cross the street without a grown-up” loses a little of its punch.

So when Mary came home with a vague assignment from her middle school cooking class to “cook something”, I vetoed her hesitant suggestion of pancakes. I was planning on making clam chowder, and I figured she might as well learn how to do it right. I showed her how to peel a potato, handed her the vegetable peeler, and said, “Don’t peel your skin off. It hurts.” And she didn’t. I got out my cherished Wüsthof chef’s knife (which cost more than everything else in the silverware drawer and could take a finger off if you’re not careful), showed her how to dice a potato, and said, “Don’t cut the end of your finger off. It hurts. Your uncle did it once, so don’t do that.” And she didn’t.

Everything went fine until it was time to add the bowl full of diced potatoes to the merrily bubbling mess of scallions and melted butter in the stock pot. Mary wanted me to get a few pictures of her culinary adventure, so I talked her through the process of tipping the bowl of potatoes into the pot while I watched through the digital viewfinder. I snapped the picture just as she dropped the bowl and jerked her hand away from the hot butter, which I’d forgotten to remind her about.

She ran to the sink and put her burned finger under a stream of cold water while I rescued the potatoes. I said, not without a certain amount of sympathy, “Well, I guess part of being a good cook is learning how to treat a grease burn.” And in that moment, my daughter made me proud: Instead of whimpering and moaning, blaming me for her burned finger, or complaining about the mess, Mary sniffled back her tears and asked, “Did you get the shot?”

Rule book or not, I must be doing something right.

Painting the Bathroom (Attention Deficit Disorder Edition)

2011-01-16T20:52:00.000-08:00

I love painting! In theory, anyway. Reality somehow ends up looking a little different from what I've envisioned.

I have a form of ADHD that is less common than the usual variety, and is significantly different in that it doesn't include hyperactivity. (There's some argument about whether it's actually part of ADHD or is a separate neurological issue, but that's another post for another day. Unless I forget. Which I probably will.) It does, however, include a chronic tendency to overestimate my own abilities to multi-task, to prioritize like a rational human being, and to determine exactly how many activities will actually fit into any given hour of the day.

So, in practical terms, this means I can wait until the end of my sentence before I say, "Oh look, a squirrel!" But then when I see the squirrel, I'm not only distracted, I'm temporarily derailed. I think, "Oh, he's so cute, running around on the tree out there. All the leaves are off the tree now! I should probably rake. Oh hey, I didn't cut back my roses last fall, darn it! I should go do that, and I know where the clippers are, they're right on the front porch because I was going to do it in November but then I got so tired that day and forgot about it." And then I will go out in the January cold and prune my rosebushes, and not remember what I was originally doing until hours - perhaps days - later.

Can you see how this might be somewhat incompatible with a project involving wet paint?

So, when I take on a project like changing the bathroom's ivory-and-more-ivory color scheme into a more updated soft beige with crisp white trim, I have to be PREPARED. Caffeine - check! Hershey bar - check! Paint - check! (Priorities, you know.) Paintbrushes, tape, newspaper, drop cloths, screwdriver, paint stirrer, rags, ladder - checkcheckcheck! Horrible old jeans and dark pink shirt that was so ugly that paint splotches improved it. Pandora on the iPad. Hallway light turned off so that I will not see squirrels or their non-rodent distractionary equivalent. (Did you know there is only one instance on Google of someone else coining the word "distractionary"? How can that BE? It's such an obvious word!) (Oh. Whoops. Case in point, there.)

Anyway, I'm ready to go. I have everything All Planned Out, so that I will stay on task and finish what I'm doing. The Beach Boys will sing, the sun will shine in the window (in January! in Oregon!), the tape will all go on straight, and my drop cloths will not get scrunched up under my ladder. I will work industriously, painting perfect lines with my beautifully steady hand, never dripping, never spilling, never smacking my hip on the corner of the bathroom counter and swearing loud enough that it echoes off the bare walls. Somewhere in this increasingly rosy picture, I've developed the ability to effortlessly paint around the tricky bits and reach all the awkward corners. It's not until I notice that my dream self looks suspiciously like Reese Witherspoon at her most adorable that I get the uneasy feeling that things might not quite turn out exactly like this image, at least not in every detail.

Four hours pass, in a decidedly un-dreamlike manner.

I do not look at all like Reese Witherspoon by now. (I didn't look a whole heck of a lot like her in the first place, but now I really don't.) I am hot, tired, cranky, and distinctly wobbly from the paint fumes. The awkward corners have been attempted, fudged, and abandoned. Pandora has forgotten what I told her, and she is playing Boston. (Not that I don't like Boston, I do, but it's not always the most restful music.) My drop cloths look like they've been attacked by a flock of incontinent seagulls, my paint-flecked hair is escaping from its hastily arranged bun, and the ladder is in the bathtub. Swearing? Don't ask.

However, I have mostly managed (we'll just ignore that isolated instance of FarmVille) to stay on task. It has taken much longer than I expected, but my poor focus-challenged brain has managed to stay pointed in the right direction for most of the afternoon, and I have actually accomplished quite a lot. And then my daughter comes home and it all goes to pieces.

I am standing on the bathroom counter, the ladder long abandoned because it's not tall enough. (Or I might just be too short, but I'm not willing to consider that possibility right now.) She's talking to me through the partly open door, and I am trying to reach the corner with the roller. And then, CRACK! The much-abused wooden edging around the countertop finally gives up the ghost, falling with a clatter to the floor. Startled, I step into a puddle of paint on the counter that I swear was not there a minute ago. I am still dangerously close to the edge of the countertop, which is now just that crucial bit narrower than it was. Still brandishing my paint-covered roller, I shuffle onto a free bit of counter. NOOOO! I just got more paint on the counter!

I need a wet rag, stat. I stand on my non-painty right foot and reach with my painty left foot to get the damp rag off of the ladder. I manage to wipe up the worst of the paint with the rag clenched in my toes, and drop the rag in the sink. When I realize that my paint roller is dripping, I finally have the presence of mind to put it back in the pan. By now I've put my left foot down onto a patch of newspapers, which promptly stick to the bottom of my foot.

I have to laugh ... I can't help it. I look like an escapee from a lunatic asylum (apparently one undergoing interior redecorating), my daughter is doubled over in a hysterical fit of laughter, and the bathroom looks like a particularly stylish bomb has gone off. And Pandora, in one glorious, serendipitous moment of electronic clarity, has decided on Queen for the soundtrack:

"Another One Bites the Dust."

Pride Goeth.

2010-10-21T15:08:00.000-07:00

As I've gotten older, I've gotten increasingly less interested in the opinions of all but those who matter most to me. I don't worry as much about my hair, I spent less time fretting about my funny walk and ghostly skin, and I have even found a small measure of resigned acceptance of my post-baby figure.

That said, when I was approached with an offer to include me in a project featuring local artists doing what they do, I thought, “Oh yes, of course you can photograph me in the daily nitty-gritty of my work, as long as I can have an hour to do my hair and makeup, and I need to find that one good red lipstick, and I think maybe those REALLY flattering jeans and my good black boots, and can you not shoot me from the side because I don’t like my double chin?”

What I actually said was, “Yeah, sure!” You know, all casual-like. And then arranged for the photo shoot to take place at rehearsal (in the performance hall at the local university) instead of at my house as originally planned. I mean, sure, it’s a great idea in theory. But for a photographic feature that focuses on process (the hidden, solitary hours of solo practice) instead of the final product (the black-satin-clad, high-heeled, sparkly-jeweled performances), I was a little worried about just HOW nitty-gritty this might be.

My actual practice sessions involve stepping over an abandoned wooden train-track construction to get to the piano, clearing elaborate Lego creations off of the bench before I sit down, and making sure there are no marbles under the pedals. There's usually a cup of tea or a can of diet Coke on a coaster proclaiming "I had a mind once - now I have small children." A small pile of M&M candies (for energy, you know) is a distinct possibility. I generally have my hair in a ponytail to keep it out of my face, I rarely have makeup on when I'm at home, and I almost always practice barefoot. Pajamas and a bathrobe are not unheard of. I’m all for honesty, but this was a little more honesty than I wanted posted on the internet.

I thought this would be a good compromise – I’d be more casual than on a performance day, certainly, which is highly dependent on good makeup, hot rollers, hairspray, and a quite literally breath-taking amount of Lycra under that smooth sweep of black chiffon. On the other hand, this “casual” snapshot of my work would still include a lovely nine-foot Steinway, polished hardwood floors, and beautiful lighting. I decided on jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, my good black boots, and of course I would allow ample time for carefully understated makeup and a complete blow-dry of my waist-length hair. I’d leave my librarian-esque glasses at home for once in favor of contact lenses, put on a little eyeliner so you could see my eyes, maybe a touch of lipstick. As my imagination picked up pace, I envisioned (remember that thing about pride and falls?) my hands tenderly drawing music from the keys as my hair cascaded around me in a shining, smooth waterfall of blonde, eyes closed in a moment of transcendent oneness with the music.

So, at 8:45 I’m on the phone with Hannah, the soprano I’ll be working with, getting everything settled regarding the hall and the photographer. I’ve spent the last 45 minutes getting my son fed and ready for school, and I’m not as far along as I thought I’d be in my preparations. I realize I’m cutting it close, so I say my goodbyes to Hannah with a cheery “See you at ten!” Hannah says, “No, no, you mean 9:30!” I say, “Um, yeah! Sorry, you’re right, 9:30.”

At which point I hang up and explode into full-fledged Panic Mode. I am wearing a green nightshirt with a cartoon of a giant black bear on the front. I am barefoot, unfed, unshowered, and my sleep-tousled hair is rampaging in a highly unflattering multitude of directions. It takes twenty minutes to get to the university, and it is now 8:48.

I fly into the bathroom, barely taking the time to take my glasses off before I get into the shower. I take the fastest shower I’ve taken in years, forgoing conditioner (I know I’ll regret this shortly) in favor of speed. I hop back out of the shower, scrubbing my hair with a towel as I charge back to the bedroom to get dressed. Jeans! Black sweater! Earrings! Socks, I can’t find my socks, dang it! Here, laundry basket, socks, run, run, run, back to the bathroom … auuggghhh! My HAIR!

I am faced with the inevitable result of a fast shower, no conditioner, and a mad towel-drying rampage. Helena Bonham-Carter’s rats’-nest of hair in any one of her freakier movie roles is a good point of comparison. There is no way, NO way this is going to metamorphose into a smoothly shimmering waterfall, or even a moderately ripply stream. There is no help for it. I get it just dry enough and just detangled enough that it doesn’t appear to be harboring small birds and woodland creatures, and twist it into a bun, stabbing blindly with hairpins until it feels like it will withstand the mad rush to the university.

Contacts … no time, I guess I’m Marian the Librarian today. Makeup … quick, a little powder and mascara, and let’s at least cover up that spot in case he decides that pimples add to the artist-at-work ambience. Lipstick? No time. DANG IT.

Run downstairs, gather music, grab a granola bar, no time for tea, do I have a pencil?, purse, boots! No time to go back and get them, I’m late, sneakers will have to do, but oh NO these are bootcut jeans, and I guess they’ll just have to drag on the ground, nothing to do for it now. Run to the car, run back for my cell phone, run to the car again, come on light turn GREEN, park, mad dash across campus, and I’m here.

Beautiful piano. Perfect light. Shining wood floor. Lovely Hannah. And my scuffed-up Converse sneakers, cheeks flushed from hurry, hair already trying to escape the hasty updo, and clothes disheveled from the careless dash from the car. Everything was rushed, mussed, breathless, and not at all what I had in mind. The photographer said it was perfect.

I can live with rushed, mussed, breathless and perfect.

Little Miss Smartypants, Version 2.0

2009-12-22T13:07:00.000-08:00

My family and I spent the last few days at a retreat center at the Oregon coast with a large collection of in-laws, outlaws, and assorted relatives. Since the number of private rooms is limited, we usually give them to whoever has the smallest (read: loudest) children, or those from the grandparent generation who prefer not to climb into bunk beds, thank you very much. My family is in neither of those categories, so we happily staked out a corner in the dormitory with several other family members.

On Monday, Mary and I woke up around 8:15 after a somewhat patchy night of sleep. Our bunkbeds (wooden, with plastic-covered mattresses) were much better than the standard 1986-era accommodations I recall from Camp Glendawn, where I spent much of my summers in my teen years - ah, the delights of flattened mattresses, concave with the memory of decades of sleepless little bodies, sagging into the generous downward curve of the swaybacked metal bed frames. On the other hand, one thing we could be fairly sure of avoiding (at least in the girls’ dorm) was the bone-rattling buzzsaw snore of an adult man with a head cold.

I heard Mary rustling in her bunk overhead and whispered up to her, “Come down and snuggle with me?” I used to so love those early mornings when she was still tiny, and (if she wasn’t already in there with me) retrieving her warm wiry little self from her crib for that Mary & Mommy time. I loved looking down at her pink, wiggly little body, grinning up at me with her toothy smile and hyper-aware gaze. It always seemed like she was on the verge of some wry comment, if only she could talk. We don’t get many morning snuggles any more, so I took advantage of the opportunity to curl her into my sleeping bag to let our warm, sleepy bodies settle in under the blanket while we talked.

She yawned mid-sentence, and before she’d gotten halfway through it, the contagious nature of yawns caught me in a jaw-cracking yawn of my own. She’s getting old enough to be able to understand my particular brand of snark, so I quipped, “Thanks.” She shot back, “You’re welcome” in a tone of voice that reminded me that she’s my daughter and her Aunt Mary’s niece, and apparently whatever genetic code contains joking sarcasm, it has been passed down to little Mary entirely undiluted.

We chatted about nothing for a while, her morning “Wakey Girl” mode basically unchanged from her toddler years when she could go from slack-jawed sleep to standing on her little bed jabbering in (I am not making this up) less than ten seconds. This, combined with my usual slow emergence to consciousness, probably would have made for some amusing conversation to an observer. After a few minutes, Mary made a very Brenda-ish non sequitur in a mysterious voice: “There’s an EYE up there.”

I rallied my limited mental resources enough to determine that she was talking about a knot in the grain of the wood in the bunk overhead. I blindly groped until I located my glasses, and sure enough, some unknown camper had inked a pupil onto it and drawn a circle for an iris. We looked at it consideringly for a moment. It didn’t do anything. Then Mary said in a sepulchral voice (for a 10-year-old, anyway), “It’s WATCHING US.”

We both started giggling, and I launched into an early-morning-alto chorus of “It sees you when you’re sleeping, it knows when you’re awake,” and continued through the song with the words, “You better not shout, you better not cry, you better not whatever…” and I realized that my IQ points were not quite up to their maximum yet. We agreed that “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” is actually kind of a creepy song if you stop and think about it, and returned to our contemplation of The Great Eye.

I started to say something, and was peremptorily shushed: “Shh, I’m having a staring contest.” I replied, “Let me know how that works out for you,” and we both dissolved into giggles. Another long pause, and then: “… I think I’m WINNING.” More giggles, and then I regained just enough sense of maternal responsibility to say, “Yes, dear, but at some point you have to blink, and it doesn’t.” Extended silence, punctuated by muffled laughter, and finally: “It’s SQUINTING. I think it’s going to BLINK.”

At this point we both lost it entirely, and it was time to crawl out of our cocoon and make ourselves at least minimally presentable. I have to say, it felt pretty good to start the day knowing that even if she’d fallen off the bed as an infant and I’d let her eat a few too many M&M’s in her life and probably snapped at her when I was tired, if my daughter could be that funny before 9 a.m., I must have done something right.

Fat Woman Running

2009-07-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

"Inside every fat person is a thin person trying to get out."

- attributed to hypnotist Milton Erickson

"Inside of me there is a thin person trying to get out, but I can usually sedate him with five or six doughnuts."

- humorist Pat Williams

Aside for the eighteen months I spent being pregnant, I am reasonably sure there has never been anybody else hitching a ride inside of me, thin or otherwise. But given that I weigh more at this moment than I did the morning I went into labor with my first child, and that was including water retention that made me look like an escapee from the hippo exhibit at the zoo, the actual existence of that hypothetical other person has become somewhat moot.

Because honestly, it doesn't matter how good my hair is (not bad right now), how much I like my new red lipstick (a lot), or how much of my wardrobe is black and slimming (at least 60%). Disguising this much extra weight is going to require David Copperfield, not just serious amounts of Lycra and distractingly adorable leaf-green satin high heels.

Diet Coke does not, in fact, cancel out a Hershey bar.

Lots of people have one pivotal moment, but mine has been a gradual realization. I've probably lost in excess of 200 pounds in the last fifteen years, and if most of them weren't the same five pounds, that would be so much more impressive. However, the last few years have seen a steady gain, an extra biscuit here and a second helping of totally decadent macaroni-with-three-cheeses there, and what the heck, there's not really enough of this left to make a decent lunch tomorrow so I'll just eat it at the counter while I read the last chapter of my novel, because calories don't count if you eat while you're standing up, right?

Well, it turns out they do. They also count if it's your birthday. Or your child's birthday. Or your nephew's birthday. They count if they're consumed at a totally legitimate work event. They count if you're only having a piece to be polite. They count even if the person you're with is having a bigger dessert than you are. Calories count, and this is SO unfair, even if you're at a big family gathering and everybody's having pizza and nobody's counting calories and there's so much pizza that it'll just go to waste if it sits out there all evening and you're really just doing it to be helpful.

It gets worse! All this time, the broken cookies DID have calories. Tasting the Parmesan cream sauce to make sure it had enough garlic, no free pass there either. Calories eaten after midnight definitely counted, as did calories consumed at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and (sob) Valentine's Day. A diet Coke does not, in fact, cancel out a Hershey bar. And for the ultimate indignity, it turns out that I have been wrong since high school -- if you get up in the middle of the night and leave the light off in the kitchen, and open the fridge really fast and snag the leftover peanut butter cream cheese brownies and slam the door, the calories were not actually out running around in the refrigerator while the lights were off, and those brownies did in fact have 300 calories apiece, just like they did after dinner when you ate the other three.

And the silly thing is, I can't even claim ignorance. My mother has worked in a hospital for the last twenty years, several of which were in the hospital's fitness center. I've had earnest conversations with my doctor, who is less than amused at the mumblety-three pounds I've put on since we first met in 1995. I've done Jenny Craig (yummy muffins), Weight Watchers (frozen banana chocolate treats!), and mostly vegetarian (cheeeeeese!). I know about low-fat, low-sugar, low-glycemic, low-calorie, and how sad it is that I wanted to finish that off with "cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun"? Are you seeing a trend here?

I like food. I like to plan it, I like to cook it, I like to feed it to other people, I like to eat it, and I like to have seconds of it. One of my favorite ways to spend an evening in our D&D days (yeah, shut up, I'm a child of the eighties) was to invite ten people over for dinner and dessert. While they played the first round, I'd happily cook something involving insane amounts of pasta, several kinds of cheese, freshly made cream sauce, tomatoes, chicken, and maybe a couple of loaves of that nice crusty garlicky bread that the whole party has to have or nobody can stand to smell each other for the rest of the night. They'd suspend the game long enough to eat and do the dishes, and then I'd turn right back around and bake a pie or snickerdoodles or my deservedly famous Chocolate Brownie Cookie Thingies. I cook, we all eat, they do the dishes -- life is good.

Life is good, but having to buy four sizes' worth of "temporary" fat pants is not so good. I wasn't too enthused about not being able to get my rings cleaned because they were stuck on my fingers. I don't like looking at that one perfect green dress I bought on Solano Avenue all those years ago, into which I might possibly now be able to fit one jiggly thigh. And I really didn't like looking at the lovely pictures my cousin's wife took at a recent family gathering. I saw my beautiful cousins, their adorable children, and then hold on -- who is that fat woman in the black dress, and why is she wearing my head?

I did lose weight once, quite a bit of it, and I looked good and felt good. It wasn't very complicated, either, and it was the least stressful weight-loss program I ever did. I was walking fifteen to twenty miles a week, eating very little processed sugar, trying out some vegetarian recipes, and breaking myself of the habit of having seconds at nearly every meal. I had muscle tone, I lost weight, and I fit back into pants that were a good five years out of date. And then I got shin splints, bad ones, and over the next few years that served as a wonderful excuse to let myself go completely to pieces.

I still have the shin splints from time to time, but in the last week's return to some semblance of self-discipline, I was surprised to find that I also kept more of the muscle tone than I'd expected. I've gone on a couple of cautious runs, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did not, in fact, kill me. On my last run, an elderly lady in her garden called out to me as I slogged by, "My goodness! You're very ambitious!" Now, granted, part of me wanted to trot back there and slap her, because really? Do I look that bad? But the nice part of me decided it was a compliment and called back, "Thanks!" And I guess maybe this will require a little more ambition than I'm used to, and perhaps the added motivation of periodic prizes (like maybe those utterly fabulous patent leather Mary Janes).

I think this is possible, as long as I don't reward myself for each workout with M&M's. It's definitely necessary, whether I want to do it or not. I like noodles and bread and fried things and cheese (did I mention the cheese?), but I remember now that I also liked running. I liked the wind in my hair, the road under my feet, the rain on my face (this IS Oregon, after all), and the feeling of accomplishment.

So maybe there is someone else inside this fat woman, a reasonably fit runner who's yelling, "Why the HECK are we carrying the weight equivalent of an eight-year-old with us?" I'd prefer that she didn't start talking out loud, or ordering her own workout DVDs off the internet, but I'd like to see if I can get her to change her refrain to "Look what we did!" And maybe, with enough time, there won't be anybody else inside there -- that reasonably fit runner will be me.

Author's Note: I have lost 2.5 pounds so far, and I am cautiously optimistic. Also, all recipes are available on request except for the Chocolate Brownie Cookie Thingies ... sorry, that and my actual weight are on a need-to-know basis.

Postscript for Aspiring Fashion Designers

2009-06-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

It is a lot harder than it looks to get two giggly ten-year-olds into old vacuum cleaner boxes on uneven stairs. There was much giggling and falling over, and I cannot guarantee that no spiders were injured in the making of this photo shoot.

Alternative Fashion for the More Modest Tween

2009-06-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

For years, I didn't understand the moaning and groaning of mothers about the difficulty of finding decent clothes for their preteen daughters. I mean, how hard can it be? Pants to cover up the bottom half, shirts to cover up the top half, put a ribbon in her hair, and you're done!

Then I discovered that this tactic only works until about halfway through the first grade, when all of a sudden those adorable little matched sets are a) uncool and b) impossible to buy in her size. It turns out that there are two sets of sizes for little girls -- 2T (T for toddler) to size 6, and size 7 to size 14. The first set of sizes tends to be sweet outfits that look fine on little girls who are freshly out of the ruffled underpants stage, and are now big enough to think mix-and-match is the coolest clothing concept since the second incarnation of bell bottoms. The second set of sizes ... well, does the name Britney Spears mean anything to you?

Apparently 14-year-olds don't have much desire to look like 7-year-olds, but an increasingly large number of 7-year-olds really want to look like 14-year-olds. The end result is that a little girl who just grew out of her purple corduroy pants and coordinating pink-and-purple striped shirt is now faced with an array of belly-baring, cleavage-enhancing, hip-hugging attire that her mother keeps holding up and saying, "No, they must have the sizes wrong, a ten-year-old could not possibly fit into this skirt." As it turns out, a ten-year-old can -- and if you're worried about the world at large seeing her underpants if she does anything drastic like, you know, walk or sit down or breathe too energetically, have no fear! If they're going to see her underpants anyway, you might as well buy her a backless pair that reads "Eye Candy" on the front! Or maybe a little pair of pink undies that say "Dive In!"

You only think I'm joking.

Well, OK, they recalled those, but only because so many parents threw fits.

Yesterday I tried to buy Mary a few pairs of shorts from the resale shop, nothing fancy, just a few pairs that she could run around in and not worry about if they got stained by glitter glue, mud, paint, or tree sap. (I love that these are equally likely possibilities for my daughter to ruin her clothes with - at least she's having fun, right?) We found three perfectly nice pairs of shorts, every single one of which, when turned around, had something stamped across the backside - "Dance", or maybe the brand name, and we were lucky they didn't say anything worse. (You don't want to know, really.) They all went back on the rack, and we left with empty hands. Call me old-fashioned, and I know some will, but I think that putting a sparkly purple word on something will make people look at it. And when that's my fifth-grader's backside we're talking about, count me OUT.

Since many essayists have articulately and loudly railed about this phenomenon for years, I'll leave that to the professionals. Instead, I'll just list a few alternatives. My grandmother used to joke about how in her day, you could get a hole in the knee of her swimsuit. (A quick phone call revealed that while she was teasing, her mother did in fact have a swimming costume in which it was technically possible to get a hole in the knee. So it's not quite as far back in the Dark Ages as it sounds like.) I know the fashion industry will never go for that, so it's time for moms of tweens to get out their needle and thread (or duct tape, as the case may be), and get creative!

There's always the retro look:

The ever-popular wrap dress gets a fun update with pink roses and Tinkerbell:

Madison models the newest take on the trendy "maxi-dress":

Buy an extra for a friend!

Mary models the latest in "green" clothing:

And for a final environmentally conscious fashion offering, the ladies show off the latest trend for recycled fibers. Madison is wearing a boxy-styled ensemble from the Eureka line, and Mary is in a fetching number with a square neckline by Hoover.

Until these catch on with the fashion industry, just let me know if you find the Holy Grail: A pair of girls' size 10 non-ripped non-skin-tight non-lowrider jeans, preferably for under thirty bucks. Thanks!

Strong Heart, Weak Stomach (or Vice Versa)

2009-06-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

Motherhood is not for the fainthearted. It is also not for the weak-stomached, which is frequently much more relevant to daily life.

Fortunately, I've never had real issues with that. I am not, like my poor friend Erin, a sympathetic vomiter. I offered once to drive up to Portland to help her with the unstoppable chain reaction of her children's flu and her inevitable response, which would have earned me a star in my crown, if not three or four of them. I think that if it had gone on for one more hour, she might have taken me up on it.

That's not to say that I like barf, I just can't get all that worked up about it. I've been living for seven years with a mildly autistic child who has what are politely termed "eating issues". Some textures just don't work, when combined with the wrong mood, busy day, or (for all I know) misalignment of the planets. As a result, I am fully capable of cleaning a recycled dinner off of the placemat, the plate, the chair, the floor, the child's clothing and his hair (how do they do that?!), fixing him a sandwich, and serenely sitting back at my own place to eat my serving of the same dinner I just flushed. I was going to say something at this point about what halved grapes look like the second time around, but I'll spare you that. (You're welcome.)

Pee? No problem. I've cleaned whizz off their chubby little baby bodies, their clothes, my clothes, the bathtub, the bathmat, the kitchen floor (THAT was a low day in the potty-training saga of 2002), the sheets, the blankets, the mattress pad, the carpet, and the bathroom floor at significant distances from the toilet for reasons that I cannot, as a woman, begin to envision.

Yes, I'll say it, the other p-word: Poop doesn't bother me. I'm not saying I'd like to decorate my kitchen in a cowplop motif, but spending most of my childhood crossing a field full of horses and cows to play with the neighbor kids gave me a high tolerance for the stuff (not to mention a fair ability at obstacle courses later in life). If you've cleaned up one of those baby blowouts that end up with it inexplicably settling under their hats, there's not a lot that can bother you down the road when it comes to the brown stuff.

Blood? Still OK. I had a dear friend who spent most of his adult life in various jobs in the medical field, and was one of the most supremely capable men I have ever known ... right up until he cut his finger working on his VW Beetle and had to close his eyes and holler until his wife brought him a Band-Aid, or run the very real risk of passing out cold right then and there. I never had that issue, and in fact chickened out only at the last minute when I had the opportunity to watch a surgery being done on my own foot. I don't like seeing my children bleed, but I've survived front-row seats for their many vaccinations, the broken arm incident, two suspected concussions, tear duct surgery, gymnastics-related bangs and bumps, and the countless scrapes and scratches that naturally result from combining small children with bicycles, stairs, and excitable cats.

So, with this stellar track record of stainless-steel-stomached motherhood behind me, you can imagine how surprised I was to find myself with my head between my knees at Dr. Robertson's office last week. My daughter has had a tiny mole under her right arm since infancy, and while it gave no cause for concern, it chafed when she wore sleeveless tops, so we opted to have it removed. The doctor said it was a simple skin tag that could be treated with a local anesthetic and snipped off with minimal fuss. I was fine through the whole description of the procedure, and my calmness helped my daughter, as I hoped it would. The needle didn't bother me, but as soon as I saw those scissors, I felt ... nervous. You know, just a little ... concerned. Maybe a little fluttery. Is it hot in here? My goodness, I must have had less sleep last night than I thought. I think I'm ... um ...

At this point the doctor realized that Mom wasn't going to be much help, and might actually permanently warp her daughter by passing out cold on the floor, so he excused me from the room. I waited out the rest of the procedure in an adjacent exam room with a line of sight to my daughter, but too far away to see exactly what he was doing with those scissors. I dutifully put my head between my knees when I felt dizzy, but there wasn't anywhere I could put my head to remove the embarrassment.

And even more than feeling silly for being caught off-guard and having to leave, I felt that I had let my daughter down by leaving her right when she needed me. She was fine -- a little zing of pain from the anesthetic, a quick snip, and a brightly colored Band-Aid, and she was good to go. (A trip to Baskin Robbins also seemed to accelerate the healing process.) But I was far from fine, and the bowl of dark chocolate goodness didn't take care of my sore heart.

I know, intellectually, have always known, that I can't go with my daughter and spare her all the hurts of life, and it would be very wrong to do so even if I had such supernatural power. She will need to experience pain, and loneliness, and the heart-strengthening effects of dealing with life's inevitable bruises (physical and metaphysical both) on her own. I know this. I know that I can't even walk along beside her every step of the way to hold her when she cries, because honestly, who really wants to bring their mom to college for the first time they're stood up by a date? I know this, I do. But this day, all I could think of was that she was in there, and I was out here, and I didn't know what to do.

I like to think that she will forget the fast-fading scar and her mother's lightheaded abandonment, and remember only that she was allowed to order the long-coveted clown ice cream treat. I am probably right in this. I suspect, though, that this is only one in a long line of occasions where I am not enough for her, when my weakness makes me fall short of what she needs at that moment. I hope she some day grows up to the point that she knows my love leapt across the hallway even as my body sat hunched on the red plastic chair in the other room.

I won't always be able to catch her, to hold her, to wipe the tears, but I'll keep throwing love across the hall (across the world if necessary), and hopefully enough of it will stick that she'll feel the warmth of it. For tonight, I think I'll carefully ease into her room and hold her warm, sleepy self close, banking against the next time I drop the ball.

It was so much easier when all I had to do was wipe faces and hands and tiny bottoms, but (not too surprisingly) I'd never turn back the clock to those endless, exhausting, smelly, ketchup-stained years. I'll adjust, somehow, to the inevitable independence that will grow and mature out of her childish "My do it!" and propel her into adulthood. For the moment, though, I'm glad the days only go by one at a time ... I don't think my heart could manage more than one of them at once.

Making Money

2008-11-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

Some people are born entrepreneurs, natural salespeople. You know the kind I mean -- the ones (like my father-in-law) who get bored in the summer, and where normal people go to the beach for the week, they start businesses for fun. The high schoolers who mow lawns and babysit like all the other kids, but then invest in stocks and bonds and put themselves through college. The guys who could, with a smile and a joke, steal your car and sell it back to you -- and you'd think you got a good deal.

I am not one of them. I can manage the money I have, save it and invest it and spend it wisely, but I am not one of those people who says, "Hey, let's [fill in the blank]" and the air is suddenly full of dollar signs. Whether my children take after me or their grandpa, though, I feel it's important that they understand how money works, and have some of their own to manage. They each get a small weekly allowance that is not tied to chores, and from that they are expected to put 10% in the bank each month, and 10% into the church offering or another charity. The rest is theirs to save for toys and games, and up until recently that worked out pretty well.

And then there was Lego. Lots of Legos, actually. Hundreds. Thousands. Car Legos, spaceship Legos, airplane Legos, Star Wars Legos, and most of all, Indiana Jones Legos. It starts out small, the little kit with the Indiana Jones guy and his little car and his little hat and his little whip. And on the back of the instruction sheet, there is a picture of a bigger Indiana Jones kit, with a sidekick who comes with his own little hat, and a tower and a boat and a snake to scare Indiana Jones with. And do you know what comes on the back of that instruction sheet? Oh yes. The MOTHER of all Indiana Jones Lego kits. It has 554 pieces, two 75-page books of illustrated instructions, six spiders, eight snakes, a plane, two skeletons, three working traps, a golden skull, and (this always feels vaguely heretical) a little plastic Ark of the Covenant.

It costs eighty bucks. So you can imagine that the kit advertised on the back of that instruction manual was not within the price range of someone who makes $3.20 a month, after giving and savings. Peter therefore took matters into his own hands. He asked for paper, a pen, a cup, some tape, a big cardboard box ("No, Mom, BIGGER!"), and refused to answer any questions about his business plan. Fifteen minutes later, he set up shop:

A closer look at the sign:

Not just any drik, it's good drik. He was open and ready for business, and since he'd chosen the kitchen floor for his grand opening, it was pretty obvious who his target market was. He set it all up, his box and his sign and his plastic cup of lukewarm water, and gazed hopefully up at me. To his disappointment, he learned some important early lessons about pricing and marketing when I didn't pony up the anticipated $76.27.

When that didn't work, we tried the more mundane approach of household chores. We would agree on a service and Peter's fee, he would do the work, I would pay him, and his amused and generous Mama Kate would match his earnings with her own donation. He liked the idea of getting money from Mom and Grandma, but the reality of actually picking up sticks, cleaning under his bed, and sweeping up leaves proved to be daunting.

His latest moneymaking venture arrived in a black construction paper "envelope", carefully folded and taped around a yellow construction paper letter. He had dictated it to an aide in his first-grade class, and signed it in red marker. It reads:

Dear Mom,

I like you because you're good. And that's very kind of you. And it would be very sweet if you would just give me $1,050,001.00.

Your son,

Peter

It was certainly worth a try, and if nothing else I got a good laugh out of it. Even with the transparent attempt to cloak his financial scheme in filial love, I was proud of his focused efforts to bring in a few more bucks toward the next box of tiny pieces of plastic joy. And in today's economy, I fully understand the exasperation of watching the slow, slow growth of a pile of dollar bills toward something you really want.

Now that I stop and think about it, though, stranger business plans have worked. Any number of now-successful businessmen were laughed out of the first ten (or hundred) offices in which they pitched their products, before finding ultimate success. Maybe he's onto something:

"Dear IRS,

I like you because you're very big and strong. And that's very kind of you. And it would be very sweet of you if you would just give me ..."

Role Models for My Children

2008-10-16T19:32:00.000-07:00

"Inspector Gadget is not afraid, Inspector Gadget is brave." Mm-hmmm.

"But The Brain is not brave, he is afraid." Ohhh!

"Inspector Gadget is afraid of the cliff." Hmmmm.

"Inspector Gadget is, was, he's, is on the tree, he was on top of it!" Ohhh.

"There is a back door!" Mm-hmmm.

"Dr. Claw has a trap! A good trap! With a poky thing!" Ohhh!

"I'm going to build a trap! With a poky thing!" Hmmm.

"And trap Mary!" Mm-hm --

*click of maternal brain engaging*

"Buddy, no! We don't trap Mary with poky things! We don't trap anybody with poky things! No, no -- no traps."

I sigh, and remind myself that as wonderful as it has been to discover the delightfully clean television shows of my generation's childhood on Netflix's "Instant Watching" feature, Dr. Claw leaves a little to be desired as a role model.

I tried, I really did -- we have almost every Veggie Tales movie ever released, we have books upon books upon books, educational games, lots of Madeline and Wallace & Gromit, and a mindboggling array of Baby Einstein titles. But we also got talked into the occasional (parentally edited) showing of "Star Wars", and the smart-mouthed Jimmy Neutron made his way into the collection, and of course we couldn't pass up the Three Stooges and Bugs Bunny in the dollar bin.

And really, even if you ignore his protracted whining throughout the first half of Episode IV ("But Aunt Beruuuuu!"), there are worse role models for a little boy to have than the squeaky-clean Luke Skywalker. But no - Peter now is the proud owner of a Darth Vader cape, Darth Vader mask, Darth Vader plate, Darth Vader bowl, Darth Vader spoon, Darth Vader fork, and a red plastic lightsaber. And really, Vader is quite a bit cooler now that I look at Darth and Luke through adult eyes, unhindered by my 13-year-old sighs over Luke posed in the light of the twin moons of Tatooine, blond hair blowing (and blowing and blowing) in the desert wind.

I do see Peter's point. I mean, it's cool that he can play the little stick figure guy all the way through all the puzzle levels of the mentally stimulating computer game. But it is kind of funny when the little dude falls alllllll the way off the cliff and bounces on the ground in slow motion with his little stick arms and legs pointing in all directions. (Or maybe I'm just kind of a sick mommy, also a distinct possibility.)

Peter is very, very creative. There's no question about that -- whatever parts of his brain go in different directions from mine due to his mild autism, the creative bits are alive and well. But I have to worry a little when his creativity results in an elaborate contraption at the top of the stairs, string and Tinker Toys and bits of paper crowned with my exercise ball. I come to the foot of the stairs and look up at this vision of architecture, and hear his voice around the corner, giggling and cackling, "Mary will come home! and she will come up the stairs! and I will pull the string! and it will fall on her HEAD!" It's a little hard to chastise him when I'm laughing so hard I can't talk.

At the end of the day, all I can really do is be thankful for the creativity, since somebody has to design elevators and games and new-and-improved mousetraps. Maybe Dr. Claw never found redemption, maybe Wile E. Coyote never made friends with Bugs Bunny, but Darth Vader turned out OK in the end ... plus, he wore a really cool cape, and when it comes down to it, I just can't argue with that.

Fish, Et Cetera

2008-09-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

You know those rear window stickers with the little stick figure brother, the stick figure sister, the stick figure mommy, the stick figure daddy (or sometimes the other stick figure mommy), and the stick figure dog? We don't have those stickers, and I doubt that we ever will. We are now a multi-species family that goes beyond the imaginations of the window sticker producers.

It started out with a dead cat. Lucy had been a part of our family since three months after we got married, long before human children were on the radar. She was petite and delicate, with long silky fur that never lost its kitten softness. She was a lovely mix of tan and grey and white, with perfect little white feet and enormous pale green eyes. She was so pretty you just couldn't help but pick her up, which was when you found out that she was in fact a horrid little wretch. She liked my husband, and barely tolerated everyone else. I am convinced that she thought she was a lion, and that it was only the fear of indigestion that kept her from eating me whole. Lucy never forgave me for bringing Mary and Peter into her domain, but when she finally died at the age of twelve, they mourned her sincerely.

It was a while before we were ready to bring another pet into the home. Katie the Cat was, shall we say, not a good fit. It transpired that the good people at the humane society had not been quite as successful as they claimed at housetraining her, and that she had originally arrived there due to her penchant for wetting on anything that would hold still. If it had just been the pee on the carpet (in every room of the house), the couch, the box full of clothes to give away, the bedspread on my bed, the sheets (after I took the bedspread off), the mattress pad (after I took the sheets off), and the mattress (after I took the mattress pad off -- she was fast, I'll give her that), well, that would have been one thing. But when it turned out that I was violently allergic to her liquid offerings, Katie found a new home, and we were pet-free again.

We asked the kids what they wanted for a pet, and they had some interesting suggestions. Mary said, "I want a fish!" Peter said, "I want a piranha!" Mary countered, "I want a puffer fish, and I'd name it Puffy!" Peter raised the ante: "I want a puffer fish too, and I'd name it ... um ... Puffier!" We said, "How about GOLDFISH."

Just so you know, it doesn't work to keep feeder goldfish in a bowl without a water filter and an aerator. Now that you know this, you don't have to try it seven times in a row, and that will save you the theological complexities of conversations with six-year-olds about the afterlife of goldfish. (The right answer, by the way, is "Yes." Even if you don't believe in God, heaven, or an eternal soul. All fish go to heaven by way of the toilet, end of story.)

Eventually, a betta fish named Wavy found a home in Mary's room, with nice blue rocks, a fake plant, a little light, and (lesson learned) an aerator. Wavy was joined in short order by Frogger the Frog and Rosie the Shrimp. (Did you know you could buy live shrimp at Wal-Mart? Apparently you can.) You'd think that would be enough, wouldn't you? You would be wrong.

Now, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, because if you read in tomorrow's "Weird News" websites about some deranged woman trying to mail an overly friendly pit bull to the outback of Australia in a large box with holes poked in the top, I don't want to leave a paper trail. So I'll just tell you some random interesting facts and hopefully avoid arrest.

It turns out that a perpetually grinning chocolate-brown dog with a penchant for licking people's knees is also capable of doing upwards of a thousand dollars' worth of damage to a home. Sarah can dig holes into decking, scratch off chunks of siding, bite off whole pieces of doorframe, chew through leashes, disembowel stuffed animals, destroy bedding, ravage carpet, and chew the heels off of cute new sandals that had only been worn once (not that I'm bitter). She can dig so many holes under the fence that you get to meet nearly every neighbor on your street and a few from the next block over, thanks to the opening gambit of "I think we have your dog." She can bash her head against a weak board until she actually goes through the fence, helping you meet even more neighbors. She can flatly ignore all efforts at housetraining, resulting in odorous little gifts in every single carpeted room in the house, plus a few closets, a laundry pile or two, and a scrapbooking project laid out on the floor for organizing. (Just so you know, in a showdown between dog pee and scrapbook materials, dog pee wins.)

I'm sure we'll get it all worked out at some point, and if I mail her anywhere, it will be to my sister in California because her dogs would put the fear of God into mine in about three seconds flat. But I tell you ... that piranha is starting to sound pretty good.

And now, for something completely different!

2008-09-12T15:13:00.001-07:00

You know, I never do this. I just really don't. I don't get all activist about things, because I am too tired. And I don't link to other people's blogs, because this is the one little corner of the universe where I Am The Queen, so why should I share it any more than necessary?

But I'm making an exception this time, and for what I think is a pretty darn good reason. I will warn you right now that these links include discussions about nursing, lots of unhappy mommies, and a few Bad Words. So if those are going to offend you, stop now -- just skip it and you can come back in a few days and hear about Peter's ideal pet. (A piranha.)

I follow the blog of another mother, a wonderful writer who posts under the name of Her Bad Mother. She was flying home from the funeral of a friend, and her daughter got hungry. Since she is a breastfeeding mother, she discreetly set her daughter up to eat. Like many nursing mothers with a fair amount of experience at it, she didn't feel the need to lay a blanket over herself and the baby, since nothing was exposed and no one was looking. The flight attendant took it upon herself to "offer" her a blanket -- several times -- so that she could cover up and not bother people, even though no one appeared to in fact be aware that a baby was nursing.

The email campaign to Canada's WestJet Airlines that followed was, shall we say, not particularly successful. The airline sent a form letter that said very little at all, and the person sending it had not even bothered to change the name of the passenger from the last time such a letter had been sent. Her Bad Mother was understandably irritated, and I decided to pitch in with my blog since I know I have a few readers who support the idea of breastfeeding without having to practically put on a burka and hide in the ladies' room.

(And to those of you who have never breastfed, would YOU like to have to eat every meal with a blanket on your head?)

The post explaining the event is here. The post where she waits for a response is here. The part where she gets irritated and writes a funny interpretation of the form letter is here.

If this is the sort of thing that winds you up and you feel like sending a cranky email, please stop by Her Bad Mother's blog. I spent two years nursing my children, at home, in restaurants, on airplanes, in church, pretty much anywhere the baby and I went. (Sorry if I made you squirm when I was new at it and hadn't quite figured out that whole decency thing.) It's not the easiest thing in the world, and it gets a lot harder when people are glaring at you for, well, doing what mammals do. When I see a young woman nursing in public, I like to make eye contact, smile, and whisper "Good for you." They usually grin from ear to ear, since that's not usually what people say to them, unfortunately.

So, Her Bad Mother ... good for you, and I hope they send you flowers to apologize. One can always dream ...

Small Skeptics

2008-07-23T14:29:00.000-07:00

You've heard it, the stereotypical image of a 4-year-old child: "But WHY, Mommy?"

It's a fun question when you're four. You get to find out all kinds of interesting things, like why leaves fall off of trees but branches stay on, and why Kool-Aid makes a stain but water doesn't, and (if you ask it enough times and your mom remembers what she learned in grade school about light and wavelengths and color) why the sky is blue. Plus, it keeps her talking with very little expenditure of energy on your part.

The simple brilliance of it is that it serves as its own follow-up question. "Mama, why is that ant carrying my sandwich crumb?" To take it back to the nest. "Why?" To share it with the rest of the ants. "Why?" Because ants all share their food. "Why?" Because they are social insects, and instead of eating what they find, they bring it back so that the ant queen and the other ants can eat it too. "Why?" And by the time your mom loses patience, you've learned quite a lot about ants, and maybe a little bit about people too.

You have to be kind of careful with this one-note line of inquiry though, or things get metaphysical. Ask it too many times, and you'll get a snappish little "Because God WANTS the ant to be that way, that's why." (Asking why God wants it to be that way will probably result in you being sent out to play or inside to clean your room.)

Somewhere along the line, we lose that. We stop asking some of the questions because we always get the same insufficient answers. We stop asking some questions because we are perpetually redirected to encyclopedias, which may or may not tell us what we really wanted to know. We stop asking some of them because we learn to trust our books and our teachers and our friends, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it can be dangerous if it becomes the answer to too many questions. Some questions, we stop asking because nobody knows the answer yet. And sometimes the reason is less complicated ... we stop asking simply because we move out of that childish phase of wonder and into a world with more immediate questions: "Can I call Madison, can I get my ears pierced, can I spend the night if her mom says yes?"

I think, though, that we need that questioning spirit more as adults than at any point since age four. We need it desperately, and sometimes half the battle is discovering that we need it at all.

We need it for the questions whose premises are so entrenched that people forget that there are more questions to ask. "Is global warming really our fault? How do you know? What studies were done? And if so, can we fix it? And if not, should we fix it?"

We need it for the questions that the media blithely answers for all too many people, without the prerequisite of even a moment's actual thought. "But WHY does Oprah recommend that? Did Barack Obama do his research? Has People magazine looked at the science behind that claim? Can John McCain back that up?"

We need it for the questions that pick up where our mothers' answers left off. "Why does God want it to be that way? How do we know? Did He say He does? If not, why do we think He does? If so, do we then have any responsibilities to change our behavior?"

More than anything, we need it for the questions that have not yet been answered. We need it for the tiny (the insects, the viruses, the insides of atoms) and we need it for the immense (the stars, the gods, the outsides of universes).

We need to teach it to our four-year-olds, to live it ourselves, and to remember it when we are old. We need the neverending Why.

Move Over, Dick and Jane!

2008-07-12T01:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry, Dick and Jane ... you're great little kids, but you don't stand a chance against a talking tiger.

Peter started learning the alphabet in preschool, and it didn't take him too long to attach the sounds to the appropriate letters. However, he stayed at that point in his reading development for many, many months. Since we had plenty of other things to work on with him, it seemed unwise to push the reading and risk having him resist the whole idea of it, so we just reviewed the alphabet and read him lots and lots of stories.

When he started kindergarten, he had more exposure to other children reading, and his interest picked up again. He is in a special-needs class geared for children who have communication or social challenges, but who are cognitively up to speed. Some are in fact quite bright, but are likely to clobber classmates on the head over the ownership of a little green plastic soldier, just to pick a completely random example. His class therefore spends much time working on appropriate peer interaction and social skills, but they also work hard at keeping the children current with the schoolwork being done in the "typical" classroom. Since Peter's class is a combined group of kindergarten, first and second graders, this means he hears children reading aloud daily, and it was not surprising when he suddenly showed a renewed interest in letters and sounds.

I dug out the little reading system I'd used with limited effect with Mary, a set of ten books which move gradually through various vowel and consonant sounds. The pictures are funny, but the words (not surprisingly) are repetitive, and they quickly became tedious. All too often, Peter would make it four pages into a book, and then it would become airborne and he'd be off to play with his trains, which were infinitely more interesting.

We tried having him read his beloved Frog and Toad, but no dice. Slightly more success with the equally cherished Little Bear books, but he lost interest in those as well. I was ready to just hand the whole process over to his teacher, when he happened to run across a stack of Calvin and Hobbes books. Years ago, when my parents were cleaning out some bookshelves, they gave us several comic collections, and we have a large majority of the collected cartoon for the whole ten years it ran in the papers. Peter opened one, and fell in the five-year-old version of true love.

It's not too surprising, when you stop and think about it. Calvin is six. He rides the bus and eats dinner and goes to bed, just like Peter. He has funny hair that stands straight on end and sometimes appears to have a life of its own. He has a stuffed animal who walks, talks, and has his baths in the washing machine. It doesn't take long to figure out that this is way, way cooler than watching Spot run, stop, and run yet again.

Peter started out by just looking at the pictures, but when he realized that all the letters had something to do with the pictures (and were often easy words like "Wow!" and "Bang!" and "Hahahaha!"), he suddenly got very, very motivated to learn how to read. And boy, did he ever. Within about a month's time, he went from carefully sounding out three-letter words to being able to read at least half of the words in the cartoons -- not enough to get all the jokes, but certainly enough to figure out what was going on.

However, there was an unexpected flip side to all of this wonderful progress, as we discovered in a conversation with his teacher, Mrs. Beech. It transpired that Peter had been talking about some very unusual activities during their daily sharing time. Apparently when he was not at school, Peter was flying space ships, turning into a dinosaur, and being attacked by his food. Since they try hard to help these kids separate fact from reality, she requested that we not allow Peter to read Calvin and Hobbes any more at home.

We reluctantly complied, hid the books, and tried to find some alternatives. But really, if you were used to books where the main character could turn into Spaceman Spiff at will, would YOU want to read Goodnight Moon for the fourteenth time? I didn't think so. Neither did Peter. With his usual resourcefulness, he found the stash, and within a day or two he was to be found back on the couch every afternoon, reading and laughing hysterically.

And I do mean reading. The more he read, the more expressive he got, and the better he got at sounding out the words. By the end of kindergarten, he scored so high on the kindergarten reading assessment that I asked to have him tested again with the first-grade assessment. Sure enough, they estimated him at somewhere between a second and third-grade reading level, which isn't too shabby for a kid who just turned six (and has only been using complete sentences for two years).

So, my apologies to Mrs. Beech, but I don't think I'm going to mess with a good thing. I'll do my best to help Peter learn that balloons will not in fact take you to Mars and that mutant killer snowmen aren't going to invade our lawn. I apologize in advance for any incident in which he calls his lunch "green icky guck" or refers to a classmate as a "slimy bucket of boogers." And I'll just tell you right now that if he says he had a bath in the washing machine, you don't need to call Child Protective Services.

I think it's worth a little extra effort, when the trade-off means that he can painstakingly copy the word "transmogrifier" onto the side of a cardboard box, climb in, and emerge into a land of imagination. Books are the best transmogrifier out there, and if a naughty little boy and a smartmouth tiger can reach into Peter's heart and mind and bring him laughing into a new world ...

... then have fun, boys, and be back in time for dinner.

Children's Bill of Non-Rights

2008-07-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

Dear children,

It is summer, and as you know, our daily life is a little different. We are not bound by bus schedules, carpool schedules, or gym schedules, and that means things get a little flexible.

However, the relaxed attitude of summer does NOT mean that all rules and discipline go out the window. You are not the King and Queen of Everything, and I think a few guidelines are in order.

Bill of Non-Rights

I. You do not have the right to watch all thirteen episodes of The New Scooby-Doo on DVD every single day.

II. You do not have the right to use the rewind button on the VCR as an act of aggression against your little brother.

III. You do not have the right to be given a milkshake every time we drive past a McDonald's.

IV. If you play a game that includes the words, "OK, now you sit on me and hit me with that pillow", you do not have the right to come and cry to me that your sister hit you.

V. If you want a drink of water, you know where the faucet is.

VI. You do not have the right to get back out of bed every half hour on the half hour until 11:30 p.m. When I say it's time for bed, IT'S TIME FOR BED.

VII. You do not have the right to whack your brother/sister on the arm for "looking at you funny." You also do not have the right to look at your brother/sister funny for fifteen minutes straight without some kind of parental intervention.

VIII. You do not have the right to wear your pajamas until 2 p.m. No, I don't have to explain why, it's just the way it is.

IX. Contrary to local popular belief, it is not child abuse to restrict the consumption of popsicles to one per day, even if it is 95 degrees outside. Also, there is nothing wrong with requiring you to eat them on the back porch and wash your hands afterwards. Washing hands is not in fact recognized as torture by the Geneva Convention.

X. You do not have the right to cover your body with band-aids as a visual reminder of every time your sibling accidentally bumped into you.

XI. You do not have the right to eat all of the Jelly Bellies your mom bought as a special treat for your dad, even if they were sitting right there out in the open on his computer desk, even if they are your most favorite treat ever, and even if the bag was sort of open already.

XII. You do not have the right to be the first one in the door every time we come home, nor do you have the right to punch your sibling for going in the door ahead of you. You do not have the right to spread your arms out or trip your sibling to keep them from getting in first, and you do not have the right to make "mean faces" at your sibling if he or she should happen to elude you and get through first.

XIII. If you sleep in the basement, I do not care who sleeps on which side of the couch. I don't care which is the favored side at the moment. I don't care if you have bad dreams on the left side of the couch, or if you can only sleep if you have your enormous toy horse standing next to you. If you interrupt me one more time with a couch-based complaint while I'm watching "24", I will put you to bed in your own room even if it IS the approximate temperature of Death Valley in there.

XIV. Playing outside on a beautifully sunny day is not cruel and unusual punishment, and you can expect to find that it is suddenly your only option if you say the words "I'm bored" seventeen times in fifteen minutes. And no, you may not dig a hole with a shovel, you may not wash the house with the hose, you may not put your brother up in the oak tree, you may not build a "home for ants" in the middle of the driveway, you may not pick the heads off the roses and put them in a pretty pile, and you may not have a hammer and nails for any reason. I really mean it about the shovel.

However.

I. I promise I will feed you good food three times a day, and sometimes you might even get hot dogs.

II. I promise that you will always have clean clothes to wear, even if I don't do daily laundry so you can wear that one pair of pants every single day all summer long.

III. I promise we will take fun trips to the park, the library, the carousel, and the Capital Building so we can feed the squirrels, even if we don't do them on the exact day you had in mind. You will not die of boredom on the days we stay home, I promise.

IV. I promise I will let you play in the sprinkler sometimes. But just as a heads-up, when you ask to do it at 9:45 p.m., the answer will always be "no".

V. I love you with all my heart, my sweet silly kids.

All items are subject to change without notice, even if that doesn't seem fair, even if it's not the way your friend's mom does it, even if that's not how we did it last time, and even if you think it's going to make you have bad dreams, throw up, cry, have an unexplainable ache in your left arm, or (dramatic sob) Never Be Happy Again.

Well, OK, all items are subject to change except the "I love you" one ... that one, you can count on.

Love,
Mama

Autism (A Gut Reaction)

2008-04-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

Note: I originally posted this essay at the end of April, and took it down the next day because it sounded so unhappy when I re-read it the next morning. And if you've been following this blog, you know that something has to be pretty darned unhappy for me to remove it from the blog. However, within the next 24 hours I received two different e-mails from people who had already read it and had intended to forward it to other people they thought might want to read it. I think that is a good enough reason to put it up again, even if it is a reflection of one of my darkest times. Thank you for sticking with me through the black nights as well as the times that make you laugh so hard you spit your coffee on your screen. I'll try to make sure there are some more of those moments soon.

I hate it.

I hate it. I hate it with everything in my being, and there is nothing I can do about it. It has stolen my son. I don't know who he would have been, and no amount of touchy-feely rhetoric will change that.

Yeah, I know. God made him the way he is.

Yeah, I know. Evolution has its quirks.

Yeah, I know. S**t happens.

But you know what? This is my son. My baby. This is the little boy I live with every day of every week of every month of every year, and I hate autism. I hate that it has taken a piece of him away, tied him up in some inscrutable web that cannot be untangled. I hate that he knows who I am but cannot KNOW me. I hate that I love him but will never be able to truly communicate with him. I hate that he will never grow up.

I hate it that I carried him for nine months (almost ten, he was late) in the deepest most secret part of me, and I do not know him. I know what he likes -- Peter likes Cheddar cheese, strawberry yogurt, Calvin & Hobbes (he REALLY likes them), his friend Gerrit, Wheat Thins (but not Ritz), Toy Story, turkey sandwiches (if they are cut up into 16 squares and served with a toothpick) and sunshine.

He does not like Swiss cheese, pasta, ground beef, roast beef, chicken, rice, the dark, the Grinch, mud, and sometimes he does not like numbers. Any numbers. Adding, counting, doesn't matter -- numbers are bad, on some days. Pasta is bad EVERY day, except some of the time when it is acceptable with my mom's tuna casserole recipe. Even then it's touch and go, and otherwise, pasta and rice are sent directly from the Pits of Hell and are not to be consumed. And if we consume them, we throw up.

I am tired of vomit.

I am tired of separate meals.

I am tired of the short bus.

I am tired of wondering who my son is.

I am tired of the nagging sense that there is something I could have done differently ... some vaccination (or lack thereof), some food (or lack thereof), some thought, some prayer, some wish, some hope that could have made my son be who he was supposed to be. I don't know him. I wish I did. But I don't. He lives in a world that intersects mine maybe 60% of the time. That's great, in that it used to be about 10% of the time. But really, 60% is incredible and it might be as good as it gets. This might be as much of my son as I ever get to know.

If he ever gets a job, I will have to help him apply for it.

If he ever lives alone, I will have to make sure he is paying his bills.

If he has a friend, I will have to make sure they get to "play together", even if they are thirty-five years old.

He will never graduate from college.

He will never get married.

He will never hold his newborn son in his arms and think, "This is my son ... this baby will carry on my name after I am dead and gone."

He will never hold his wife in his arms and think, "This, this is all I want. She is all I want. She is enough reason to work and live and love and exist, and nothing in the world compares to her." Instead, he will go to his supervised job and hang out with his supervised friends and sleep in his supervised apartment paid for by his supervised paycheck.

There is no grief that compares to losing a child. My best friend has lost three children from early pregnancy to six months old, and I know that my grief is a pale shadow of hers. But the grief of having a child that remains a child, a child who will never truly know you or be known, is a pain all its own.

I don't expect you to fix it, to understand it, or to have an answer for it. But sometimes telling it makes the grief a little less.

What Do You Need?

2008-01-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

It is a characteristic intrinsic to all newborns to be completely inexplicable. They don't speak English, they don't use sign language, and they can't leave you a sticky note on the fridge to tell you when they're out of food. Sure, most mothers insist that they can tell the difference between each little cry, but I suspect that this has to do equally with the mild delirium of sleep deprivation and with the existence of some key external cues.

It helps to determine that the snuffling, whimpering little cry means "I'm hungry" when the infant in question is attempting to find sustenance from the buttons on your shirt. It's pretty evident that the pathetic, irritable wail means "I'm hot" when it's 95 degrees and sticky and most of the people in the baby's vicinity are only refraining from crying the exact same way because of adult conventions of behavior. And really, who couldn't figure out the "I need to be changed" cry when the sound is accompanied by stink waves so strong as to be visible to the naked eye?

All that changes with an autistic child. The usual cries still apply -- hungry, wet, tired, colic, basic existential angst. However, there is a whole new range of howls that might mean just about anything. "This shirt has a tag in it and I can't handle tags. You're touching me too much. There are shadows on the ceiling. Stop looking at me, your eyes make me confused. There are too many smells in here. My hand just smacked the side of my crib and I don't know where I am any more."

Most new mothers almost certainly have a few moments, often at 3 a.m. and hunched over with unwashed hair straggling across their faces, where they look into the red screaming face of their well-fed, thoroughly-burped, freshly-diapered child and emit a despairing growl through gritted teeth, "I don't. Know what. You WANT." And then the mommies start crying because they just said mean things to their baby, and now it will be warped forever, and it didn't even help because now the baby is just screaming louder, which didn't seem physically possible thirty seconds earlier. (3 a.m. is powerful stuff.)

With Peter, though, this confusion was very nearly a way of life. His crying and his needs only seemed to line up part of the time, and it was a long guessing game to figure out what he wanted if the basic needs were fulfilled and he was still bawling. During one particularly loopy moment when I hadn't had more than a few hours of sleep for days, I remember laying him on the bed and watching him scream, and then putting him on my left shoulder, where he immediately stopped crying. I was so startled that I put him back down to make sure he was all right, and he started up again like a switch had been flipped. I started giggling slightly hysterically and put him back on my shoulder -- silence. I played with him for a while like this, on, off, on, off, partly because it's really funny when you're that tired, but mostly because my arms were too tired to hold him there for very long.

His delayed speech didn't help matters. He only knew eight words at the age of two, and even those weren't always intelligible. By age three he knew more words, maybe a hundred, but they came out one or two at a time, and when he progressed as far as "Want nilk!" we quickly learned that "nilk" could be milk, juice, or water, and woe to the parent who didn't guess it right on the first try. More time brought more words, and things became very gradually easier, but he was well into his preschool years before we could reliably determine what he wanted at any given moment.

This afternoon, Peter was playing with one of the delightfully complex building toys he received for Christmas, and had set up the pieces for his Star-Wars inspired "transport" all over the family room floor. He was absorbed in his task, fitting together apparently random combinations of red plastic pieces and black rubber tires, producing something more Rube Goldberg than George Lucas, but having a marvelous time doing it. He broke off from his play and called decisively into the kitchen, "Mom, I need some chocolate milk."

My first instinct as a mother was to say, "No, you don't need chocolate milk, and we're going to have dinner in a while anyway." And then I stopped, smiled to myself and said, "Buddy, I think that's a GREAT idea," and made my son a cup of chocolate milk.

After all the years of verbal word puzzles, Peter is finally starting to make that connection between what his little body and heart desire, and the words required to express those needs to someone else. And once he got the words out, I couldn't argue with him. He's right -- some days when you're five, all in the world you really need is something to build, a mom to admire your work, and a glass of chocolate milk.

Disabilities

2007-10-16T17:59:00.000-07:00

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me, "It must be so hard to raise a disabled child." They have a point -- Peter is a lot of work, and he can silently spread a six-ounce container of yogurt farther than most people could possibly imagine. Still, it's hard to see him as "disabled" when more and more often, his unique mental wiring means that something goes unexpectedly, perfectly right.

In my life outside the house, I am a professional accompanist. This means that people sing or play instruments, and I play the piano along with them. At the moment I am employed by a local college whose talented instrumentalists outnumber their piano majors. It is part-time, it involves playing lots of classical music, and best of all, when it's time to perform, somebody other than me has to be under the spotlight with two hundred people looking at them. It is an ideal job for me, but it is not one that blends well with my day job of being a mom.

This afternoon I rehearsed with one of these students, a senior oboe student named Emily whose talent is (fortunately for me) matched by her easygoing nature. I normally hire a babysitter for all of my music work, but today Peter's sitter's class schedule meant that he had to join me midway through a rehearsal. I apologized profusely to Emily, knowing that my attention would necessarily be divided during our practice time. I was further chagrined to discover that I had forgotten to bring a coloring book and crayons for Peter, and he would have to endure 45 minutes in an uninteresting room with little to entertain him.

I knew, though, that even the coloring book probably wouldn't have helped much. Feigning interest is not a typical skill among five-year-old boys, and Peter is no exception. He rarely wants to color, and I knew that the rehearsal would probably end early and in frustration. Emily was gracious, but I confess I snickered to myself, "Yeah, well, let's see how things look in ten minutes when he's emptied your purse onto the floor."

Emily and I resumed our practice, and Peter predictably lost interest in the crumpled recital program and ballpoint pen I had scrounged up for him. He wandered from place to place in the practice area, pointing out chairs, wall panels, and a cluster of metal music stands in the corner of the room. For the next quarter of an hour, I labored to simultaneously answer Peter's questions, keep him relatively quiet, and accurately forge through a wilderness of staccato chords and elaborate baroque trills. I consider myself a decent multi-tasker, but this was stretching it even for me.

As we wrapped up our rehearsal, it seeped into my consciousness that Peter had been very quiet for quite some time, allowing us to work much longer than I had anticipated. I gathered up my music and turned around on the bench, only to discover that Peter had carefully extended each of the heavy black music stands to its full height of nearly six feet, and then quietly spaced them evenly across the unused part of the room in a visually striking display that would be completely at home in any of the world's more avant-garde art museums.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to say I'm glad that Peter is autistic, and honestly, I'm not sure that's a goal I want to set for myself. But today, I got to see my son's inexplicable focus on inanimate objects turn a frustrating scheduling conflict into something surprisingly successful, and transform a bland rehearsal space into a whimsical modern art display.

Disabled? Not in a million years.

Losing Lisa

2007-09-26T20:42:00.001-07:00

Lisa Priano, a friend from my online parenting forum, passed away on September 25, 2007. She was 37 years old and leaves behind a husband, Greg. She had recently been declared cured of leukemia, but the final round of chemo, intended to assure her continued health, came with an unexpected toll on her lungs that eventually made them unable to absorb oxygen. After a short hospitalization and a few days in a medically induced coma, she slipped away quietly, surrounded by her family. She was preceded in death by two children, both lost in early pregnancy in the year before her cancer diagnosis.

Lis, my heart aches tonight because you will never read this. You will never post on our forum again, you will never read my essays, you will never post about how your hair is finally growing back and you're finally feeling better and maybe you and Greg will try one more time for a baby. I mourn for you, and for all you lost in the difficult months that led up to this last horrible loss.

Marcie expressed perfectly what I was thinking -- it feels so selfish, this grief that revolves around us and what we lost when we lost you. I wonder, though, when it comes down to it, isn't that what most grief is?

I grieve for Greg, who knew you inside and out and loved you so much. I am so sad that he will never see your hair (he missed it so much, your beautiful dark hair) grow out and become lush and thick, and that he will never be able to push it out of your eyes when it is heavy with sweat from the exertion of bringing his child into the world. But the truth is, I never met Greg. I wouldn't recognize him if he sat next to me at McDonald's. I mourn for him, but in truth it is only what I imagine he feels from his anguished announcement of your death.

I mourn for your parents, who raised you and loved you and watched you grow into a strong-minded and wonderful woman. My heart aches as I think of them burying their daughter. But I never met your parents. I don't know them, and my grief for them is largely what I imagine my own grief would be if I had to bury my own daughter.

I mourn for your lost opportunities, but I confess that everything I imagine is simply an extension of what I imagine I would lose. I mourn for the children you will never have (my children), the holidays you will never celebrate (my holidays), the laughter with friends that has died with you (my friends), and the hours of joyous hard work you will never again spend singing the blues with your band. It is my band that I see, since I never met your band.

It seems so selfish. But Lis, what other grief do I have? I can't share their grief, and they can't share mine -- it will mean nothing to them if they go a week without seeing the always slightly bittersweet "blues_mama2005" user ID next to a new post on the forum. This is the only grief I have, and it is all I have to give.

I mourn for the years of friendship we are denied. I regret all the days when I thought about e-mailing you, just to see how you were doing, but didn't get around to it. I am sad that you and I will never get to sit down together at a piano. I will never get to roll out a walking bass line and fill it in with rich blues chords, and hear your marvelous voice in response. I mourn for the joy I would have shared with you when you posted a picture of your funny chemo hair growing out, and the delight when you announced that you'd gotten two pink lines on your home pregnancy test (and it would have been the fourth one you'd taken that day because you just couldn't believe it was true). I am sorry I will never see your trademark ear-to-ear grin sharing our jubilant relief when 2012 rolled around and you'd reached the five-year mark in your journey away from cancer.

If it is selfish to feel my own grief, then I will be selfish and unashamed. I cry my own tears, because they are the only ones I know how to cry. My own sorrow is all I have to offer, and I offer it with all my aching heart.

I wish I could have heard you sing.

Grief in the Sunshine

2007-09-21T20:33:00.000-07:00

They tell me that the five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I've experienced these with Peter, sometimes all five on the same day. Maybe it works for some people to go through them in a straight line and never go back; it appears that I'm not one of those people.

Peter is doing so well. I know he's doing well, because for the last month or two, everyone in contact with him has been speaking in excited tones, their conversation peppered with superlatives and nearly visible exclamation points. He's come a million miles this year! His progress is absolutely amazing! You'd never know it was the same kid!

And it's true, he has made incredible progress in the last few months. He can have a conversation now, where you say something and he answers you, instead of looking out the window and exclaiming, "A truck! A car! A truck! A truck!" He can choose a shirt and pants and put them on by himself now. He can use a spoon and fork, and the amount that misses his mouth isn't much more than I cleaned off his sister's shirts at that age. He lets us wash his hair without thinking we're trying to drown him. He finally finished the long road to toilet-training last month. He uses complete sentences most of the time now, and the other day he even made a little joke. (He got mad at us when we laughed, because he thought we were laughing at him, but it's still progress.)

It is amazing. He has come a million miles. And I am happy about it, really I am.

It's just that some days, for no real reason, I am sad again. I feel so ungrateful to be sad, that if I was truly thankful for his progress, I couldn't feel anything but pride. I worry that my sadness will seep from my hands into his wiggly little body, dampening his rowdy energy for life. I am frustrated with my sorrow, this unwelcome houseguest which drops in uninvited every few months and makes its grumpy self at home in my head.

Shouldn't this be over? What about those five stages of grief? I did denial for a while -- about fifteen seconds, because his diagnosis was too obvious to ignore. Anger, you bet. Definitely some mad days in there. Bargaining, not so much ... I couldn't special-order him a new brain, so there wasn't much petitioning to be done. Depression, sure, and who wouldn't get a little down? So now it's acceptance! Hurrah, acceptance! Now we're in that wonderful forward-moving productive stage where we can sit around with other parents and encourage each other and talk about all the wonderful progress our wonderful children are making, year after year after wonderful year.

Some days, though, it hits me all over again. I was sitting on the steps this afternoon, tying my shoes so I could go outside to work in the yard with Peter. The breeze was warm, the sun was shining, and I was looking forward to the physical labor and the time with my son. I told him he could go into the yard ahead of me, and he responded with one of his usual non sequiturs, something about a tree this time, and all of a sudden grief landed squarely in my lap all over again.

Why that statement, that afternoon? I don't know. It was only one of hundreds of times when he answered a question I hadn't asked, listening to an internal conversation I couldn't hear. There was nothing to make this time any different from the others. But today I felt all over again the ache of mothering a child who lives partly in this world and partly in an alternate universe with a population of one. I grieved the lost years of getting to know my little boy when he was so far inside his head that I wondered if he'd ever come out. I ached from the frustration of hours spent in circular conversations, and from his daily angry outbursts about shoes and breakfast cereal and forbidden shelves. Tears pricked my eyes at the thought of the mean kids (and they're out there, practicing their nastiness even as Peter plays in the leaves), the bullies in high school who will not understand or care why Peter's thoughts go skipping in unexpected directions.

Grief is not a popular emotion in the world of autism. It is expected, especially in the first days after the diagnosis, but it is also expected to leave in a timely manner. Support groups are meant (and rightly so) to be supportive, not full of weeping and whining. The myriad books on the subject are positive, looking toward solutions and hope. The amazingly patient people who work with children with autism are unfailingly optimistic, reeling off the latest accomplishments in glowing terms. This is good -- unquestionably, we need optimism.

But sometimes I wonder how many other mothers and fathers sit in the sun on the porch, suddenly immobilized once again with the stab of loss. I wonder how many of us ache privately, unable to tell anyone of our sadness because we don't have the energy to smile and nod through another recital of our child's latest achievements, things that a typical child would have done months or years before. I can't be the only one who blinks back tears when it hits me once again that yes, there is something wrong with my child, no matter how politically incorrect it is to say so aloud.

I suspect that we do ourselves a disservice, in this particular grief as in any other, by putting the stages in a neat line and discouraging backtracking. I have heard it alternately described as a cycle, but that seems unnecessarily grim, eliciting images of the hamster on his wheel, always watching the same landscape pass under his frantically running paws.

I like to think that it might be a spiral. Tightly wound at the beginning, denial mixed with bargaining in the same angry prayer, acceptance masquerading as depression and depression dressed up as acceptance. As time goes by, maybe the pattern gets looser, wider, curling out in ever-increasing circles where there is more time to breathe between sadnesses.

I like to imagine that some day, like a playground game of Crack-the-Whip, Peter will find himself exuberantly flung off the end of the spiral, spinning and laughing into adulthood with no more fear of falling than the rest of us.

Clean Your Room!

2007-09-11T22:32:00.000-07:00

Like many women in my stage of life, I've experienced the disconcerting process of watching my mother morph from the out-of-touch, unhip person she was in my teen years to The Source of All Maternal Wisdom whose number is at the top of my speed dial list. I'm not sure I've ever come out and told her that she obviously knew what she was doing all along, but I think she knows.

After those blissful years from age 13 to age 25 when I knew everything, I had a baby and discovered that I knew nothing at all. At least, not when it came to anything involving this small mouthy person who believed that she was the geographic and metaphysical center of the universe, and that my sole purpose in life was to orbit her, reflecting her brilliance and catering to her every whim. Mom gave good advice: If she's too stubborn to eat, it's not going to kill her to miss a meal. She'll fall asleep when she gets tired enough. Be consistent. It's OK to call the pediatrician if you're not sure. And honey, you have GOT to get some sleep.

As Mary got older, my calls to my mom got more frequent, and she continued to dispense wisdom on demand. Sometimes she offered as much commiseration as actual advice, but it was no less welcome for that: You quit taking naps at about that age too, so I just made you have a quiet time so I didn't go crazy. Do you think she'd eat it if you cut it in half first? (I'd nearly forgotten the two-month Sandwich War, which is a story for another day.) She'll use the potty eventually -- how many twelve-year-olds do YOU know who still wear diapers?

Far more often than not, Mom was right. Even when her experience differed from mine as her children differed from mine, she often helped me get out of that day's mental rut, even if it was just by eliciting a tearful laugh from me and persuading me not to find out the going rate for a toddler on eBay.

Recently, though, I have run up against a predicament that I can't ask my mom's advice about. For one thing, she doesn't know the answer because it was one area of parenting where she had to resort to simple damage control. For another, if I told her I was facing this particular parenting challenge, she would laugh herself silly. I suspect that through her snorts of hilarity, I would hear the words "What goes around, comes around."

In my own defense, I will say that I am much more organized now than I was when I was a child. My kitchen counter isn't perfectly tidy and I'm a few years behind on my photo albums, but I pay my bills on time and arrive for my appointments as scheduled. I put my clothes away after they are washed and do a fair job of maintaining order behind the two small whirlwinds to whom I gave birth.

It was not always this way. I'd like to say that it was organized chaos and I knew where everything was even if nobody else did, but that would be, not to put too fine a point on it, an outrageous lie. My childhood bedroom looked like those sad pictures they print in the newspaper after tornados level small Midwestern towns. Dolls, books, and bedding were indiscriminately mixed with lost homework, tangles of yarn for crochet projects, and unidentifiable (but highly treasured) paper crafts. On one memorable occasion, there was even an accidental science project under the bed that resulted in a pungent cup of something resembling cottage cheese.

My parents tried everything to make me keep it clean. Threats, rewards, appeals to my conscience, descriptions of the virtues of an organized room -- all fell on deaf ears, and the mess deepened. After one long Saturday morning on which I was relegated to my room until it was clean, my mother became suspicious of the suddenly visible carpet. A quick peek under the dust ruffle answered the question -- I had simply stuffed everything under the bed, and it was apparent that this was not the first time I had resorted to this method of housekeeping.

At this point, my father intervened. He insisted that I clean out from under the bed, and he would not brook opposition. I suffered from mild claustrophobia, and wailed that I couldn't get under the bed because it was too scary. He told me that if I didn't do it within fifteen minutes, he'd do it.

Well, that sounded like a good plan to me. I sat on my bed for fifteen minutes and read a book, and waited for him to come back. He looked under the bed at the untouched rat's nest of clutter, and started to leave the room. I protested, "Hey, where are you going?" I had fully expected him to kneel down and lovingly remove each item from under the bed, determine its proper home, and put it away for me. This illusion was shattered when he returned shortly with a dirt rake and proceeded to unceremoniously drag several weeks' worth of rubbish to the center of the room. I stomped around and put it all away with bad grace, but for that one day, my embarrassment overcame my natural messiness and I had a clean room.

It wasn't a permanent solution; my room continued to be a sore point between my parents and me. The Rake made for a funny and oft-repeated tale, but my dad wasn't interested in repeating the process. Eventually, a caustic-tongued college roommate provided the motivation to keep my living area neat, and the lesson was driven home by the pleasant discovery that homework could be turned in on time more easily if it wasn't buried two geological layers down in the strata on top of my desk.

Some day, I hope my daughter will learn for herself the joys of an organized closet and a floor you can actually walk on without hearing the crunch of small plastic toys. I would like her to realize that homemade jewelry projects are easier to complete if the beads are not mixed into her sock drawer. I would love to see a bookshelf full of books and a toybox full of toys, instead of an evenly distributed muddle of dolls, craft projects, magazines, and hair ribbons on every flat surface in the room.

In the meantime, though, I will continue to make threats every Saturday morning. I will come in from time to time while she's at school and furtively winnow out the more indeterminate craft projects. I will praise her when she clears a path from the door to the bed. I will hope with all my heart that she finds her own way out of the pigpen.

And if all else fails ... there's always The Rake.

Fishes and Little Girls

2007-09-06T18:50:00.001-07:00

"Yup, he's a goner." And so begins my personal top ten list of things never to say to a crying child.

Mary came into my office last night, eyes and sniffly nose red from crying, and informed me that Diamond was floating. Diamond is one of three goldfish purchased with her saved-up allowance earlier this week, along with their bowl, food, and other necessities. After the death of our cat Lucy last year, Mary hounded us mercilessly for a new pet, and a few fish seemed a little more practical than her other oft-repeated wish (a horse).

Diamond was a feeder goldfish, and she (he?) cost twenty-eight cents. I made the mistake of forgetting that when you're eight, a pet that costs less than a candy bar can still be deeply valued. Diamond was selected specifically for the contrast between her pearlescent white body and the vivid splotch of fiery orange on the top of her head, and I will readily agree that for a feeder goldfish, she was quite pretty.

Unfortunately, last night she was also quite buoyant, and this is never a good sign when you're a fish. She was still "breathing", or whatever it is that fish do, but she was not a happy fish. Mary was optimistic, though, and over the next hour as I got the kids ready for bed and tucked Peter in, she delivered regular progress reports. She would drag herself wearily into the room, slump against the door frame, and say, "I don't think she's going to make it" before making a dramatic, tearful exit. Five minutes later, she would come bounding back, her tearstained face glowing with the wonder of a true miracle, and proclaim, "She swam all the way across the top of the bowl! She's going to live! I just know she is!"

Upon further examination, though, I realized that Diamond's progress had less to do with healing than with Mary's aggressive approach to nursing. Not too surprisingly, if you jostle a fish's bowl, it will move from one side to the other, and if you poke it repeatedly in the side, it will momentarily overcome even catastrophic illness to attempt escape below the surface. Optimism aside, it did not look good for Diamond.

After biting my tongue and mentally slapping my forehead over my first callous diagnosis, I continued to alternately commiserate and rejoice with Mary over the course of the evening. I had to balance it with at least a small dose of reality, though ... I've had fish before, and this behavior is usually not (as she theorized) a piscine attempt to learn to float just like people do. I didn't want to completely quell her hope, and I also didn't want to be embarrassed the next morning by a fully recovered Diamond swimming around the bowl. But the prognosis wasn't good, and she needed to know that.

The next morning, the worst was confirmed: Diamond had gone to the Great Fishbowl in the Sky. Mary cried, retrieved the fish from the bowl, and we discussed interment options. After debating the merits of a spot in the yard, she settled on the more traditional "burial at sea". We moved the ceremony to the bathroom, and Mary's tears flowed again as she held the tiny body between her fingers, stroked its fishy little head, and sobbed, "I'll never forget you, Diamond." She consigned it to the deep, cried a little more, and flushed.

As it swirled around and around the toilet bowl, Mary emitted an unexpected giggle. "I hope she knew the Fish God." I had to laugh, but my heart ached for her all over again, for the silly little 28-cent fish, for the memories of the cat buried under a patch of tulips in the back yard, and for the many times in her future when she will have to say good-bye to animals who have enriched her life, even if only for three days.

I responded, with a perfectly clear conscience, "Yes, love ... I'm pretty sure God takes care of the fish," and finished silently, "and of the little girls too."

How To Hit Your Brother

2007-08-31T22:59:00.001-07:00

First, an important announcement: I apologize to my little sister for all the times I hit you when Mom wasn't looking.

Hitting your brother is an enterprise not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but carefully, discreetly, quietly, and with a close watch on your mother. It may appear at first glance to be an activity born of the heat of the moment, but a successful clobbering requires planning.

First, choose your time and place. It should be within your mother's earshot, but not her line of vision. Your mom should be busy, but not so busy that she doesn't notice the set-up, which will be important later when you're presenting your defense. Don't do it when she's on the phone -- she's likely to tell him, "Fine, hit her back, just do it in another room." Ideally, she should be engaged in something that keeps her in one place and requires a certain amount of focus, such as writing a letter or paying bills.

Next, the set-up. It is important that you come across as the victim in this situation, even though yes, you are technically on the offense. This is one of the most delicate stages of the process, since you need your mom to be subconsciously aware of the recent history of injustice, but not aware enough to make a preemptive strike and separate you. A few trial efforts will help you refine the volume and pitch of your complaints so that they stay just beneath her conscious attention. Phrases such as "I'm trying to help you" and "Use your words" will establish you as the reasonable party in the coming dispute, and may be used to your advantage later.

Now, move on to the escalation phase. Stay in control, as this is the point at which a flare of emotion can completely blow the operation. Raise the pitch of your voice but not (this is crucial) the volume. As counterintuitive as this seems, you need to keep the volume of the interactions at a constant level in order to keep your mother from intervening. If the altercation becomes loud enough to break her train of thought, you'll have to fall back and wait for another opportunity, perhaps hours later. Instead, step up the emotional intensity and the frequency of your comments. Now is a good time to introduce more action-oriented phrases such as "You already took three turns!" and "I'm already sitting here, don't push!"

So far your efforts have been primarily verbal, but toward the end of the escalation phase you may add the physical component. It is essential that you do not, no matter how tempting, hit your brother at this point. He needs to formally start the physical hostilities, and this must be managed carefully. Instead, get into his personal space without actually touching him. Wait until he puts down a toy, and grab it immediately. Without making physical contact, lean close to him and hang your arms on either side of him so he is essentially surrounded. The final never-fail technique is to sit in front of him (preferably in the middle of his current play activity), stretch your mouth out in a dreadful grimace, stick your neck out so that your faces are inches apart, and make a silent "grrrr" motion toward him.

A certain amount of sacrifice is required for a successful whomping of your brother, and this is where you'll have to take a deep breath and take one for the cause. He will inevitably take a swing at you. You need to duck, but not completely. He MUST make contact with your body, but since you're expecting the strike, you can make the impact minimal by using fast evasive maneuvers.

Finally, the moment you've been waiting for -- give him a good smack, and enjoy it. You've earned it! Personal tastes differ greatly as to approach and style, but give it all you've got. Wow, that felt good, didn't it?!

Don't get lost in the victory, though -- you're not done yet. Perfect timing is essential at this point. After you've hit him but before he really gets wailing, yell at the top of your lungs, "Mo-o-o-o-ommm! He hit me!" This establishes him as the aggressor, and it has the additional merit of being perfectly true.

The next few minutes will require careful responses to the inevitable cross-examination by your mother, and the variables at this stage are too numerous to cover in depth. Remember, though, you are the victim here. This is the time to turn on the waterworks, display any bruises you've acquired in the last week, and present your aggrieved defense to the judge. Later, when he's in the corner having a time-out and Mom is balancing the checkbook again, you can dance around and make faces at him, your objective reached and your adversary defeated.

On second thought, maybe I should reword that important announcement:

Sorry, Mom. I promise I won't do it again.

I haven't forgotten.

2007-08-22T13:05:00.001-07:00

I'm still here.

But it's summer vacation, and therefore my children are also here.

That may not sound like an insurmountable problem, but I will give you a brief snapshot of life at my house now that Peter can talk coherently and Mary is entering the stage of pre-pre-teen attitude.

After lunch (or at least after each child had announced that they were "full", meaning that they wanted a cupcake instead of their lunch), they decided to play with a laundry basket and a jumprope. Now, that in itself isn't anything too strange -- I remember from my own childhood that laundry baskets can be drums, carts, jails, soup pots, and precarious stepping stools to items on high shelves. Jumpropes can be lassos, reins, home decorating items, fashion accessories, and handles to pull the laundry basket carts. So the toys themselves were not the issue.

I don't know what happened in between the beginning and the end of this particular play scenario, so I will skip to the end: Mary at the top of the stairs with the laundry basket on her head, Peter with the jumprope (and both arms and legs) stretched across the top step, and screeching that sounds like two angry squirrels engaged in a battle to the death.

I will also skip the finer details of the next scene, in which Mary is sent to her room, Peter is sent to his room, Peter blows me a raspberry, Peter gets a swat, and Mary takes advantage of my divided attention to dart out of the room and retrieve the coveted laundry basket.

Silence reigns.

Well, sort of, since Peter has asked if he can come out yet no less than nine times in the time it took to type this. Make that ten. Eleven now. Twelve.

Nope, sorry, that was it ... I'll have to wait until another day for the creativity and the silence to line up again.

In completely unrelated news, school starts in one week, five days, nineteen hours, and fourteen minutes.

A Matter of Style

2007-05-27T21:06:00.001-07:00

I admit it -- I never had a "Baby On Board" sign in the window of my car. I don't have a bumper sticker proclaiming that my child is an honor student at her grade school. I don't have customized window stickers with little stick figures of the mommy, the daddy, the sister, the brother, and the cat on the back window of my minivan. I do not lovingly press and save every weed my kids bring me from the front yard. I will even confess to having thrown out school projects involving Q-tips, dead leaves, and amorphous blobs of tissue paper.

The sheer volume of the art requires a certain amount of selectiveness. The plaster mold of Peter's 3-year-old hand went straight onto the kitchen wall, where it will most likely still hang when he is a grown man with children of his own. The luridly colored "treasure box" filled with flower petals Mary picked for me when I was out of town for a few days has a permanent place on my dresser. But I've pitched countless pieces of construction paper carelessly decorated with random swipes of chalk, and not regretted a single one of them.

I will also freely own up to my collection of never-worn jewelry in a dish on my bathroom counter. Mary discovered the joy of plastic beads a couple of years ago, and quickly learned that ten minutes with a pile of bright red beads and a piece of string was a fail-safe way to be fawned over and told how wonderful and creative she was. As a result, I have several extremely ugly and scratchy bracelets that don't match a single item of my clothing, and when it comes time to accessorize, I inevitably reach for a simple silver chain or an elegant bangle to finish my ensemble. Mary occasionally asks, "Mom, aren't you going to wear that bracelet?" and I put her off with a vague reply about maybe wearing it some day when I have a shirt that matches it.

However, I received a necklace for Mother's Day that made me rethink this policy. It's not attractive -- it consists of three flourescent green foam beads spelling "MOM" on a stiff piece of plastic cord, tied in the back with an awkward knot. I was presented with this unusual piece of jewelry at the Mother's Day Tea at Peter's preschool while I sat on the play mat with several other mothers after our snack of crackers and red punch. As each child's name was called, they eagerly delivered their handmade gifts to their mothers. Peter presented me with my necklace, and I obligingly admired it. Brendan's mother, sitting next to me with her gift, leaned over and said in mock exasperation, "Hey! Mine only says 'MO!'" We realized, though, that we were the lucky ones -- Alec's mom was bemusedly inspecting a necklace that read "WYCILQPVHLX."

After the event was over, Peter and I went to the grocery store. I wore my new necklace with my stylish black shirt and lavender skirt. I won't say I wasn't a little self-conscious, but I decided that this once, I'd rather make my son happy than be fashionable. It's not like I have so much fashion sense to begin with, so a plastic necklace isn't going to make that much difference anyway. He was so pleased that I wore it, and it was worth any odd looks I might have gotten.

For that hour of that Wednesday, that homely plastic necklace made my son happy, and I suffered a healthy pang of guilt. Maybe, on second thought, counter space and an organized refrigerator door aren't all that important in the grand scheme of things. It might be worth a lumpy photo album if it makes my kids smile someday. Maybe my home decor would be improved by a little more construction paper and orange paint. Maybe classy silver pendants are overrated.

You know, there's a red bracelet in my jewelry dish that would look absolutely stunning with my new green necklace ...

Finding Peter

2007-04-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

Metaphors abound for the way an autistic child relates to the rest of the world. We only have glimpses of what it's like to live inside an autistic person's mind, although those glimpses have become more and more articulate as more autistic people turn to computers to express the thoughts that tangle behind their tongues, their ideas upended by the complex distraction of the listener's face. We try to understand, but in the day to day, the best we can do is try to translate it to our own frame of reference.

It's like a radio that's tuned to the wrong frequency. It's like she's living in another world. It's like he thinks in pictures while we think in words. It's like she speaks another language. It's like (for the Trekkie parents of autistic kids) he's living in an alternate universe that occasionally intersects with ours.

My personal favorite came from an unexpected source, the Steven Spielberg film "Hook". One of the less memorable adaptations of J. M. Barrie's book Peter Pan, it has one scene that has nevertheless imprinted itself on my mind. Peter Pan, now the unthinkably adult Peter Banning, has forgotten his childhood self, and even a visit to Neverland does nothing to jog his memories. He is weary and lined, jowls losing their fight with gravity, and the Lost Boys can see nothing of their hero in this suited businessman. One child, though, stands before the kneeling Banning and presses his hands into the unfamiliar face. He frowns as he presses Peter's nose, his chin, his forehead, trying to find traces of the boy who was never going to grow up. He pushes his little hands against the lined cheeks, smoothing out the years, and suddenly exclaims, "Oh, there you are, Peter!" It was not just the coincidence of the name that made this scene resonate with me long after I watched it.

All of these metaphors work, in a way, and on some days all of them fail, as metaphors inevitably do. Some days, no comparison is adequate for the wrenchingly lonely sensation of sitting in the sunny front yard with your son two feet away from you, and realizing that you have no idea what he's thinking, where he is in the sensation-rich wilderness of his mind.

But some days, for a brief startling moment, contact is made. Tonight, as always, I helped Peter to undress. I changed his diaper and sent him off to try to use the toilet, over his protests of "I can't, I can't, I don't have any potty in me!" I put him in an overnight diaper and helped him squirm into his plaid flannel pajamas, balancing him as he stood on the bed to pull the pants up. I usually ask for a hug, reminding him to "hug with your arms", since his initial attempts at hugging were to simply fall forward onto me, upper body awkward and tense.

Tonight, though, before I could ask for my hug he began to stroke my hair. He has done this a few times, and while an evolutionary anthropologist would have plenty to say about primate grooming activities, I enjoy these moments too much to analyze them. His face is intent, and his little hands softly stroke my hair from side to side, smoothing it away from my face. I stand perfectly still, not wanting to jar him out of this sudden personal connection. I drink in his blue-grey eyes, his long eyelashes, the curve of his upper lip (so like mine), and the nearly translucent fairness of his skin. His eyes move back and forth from my eyes to my hair, and he pets my head with an almost religious solemnity.

I have always worn my hair cut in bangs, due to the family trait of a startlingly high forehead. When Peter plays with my hair, his main focus is moving my bangs away from my eyes and eyebrows. He seems to be searching, clearing away what obscures his view of his mother, for these brief seconds trying to find me instead of looking away. Tonight, he finally moved my hair away to his satisfaction, and said in surprise, "You have a head in there!"

I had to laugh, and the connection was broken, so I swept him into a hug and said into his little pink ear, "Yeah, I have a head in there." He hopped off the bed and we were off to the bathroom for the ritual of brushing the teeth, really only a prelude to the real business of spitting water in the sink.

As we laughed and splashed through the bathroom routine, his comment kept running through my head, permutating as it went. "You have a head in there! You have a mind in there! You have a you in there!" I found myself wishing with unaccustomed intensity that I could see what needed to be smoothed away to find Peter. How much easier to smooth away his soft, silky hair with my hands, than to continue the neverending redirecting, the reinforcing, the words upon words poured upon him in hopes that some of them will trickle into wherever it is that he really lives.

Those flashes make it worth it. It sounds trite to say so, because many other parents have said the same of their children and the struggle to reach them. It has become trite, though, because there is no other way to say it -- it IS worth it. We continue to reach, to try, to talk and rub and love away whatever unseen barriers stand between us and our children, our little Lost Boys living within arm's reach.

Some days it is exhausting beyond endurance, and I wonder (deep down where nobody sees) if his world is so bad after all. Maybe I should just leave him in there where it is quiet and no one is harassing him to say it again, to try one more time. But then some nights, in looking for me he inadvertently shows me himself, that mirrored window opening for just long enough to remember why I strive: "Oh, there you are, Peter."

The Evolution of a Dad

2007-03-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

Sanity is not a recommended personal quality for the job of parenting. Squeamishness is not, nor is long and deliberate decision-making. Much of parenting, far more than I'd expected, has to do with quick and dirty do-it-now reactiveness, all the while being gentle and loving to the child in front of you. These qualities aren't issued at the hospital with the baby blanket and diaper bag, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly when they emerge.

I knew Eric for many years before he was a parent. He courted his wife, my good friend Cara, when I was expecting my first child, and my bridesmaid dress for their wedding had to be custom-fit to accomodate my barely post-baby figure. He got to see parenting up close and personal long before he applied for the job himself. He was a great guy, but babies made him nervous, as they do many young men. The only way he would consent to hold Mary as a newborn was to arrange himself on our couch, his body plastered against the back of the seat, arm and shoulder carefully braced against the arm of the couch, with Mary carefully laid across his lap. Even then, he was visibly afraid that she would suddenly gain the power of motion and leap out of his protecting arms onto the floor. After a few minutes his nerves would overpower his politeness and he would hand her back, shaking his head at the courage required to carry a baby all over the house, sometimes in only one arm.

Time passed, and he and Cara decided to start a family of their own. But they, as so many couples do, found that there was quite a long journey between deciding to start a family and actually getting the heartstopping double pink line on the pregnancy test. In those long years, fluctuating between frustration and hard-earned patience, Eric became more comfortable around my children. Mary adored him, and started crawling into his lap almost as soon as she could walk, and her wide grin won out over his natural caution. It helped that she, like many toddlers, was apparently indestructible.

When Peter was born and Eric and Cara were still waiting, his reticence had faded even farther. He would hold Peter, and he didn't even have to sit down to do it! I loved surreptitiously watching him, the 3-year-old Mary climbing up his leg in her inimitable way, as he grinned at her and laughed as he scooped her up into a scratchy-bearded hug. Looking at Cara's wistful expression, the same thought always came to mind: "He's going to make a GREAT dad."

And he did. Mariah made her long-awaited entrance into Eric and Cara's life a little over a year ago, and it was astounding to watch how naturally he fell into the Proud Daddy pose -- baby held across his chest, grin nearly splitting his face in two, and neck cocked at that sweetly awkward angle that says, "I'm looking at you right now, but as soon as you break eye contact I'm going to look back at my daughter."

We saw less of them for a while as their lives were overtaken by the inevitable hurricane of diapers, bottles, and sleepless nights followed by crashingly tired days. But then Mariah got a little older, and the more we saw of them, the more evident it became that we were right -- Eric was a great dad.

I didn't realize quite how thoroughly he had made the transition, though, until Mariah's first birthday party. Our whole family attended, and Peter (as he so often is) was excited beyond his little body's endurance. The whirling carousel, the giggling children, the bobbing balloons, the noise of the calliope, and the endless bowls of pastel M&M's all combined for sensory overload. He ate too big a bite of cake, gagged, and his dad sprang to move Peter's chair back from the other diners. In less time than it takes to tell it, I upended my fruit plate onto the tablecloth, threw myself bodily across the table, and shoved the plate under Peter's chin to catch the mess.

The woman at the next table watched this drama, eyes wide, and I realized that to a non-parent my actions would have looked, in that first split second, like the flailings of a madwoman. Strawberries bouncing across the decorations, grapes rolling under the table, my body flopped gracelessly horizontal like an outfielder going for the game-saving catch. What startled me more than anything was that I hadn't even thought about it. He barfed. I leapt. It was that simple.

We cleaned him up and sent him outside for a breath of fresh air. He seemed to be feeling a little more steady, and he came back in asking for more candy. My hesitation was well-founded -- as he stood next to the dessert table between Eric and me as we chatted, Peter got the familiar wide-eyed look of panic on his face and made the little urping sound that signals an impending explosion. I scrambled for a plate, a napkin, a garbage can, anything to keep it off the birthday cake. I spun around, plate in hand, only to see Eric stretched out in the classic parental pose for vomiting children. He was standing precariously balanced on his tiptoes, arms outstretched to make the catch, face a mixture of compassion and sympathetic nausea, trying at once to console Peter and keep from requiring an entire change of clothes himself. He had the same three seconds to react, and he'd beaten me to it.

No question about it ... he's a dad.

Read Me a Story?

2007-03-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

I think I'm a pretty tough cookie when it comes to my children's wheedling. I effortlessly refuse appeals for curly fries from Arby's. I have no qualms about nixing requests for bites of my pizza. I can heartlessly deny the demands of imperious little voices wanting to blow out candles, drink chocolate milk, or wear orange pants and a hot pink shirt to church.

One question, though, leaves me helpless every time -- "Read me a story, Mama?"

Anna Quindlen writes, "I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." This is unquestionably the kind of home my children live in. Partly because I am completely missing the interior decorating gene, but mostly because we have more books than the Salem Bookmobile. One wall of the family room is a custom-built bookshelf with books from knee-height to ceiling, picture books on the bottom, a nearly complete collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan books at the top, and everything from Newbery Award winners to Plato in between.

Mary has bookshelves of her own, Peter has a large toybox that inexplicably filled itself with books instead of toys, and in the rest of the home, the stairs and the laundry room are the only places that are reliably free of books. There are magazines in the dining room, children's books under the couch, Bibles on the nightstands, atlases on the coffee table, and philosophical texts in their sixth year of temporary storage on the office floor.

If it's true that the best way to teach is to do, my children will learn that almost anything can be done while you read. At the end of a particularly talkative evening with one of my children who shall go unnamed, the parents will frequently look at each other over the dinner table and simultaneously say, "Books." There is a quick scramble, and quiet reigns, broken only by the sound of rustling pages and intermittent chuckling if someone is reading Terry Pratchett again. When I fix a dinner that involves more stirring than creativity, I can frequently be found with a wooden spoon in one hand and a novel in the other. I read in the bathtub, although I am no longer allowed to do so with first edition hardbacks. I keep a magazine in the car against the highly unlikely event that I actually arrive somewhere early and have to wait. And really, is there anybody who doesn't read in the bathroom now and then?

Our family came by it honestly. I read at the age of three, to my parents' delight and surprise. (They claim I was reading my father's Greek texts as an infant when I sat in his lap during his study for seminary courses, but I think that may be parental pride speaking.) My mother recalls me coming home from kindergarten exclaiming, "We learned "N" today, and now I can spell my name!", and then settling down on the couch with the Readers' Digest. Michael learned to read a little later, but made up for lost time by reading (at his father's encouragement) the Lord of the Rings trilogy at the age of eight, Crime and Punishment at nine, and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich at twelve.

My sister and I read voraciously, and our mother's only rules about checking out library books were as follows: 1. Only half of the books could be about Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, and 2. she wasn't going to help us carry them. We mastered the art of carrying a stack of books balanced on our fingertips and held down with our chins. My mother tells of us nearly causing a librarian heart failure when we approached the desk of the tiny public library in the coastal town where we vacationed with twenty books apiece (including their entire collection of Carolyn Keene). The poor lady gasped, "Do they know they can only check out five books?" We stared at her, goggle-eyed -- that was only going to get us through to dinnertime! We reluctantly put thirty books back and came to the library nearly every day for the next three weeks.

So when my children sidle up to me at five minutes before bedtime, book in hand, it's hard to say no. They haven't yet acquired my sister's devious strategy of getting the parent to agree to just one book, and then choosing the longest one on the shelf. It worked, too -- I remember many nights of happily reading in my own bed for an extra forty-five minutes, half-listening through the thin walls as our father rumbled and muttered and roared his way through Beatrix Potter's interminable The Tale of Mr. Tod. I know the day is coming, though, and I suspect I will be no more able to resist the tactic than my dad was.

Mary is starting to get the idea. She plays quietly until 8:57 p.m., and then comes into our home office with an elaborately surprised expression on her face. With an innocent voice worthy of an Oscar, she asks, "Isn't anybody going to read me a story?" We smile ruefully, caught again at having let the last few minutes of the evening slide by while she hid out in her room. Michael settles down with her for the next chapter of The Chronicles of Narnia, or she and I embark on another giggle session over the absurd adventures of Paddington Bear.

Peter isn't far behind in creative methods of obtaining bedtime stories. He knows that even if it's 9:15 p.m. and we got home late and we're all tired and cranky and need to go to bed, he can always get a result with "Mama, you read me?" He has now adapted this strategy for our normal bedtime reading routine. I will read three or four of the short children's books he loves to hear again and again, doing my best to evoke the proper awe at "He was a beautiful butterfly!" at the end of my 293rd reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. As soon as the last page is closed and I am preparing to call it a night, he is already hopping off his perch on the rocking chair and announcing in an eminently reasonable tone, "We read one more." I open my mouth to tell him to get into bed, but I am always swayed by the sight of his pajama-clad backside bobbing over the edge of the toybox as he rummages through it for our long-time favorite, Where's My Hug?

I put him to bed, finally, and he insists that we leave the door open and the nightlight on. He claims it is for "No dark!" but last week I discovered otherwise. I looked into his room and saw, as parents probably have since the first ancestors of Frog and Toad made it to papyrus, the manifestly guilty little face of my child pop up from behind a blanket carefully arranged to conceal the Little Bear book half-hidden under the pillow.

I know I ought to make him stop it. He's disobeying, and he's not getting enough sleep. I'll go talk to him in a few minutes, really I will. Just as soon as I finish my chapter.

I Take It Back.

2007-01-18T14:33:00.000-08:00

As a teenager I heard a radio personality say, "Before I was a father, I had six different theories on how to raise children. Now I have six children, and no theories." As a parent, I still see the humor in the statement, but I also hear the wry truth behind the quip. I knew so much before I had kids, and now I am content to be utterly clueless about anybody's children but my own. (And I'm clueless about my own at least half the time.)

I usually had enough sense as a young adult to not voice my opinions about how other people were raising their children, since I knew anything I said would be that much more likely to come back and haunt me. What happened in my head was an entirely different story, and I am now offering a formal retraction for all those uncharitable thoughts.

I once thought that a child old enough to use a computer mouse was certainly old enough to be toilet-trained. I take it back. My son can do 25-piece puzzles online and type most of the alphabet on his daddy's computer, but the mere suggestion of Thomas the Train underpants is enough to propel him into a screaming fury.

I once believed that a mother who was even remotely attentive would never need to scrub crayon marks off the wall. I take it back. Crayons and large flat surfaces are drawn to each other with a force that puts mere gravity to shame. My walls never had a chance. (And while I'm at it, I'm sorry about the dining room in the house on 39th Street, Mom.)

I used to think that a child who sucked his thumb, used a pacifier, or carried a blankie around past the age of two was a sure indication of a weak-willed mother. I take it back. If promises of nickels, the application of Tobasco sauce, the forced wearing of mittens, strategically placed Band-Aids, the prospect of orthodontia, and sensational descriptions of permanently deformed hands couldn't pry my 7-year-old's fingers out of her mouth, I defy even the combined forces of the U.S. Armed Forces to accomplish the task.

I thought that if a child had enough shelves in her room, everything would have a place and everything could therefore go in that place, thus avoiding long Saturday afternoons of crying, withheld privileges, and dire threats containing the words "all day and all night until it's clean". I take it back. Coat hangers might multiply quietly in dark closets, but beads and stuffed animals replicate themselves right there on the floor in broad daylight.

I felt that any woman who said "I used to play the piano before I had kids" simply didn't have her priorities straight. I take it back. I never could have envisioned practice sessions punctuated by unexplained rattles inside the piano, accompanied by wild giggly dancing and repeated demands for the theme song to "Star Wars".

I once believed that it was possible for a woman who loved fine and beautiful things to maintain a lovely and gracious home, even in the presence of small children. I take it back. It's possible, but a certain amount of watchfulness is required. I would have paid good money to be a mouse in the corner when my mother-in-law found the missing black crayon my son had been playing with days earlier. She had a lady over for tea and a chat, and when she went to pour their drinks, she and her friend were horrified to see, oozing from the spout of the teapot into the delicate china cup, what appeared to be a long black slug.

I thought that the only thing required for a regular bedtime was a firm word from the parent. I take it back. I had never seen a high-energy toddler kicking her heels on the wall at 11 p.m. and singing "Jesus Loves Me" to pass the time, and I had never heard the irresistible pleas of a four-year-old: "You read to me? Please, Mama?"

I was certain that there was no reason for children to watch videos more than, oh, maybe once a year. I take it back. I couldn't have imagined the infectious giggles of my son watching his beloved "funny cat" cartoon, the antics of Felix the Cat sending him into peals of laughter. I hadn't stopped to consider that Mr. Disney might occasionally have just as much to say to my daughter as other storytellers whose words are bound in books.

I was convinced that when I had kids, I would do it all just right, and my children would turn out perfect. I take it back. I don't think it's possible to do it all right, not on the first try or the sixth. Besides, perfect children wouldn't be any fun anyway.

I was wrong, gloriously so, and of all the wonderful, funny, laughing, tearful, inexplicable, unexpected moments along the way, there's not a one of them that I'd trade for having been right.

"I Will Never ..."

2006-10-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Before I had kids, I had a long list of things that I would never do. They ranged from the reasonable (I would never leave my children alone in the car at the grocery store) to the vain (I would never let my children dress themselves in mismatched clothes) to the hysterically funny (I would not get morning sick, since it was all psychological anyway).

As it so often does, reality intervened. I only leave them in the car long enough to put the grocery cart back. Mary can dress herself during the week, but I get to dress her on Sundays, and she may not wear a striped top with differently striped pants if she's planning to leave the house. Morning sickness ... well, let's just say I only adhered to the letter of the law on that one, because "morning" only covered about 25% of the time I was sick, and "sickness" falls laughably short of an adequate description of the misery my pregnancies put me through.

Within days of bringing Mary home from the hospital, I suddenly understood why women went around with hairstyles that would scare the cast of "Night of the Living Dead." I understood how "clean" could become a relative term. I understood how one could make fashion choices based on whether or not the stains on the shirt in question could be disguised by a cleverly positioned infant. "I will never" quickly degenerated into "I will probably not, at least I don't think so, as long as it never really becomes an issue, but then maybe."

One rule that I stuck to, though, was that my children would not be allowed to play violent games with gun-related toys. We ended up with a couple of vaguely pistol-shaped squirt guns (fifty cents at Wal-Mart!), but I didn't worry much about them because a) they were purple, b) the kids had no aim to speak of, and c) they lost some of their menace when they they emerged from the lawnmower in ninety-eight tiny purple pieces. Other than that, though, I was consistent on this important parenting decision.

It wasn't without reason, either. I knew women who were convinced that by keeping all weapon-like toys out of their homes, their sons would grow up to be gentle, sweet men who would never dream of doing anything violent. I didn't set my hopes quite that high, but I feel that it would be a safer environment if my children were not playing with the increasingly realistic-looking toy guns that are now on the market for little kids.

Michael backed me up on this, not too surprisingly. His father came home from Vietnam with a Purple Heart and a list of surgeries that would curl your hair if I told you about them, and he had had quite enough of guns by the time Michael arrived. Michael and his brothers played with all manner of toys as kids, and the lack of toy guns didn't seem to have warped them too terribly. My sister and I never particularly wanted guns, and we turned out just fine. When Michael and I started a family, we had a gun-free house, and violence was simply never an issue for us. Mission accomplished, right?

Wrong. What I didn't realize was that our initial success was due to one thing, and one thing only: We had had a GIRL.

Peter didn't have guns. Peter didn't NEED guns. He was a stick man from before he could talk, and let me tell you, if you're into sticks, everything is a stick. You could hear him coming from several yards away -- Whack! Whack! Whack! And as he got older and his aim improved, Whack! Whack! "OWWWW! Mo-o-o-ommmmm!" We encouraged him to touch softly, to use gentle words and soft hands, and to "pat pat pat" instead of hitting everything with impartial enthusiasm.

I didn't realize quite what a grand and sweeping failure this approach had been until he got his own sword. He is heavily into all things "Peter Pan" right now, and since the little curly-toed green shoes were more than I wanted to tackle as the family's chief costume designer, we took the easy route -- pirate hat from PaPa, red turtleneck from Target, and pre-packaged hook and sword from Fred Meyer. He was Captain Hook, or so I thought, until he geared up for battle and announced his intentions.

Here was my sweet, soft, fuzzy-headed little boy, standing on the arm of the couch with a plastic sword in his hand and the fiery bloodlust of a grog-swilling, foulmouthed, grizzled old swashbuckler in his eye. He brandished his weapon, eyed his audience, and roared, "I CHOP Captain Hook! Like THIS! Right in the NECK!" This pronouncement was followed up with a startlingly realistic-looking slash that would have at the very least given the old pirate reason to shave carefully for the next few days.

I shouldn't have laughed, but I did. I laughed so hard I was afraid I was going to fall right out of my kitchen chair, and I'm still laughing about it.

I think it's probably the best response, when I get thinking about the other "I have nevers" that have escaped my lips in the last few years. If "I will never let my daughter drive my Mustang because she might drive it into a mailbox" goes the way of the rest of the list, I'm going to need all the practice laughing I can get.

First Star to the Left

2006-10-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

My hands smell of rosemary chicken, cold vomit, and fairy dust.

I tried a new recipe tonight, more ambitious than most, since I tend to select main dishes by asking, "Does it go with French fries?" It involved the dismembering of a chicken, an overnight marinade, and fresh everything. I enjoyed the subtle tang of the lemon and the spicy kick of the rosemary. Peter wasn't so sure about it. Once it was removed from the offending bone and cut into small pieces (suitable for dipping in his ubiquitous ranch dressing, of course), he deigned to try several bites, and even let slip that he might like it a little.

Once I got the dishes cleared and the leftovers packaged up, the family had a little drive to take. We had ended up with one car at home and the other at Michael's work, and we needed to drive the ten minutes to work and pick up the other car. It was going to be a quick trip, and Mary was delighted to discover that she didn't even have to put her shoes on. We tried to sell Peter on that, but once we got in the car, it was evident that he really wanted his shoes.

We decided, unwisely, to attempt to distract him rather than give in to the demands for shoes. "Look, Peter, we're riding in the car! It's dark out! Isn't this fun?" We were only two houses away when the crying turned to coughs, the coughs turned to gags, and the rosemary chicken hit the floor. We sighed, turned the car around, and went home. Michael took Peter upstairs and changed his clothes, and I hauled the carseat out into the yard in the routine that has become mindless from repetition -- hose on, hard spray, ready, aim, squirt. I sprayed it clean and dried it off, fetched three hand towels from the kitchen (one damp, two dry -- don't ask), cleaned up the worst of the inside of the car, and followed it up with warm water and ammonia. We laid a thick towel over the carseat and tried again, this time with shoes.

Trauma forgotten, he started chattering away about his latest fascination, the Disney movie Peter Pan. He falls into verbal patterns with these interests, reciting the same phrases and wishes: "I gonna fly! Peter Pan gotta help me." He wants to go on a pirate ship. The crocodile's coming. He wants to be Captain Hook, with a coat and a hook and a box in a room. (We think this is the treasure chest, but we're not quite sure, since pillows occasionally enter the narrative as well.) This time, though, he wandered into a new flight of fancy, announcing that he would go to Never Never Land, with a whimsical description of who would be there: Everybody, it seems, but Darth Vader, who is relegated in solitary exile to his space ship up in the sky.

Mary joined in the fun, quoting the story's directions to Never Never Land: "First star to the right, and straight on 'til morning." In her usual tangential fashion, she came up with all sorts of ideas of things for Peter to do when he got to the mythical isle, and then asked in a startled voice, "What would happen if you took the first star to the left?" I laughed and said, "Good question!"

The rest of the drive was uneventful, and when we got to Michael's work he took the kids home and I drove the other car home, still smiling to myself at Peter's unexpectedly imaginative ramblings. As I settled into the comfortable roar and rattle of my old Mustang, my mind returned to Mary's comment. What does happen if you take the first star to the left? Are you lost in space? Do you find a different, crocodile-free fairyland? Is it, perhaps, the directions to the Death Star?

I think, though, that maybe that's what happened when Peter was born. We took the first star to the left. I didn't realize it at first, because things look pretty similar at first -- a few rays of light, plenty of dreaming, and a whole lot of being up in the middle of the night when the rest of the world is asleep. But after a while, there's the growing realization that something's funny about the constellations. Lots of stars, yes, nice stars, but they just don't look right. And then the hunch is solidified by the speech therapist's suspicions, verified by the autism specialists, and hammered irrevocably into place by the team of experts from the hospital -- his brain should have turned right at that star back there.

Slowly, we're discovering the geography of this island. We've met a few crocodiles, that's for sure. We found some other Lost Boys, and while we can't always play with them, we can play near them, and that works pretty well. It's a messy little world. There are more diapers than in Never Never Land, and people throw up more. People hit and break things a lot, and some of them can't walk or talk very well.

The best thing about this fairyland, though, is that a lot of the kids have their mommies with them. You don't get to bring your mommy to Never Never Land, but you can bring her here. Also, these mommies come equipped with sharp pointy swords -- pirates don't mess with these gals more than once. The trails through the woods are wheelchair accessible, and the midnight feasts are mostly Cheerios and string cheese. There are no wild Indians, just physical therapists and classroom aides. The nights can be dark, and sometimes the trees close in and the shadows overwhelm the firelight. But here, usually when you least expect it, there's still fairy dust.

Fairy dust like you'd never believe.

Hugs and Hurts

2006-08-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

Of all the innocently honest things that have come out of Peter's mouth since he learned to talk, I heard one of the most hurtful earlier this week: "I not hug Mama!"

Our typical morning includes an extended dressing routine that starts with Peter hiding from me under his comforter and shrieking with laughter as I lift up its corners and playfully squeeze bits of him. I finally whip the blanket off, tickle and kiss his tummy, dress him as the giggles subside, and stand him up on his bed to snap his pants. Then he leans into me, wraps both arms around my neck, and melts into me in a warm, sweet hug. I hug him back for as long as he'll tolerate, and then I swing him around off the bed and onto the floor, and our day begins.

A few days ago I had a freckle removed from the skin just below my collarbone, since its irregular shape and color had bothered my doctor. It's not especially painful, but the area is covered with a self-stick bandage the size of a fifty-cent piece. I hadn't given a lot of thought to its appearance, and hadn't made any real effort to cover it up when I got home.

The next morning, though, when I stood Peter up on the bed and held out my arms, he hesitated. I reached out again and said, "Peter! Give Mama a hug?" And he dropped his little bombshell. I wilted a little inside, but smiled and repeated, "C'mon! Give Mama hugs and loves!" He still stood there, frowning, and finally reached a finger toward my bandage and said, "I no like it." My smile slipping a bit, I hitched up my neckline and asked if that was better. He said that it was, and gave me a stiff little embrace before wriggling down to the floor.

It shouldn't have bothered me, and I feel silly for even admitting to it. But it did. It bothered me a lot. I am 33 years old, and I have come to a measure of acceptance of my various physical imperfections, although admittedly not enough to quit looking for that perfect pair of jeans that magically takes off ten pounds. I no longer fret about the shape of my nose, my interesting hairline, or the irregular shape of my eyelids that makes artful eyeshadow a lost cause. I am at long last starting to grasp some of what all those nice counselors tried to explain to us in middle school, that it's what's inside that counts.

But even with this lovely grown-up maturity, there is still something that shoots past all the careful constructs of logic and philosophy when someone says, "I don't like you because of how you look." Even if it's temporary. Even if it's silly. Even if it's a four-year-old. Even if it's your son.

I think the thing that hurt the most, though, was the unwanted echo I felt in my own mind. How many times have I looked at him and thought, "I love him, but I wish he was OK"? I don't think it's wrong to wish your child was perfectly healthy -- it's what every mother wants when she first finds out that there is life stirring in her womb. Healthy mind, healthy body, all of its fingers and toes. But I did feel a rush of guilt for the times of frustration and feelings of distance from my son, my sweet baby whose mind struggles so mightily with the basics of human connection.

Every child is imperfect, which is good -- a perfect child probably would have driven me around the bend completely. Bodies, hearts, minds, there are so many tiny flaws and quirks that make each child interesting and challenging and unique. Mine is, in that way at least, no different. He will exasperate me in ways that his sister never did, but the reverse is also true. I will rise to the occasion and I will let him down, and I hope with all my heart that there is more of the former and less of the latter as our years go by.

Every day of those years, though, there is one thing I can do right, starting right now:

Peter, I hug you. I hug you.

new friends

2006-06-12T19:11:00.000-07:00

I remember my first day of high school. Not like it was yesterday, because today was long enough that yesterday feels like several months ago, but I still remember it fairly clearly. I agonized over my outfit, finally settling on a denim not-quite-mini skirt, pale pink socks, white Keds, and a pale pink ten-button shirt (and if you know what that is, I know how old you are). I had a spanking new shoulderbag, big enough to carry my flute, my lunch, and several pounds of schoolbooks. The permanent damage to my upper back was considered a small price to pay for the hipshot coolness of that bag. My hair was freshly spiral-permed in a way that expressed my true inner self, just like several hundred other girls at my high school. My bangs were teased within an inch of their life, my discreet mascara and pink blush were painstakingly applied, and I was ready for whatever this Grand New Adventure would offer.

More than once, I have wished for a similar beginning to this phase of my parenting. I would have liked a countdown to The First Day of Autism. I could have gone shopping and picked out the clothes that would give me the optimum emotional back-up for whatever the first day offered, and still make me one cool mama for the rest of the year. A new bag would have been a wise investment, because there's a lot more paperwork than I expected. And a new haircut is always a good idea if you're heading into something new.

One of the biggest fears of high school involved friends. Would my old friends be there? If they were, would they be too cool to like me any more? And what about all those new kids, the ones from the middle school across town that I'd never seen before in my life? They could be anybody! They might be mean and stuck-up, or there might be somebody just like me. How would I know? How would we find each other if we were meant to be lifelong friends? And if it rains and my bangs go flat, will they think I'm weird?

I didn't have time to think about friends in this new educational venture. I didn't know I was starting school, to be honest. Instead, I found myself suddenly sitting in class without a textbook, astounded to discover that my next project was due to start as soon as I got home to my son. Who had time to think about friends? Isn't this independent study?

It turns out it's not. The diagnosis of any child with a neurological problem is an automatic induction into an accidental community of parents who are, at least initially, every bit as confused and emotionally staggered as all the other "new kids". Current statistics indicate that about 1 in 175 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Go to the state fair this summer and see how long it takes you to count 175 kids, and you'll get some idea of what this means.

At first it irritated me. Whenever anyone heard that Peter is autistic, the knee-jerk response was to tell me about someone they knew who was autistic. Depending on the sensitivity of the person telling the story (and the severity of their acquaintance's autism), this information ranged from irrelevant to horrifying. Now that I've had time to breathe a little, though, there is a welcome rush of recognition when someone says, "OUR son's autistic too!"

A few days ago I took the kids to the food court at the mall to celebrate Mary's last day of school. This was a risky proposition, and I knew it. The stores are awash with brightly colored products and advertising gimmicks. The voices of the shoppers, the piped-in music, the clatter of the restaurants, and the mechanical hum of the escalators swirl together in a bewildering cacaphony of noise. The food court involves a constant bombardment of smells, sushi and grilled steak and marinara and chocolate ice cream mingling over the constant underlying presence of Miscellaneous McDonald's. It was a prime set-up for a meltdown, but I'm quickly realizing that always protecting him from these situations won't help him in the long run, and in the short run it will guarantee me a first-rate case of cabin fever.

So we went, and by the time we all sat down with our various deep-fried delicacies, Peter was so overstimulated that his vocabulary had dwindled to his ear-piercing repertoire of squeaks and squeals. He was still having fun, though, so I kept feeding him French fries and tried to keep things at a volume that wouldn't bother the family at the next table. The dad kept looking surreptitiously over his shoulder at us, and I eventually realized that it wasn't because of Peter -- it was because he was a former neighbor, and we realized at about the same time how we knew each other. Talking over Peter's excited shrieks, we reintroduced ourselves and met each other's children. It turned out that Shawn had married a woman I'd gone to college with, and we nodded and smiled in a "small world" sort of way. Just as the conversation seemed to be winding down, Peter ratcheted up a few notches and I felt some explanation was required. Heather's response was unexpected, but it certainly explained her ease in maintaining a conversation punctuated with noises that would scare bats out of their caves: "Oh! Dylan's autistic too!"

The polite, distanced tenor of the conversation evaporated instantly. With that exclamation, Heather and I saw in each other's eyes the thoughts of another mother who wondered if diapers were forever. We could see the faint lines on each other's faces, etched by hidden fears that our sons would never know the joy of holding their own sons in their arms. We saw the grey hairs that were the result of too many people looking at our little boys and thinking almost audibly, "Why doesn't she DO something about him? I would NEVER let my child do that in public!"

As our conversation continued with new enthusiasm, we discovered that our stories took a shorthand form. "He bangs things." "Yes! Everything's a stick!" "We thought he was deaf." "But his hearing was fine, he was just tuning us out!" "He squeaks!" "He doesn't talk at all." "Barf!", I offer. Laughing, she says, "It's poop at our house!" Our eyes meet again, and we see that along with the fears, here is another mother who has guiltily laughed herself silly at something weird her child has done. We both grab hungrily at humor wherever it comes, because some days have precious few funny moments.

We talk a little longer, our highly verbal daughters becoming fast friends by the instant-photo booth and our sons happily enmeshed in their own private worlds. Dylan entertains himself by rolling little balls of paper from a covertly obtained magazine. Peter has removed the metal swinging door from the front of a gum machine, and Shawn comes to my rescue and replaces it with a minimum of fuss. Heather and I exchange phone numbers and e-mail addresses, do our best to clean up the ketchup-smeared war zone of our tables, and make sure our children have everything they came with. We smile and say, "We should get together!" And I think we probably will.

I was not having a good hair day. I was wearing a plain T-shirt and a skirt that was coming unravelled on the hem. I didn't look especially cool, and my purse with its amazing Kleenex collection was probably flopped open on the table, barely missing the puddles of spaghetti sauce on the trays. If I had bothered to put make-up on that morning, it had certainly fallen off hours earlier.

Funny, how none of that seemed to matter. Maybe she isn't just like me, and maybe we don't have a lot of the same classes. But all of a sudden, my new school doesn't look quite so scary.

Of Mice, Men, and Tears.

2006-05-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

I went through childhood with a taste for pathos. Sure, I liked skipping rocks and telling knock-knock jokes as much as the next kid, but I'd take a good deathbed drama over playing house any day of the week. If you were sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to rescue me from drowning in the frigid sea below, my hand would always just miss your grasping fingers, and I would sink gracefully onto the carpet and silently drown. If the game of the day involved an imaginary hospital, my case was usually fatal. And if I was the brave Army nurse, struggling valiantly through the driving rain and the roar of the battlefield to reach you in your hour of need, you'd better hope your prayers were said and your life insurance policy was current, because there wasn't much hope for you.

This might explain why at the tender age of seven, I staged a full funeral service for the neighbor children over a mouse we found dead in the field. It looked so pathetic and sad, its soft brown fur unrumpled by predators, simply lying there in the grass. I dug a small hole, gently lined it with leaves, and gathered the children around for a moment of silence and a few well-chosen words of comfort to the grieving. We committed the mouse to its eternal resting place, and tearfully covered it with dirt.

My mother, needless to say, was not amused. As a parent myself, I can see why she was not enthusiastic about her children playing with germ-infested dead animals, and why she was not appeased by my explanation that I had picked it up with a piece of plastic and not with my bare hands. (I hadn't learned the word "Duh" yet, but it was implied.) She was right, and I didn't preside over any more funerals after that. Growing up on five acres next door to a farm, I learned quickly that it was simply not possible to grieve everything that died, especially if you might find yourself eating it for dinner.

I grew up a little and started thinking more about boys than playacting, but the tender heart remained. On my first visit to a neighbor lady's house, I was astounded to see that the wall between her kitchen and living room consisted largely of a breathtaking saltwater aquarium. The tropical fish were beautiful, but even at my age, I could recognize that the design of the fishtank was a cut above average. I commented on it, and the lady replied with a slight wince that her ex-husband had built it. I was young, and knew very few divorced people, so I instinctively offered my condolences. She responded quickly, "Oh no, it was a good thing." Unshakeable in my naive conviction that no one could be all that bad, I earnestly answered, "It's always sad when something dies." She made a polite, noncommital response, and the subject was changed.

In retrospect, I realize that the sight of those fish must have twisted a knife in her heart every time she walked into the room, if the pain was still so fresh that she would mention it to a middle-schooler. I can now hear the unspoken thoughts simmering beneath her courtesy: "It might always be sad when something dies, but I bet the good Lord himself would make an exception for this guy." She may have been right, and I don't presume to make commentary on people's divorces any more.

I am grown up now, and I know that lots of things die. Friendships unravel. Good jobs end. Churches split. Hopes fade. Dreams melt in the face of reality. And with the arrival of adulthood, I found myself pretending that it doesn't matter. I started to believe that since everything ends, the little things aren't worth the energy of grief.

I do not say that we should strive to emulate those cultures in which intense emotions are broadcast on a wide frequency, joy and grief and passion expressed at a volume that rattles the windows and scares the livestock. Our culture is not one that encourages widows to throw themselves into the grave, and this is not a bad thing. I am not cut out for public displays of much of anything, and I make no apology for it -- I don't always wish to share my innermost thoughts, and I don't really want to hear those of the people at the next table, either.

But in the process of dealing with what appears to be a small grief, the diagnosis of my son's autism, I wonder if we have gone too far the other way. I'm guilty of it myself. We want things to be hopeful. We want people to get better. We like happy endings. All too often, though, we skip to the end, because all of the pesky intermediate stuff (like suspense and plot and character development) is too hard to deal with. Our first response to the news of a relative's diabetes is to say quickly that we are sorry, and immediately follow it up with a litany of wonderful treatments we read about on the internet. We hear that a friend is struggling with depression, and we tell her that it's so great that there are such good medications available now. We hear that an acquaintance has early-stage breast cancer, and we exclaim, "Oh, but if you have to have cancer, that's the kind you want, because almost nobody dies of that any more!"

But it is not good. You do not want cancer. You do not want depression. And if your child is autistic, the fact that he is very high-functioning doesn't mean it is happy news. It is still bad news, and I cringe to think of how many times I have deprived someone of the conversation they meant to have with me by forcing my optimism on them. There is such a tiny gap between "You should be happy about all the good treatments available" and the simpler but far more devastating, "You should be happy."

I think, sometimes, that my Celtic forebears had a valid point when dealing with grief. You laid out the dead in their finest clothes, mourned them loudly, and buried them. Then you got roaring drunk, slept it off, and picked up the plow in the morning. I don't necessarily recommend good Irish whiskey as a wise approach to grief, but I understand the principle. We need that time, those hours and days when mundane reality is briefly suspended and we are allowed to rage against the dying of the light. Yes, the sun will come up in the morning. But tonight it is dark, and to pretend otherwise is not brave, it is foolish.

Mice die every day. So do marriages. People get diseases and die in accidents and suffer unimaginable horrors every hour of the day, and if I try to grieve them all, I will have no time for living. But today, in my own small world, I will cry over the loss of a few small hopes and a few small dreams. And tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I will pat smooth the broken soil, watch the sun come up, and kiss my little boy's forehead as we start the day.

This Lane Ends: Merge Right.

2006-05-19T14:23:00.000-07:00

The last two years with Peter have felt like a drive down an unfamiliar country road. There are potholes and patches of gravel, the turns aren't marked very well, and the weirdest things show up in the middle of the road now and then, but the view is absolutely incredible, with unexpected vistas unfolding at every bend. I've been going along for quite a while, sticking with the main road when I wasn't sure which turn to take, enjoying the scenery, and hoping desperately that a recognizable street sign would show up pretty soon.

The street sign arrived last Friday in the form of a gentle, kindhearted woman sitting comfortably on the floor of my family room, bare legs tucked under her summer dress as she built a Lincoln Log house with my son. Maija is the autism specialist at Peter's special ed preschool, and she had come to visit with me and observe Peter in his home environment. After a long interview at my kitchen table that felt more like a chat with an old friend than a formal assessment, she settled down on the carpet to get a ground-level view of life with Peter. She played with him in that curiously organized fashion used by good educators everywhere, each interaction instructing the child or the teacher, sometimes both.

After a while, Maija set her paperwork aside and said that she had one last question. I was unprepared for both the question and for my emotional response to it. It was simple: "Do you think he's autistic?" I was startled to realize that with all the legal proscriptions surrounding the issue of autism within the state-run special education services, no one more official than my best friend had ever asked me that question. I thought through all my research, my discussions with other mothers, and my gut-level instinct. I started to respond. I stopped, swallowed, and tried again. It was a simple question, so I answered it simply: "Yes. High-functioning autistic, but yes, I think he is."

I have never in my life wanted so badly to lie. I wanted to say, "No, I think he's a little speech-delayed, and he's definitely got his dad's ability to focus on things, and maybe some of his mom's tendency to repeat herself, but he'll grow out of it, I'm sure of it." It would have only put off the inevitable, though, and only for about ten seconds. She knew it, and I knew it. When Michael and I met with the rest of his team a few days later, it was obvious that they knew it too.

It turns out that the word "autism" opens a floodgate of response from nearly everyone who hears it. I have been deluged with websites, titles of books, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and random scraps of advice from every direction. All of it is offered in love and kindness, and the information I've had the energy to pursue appears to be useful and hopeful. Peter is fortunate to have been diagnosed at a time when there is more public awareness of autism than ever before, with the research and support that comes with that attention. I will not be one of the pioneers, the brave mothers of the last century who insisted that their children did not belong in institutions, who battered down doors that their sons and daughters needed to walk through, and held their hands along the way.

The road is clear, and there are detailed maps for every possible route, detour, speed bump, and item of interest along the way. But I have grown accustomed to my quiet country byways, and I don't know quite how to merge from my dirt road to the 65 mph zone of the road ahead. I have my directions; what I need now is courage.

friends

2006-03-25T17:19:00.000-08:00

A line from one of my favorite songs says, "There's people been friendly, but they'd never be your friends / Sometimes this has bent me to the ground." As I have watched Peter's heart and mind develop, I have thought a lot about friendship.

Our life has been somewhat isolated, of necessity, since the process of his diagnosis began. It was obvious when he was only a few months old that he hated change far more than most infants do. The daily treks to church and the grocery store and friends' houses, so stimulating and delightful to Mary, were distressing and frightening to Peter. I stopped teaching piano when he was a year old, and as his issues became more clearly evident, I dropped out of more and more activities so that his life could be orderly, calm, and well-defined. He and I became a quiet circle of two in which we spent most of our hours, and while it gave him the environment he required to learn to talk (our first priority after his initial diagnosis), it was often a lonely little world.

It was intriguing to me to see my friendships shift and change over this time, and it was a struggle not to take it personally. This season of my life simply needed to be quieter, and I could not fault people for being too busy to try to understand it. As I retreated, some friends drifted away, shouting over their shoulders, "We should get together some time! Call me!" And I smiled and waved back, "I will!", taking the path of least resistance. That was easier than trying to explain that we could go to lunch, but I would probably spend at least half the time in the lobby, my son wrapped around my body in the protective hold he craved in stressful situations. I have no doubt that my apparent unwillingness to meet people halfway contributed to the increasing isolation, and I have wondered many times what I could have or should have done differently.

But some friends cheerfully ignored my determined unsociability and simply came with me. They would e-mail me, call me, write notes, and when they said "How are you doing?" they would not accept "fine" for an answer. They didn't always know how to encourage me or what to say, but their efforts made more difference than they could ever know.

All of this came to mind again last week when I saw friendship in its simplest form, landing in a giggling pile at my feet. Peter's preschool, part of our city's wonderful special education program for young children, is not a place where I expected him to make friends as I would define the word. Some of the children are wheelchair bound and communicate primarily through gestures and grunts. Most of the children have speech difficulties, and many have problems making social connections as well. With Peter's own challenges in these areas, it was hard for me to imagine anything approaching friendship to result.

I was wrong, and delightfully so. I dropped him off at school one morning, and he was enthusiastically greeted by Christian, who greets everyone enthusiastically. I encouraged Peter to say "hello", and when it became evident that Christian desperately wanted to give Peter a hug, I gave Peter his familiar prompt: "Give him a hug with your arms." To my surprise, he obeyed, and I had barely had time to register the burst of maternal pride before Emma came barrelling down the hall, radiating excitement at the sight of her two little buddies. She hollered, "Hi, Peter!" and threw her arms around both boys, her exuberant embrace knocking all three of them to the ground in a confused, laughing tangle of arms and legs and little blond heads.

Between these three children, there is a list of diagnoses and possible diagnoses as long as your arm. Emma is autistic. Christian didn't talk until he was nearly four. All three have social and speech delays, and those are only the most visible struggles. But whether or not they could articulate it, they figured it out that morning: Friends are good. Say hello to your friends. Even if you fall down, a hug is almost always a good idea.

They say it's the thought that counts, but I don't actually think that's true. Just thinking about being a friend only makes me feel better inside my own head, and only for a moment at that. Even in my temporarily shrunken world, I want to be the kind of friend who says hello. I want to answer letters, to return e-mails, to call and have lunch, even if we have to eat at restaurants where plastic toys reign and the paper napkin may well be the most nutritious item on the menu.

I want to give hugs, even if we all fall down.

losing things

2006-03-19T20:40:00.000-08:00

There are lots of good reasons to have kids, and I think I've just found another one. After over twenty years of losing things and bearing the full responsibility of my carelessness, I can now blame it on my kids.

I was a loser as a kid, and I don't mean it in the "shape of an L on your forehead" way. I lost things. Unbelievable amounts of things, and usually at the worst possible time. If we needed to leave, I had lost my coat. If it was time for school, I had lost my homework. If it was time for my piano lesson (and once, disastrously, for a piano competition), I had lost my music. I lost earrings, glasses, shoes, sweatshirts, school books, backpacks, jackets, and on one memorable occasion in the Seattle Coliseum, myself. And the thing about losing stuff is that you really can't blame it on anyone else, since it is not highly likely that anyone would steal an enormous and fabulously ugly denim jacket with white fuzzy lining. Well, OK, maybe in the eighties they would have, but they probably didn't.

I should have realized, at my high school graduation, that I was destined for greater things than losing trivial items such as socks. (I kept one yellow sock for fifteen years, hoping the mate would eventually show up.) I graduated with an empty diploma folder because I had lost an American History book that I was sure would reappear, genie-like, in time for me to avoid the $28 replacement fee. In college, I lost textbooks, umbrellas, library books, and cold hard cash. After moving into the adult world, I progressed to car keys, birth certificates, college diplomas, day planners, and a car. (I found it, though.) But always, until now, it was entirely and unavoidably my fault.

Yesterday I lost four pieces of French bread. They were not especially small or inconspicuous. They were your standard-issue slices of bread, soft, white, fragrant, and most importantly, inert. I took them out of the bag, intending to make sandwiches for my kids for dinner, and laid them on the counter while I put the rest of the meal together. I did not leave the room. But apparently the bread did. I reached for them, and experienced a moment of stunned silence when it became evident that they were gone, and that no amount of staring at the counter was going to cause them to reappear. I looked in all the usual places -- back in the bag (now inhabited only by a sad, chewy-looking heel of bread), in the refrigerator, in the garbage, on top of the microwave, and on the other counters. I looked in some unusual places as well -- on top of the piano, in the oven, by the CD player, and in the bathroom.

Then I realized that a while earlier, Peter had dragged his little wooden chair into the kitchen to supervise my work, and for a brief moment, I had my back turned. I changed my strategy. I looked in with his train set, the domino box, the toy basket, behind the couch, and among the queasily realistic rubber reptiles he got for Christmas. No luck.

By now it was a matter of principle. I rampaged through the kitchen and family room, lifting up cushions, shoving papers aside, slamming drawers open and shut, flinging open cupboard doors I hadn't opened in days, looking in impossible places because all the possible ones had been used up. I grumbled and groused and sputtered, occasionally punctuating my rumblings with an exasperated outburst, "How can you LOSE a QUARTER of a LOAF of BREAD?"

I never found the bread. I made sandwiches out of something else, served dinner, and ate with my family, still watching for four slices of French bread to pop out, waving and grinning, from behind my water glass. The adrenaline dissipated, but unlike incidents in the past where I would spend the next two hours quietly fuming and muttering to myself, I now had an explanation that brought surprising peace of mind, given that it was almost entirely unreasonable:

"Peter did it!"

Ahhh, relief. I had an answer. It wasn't a good answer, and it wouldn't stand up to any level of scrutiny, but it was an answer and it worked just fine for me. Children are supposed to bring joy to their mothers' hearts, and this child just had, whether he knew it or not.

Now if he'll just tell me where he put my 2001 tax return ...

looking back, looking forward

2006-03-17T16:31:00.000-08:00

"You really ought to get this stuff published."

I've been hearing that for years now, starting with the Tiny Baby updates. Those were the immediate fruits of the conversation with my mother in which I became urgently aware that twenty years was far too long to wait to see the humor in the mess and noise of life with a highly verbal toddler. I was struck with a merciless case of morning sickness during my pregnancy with Peter ("morning" meaning "from just before waking until just after falling asleep" and "sickness" being defined as "it would make you nauseous if I told you"). During those four months I read a lot, rested a lot, and wrote a lot. The updates began as a weekly e-mail to five members of my immediate family, and were little more than a progress report on the unborn baby's development and a short, usually humorous anecdote about Mary. By the time Tiny Baby made his grand entrance (proving to be misnamed by at least two pounds), the mailing list had grown to over forty friends and family members.

I had intended to continue writing the updates every week, and then life intervened. It turned out that my sense of humor was somewhat compromised on four hours of sleep a night, so the Mary anecdotes were much shorter on giggles. Also, the reports on Peter's growth would made less than gripping reading: "He ate, he pooped, he ate again, he slept. He ate, he pooped, he ate again, he slept." They drifted to monthly reports, then bimonthly, and I think they're on a centennial schedule now.

I quit writing for a while, and then got involved with an online parenting group. Many forums of this nature involve short posts, a revolving door of members, and frequent nasty arguments about aspects of conception, birth, and childrearing that I hadn't even known existed before I discovered the Internet. (Ahh, the wonders of modern technology. You can argue about ovaries with people you don't even know!) At first ours was no exception, and then after a series of changes to our forum, we moved en masse to a new, closed site that allowed for more open conversation. The discussions grew more serious (and the humor more riotous), the posts got longer, and some of mine veered closer and closer to essays. We started a journal page within our forum, and while I was only an occasional contributor, the enthusiastic response of my online friends planted a seed in my mind. We hadn't met in person, but they still liked it, so maybe someone else would too? Interesting thought.

Not long after, our church began a newsletter. Our pastor takes the delightful position with new ministries that if we don't have it and you think we should, maybe you're the one to start it. It has been a good policy, and when a retired journalism professor thought we needed a newsletter, he gave her the freedom to nurture her idea and let it grow. She asked me for something about my kids, and "Elephants" (see the January archives of this blog) was the result.

I kept writing essays, and finally I summoned up the nerve to e-mail one of the few that was not about my children to a former college professor and current friend for his professional opinion. He read it, gave me some polite suggestions for making it more interesting and less rhapsodic, and diplomatically reminded me of one of the key rules of the craft: "Write what you know." The next one I sent him was "Somebody Else's Kid", and the highlight of his succinct response was this: "It knocked me out of my shoes." This was high praise indeed, and the idea of seeing it in print took on new life -- this one might actually make a difference to another mother who was walking my path, thinking (like so many of us) that she was alone.

By now, the idea of getting an essay published had progressed beyond a silly idea, something someone would only say as a means of complimenting my work. But the actual process of it escaped me. After a few brain-picking sessions with a friend who has more work published than I have actually written in the first place, I decided that it was time to get moving. It was nice to imagine that the editors of Parent magazine would happen across my blog and send me large sums of money to tempt me to submit my work to them, but it really wasn't very likely.

So next week it begins. Editing, printing out, putting in envelopes, and waiting for rejection letters. That's not being pessimistic, either, as it turns out -- my goal is to get something published before I've had 100 rejection letters, and that may actually be on the optimistic side of reality.

I'll let you know!

It's Just Stuff.

2006-03-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

The older I get, the more I find myself quoting my mom. Sometimes it's accidental, where I hear her words coming out of my mouth before I have time to rephrase them: "That! Is! E! NOUGH!" Other times I don't realize that I've done it until I have the eerie experience of hearing my mother's inflections falling from my daughter's lips: "Peter, if I have to tell you that one more time..."

This time, though, I'm doing it on purpose: "It's just stuff."

My mom used to say that a lot when things broke or got lost, and it is an attitude that I appreciate and admire much more now that I have my own children. One of my stronger regrets about my teen years is the sight of my mother's tears as she swept up the remains of a cherished teacup. She had been holding it in her hands on top of something else in a grasp that was a little precarious, but nothing irresponsible for an adult taking a stack of stuff from one room to another. She paused in the doorway of the kitchen when I blocked her path, enthusiastically telling her an irrelevant story about a friend, probably for the third or fourth time. She shifted her grip on the teacup and it fell, obviously irreparable as soon as it hit the floor. Fifteen years later I can still hear her voice, fuzzy from recent tears, as she knelt over the shards with a brush and dustpan: "It's just stuff, honey. It's just stuff."

It meant that while some things were irreplacable, nothing was so important that it should be held onto more tightly than people. All of it would someday be broken or burnt or decayed, and the eternal perspective was what mattered. In the meantime, it was a good philosophy for living with a child who seemed to leave more than her share of broken glass in her wake.

I have had to remind myself of this good advice several times this week, sometimes through clenched teeth with a face red from the effort of not packing my son into a crate (with air holes, don't worry) and mailing him to my sister in California. The following is a partial list of the affected "stuff" in my house in the last seven days:

1 bottle lavender hand lotion
1 bottle lavender hand soap
1/2 spray bottle of OxyClean stain remover
4 bottles of nail polish
1 bottle nail polish remover
1 bottle hair gel
1 bathroom sink
about $30 in loose change
4 chocolate cookies
8 peanut butter cookies
1 Portabella mushroom
2 steak knives (not very sharp, fortunately)
1 Power Bar (Peanut Butter flavor)
1 Clif Bar (Chocolate Almond Fudge flavor)
1/2 banana
1 spool of thread
3 board games
1 child-size root beer from McDonald's
3 trial-size tubes of toothpaste
2 tubes Baby Orajel teething gel
1 tube insect bite itch relief cream
1 glass of water
1 small wooden chair
4 decorative pillows
1 large salt-shaker
1 pair of kitchen scissors
1 couch

I'd give you the details, but they're not funny yet, so I'll just leave you with the list. Peter is fast, he is quiet, he is ingenious, and he knows how to wait for the opportunity and then move immediately and disappear completely once his mission is finished. Come to think of it, he'd probably make a great Green Beret.

Until he's in basic training, though, I'll clean up the mess, love my son, and keep telling myself:

It's just stuff ... it's just stuff.

one of those amazing moms

2006-03-09T11:36:00.000-08:00

"Who's the gal with the little boy in the yellow shirt? I don't think I've met her."

"Oh, that's Jenny, she's one of those amazing moms. Her little guy is blind [deaf/autistic/brain-damaged/has cerebral palsy/leukemia/Down's Syndrome] and she is just so great with him. She takes him to his therapy and classes almost every day, and I know he has extra stuff they have to do at home to help him. She just has the sweetest spirit about her. I'm serious, I don't think I've ever heard her complain about it, and you can tell she just loves him so much.

"I could never do what she does."

I've heard this, in one form or another, countless times in my adult years. I've probably even said some version of it a time or two. You know the women I mean, the ones who continue to smile and encourage all the people who come through their orbit, shedding light and grace that seems to glow from within. The child in their arms or in the wheelchair or clinging to their hand only serves to accentuate the mother's maturity and joyful spirit. And they are amazing.

Yesterday I signed the consent forms so that my 3-year-old son could be assessed for autism. On some level, I knew it was coming. I've done enough research about his particular set of challenges that I knew autism was frequently the eventual diagnosis with kids like him. The Big Bad A-Word had been tossed around since the first evaluation when he was barely two, and it has always skulked in the corners of the conversations with his teachers and speech therapists. His teacher had seen the red flags and asked me for permission to go ahead with it, and I immediately agreed. Even if I hadn't suspected it myself, I trust her judgment and experience completely.

It was the right thing to do. I signed the papers, had the obligatory conversation with the teacher in which I smilingly answered that of course he could have the assessment and it would be all for the best, said good-bye to my little buddy, and closed the classroom door behind me. Then I cried for the next hour.

So here's my question: When do I get to be amazing?

These women appear to have been amazing from day one -- you know they must have bad days and times when they mourn the loss of what could have been, but you never see it. How did they get that way? Were they amazing already and that's why they were "blessed" with a "special" child? (Note to self: Never again use the words "blessed" and "special" with the parent of a disabled child.) Maybe they've been amazing since birth and it just happened to work out that way, no advance planning on anybody's part, just good luck.

Maybe it was in their prenatal vitamins -- dang it, I knew I shouldn't have gotten the generic brand. Or maybe when they had the ultrasound that told them their baby's spine was fused together, the technician hit an extra button that gave the moms a blast of particles that reconfigured their DNA and made them amazing. Or no, maybe it was in the epidural! (See, my friends were right, natural childbirth was a crazy idea.) Maybe some moms get a super-duper extra-special cocktail of drugs during delivery, and in addition to the pain medication, they get a dose of amazing injected right into their bloodstream.

I think it's actually more likely that they become amazing, though. It's the day-in and day-out of caring for a child with extra needs that builds up their tolerance for pain and exhaustion and vomit and crying, and after a while, things like petty arguments and the price of gas fade in importance. I suspect that the constant erosion of expectations and hopes and dreams eventually results in a visible bedrock of grace.

Do all the moms get it, though, or just the ones with really sick kids? What about me? I'm not amazing now. I'm tired and cranky and a little sleep-deprived. I eat too much chocolate, and I've been known to wake up with a minor headache that reminds me not to drink two screwdrivers after dinner. I read too many John Grisham novels when I should be doing laundry, and my kitchen floor is sticky a lot of the time. I get impatient with my kids. I tell them they have to go to bed, and then I get talked into fifteen more minutes. I'm not a bad mom, but I'm definitely not amazing.

When do I find out? Do you get a notification in the mail, or perhaps a light from above, letting you know that from now on, you're amazing? Can you apply for it? Is there a line to stand in? Does it help to have connections?

Oh. That's it, isn't it. It does help to have connections. But not those connections, not the kind on TV where if you know the right people you can do anything. It's the connections with my husband, my parents, my sister, my in-laws, my dearest friends. It's the support and wise advice of my beloved online mommy group, and the somewhat weirder collection of friends on my other online forums who make me laugh when I need it most. It's Peter's teacher and the incredible group of women who assist her, who remember his name and his likes and dislikes, and help him be everything he can become. It's the other moms in his class, the ones who also held a baby who wouldn't look into their eyes, who also set aside one more dream every few months. These are the ones who will hold me up and remind me that there are new dreams and new hopes to be found.

The truth is, though, I don't want to be amazing. I just want to be a normal mom, with a normal kid. And if saying that disqualifies me from being amazing, I guess I'm OK with that. I think I'd rather be real than amazing.

surprise

2006-03-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

I never liked surprises as a kid. I enjoyed the anticipation of the event too much. Like many children, I made the construction paper chain where you counted down the days to Christmas, but mine was twice as long as normal and it started with orange and brown instead of red and green, to indicate how many days were left until Thanksgiving. I didn't want to know what my presents were in advance, but I loved seeing them ahead of time, shaking and prodding and sniffing them just for the hint of what was coming.

It seemed like the sort of thing I might outgrow, but it wasn't. It is a standing joke between my husband and me that he had to make an appointment with me to get engaged. Of course, when he tells the story, I always have to defend myself by explaining that he did choose to propose on the last Friday before finals week my senior year of college, which also happened to be the opening night of the Christmas choir extravaganza for which we'd been rehearsing for months. It was a busy day, and I was so afraid of losing the really important event in the shuffle that I gladly sacrificed the traditional element of surprise, to his initial irritation and (fortunately) eventual amusement.

Thank goodness for ultrasounds -- I still didn't like surprises when I was pregnant with Mary. Since I am slow to get on board with most new technologies, I wanted to do it the old-fashioned way and find out the gender in the delivery room. But when it came down to it, I decided to find out what we were having so I could be prepared, as much as one can be for the total joyous disruption of one's life. Getting to know her would be surprise enough for me.

Mary quickly made it clear that parenting meant being surprised day in and day out. If I didn't get used to it pretty soon, I was going to go crazy in short order. I had expected a calm, easygoing child who learned to read early and spent most of her childhood immersed in a book, just like her parents. (Anyone who knows Mary personally is probably already laughing.) Suffice it to say that Mary's personal theme song is "Wild Thing", she has proved herself capable of talking for three and a half hours without stopping, and her favorite time to practice her spelling words is while she's jumping on the couch. She is exuberant and loud and energetic, and her room is an explosion of color -- ribbons, beads, paper, and bright scraps of fabric decorate every available surface.

Mary was not what I expected.

Peter brought his own set of surprises. What he lacks in his verbal skills is balanced by a cleverness that never ceases to amaze (and occasionally appall) me. Before his second birthday, he was able to open a closed door, turn on the water in the bath tub, and pull the lever to activate the shower. At two, he moved a chair into the kitchen, climbed onto a counter, opened a cupboard, and helped himself to several chewable children's vitamins. Last month I caught him retrieving a banned toy from the top of the refrigerator via an ingenious application of couch cushions. And last week, he gained access to a coveted board game by simultaneously releasing two childproof locks on the kitchen utility drawer, removing a carpenter's tape measure, extending it, and using the metal tip to manipulate the hook-and-eye lock on the upstairs closet containing the game.

Peter was not what I expected either.

I didn't expect this much noise, this much mess, this many hours of unintelligible conversation. I didn't expect it to be so expensive or so exhausting, and I certainly never expected that there would be days I was tempted to see what the going rate for a three-year-old was on eBay. (Kidding. Don't worry.) I didn't expect to go to the emergency room so many times, or to know the number for Poison Control by heart, and I never could have imagined the nearly miraculous proliferation of small plastic toys in dark corners of the family room.

I also didn't expect the internal burst of joy at my daughter's first clumsy crayon drawing that included her baby brother. (He had no legs and was mostly head, but at least he was there.) I never could have anticipated the day she and I got a serious case of the giggles in the middle of a very proper restaurant, sounding more than a little like my sister and I did twenty years ago. I couldn't have imagined how I'd go completely still with surprise when my son, who had to be painstakingly taught all forms of affectionate touch, climbed onto the back of my office chair and began to gently stroke my hair, patting and smoothing and caressing in a way that I had not thought him capable of.

I still don't like surprises. I'd rather know what's coming, put it on my calendar, and gleefully count down the days. But I've realized that on the meandering path of mothering with all its secret bends and hidden marvels, many of the best things can't be predicted, and they wouldn't fit on my calendar anyway.

I am learning, albeit slowly, to delight in the unexpected.

questions

2006-02-27T18:55:00.000-08:00

People say that it's hard to parent a four-year-old because of the incessant, hammering "Why?" I have discovered that "Why" is small potatoes, simply the warm-up for the next round of juvenile interrogation. My daughter started talking at thirteen months, which is well within the norm. That was the last conversationally average thing she did for the next five years.

Mom, can I show you how I leap? Can I do this, where I stand like this, and then do like this with my arms, and then leap onto the couch like this? Can I do it if I move the coffee table here? Can I take the cushions off the couch? Why not?

Did you know I can do a flip in gymnastics? Can I do flips at home? Can we get a high bar? Can we get a balance beam and put it out in the back yard and get mats and put them under it and I can bring them all inside if it rains? Why not?

Can we do paper dolls tonight? Can we watch Wallace & Gromit? Can we watch 101 Dalmations? Do you know how many dogs there are in 101 Dalmations? Did you know I can count to two hundred? Did you know Peter can count to twenty? Do you want to hear me count to a thousand? Why not?

You know how I always wanted to know what was inside the fireplace? Can I take this nail and scratch right here and take the brick out and see what's inside? Can I take it out and then we can glue it back? What's under it? What does the floor look like under it? Can I just look at it? Why not?

What are we having for dinner? Do I have to have the meat part? Can I have some outside the bun? Can I have cheese outside the bun? Can you cut it with that little flower cutter thing and make flowers? Do I have to have French fries? Can I have those curly chips instead? Did you know I can feel the curly chips through the bag? Do you want to feel the curly chips? Can I open it? When is it going to be time to eat? Can I have noodles like we had yesterday? Why not?

Is he going to throw up? How come he does that? Do I have to watch? Are you going to clean that little bit up? Does he have to eat the part he threw up on? Are you going to make him more dinner? Do I have to eat the rest of my dinner? Can I have a treat? Can I have two treats? Why not?

Are we going to take baths tonight? Can we take a bath together if we don't splash? Can I have a pink towel instead of a green one? Do I have to get my hair wet? Can I wash Peter's hair? Why does he have a bottom like that? Is his going to be like mine when he's six? Why not?

Do we have to go to bed tonight? Can we watch Beauty and the Beast? Can we sleep outside? If we bring lots of blankets, can we sleep outside then? If we wear all our clothes can we then? What if we wear all the clothes in the house? What if we wear all the clothes in the world? Can I go to other people's house and get all their clothes and then can we sleep outside? Why not?

"Why not" turns out to be a much more difficult question to answer. Sometimes it's pretty straightforward. Because you would break your arms and legs if you did that. Because it's forty degrees outside. Because I don't even want to think about the damage your brother would do with a brick.

Other times, though, the answer is shorter, but much more complicated. It usually comes out as a matter of principle: "Because I'm your mother and I said so, and that's a good enough reason when you're six years old." But the real answer maybe isn't so nice. Because it makes a mess. Because I'm too tired. Because I just don't want to. The other answers make me smile, and I know that I'm making the right choice as a parent when I tell my daughter that no, she may not attempt to sell small wadded-up pieces of craft paper to the neighbors to make money. These answers, though, the "no" and "no" and "no again" that spring from selfishness and exhaustion and preoccupation with the thousand urgent and mundane details of life, these answers raise questions that echo in my head long after hers are forgotten.

Am I just saying no because I'm worn out? Will the memories it makes be worth the hassle of cleaning it up? Do the dishes really matter that much? But if I don't do them, will it make me too cranky to enjoy playing with her? Will she only remember me never saying yes, always tired and busy and selfish, or is she even that aware of me as a person?

Am I too tired? Am I too busy? Am I too selfish?

Am I a good mother?

Her questions are hard. Mine are harder. Even if I had all the answers I couldn't write a book and become rich and famous, because every mother has her own questions, her own set of inadequacies and hidden weaknesses.

I don't know what my daughter will remember. She'll probably remember that I made her a paper doll tonight and that I wouldn't let her eat the whole bowl of cookie dough. She probably won't remember that I was so tired I wanted to go straight to bed and let her stay up until midnight watching movies because it was easier.

Whatever else she remembers or forgets, I hope she always knows that I love her. I won't worry so much about being a "good" mother if that's one question she always has the answer to.

Because I want to.

2006-02-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

Have you heard of the game called "I Have Never"? It's a party game I remember playing as a teenager in the late eighties, and the point was (happily for me) to be the least experienced. You'd go around the circle trying to come up with something that you thought everybody else would have done, and at the end you'd see who had the most non-experiences.

I won a lot. I'd never been to Disneyland. I'd never been waterskiing. I'd never been snow skiing. I'd never broken a bone. Most kids had experienced at least a few of these, if not all. I had a couple that I could have used, but didn't -- high schoolers can be unbelievably cruel to those who haven't been around the block quite enough times, so I found elaborate ways to avoid mentioning that I had never been kissed.

The other one I tried not to bring attention to was the fact that I could not swim. Well, I could, sort of, but it was pretty sad. I knew how to dog paddle well enough to navigate the ten feet from the diving board to the ladder in the lake at camp, but there was no way I was "swimming" any farther than that. I had no intentions of putting my face underwater for any longer than it took to jump off the board in a spectacular cannonball, knees tucked up and nose firmly pinched between my fingers.

Part of this was due to the fact that we did not happen to own a lake. The pond in our back field was seasonal (you'll understand this if you live in the Pacific Northwest), and even then it was more mud than water and I doubt it ever surpassed a depth of six inches. The neighbors had an aboveground pool, but its primary purpose was for splashing. I don't think it ever occurred to us to actually try to swim in it, since that would have severely cramped the style of the serious splashers.

The only time I had access to a significant quantity of water was summer camp. Camp Glendawn was a delightful expanse of forest and field that wandered from a country road to the shore of a lake. I believe the official designation was "Five Mile Lake", but I never heard it called anything but "Root Beer Lake" due to the unique color of the water, in which your feet disappeared once you were in past your knees. I suppose I could have learned to swim at camp, but there was so much flirting to be done that I never quite got around to it.

I graduated from high school, left my summer camp years, and went to college. My college was small, and while it was intellectually rich, it was less materially wealthy, and there was no thought of having a pool. After graduating with the bare minimum of phsyical education requirements (Independent Study Walking and Jogging covered half of it), I entered adult life, still essentially unable to swim.

It's not really a skill you need all that often. In my small world of home, church, and grocery store, there weren't that many floods, unless you count the time we attempted to bathe the cat. I was more interested in perfecting my melodic minor scales and my chocolate chip cookie recipe than my backstroke, and I never felt the lack.

Then I walked the marathon, discovered that my body could actually do something besides read and cook and play the piano, and a whole new world opened up. I started thinking that if I could do a marathon, maybe a triathlon wasn't so out of the question. There were the minor details of not owning a bicycle or knowing how to swim, but reality hadn't stopped me for a second while I was training for the marathon, so why get bogged down in the details now?

I got a bike for Christmas, theoretically speaking. It took over six weeks for it to stop raining long enough for me to take a few test rides, but I finally got one. So far so good.

The swimming wasn't going so well. I had started taking lessons last November from a local college student, and while she was encouraging and upbeat, I was too cynical to ignore the fact that I seemed to sink every time I put my face in the water. Since triathlons are not conducted six feet below sea level, this was a problem. I had practiced my rapidly degenerating freestyle stroke until I was convinced that the next time I got into the water, it would surge up in a giant wave and drown me, just to save me the trouble of doing it myself.

I told my swim instructor that if I had to do any more freestyle, I would quit. By this point she was familiar enough with my strong opinions to know that I meant it, so she taught me the backstroke. To our surprise, I turned out to have a killer backstroke. Unfortunately, doing the backstroke during a triathlon runs the risk of you blindly swimming off-course (best-case scenario) or crashing into another swimmer and knocking yourself unconscious and having to be hauled out of the water and resuscitated and then throwing up lake water all over your rescuer and probably ending up on the front page of the Oregonian looking like a dead fish (worst-case scenario). We tried the breaststroke next, and while it was less natural for me, I did manage to learn it without actually drowning, so that was progress.

I have another swim lesson this Friday, and we are going to attack the freestyle in earnest this time. It scares me silly. I have no reason to learn to swim other than this triathlon, and I have no reason to do a triathlon other than that I want to. I am learning, though, that whether or not I can articulate it any more clearly than "Because I want to", sometimes that's a good enough reason.

So I will practice this week, try not to drown, and try to cross one more thing off of my "I Have Never" list. I'd like to see if maybe when I'm 81 years old or so, I could lose that game every time.

Reasonable goal? Probably not.

Interesting goal? You bet.

Welcome!

2006-02-23T22:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new home of my blog! I finally finished moving my essays from their former home on a less user-friendly site, and today marks my new site's grand opening. I'm glad you're here, and I hope you like what you find. I invite commentary, positive or negative, as long as you know that if it's TOO negative, I'll sic my cat on you.

I love to write. Lots of people out there love to read. I hope it ends up being a good match.

stay-at-home mom

2006-02-23T22:34:00.000-08:00

I am a stay-at-home mom.

I have been blessed with the opportunity to eschew employment outside the home, believing that it is best for our family if I am at home for my children. I understood that it would mean a certain level of sacrifice, but I felt that these years spent at home would be beneficial for all of us. My mom, who stayed home with us for most of my growing-up years, had a running joke with my dad about stay-at-home moms who lie around and eat bonbons. I wasn't picturing anything quite that luxurious, but it sounded pretty good to me when I quit my job for the at-home life.

On an average school day, I start by driving Peter to preschool (3.9 miles, 15 minutes by the time I deal with the lights, the school zone on Pringle, and the inevitable Buick going 27 mph in the 40 zone on 12th.) I get him settled and head out to the health food store for my fresh fruits and vegetables (1.2 miles, 5 minutes). Then we're off to the regular grocery store for everything else (2 miles, 6 minutes).

I come home, unload the groceries, check e-mail, toss in a load of laundry, and go back out to get Peter (3.9 miles, 13 minutes -- no Buick this time). We hold hands and walk down the hallway, examining the same pictures that capture his attention every week: "Look! Fish! Lots of fish! Look! A train! Peter's train!" "No, it's like Peter's train, but that's not Peter's train." "Look! Fish! Lots of fish!" We meander through the parking lot, marveling at pinecones, the bulldozers at the construction site next door, and the bus driver who looks just like Santa Claus. Eventually we get to the car, and as usual, I need to get gas (.4 mile, 3 minutes -- is that light EVER green when you drive up to it?) at our favorite friendly gas station.

We head back south via the bank (1.5 miles, 6 minutes due to that wretched left turn) and home for lunch (2.5 miles, 7 minutes). We eat our jelly sandwiches and cheese sticks and pickles and grapes, and we have a Hershey kiss if we finish all our food. I change Peter's diaper, set him up with a Veggie Tales video, switch the latest load of laundry, fold it, and start ironing the stack of shirts that has been glaring at me from the ironing board for the last two weeks. I check in with my online parenting forum as Larry the Cucumber issues my two-minute warning: "God made you special, and he loves you very much!"

After taking care of the lunch dishes (I know, I know, I should have done it earlier), I change Peter again and locate my shoes, and if you know me well, you'll understand how that just added five minutes to my routine. I have an extended discussion with him about how many toys he can bring with him, and I bundle him into the minivan. We drive out to Mary's school, which is still technically in Salem but is past downtown, over the river, through the woods, and actually in another county (8.7 miles, 22 minutes, and that's only if everybody doesn't come to a dead stop at the apparently fascinating sight of the blinking yellow lights at the school zone by the Dunkin' Donuts).

I negotiate the mud, the stairs, and fifty screaming grade-schoolers to retrieve Mary and Madison from their classroom. I return to the car with the kids, two carseats, and all the papers and YOU HAVE TO SIGN THIS MOM! and lunch boxes that were inexplicably too much for two budding young gymnasts to carry and still be able to walk at the same time. I am easily talked into buying the fifty-cent hot chocolates at Fastlane Coffee (5.1 miles, 12 minutes) before driving Madison home (3.3 miles, 10 minutes by the time this cowardly driver manages to get across Commercial). Madison is unloaded with much giggling and waving, and we head home (1.2 miles, 4 minutes).

Like millions of other mothers across the country, I get the kids calmed down from the day, change another diaper, sort out the homework from the construction paper crafts in the backpack, toss in a load of towels, and start thinking about what to fix for dinner.

It's a good life. I'm not complaining about it. But would somebody please tell me when it's time to eat bonbons?

-----

My thanks to mapquest.com for the mileage information. I am trying not to be too depressed that I averaged 19.6 mph while driving on roads whose speed limits ranged from 20 to 55.

small words, big ideas

2006-02-23T22:16:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on January 18, 2006.

Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and Mary didn't have school. She's only six, so her main focus for the day was getting to watch videos on the couch and wear her pajamas half the morning. I confess I wouldn't have given the day much more thought either, except that she asked on the way to the YMCA that afternoon why she didn't have school.

I thought a minute, took a deep breath, and told her.

A long time ago in our country, when your grandmas and grandpas were as big as you, things didn't work quite the same way they do now. A lot of people thought that if you had a different color of skin, you weren't as good of a person. So kids who looked like your friend Olivia had to be separated from kids who looked like you, just because of what color they were. Pretty silly, huh?

If you had lived in that time, you and Olivia couldn't sit in the same seat on the bus, you couldn't go to the same school, and they wouldn't even let her drink out of the same drinking fountain as you! It was kind of like they thought people with black skins had germs or something, which is really goofy. But a lot of people thought it, and that was how things were in a lot of places.

Well, there were some people who didn't think this was how God meant people to act, and that it didn't really matter so much what color you were. There was one man named Dr. King who thought this, and he thought about it and prayed about it and talked to his pastor about it, and then he started talking about it. He talked to a few people, then a whole bunch of people, and then he got to talk to hundreds and thousands of people right by the Capital Building of the whole country.

He said "I have a dream." Now he didn't mean the kind of dream you have when you're asleep, but the kind of dream where you really, really want something to happen. He wanted our country to be a place where people who were different colors could go to the same schools and sit together if they wanted and drink out of the same drinking fountains and get the same jobs, no matter what color they are. He told all these people about his dream, and a lot of them thought it was a really good idea.

That's where the story was going to end. But then, with the odd clarity young children sometimes have, she asked, "Is Mr. King still alive?"

And I had to tell her the rest of the story.

No, honey, he isn't. Some people didn't like the things he said. Some people got very, very mad about it, and one man got so mad about it that he shot Dr. King with a gun and killed him. That was a very bad thing to do, and they caught the man and made him go to jail, and later he said he was very sorry.

But lots of people were paying attention to the things Dr. King said, and they kept doing the things he wanted to do, even after he was dead. They changed laws and made it so everybody could do the same things no matter what color they were. It's not all the way fixed, but it's a lot better because of the people who listened to him talk that day.

And then we were to our destination, and her rapidly-moving attention shifted to the clock tower on the church next door to the Y, and Dr. King was forgotten.

I hope some seed of that conversation stays in her mind, though. I hope that for now, she is thankful that she and Olivia can be in the same class. I hope that when she is older, she takes her fierce energy and uses it to fight the things Dr. King fought, whether for her life's work or just to make a habit of righting a few of the daily injustices that will still be part of her world.

America is a melting pot, and we will never be fully colorblind. But little girls like Mary and Olivia sometimes grow up to be women like Rosa Parks, and that's something any mother would be proud to see.

PMS

2006-02-23T22:08:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on January 4, 2006. Thankfully, my mood improved by the next day.

My cat is an egocentric, temperamental little personality, which makes her like virtually every other cat in the world. Lucy, however, is more than usually averse to being picked up and petted. She is exceptionally pretty, with long fur that's almost as soft as a kitten's, perfect little white paws, delicate features, and the most amazingly large pale green eyes I've ever seen. She makes you want to pick her up, cuddle her, and pet her all over. I still try it, even after being owned by her for ten years, because she's so pretty you just can't believe she's really that unpleasant.

She is, though. If you pet her on her own terms, and you're very very lucky, she might break into a gentle purr. She doesn't do one of those full-body V6-engine purrs that some cats do, but it's a purr and it's a delight to the ears. But I tell you what, if you pet her too much or try to pick her up when she's not in the mood, she'll let loose a hiss that makes you think the devil himself has set up camp on the living room couch.

I have often wondered why humans can't purr. It seems like a useful skill. If God created us in His image, I assume He doesn't purr ... but wouldn't it have been nice if He threw that in as a bonus? And if you take the view of evolution, explain to me why that one got filtered out, would you? Sure, it'd get misused just like winks and smiles, but I think it would be so nice if when we were really, really happy, we could close our eyes, smile with the little corners of our mouths turned up, and purr.

Today, though, I am sorry to inform you that I have a raging case of PMS. I hate pretty much everything in the world, including but not limited to my dishwasher, the neighbors' 35-foot-tall tree hedge, the moldy olives in my fridge, and the Republican Party. (Never mind. It's a long story.) My head hurts. My back aches. I'm hot and then cold for no apparent reason. I feel like calling up computer customer service hotlines and being rude, just to make them be nasty back, just to have the pleasure of being REALLY awful to them and then hanging up. Not that I would ever actually do such a thing, but it sounds like fun at the moment, and that's not really all that good a thing, now is it.

I'll be fine in a few days, I promise. I'll be back to my nice sweet self, or at least as nice and sweet as I get. It's temporary. I keep telling myself this. I'll feel better soon, and I won't feel like slapping people when they tell me to have a nice day.

Most days I envy cats because they can purr. Today, though, I envy cats because they can hiss.

Home Sweet Home

2006-02-23T22:02:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on December 19, 2005.

My husband had business out of town tonight, and I decided to use the time for a nice evening of bonding with the kids. I had everything I needed to make chocolate fudge (just in time for Christmas) and it seemed like that would be a fun thing to do together before I bathed them and put them in their pajamas. I'd let them stay up for a while playing with some new toys they'd gotten as early presents from family friends, and I'd finish up the Christmas cards.

I turned on some Christmas music to set the mood and had both kids wash their hands with the gingerbread soap that makes everything smell like the holidays. Mary carefully poured the ingredients into the pot on the stove and Peter stood on his little wooden chair to watch it thicken as I stirred. It reached the optimum temperature on the candy thermometer just as I finished explaining the science behind it, and I set it on a back burner to cool while I gave them their baths.

They're still young enough, so I let them bathe together as a special treat. I got them both soaped and shampooed, and read them a story as they played with the brightly colored educational bath toys we've had since Mary was a baby. After the story was over, I gave them a final rinse, toweled them off, and put them into their warm winter pajamas.

The Christmas music still playing softly in the background, they played together with Peter's new train as I finished off the last fifty Christmas cards and organized them by zip code for the post office. I told them it was bed time, so Mary took Peter's hand, led him up the stairs and walked him to his clean and tidy room, kissing him on the forehead before returning quietly to her own room to read a book until I tucked her in. Stories read and lights out, I changed the music to some light jazz, sampled a bite of fudge, and settled down with a good book and a warm blanket on the couch, revelling in the cozy room with its booklined shelves and toys neatly stored in baskets.

Now, my question for you: At what point did you realize this story was fictional? Was it the science lesson over the boiling sugar water? The story being read while two active children played in several gallons of water without a lid? Or did I have you going clear up to the toys in the baskets?

I completely forgot about the Christmas music, so we've already lost the soundtrack to this tender scene. Mary washed her hands with the gingerbread soap, but for some inexplicable reason, Peter's attempt to wash his hands ended up with him sitting on his bottom in the hallway outside the bathroom, crying and blazing mad at his sister, who claimed complete innocence. He lost interest in the fudge shortly after I got out the first measuring cup, and directed his attention to a glass jar sitting on the mantel over the fireplace with its brick hearth. I bet that combination set off a warning signal in your brain -- it didn't in mine, because at the time the water and the sugar were behaving exactly like water and sugar normally behave over high heat. It looked like a holiday version of MacBeth's witches' brew, including the trouble.

Peter pulled the coffee table up to the mantel and climbed on top to reach the jar, and just as I looked up in horror to see him drop it onto the floor, the pot boiled over. I bit my tongue before I expanded my daughter's education in a way that I didn't intend to (I made up the bit about the thermometer, by the way), slapped the pot onto another burner which it promptly covered with a fresh layer of pale goo, and started swiping ineffectually at the mess with a hastily dampened dish towel.

Completely frustrated, I bundled both children upstairs into the tub. I got them both washed, issued dire warnings about excessive splashing, and retreated to my office to check e-mail. I relaxed a little to the sound of their laughter, right up until Mary came out and said, "Mommy, we kind of both threw up." They had laughed so hard that their dinners had landed in the tub, and I will spare you further description of that scene.

After an aghast survey of the disaster area, I abandoned it and put both children into pajamas and plunked them down in front of a video, which they watched until I decided that it was really quite late enough and put them to bed. No playing with trains. No kissing. No light jazz.

In the next twenty-four hours I will boil or launder upwards of twenty bath toys. I will clean out the tub while holding my breath -- I am fortunately not a sympathetic vomiter, but I'm not looking forward to the task. I will gingerly remove several sodden towels from my sink and run an extra load of wash. I will scrub the sticky remnants of the doomed fudge off of the stove top and dispose of a pot full of something that does not even slightly resemble food. I will tidy up the ravaged family room, balancing books onto more books in the futile hope that they will not fall off before they are attacked again. If I have the energy, I'll start the Christmas cards.

Idyllic scene of hearth and home? Not on your life. But I look in on my sleeping children, and I see a couple of kids who are loved. I see a damp-haired little girl who learned tonight that not all recipes work the way you expect, and that you can still have fun trying. I see a pink-cheeked little boy who learned that it's possible to laugh too hard, but that's actually kind of fun too, in a sick sort of way. I see a mom who's tired and sticky and maybe a little cranky, but who doesn't doubt for a minute that she picked the right profession.

This home is sweet, and it's home.

Homeschool Mom

2006-02-23T21:54:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on November 28, 2005.

I thought about it. Really I did. My friend Tracy homeschools her children, and does it brilliantly. One full wall of her living room is covered with books, organized by subject, full of projects and facts and kid-friendly stories. I visit her home in the summer when they're technically not having school, and I'll find the kids playing with really cool geometric block games that are clearly teaching them all kinds of stuff without them even knowing it. Her oldest two children learned to read early and well, and her daughter explained fractions to me at an age when most little girls are focused primarily on whether Barbie needs a new ponytail holder or (heaven forbid and don't let Mommy catch you) just a haircut.

I thought, "How hard can that be?" It looked easy. I'd buy some of those cool books, the ones with interesting covers in primary colors and science experiments you can make with things out of your pantry, and maybe some of those geometric blocks, and we'd be off! Right?

Hmmm. Not quite. It turns out that the patience of a saint is also required. I put Mary into pre-school the year I had Peter, partly to "socialize her", but mostly so I could spend a couple of mornings a week with the baby without having to answer questions for three hours straight. (And if you think I'm exaggerating, I'll pay you $5 an hour to babysit this Friday night just so you can find out.) It wasn't real school, just a little fun thing before the real business of homeschooling began.

One month. That was all it took to realize that Mary and I were not an ideal homeschooling match. Part of it was that I was tired from having an enormous toddler who didn't want to be put down for more than about a minute at a time. Part of it was that I was starting to realize that Tracy's apparent ease with homeschooling was actually the product of careful planning and a gift for communicating with young children. But mostly, it boiled down to this: I am essentially an introvert. Mary is so extroverted that I'd think she'd been switched at birth if she didn't look exactly like me. And if she didn't go to school pretty damn soon, I was going to go around the bend.

So she went to kindergarten, I stayed home, she got even more socialized, and I stayed sane. It was a good choice. She can read now, it turns out that she fully inherited her dad's ability in math, and she gets lots of people to talk to All Day Long. Every once in a while I feel the pang of defeat for not being up to the task I'd dreamed of. However, we do get the occasional shot at homeschooling, and it's just enough to make me realize that we made the right call with her education.

Mary had a long weekend at home over the Thanksgiving holiday, and we covered every subject.

English: "Butt" is indeed a synonym for "bottom". It is, however, not one that we use at our house when we are under the age of thirty.

Math: One pancake plus one pancake plus one pancake plus one pancake equals four pancakes.

Health: Four pancakes is one too many.

History: If it wasn't OK to pour water out of the bath onto the linoleum last year, and it wasn't OK to do it in July, and it wasn't OK to do it last week, it probably still isn't OK tonight.

Economics: If you swallow that penny, I'm not giving you another one.

Science: Just because the sun's out, it doesn't mean it's summer, and Mommy is NOT going to let you go outside and play with the hose no matter how many times you ask.

Physics: If you lie on the couch directly under your brother's kicking feet, the arc of his moving legs will intersect with your head.

Music: Banging on a piano with both hands is called dissonance, and (like much of the music from the time period favoring this tonality) it drives Mommy nuts.

All things considered, tuition's a small price to pay for sanity.

Mother, heal thyself.

2006-02-23T21:33:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on November 22, 2005.

It's probably nothing, really. I had some very unpleasant dental work last week that requires me to be on antibiotics for a while, and my insides don't much care for the penicillin. But this afternoon I was feeling more than usually wretched so I decided to take my temperature.

I wasn't sure it was going to be accurate. It could be apparently on the high side because I was on my feet and folding laundry while I was taking it, and I think you're supposed to lie down and think restful thoughts while you have a thermometer in your mouth. Even if you leave out the part about potentially raising your temperature from activity, it's better not to walk around with glass-enclosed poisonous chemicals clamped between your teeth.

On the other hand, it could be artificially low because of all the air blowing past the mercury. It's a little hard to keep your lips firmly closed around the thermometer when you're very vocally engaged in keeping an aggressively energetic toddler from crawling on the laundry, throwing pillows on the floor, and removing books from the bookshelf. If you throw in the answers to questions like "Mama's bubbles? Peter's bubbles? Daddy's bubbles? Mary's bubbles?" when there are NO BUBBLES in sight, it's lucky it didn't tell me I was hypothermic.

So I took my temperature again, with the digital thermometer this time. I'm not sure this effort was an improvement, since I had to put away the laundry before he unfolded it, replace the cushions on the couch for the third time today, retrieve a ball of clay from a cooking pot soaking in the sink, flush a toilet and silently beg it to magically unstop itself (it did!), and look despairingly into the fridge in hopes that a fully prepared dinner would materialize. (It didn't.)

As I've grown into the job of Mother, I've discovered that the requirements for sick days are remarkably similar to those regarding missing church in my childhood. Church attendance is a high priority for my family, and the unwritten rule was that you must have a broken bone, a real fever (not the suspicious 109.5 temperature acquired with the use of a bunkbed and an overhead light), or be throwing up real vomit in order to miss church. It was a good rule, and I didn't miss much church.

When you're a mom, your list of acceptable maladies is similar, but shorter. Fever? Well, if you're upright, you can make dinner. Broken bone? Hey, that's what casts are for! Throwing up? Just don't do it during story time.

Now, there are a few things that are completely unavoidable, which is one of the many reasons why dads come in handy. A combined total of ten months of constant and permeating pregnancy-related nausea meant that I didn't do much laundry or serious cooking during those phases of my life, thanks to a very sympathetic husband. I've had a couple of cases of food poisoning where if the house burned down, I would have simply sighed with relief that I didn't have to fix dinner that night. And if you're actually in the hospital, you get some time off. Theoretically.

Of course I'm not all that sick, and it could be worse. I don't usually play that game, since I've always subscribed to the philosophy that my hangnail hurts me way worse than your broken leg hurts me. But if you don't have small children at home, the next time you're sick just keep this in mind -- it could be worse. You could be taking your temperature while folding laundry, ten hours into a fourteen-hour workday while entirely at the mercy of a tyrannical three-foot-tall boss whose first language appears to be Squirrel and who can completely dismantle a room in a quarter of the time it takes to clean it.

My temperature? 99.5. Nothing life-threatening. Too bad ... if I was at death's door, at least I could lie down for a while.

running

2006-02-23T21:26:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on November 3, 2005, two days before I did my first 5K race.

You've seen them. You know the people I mean, the dedicated athletes who are out there running on the downtown sidewalks and the shoulders of the back roads. They run in the dark, in the rain, in the fog, and in the blazing heat of a summer afternoon with their sweat-shiny bodies reflecting the merciless sun. Some are old, some young, men, women, the occasional teenager who's not just running because his coach told him he had to. They all somehow look alike, though, because under their baseball caps and ponytails and bald heads they have the same focused, determined expressions on their faces, mixed with a satisfaction that is inexplicable to the rest of us.

I always just kind of assumed they were crazy. I mean, honestly, getting in shape is one thing, but this is ridiculous. Wait for a nice day and go for a walk, folks. Get in out of the rain, take off your windbreaker, and go to the gym like normal people.

Be like me, with my exercise philosophy: All things in moderation. Rest, pasta, good books, good music, good movies, high-quality chocolate, and perhaps a bit more rest. If I need some fresh air, I'll go read on the porch. I might take a walk now and then with the kids to get a change of scenery, but none of this foolishness with running shoes and track pants. I get plenty of exercise chasing my kids, right?

All right, so I walked a marathon. Your point? It was moderate! You didn't see me rushing about hither and yon, sweat dripping in a most unfashionable way. No, I walk -- fast, I'll grant you, but just walking, like sensible people have been doing for millennia. You'll never catch me running.

I finished my marathon, and started looking for other walking events online. I kept seeing the phrase "walk/run". I wasn't really planning to start running, but it seeped into my thinking and after a while it didn't seem so unreasonable. Maybe just a little bit of running. I checked with my doctor, and she said my hips and ankles were recovered from the summer's attempts at running (see, I knew it wasn't a good idea to overdo things) and I could speed up a bit if I wanted to. Just for some variety, you know.

Last week I tried incorporating some jogging into my walking routine, and wasn't too sure I liked it. The speed was nice, feeling the wind in my face and watching my too-familiar landmarks fly by in a most unaccustomed way, but my ankles protested and it was hard to breathe. See, I was right. Only crazy people do this. But rock-headed stubbornness was what got me through the marathon, and it hadn't disappeared at the finish line. I decided to finish out the week that way. It got a little easier by the end of the week, so I thought I'd try another week's worth of moderate running.

This morning I realized that I could not tolerate another three miles' worth of abuse to my ankles, and did something somewhat counterintuitive: I sped up. All of a sudden, my weight moved forward, my breathing fell into a comfortable rhythm, and the scenery started sliding by instead of bumping dizzily up and down. I finished my workout with more energy than I'd ever had after running, and if I'd had time to hold still, something would have clicked into place in my mind -- but I'm a mother, and there were lunches to make and hair to braid and oatmeal to prepare to order, and the breakthrough didn't quite happen.

Later this morning, I got in the car to pick Peter up from school, and as I drove down the familiar road from which most of my walking routes begin, I wasn't thinking about much of anything. It was one of those Northwest fall mornings that I have always enjoyed from the inside of a car -- 48 degrees outside, 72 degrees inside, comfortable seats, radio playing softly, and the windshield wipers making a pleasant counterpoint with the splashing rain on the windows. "A good time to be indoors," as my mom liked to say on a cold, wet day.

However, I found myself with my head oddly cocked, watching the sidewalk. I snapped my eyes forward when I realized my attention had wandered, but my subconscious had had enough time to produce the following highly unexpected thought: "I'd rather be out there running."

The clouds didn't part, angelic music didn't issue forth from the heavens, and I didn't stop the car to absorb this epiphany. Instead, I drove on, rather more thoughtfully than before, and pondered what madness this might be. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was true, plain and simple. I wanted to be out there running, in the rain, in the cold, in the wind.

It appears that I may need to reconsider my definition of insanity.

different

2006-02-23T21:20:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on October 15, 2005.

A friend asked me after the marathon if I felt different.

It was a good question, and I had to think about it. I didn't at first, and I confess I had expected some kind of self-esteem-boosting epiphany, some burst of confidence that would make me a Better Person overnight. Nope ... still me, just with sore feet. But when I was going out to get the mail a few days later, I found myself swinging into my accustomed walking pace without even thinking about it, in spite of my tired legs and aching joints. And all of a sudden it occurred to me in a new way: "This body did a MARATHON!"

Lots of people say they were the last one chosen on teams in grade school -- I really was. THE last one. Not second to last. Last. Intellectually, I understand the rationale behind letting "team captains" choose the teams. The brutally honest value system of the playground results in perfectly balanced teams, each child with real athletic talent snatched up in ruthlessly accurate descending order of ability. It was probably easier for the teachers, and I've spent enough years teaching to understand taking the easy way out now and then. But for those of us who were a little smaller, a little younger, a little weaker, I have come to believe it was inexcusable.

If any of those miniature jocks, the undisputed playground royalty, had been told that the desperate-looking child trying to catch their eye would someday finish the Portland Marathon, they would have laughed until they wet their side-striped Adidas parachute pants. Understandably so -- if somebody'd told me that, I would have gotten mad at them for teasing me. This was entirely uncharacteristic of me, both then and now, and that's half the reason I'm so pleased at having done it.

I'm not going to say I was forever warped by my experiences in grade school P.E. I hope I'm a better and more well-rounded person than that, and that my successes in other areas of life have more than made up for any humiliations on that childhood battlefield. But neither will I say that it made no difference to my early years, and I will not say that I have forgotten it. I might not have actually been that much slower or less coordinated. But it was enough to convince me to my bones that if I was going to do anything real in life, it was not going to be with my body. My brain, my music, my sense of humor, absolutely. The rest of my body, though, was only useful as far as getting me to school and back and providing the leverage I needed to wrest those enormous sounds out of the beloved grand piano in my high school choir room.

The last several months blew that out of the water. I have incontrovertible proof now that my body is good for something. Yes, I had two babies, and that made me feel a bit more generous towards it in recent years, but lots of women have babies, so it was hard to get too worked up about that as a bona fide athletic accomplishment. Most women do not do marathons, and I did. One of the signs I saw along the way said, "You are an athlete!" To the amazing men and women who ran that entire 26.2 miles, that was probably like informing me, "You are a musician!" My response to that would be, "And the sky is blue, but we don't put that on the front page of the Oregonian either." But to me, the non-sports-minded mommy with funny feet and jiggly thighs, this was news. I had been slowly realizing it over the course of my training, and when I saw that sign, I thought, "Yes. Yes, I am. I like the sound of that."

So, Darius, in answer to your question -- yes, I feel different. I have a pinched nerve in my left foot. My hips ache. I am sleeping a lot, and when I get up in the morning my brain wants to go for a walk but my body is not yet up to the task, and right now I am letting my body win that argument. (Not for long -- it's not going to be happy next week, but that's just too bad.) I also have a hard-earned blue shirt, a medal, and the memory of having crossed a finish line.

The White Queen told Alice in Wonderland, "Why, I believe six impossible things every morning before breakfast!" It wasn't six, it was just one. It wasn't technically impossible, it only felt like it. And it took eight months and one week and two days of training, so it didn't exactly happen before breakfast. But this day and every day, I carry with me the knowledge of having done something I could never have dreamed possible for myself, and that kind of different is worth the effort.

Twenty-Six Point Two Miles

2006-02-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on October 15, 2005.

I did it! When I got to the finish line, my 6-year-old asked, "Mommy, did you WIN?" And I said, "Yes."

I had to explain it a little, the concept of finishing and winning, and how the "real" winner was going as fast as we drive in downtown traffic, except he did that for more than TWO HOURS, and without a car. I tried to explain how everybody else just tries to finish and still be standing upright. I don't know if she got it or not, but as far as I'm concerned I won.

Of the handful of things I forgot this weekend, the one I am the most upset about is my watch. I have trained with the same stopwatch for months, and use it quite a bit to assess my pace. I am trying not to think too hard about what my time might have been if I had been aware of my too-slow pace in the first four miles. Next time, I'll safety-pin it to my shirt before I leave Salem, I guess. As a result of not having it, I don't have the nice mile breakdowns I had hoped to have. I'll write as much as I can remember about the different miles, though, and NEXT year I'll bring my watch!

Pre-Race: I woke up at 5 a.m., and while I hadn't slept all that soundly, I was ready to get up because I was so excited about the day FINALLY being here. This was when I discovered that I had left my watch at home, and I was not a happy camper for a while, but there wasn't a single thing I could do about it. I got packed up and checked out, and headed out to find my coach (Troy) at the street corner where we'd agreed to meet. I had been a little worried about knowing exactly where to go, but as soon as I got a block or two down the street, it was pretty obvious -- just follow the other several hundred people with orange papers safety-pinned to their shirts. I found Troy without any trouble, and he was so completely pumped that it started rubbing off on me, which helped considerably with my nerves.

I got headed in the right direction, and then suddenly realized that it was also the right direction for thousands of other people. I found my area, for walkers who were planning a certain pace, and got chatting with several other women who were also doing their first marathons. We waited and waited, and then people started cheering and it was time to go!

Mile 1: There were a LOT of people! Got started slow because of the crowds, couldn't find my pace. Passed a drum corps that was clearly having quite a bit of fun.

Mile 2: Awesome surprise -- didn't realize at first that this loop would mean we could see the runners coming back, already on mile 5. I almost fell into a hole since I was watching them instead of where I was going. Managed to find a very focused-looking Troy as he passed, before doing myself any serious injury. I'm sure the people around me thought I was a little weird: "That's my coach! With the purple hair!"

Mile 3: Got chatting with a social studies teacher from L.A. on this mile. She was walking a bit faster than I had been, and the mile we walked together helped me find my stride. Nice little handbell choir during this mile -- I was surprised at the number of musical groups along the way.

Mile 4: Made the mistake of taking a bathroom break here. Long line, and I could have waited another mile -- didn't realize then how many opportunities there would be later. I'll know better next time! Passed a couple of nice jazz combos in this mile.

Mile 5: Got a few "you go girl" type looks when I politely but firmly informed another participant, "I will not be trained during the marathon" after he started criticizing my form. I figured, hey, if my coach is OK with it, I don't need input from the peanut gallery. I was a little startled on this mile to be walking over rocks and skirting puddles -- seemed a little odd, and one gal said, "THIS wasn't on the bus tour!"

Mile 6: Had definitely found a good pace and was feeling good. Managed not to slap the person who said "Only 20 more miles!" at the end of this mile.

Mile 7: This was another section where we went two miles out and back on the same street, and could see the faster participants coming back on the other side of the street as we went back. Surprisingly, it was encouraging instead of frustrating -- I had never expected to run this, and it was AWESOME to see people running who were clearly having a great time.

Mile 8: Got a little bored, started looking at bib numbers of the returning runners to see how many people might be in the race. They seemed to end in the high 8000's, and I heard later that it had been capped at 9,000. That's a lot of people!

Mile 9: Time to turn around! There was a high school cheerstaff at the turnaround point, and that was nice.

Mile 10: After the turnaround, I started counting the people on the other side of the street -- I was curious about how close to the end I was. There were about 450 behind me at this point. By the end of the race, I was finisher #6658 of 7398, so if you count the thousand or more who dropped out, I had passed a lot of people by the end.

Mile 11: There was a worship band at the end of this mile playing a song I knew well, and that gave me a nice boost.

Mile 12: This mile curved around a bit and went up and down more than the others had, so I had to get pretty focused for a while. I found that my training on hills in Salem made it so I was passing people a lot on hills. This was surprising, and very encouraging.

Mile 13: Trying not to think about it only being halfway!

Mile 14: Bathroom break -- faster this time. This section was boring -- industrial area, not much to see. The musicians weren't as good, either.

Mile 15: More boring walking. It was all flat, which was nice, and I got into a very good rhythm at this point. There was some Brazilian-flavored music blaring out of a speaker on this mile, and if I could have taken it with me, I think I'd have finished half an hour faster -- it really got the blood flowing!

Mile 16: Another bathroom break before THE HILL -- I think I drank a bit too much over the last couple of miles. It went fast, but I would later regret having needed three breaks, given how closely I missed being under seven hours.

Mile 17: THIS WAS IT. The hill up to the St. John's Bridge. I had driven up it to see how bad it really was, and while I didn't have nightmares about it, it haunted my thoughts during training. And you know what? It was a breeze. I had trained well, I was ready, and I passed quite a few people on it. I got to the top of that bridge, and I was walking on air. (Several hundred feet of it, if we're going to get literal.)

Mile 18: Oh -- we have to keep going, don't we. *sigh* Checked in with Michael to let him know how I was doing -- he and the kids were on the way up, and it was nice to hear from them!

Mile 19: Reached Troy on my cell phone to tell him I'd conquered the bridge. He was headed out to have a beer. Tried not to be very, very jealous.

Mile 20: Getting very tired. There were two women ahead of me with large bottoms in hot pink pants, and their walking form looked like they were just strolling through the mall window-shopping -- I half-expected them to be carrying sodas and giant pretzels. But those girls were FAST. It bugged me, and I got moving pretty quick trying to pass them, just so I wouldn't have to watch them.

Mile 21: This section was beautiful, since the road followed the edge of the bluffs by the river, but the sun came out and it was pretty warm. At this point I was still not entirely sure I was going to be able to finish.

Mile 22: Passed a kick-butt classic rock band that put some fire in my step again. Also had a strangely inspiring conversation with two other mommies -- I realized that I was on a pace to finish the race in less than half the time it had taken to deliver my son. (8 lbs., 13 oz., no pain medication. The marathon was way easier.)

Mile 23: This is where I realized that a sub-7:00 time was a possibility. I jogged down a hill partway through this mile, knowing I'd probably have sore hips later, but figured that if it knocked me under 7:00, it'd be worth it.

Mile 24: This is where I realized that I was going to finish it, and I wasn't going to be sitting on the roadside crying because I was too tired. (I had really been worried about this.) Passed a few people who were headed back to their cars wearing their Portland Marathon 2005 shirts and finisher medals -- very inspiring!

Mile 25: Still doing the math in my head as I went, trying to figure out if I could get in under 7:00 -- it all depended on how many minutes it had taken to cross the start line.

Mile 26: This one seemed to be about three miles long. I was so tired.

Mile 26:2: Michael met me right at the end of Mile 26 and paced me as best he could on the other side of the barrier. The end was in sight ... going to do it ... did it!

I crossed the finish line and got my medal -- woohoo! Michael brought the kids over to the barrier so I could see them, and that was also very nice. I was a little woozy, and had a cup of orange juice. I picked up my race shirt and got my picture taken, and then met my family at the end. My coach had seen enough sick athletes to realize that I wasn't doing too well, and he was right -- I came very close to passing out cold right there in the street. I got the help I needed and got back on my feet, and while every single muscle in my whole body hurt, I'd never felt better in my life.

Because they weren't posting times right then, I didn't find out my official finish time (7:02:16) until the next morning. That was a bit of a bummer, since a sub-7:00 time had been my personal goal that I hadn't told anybody about. It was very close, though, and it's a good goal to shoot for next year.

Yes, I did say "next year." And no, I'm not insane. I had to laugh at myself -- I had expected that I might maybe possibly want to walk next year's marathon. Maybe. After I had forgotten about this one. (You know, kind of like babies. Nobody wants to have another one until they've gotten sleep-deprived enough to forget the last labor.) But I was surprised to find myself sitting gingerly in my office chair the day after the marathon, trying not to breathe in the wrong direction and make random body parts hurt, and looking online to see if there was another marathon I could do this winter since next October was just too long to wait for the next one.

Crazy? You bet. Sometimes crazy is good. It goes really well with rock-headed stubborn, which is what got me through this in the first place.

Do you drink coffee?

2006-02-23T20:58:00.000-08:00

It's such an innocuous question, isn't it? If you're one of the 107 million people in the United States who drink coffee (and that statistic only counts those over age 18), you probably don't notice how often you're asked about it. But as one of the three non-coffee-drinkers within a 500 mile radius of Seattle, I can tell you it gets asked a lot. And when I answer "No," I get reactions similar to what you might imagine if I announced that I did not eat food because I didn't care for the taste.

Coffee is an acquired taste, and I have never been able to manage it. My best friend started drinking coffee in her mid-teens, and we had an ongoing joke when I stayed over at her house -- she would fix herself some coffee (this became increasingly sophisticated as she discovered fresh-ground coffee and the associated paraphernalia) while I leaned against the counter and chatted with her. She'd ask, casually, "Do you want a cup?" I'd pause for a second as if considering it, and then say, equally casually, "No, not today ... thanks, though!" I don't know why that kept being funny even fifteen years later, but she still asks and I still answer the same way.

She tried giving it to me black, with cream, with sugar, with flavorings, with very high-class fresh-ground coffee beans, every way she could think of -- it never worked. The closest I've ever come to liking any form of coffee was an almond-flavored granita from a dark, quirky little hole-in-the-wall of a coffee shop in town that was razed to make a new bus station. I glare at the bus station every time I go by it, just because of The Governor's Cup being gone. I know it's not the bus station's fault, but that place had personality. On second thought, the positive experience with the granita might have had quite a lot to do with the devilish smile and intriguingly curly hair of my date (AND he played classical guitar), but I suspect it probably really was a well-made drink, regardless of my mental state at the time.

Anyway, I do not like to drink coffee. Like many people, I love the smell of it. If it wouldn't give people a subconscious urge to sprinkle sugar on my head, I would wear it for perfume just so I could smell it in the mornings. When I first had my own kitchen after college, I seriously considered making a pot of coffee every morning, just for the smell, and then pouring it down the drain before I went to work, because who wants cold coffee sitting around the kitchen, right? I didn't do it, but the fact that it occurred to me should tell you something about my love-hate relationship with coffee.

When I wake up at 6:45 a.m. and it is cold and black outside and I have two small children to pry out of bed, I sigh and think, "What I really want is a good strong cup of coffee." Because I know that's what I need -- something hot to warm up my insides (since I am cold from November to March), something with a good jolt of caffeine (since even I have to wait until 10 a.m. to face a can of diet Coke, and I am an avowed addict), and something that smells lovely and tastes of far-off lands with a hot bright sun that comes out more than three times over the course of the winter.

The long and short of it is that if it did not taste like hot water run through an old work boot and liberally flavored with iron shavings, I would love coffee.

This was originally posted on October 3, 2005.

lessons

2006-02-23T20:45:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 30, 2005. I never did find out what the lesson was.

Somebody somewhere said that the only wasted lesson is the one you do not learn. (I'm not in a very researchful mood, sorry, so I don't know who it was.) Yesterday was definitely what my camp counselor training would call a Teachable Moment.

A normal Thursday afternoon for me is spent at home. Mary's best friend Megan lives close enough that we carpool every day with her family to their school. Connie (her mom) usually drives them to gymnastics after school since their classes are at the same time, and I do the pick-up run on other days. It's a good system, and it saves a lot of gas and time.

This Thursday, though, Connie was out of town on business and had asked me to do the Thursday run. "Sure!" I said, thinking, how hard can that be? Yeah, OK, so I'll have Peter with me and I'll need to pick up both girls and Megan's little sister Kenzie, and all their carseats and backpacks and lunchboxes, and get them herded into the car, and make sure they eat their cheese sticks instead of seeing if they will fit into the gaps between the seats, and drive over to the gym and get my dear distracted daughter into her leotard and into class on time, and keep an eye on Kenzie, and keep Peter from going totally ballistic with all the activity and noise of the gym ... um ... whoops, too late, I already said yes.

Deep breath. Sure! I am Supermom, right? I gave birth to an 8 lb. 13 oz. baby without medication, I can certainly handle a measly little carpool run. Yes. I can. Definitely.

Somebody else said, "Pride goeth before a fall." (This time I know, it's King Solomon, but I'm not going to quote chapter and verse. If you want to know, that's what Google's for.) Apparently the universe thought there was a concentration of pride at my house and decided to shift things around a bit.

It wasn't my fault that the minivan didn't start, really it wasn't. This time I didn't leave the lights on or the back door open or the overhead light on or ... well, you get the picture. Anyway, it wouldn't start on Wednesday evening. My husband and his brother came and got it running again over Thursday lunch, and we were good to go! Right?

No. We were not. It turned out that it needed a new battery, but I didn't know that at 2:55 on Thursday afternoon. All I know was that it went rrr, rrr, rrrr. Rrrr, rrr, rrrr. I thought, maybe some gas? Rrrr, rrrr, VVRRRRRMMMMM, rrrr, rrr, rrr. Nope. A few bad words? Whack it on the dashboard to teach it a lesson? Perhaps a well-aimed kick to the tires? None of these really seemed like good ideas, so I simply sighed. (Well, all right, I thought the bad words.)

I called my friend Tammy, the only other person I know who has a minivan and was not using it at 3 p.m. on a school day, and YES! she was home and we could borrow it. So, I hauled a protesting Peter out of the minivan, did the contortionist's act required to get his carseat into the back of my beloved 1968 Mustang (2-door, unfortunately), and drove over to Tammy's, where I did the whole routine in reverse. By this time, Peter had settled into Tammy's front yard with her children, and he was NOT pleased to have to leave. It wasn't negotiable, though, so we left.

I called ahead and had the girls moved over to the school's day care, since I was going to be at least half an hour late. I called Megan's dad to tell him the Kenzie-swapping meet-up was probably going to be delayed. I managed to get to school without doing anything dire to Tammy's beautiful Honda Odyssey (didn't I just write something about coveting?), found a parking spot, and mentally armed myself for the inevitable battle of extricating the girls from the excitement and color and potato chip intensive world of after-school care.

OK, so far so good -- I had all four kids, all of them had their craft projects and backpacks and carseats and THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT MOM papers and lunch boxes. Wait! Kenzie! Did I leave ... nope, I got her. *phew* All right. We got to gymnastics, and nothing worse happened than Peter dropping several small pieces of equipment into a 4-foot-high vertical plastic tube that was bolted into the floor. (Don't tell, please. They'll find them one of these years. They didn't look all that expensive.) Everybody was with their appropriate teacher or parent, and I could go home.

I drove through the horrifying traffic of I-5 at 4:30, in which everyone is trying to beat the looming spectre of rush hour by driving ten to fifteen miles over the speed limit. In the slow lane. I cringed every time anyone came close to Tammy's paint job, sure that I was going to be the one to wreck this beautiful vehicle, in which the children were not allowed to eat and a towel was laid across the most high-traffic area of the carpeting. I won't vouch for my blood pressure, but we were otherwise safe and sane when I got to Tammy's, thanked her profusely, switched the carseats, once again pried Peter away from his playmates, and drove home, nearly two hours later.

Could it have gone worse? You bet. The van could have broken down at school instead of at home. Peter could have put his ARM in the tube instead of the little loops of cloth he found by the high bar. The tiny smudge of chocolate that landed on Tammy's pristine seat cushions could have been my entire diet Coke instead. (It came out, and she thought it was pretty funny that I was so stressed -- of course, she hasn't seen the inside of my minivan.) We could have gotten sideswiped on the Marion Street Bridge and gone crashing through the guardrail and fallen into the Willamette River and had to be rescued by heroic bystanders, and I would have been trying to cover up my tatty bra that would have been showing through my white T-shirt. Of course you'd be wearing a white T-shirt if you drive into a river, it's part of the nature of things.

It could have been worse, and a professional pessimist like me can always come up with several entertaining scenarios to prove it. But you know what? It could have been better, too. And it wasn't. And to be honest, I'm not sure I see the point.

Maybe I'm just too narrow-minded, too tired, too busy, too cynical. But days like this just seem to pick away at my soul without giving anything back. If I ever find out the deep lesson in yesterday afternoon, I'll be sure and let you know.

In the meantime, I'm going to make sure I always have good-quality chocolate in my purse. You never know when you're going to need it.

stretching

2006-02-23T20:41:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 27, 2005, shortly before I walked the Portland Marathon.

I didn't actually set out to tell you about Robin McKinley, but once I got started, I just couldn't help it. Here's the quote that got me started. In context, a vampire is talking about how it feels to touch the magical web of light that the master wardskeeper has given to the untrained magic handler who ... um ... never mind. You don't need context, do you? Context is highly overrated.

It's about change and growth, and when I read it, it felt right.

"Does it hurt you?"

"When you are a little too hot, a little too cold, does it hurt? Or if you pick up something a little too heavy for you, does it hurt? It is only a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself."

A week from Sunday, I will tie my shoes and put on my hat and walk 26.2 miles. The understood boundaries of myself have changed as I have trained, and while their moving has indeed been painful from time to time, I would not put them back if I could.

Robin McKinley

2006-02-23T20:37:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 27, 2005.

Another favorite fantasy author -- not sure what it says about me that there are enough fantasy authors that I like that I have more than one favorite, but she's one of my favorites of any genre so that's all right then.

She's not as rampantly quotable as Terry Pratchett, but then she's a bit more subtle in general. Pratchett's dragons roar and glitter and stride about; McKinley's lurk and emit evil and then burn you to a crisp without observing the usual niceties of knight-to-dragon combat. Pratchett's heroes wisecrack and stumble through the shifting realities of his world without losing their interestingly pointed hats; when McKinley's heroines wake up in the morning, they have tangled hair and pillow face, and they might not be in a good mood. Pratchett's magic flashes; McKinley's shimmers and glimmers and settles quietly into your soul.

Her early books are supposedly geared for teenagers, mostly girls (I think the boys probably read them too, but only when nobody's looking). The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown are delightful fantasy that I read for the first time when my hair was just growing out of the middle school layers into the high school spiral perm. I read them most recently as a grown-up mother of two, and I liked them more after the passage of (mumble) years.

As she continued to write, her books grew up too. Deerskin addresses horrifying realities without immersing the reader beyond hope. Spindle's End (Sleeping Beauty, more or less) gives us a heroine who is not entirely sure who she is, and she is stronger for it. Rose Daughter, her second retelling of the Beauty and the Beast legend (Beauty is the first), is a fairy tale that is most definitely not for children.

Sunshine, which I am currently reading for the fourth time since I bought it in 2004, is for grown-ups. She takes a world that's almostbutnotquite 21st-century America, drops some magic and vampires into it, stirs in cinnamon rolls and Bitter Chocolate Death, and serves it up with a dash of slightly bone-chilling romance (I'm not going to tell you any more than that). I don't have favorites of her books, since it's like trying to decide whether I prefer eating or breathing, but I do like this one. Quite a lot. I see different bits of myself in all her heroines. In Sunshine I see some of my very best and some of my very worst, so she appeals to me in a way that gets under my skin and stays there.

I'm not going to tell you to read McKinley's work, since I don't know if you'll like her or not. Not everyone does, and that's all right -- not everyone likes Shakespeare either, if you can find anyone honest enough to admit to it. I will say, though, that her work is worth a try if you like being grabbed by the back of the neck and yanked into a fantasy world and meeting yourself when you get there. I happen to like that. Maybe you will too.

"One of my children"

2006-02-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 27, 2005.

I grew up as a preacher's kid, and my sister and I made regular appearances in my father's sermons as everyday examples of the principles he was teaching from the Bible. Since there were only two of us, he did his best to preserve our anonymity by starting the often-humorous stories with "One of my children ... "

It never worked all that well. All the congregation had to do was look up in the second row on the left-hand side and see which sister was laughing and which sister was blushing. It was a kind attempt, though, and in that tradition, I will leave a thin veil of secrecy over the identity of the child I am referring to.

One of my children spent the morning drifting in and out of the room I used to use for piano teaching. It still contains my piano and a large collection of music, but has little else in it aside from a few plants on a small table, a desk against one wall, and plenty of sunlight. It has become the home base for the kids' train set. (You didn't think a train set needed a home base? You'd be amazed at how far a 30-piece wooden train track set can migrate.) I assumed that this was what kept drawing my child's interest, since that is a frequent activity on sunny mornings.

It was a faulty assumption. It turned out that I had left a very large bin of raisins on the kitchen counter after fixing breakfast, instead of returning it to the childproofed cupboard where it normally lives, locked away from inquisitive little fingers. One of my children had spirited it away into the piano room out of my line of vision, and made several trips to visit it over the course of the morning.

Do you have any idea what a cup of raisins will do to a child who is still in diapers?

sigh

2006-02-23T20:31:00.000-08:00

If you want to make me a happy woman, please explain to me what fundamental law of the universe demands that a professionally cleaned carpet be immediately baptized by a glass of orange juice, random sprinklings of sand (we don't even have sand!), and a pile of cat barf.

Thou Shalt Not Covet.

2006-02-23T15:51:00.000-08:00

Now, I figure that since they didn't have grand pianos when that command came down the first time, grand pianos should be exempt. Doesn't that seem reasonable to you? It does to me.

I own a Yamaha upright that I purchased new when I started teaching full-time. It has an oak finish, keeps its tune nicely, and it has been exactly what I needed for my private use and my years of teaching. It retailed somewhere in the neighborhood of $4,000 in 1996, and since I worked at the music store I bought it from, that was knocked down to $2,400. It was the nicest instrument I could afford, and even that was stretching it a bit. It has served me well, and I have never regretted the purchase.

However, as anyone who has the faintest appreciation for cars can tell you, the fact that you like your reliable Honda does not keep you from getting whiplash watching a Shelby Cobra drive by, or a perfectly maintained '57 Chevy, or one of those Corvettes -- yeah, you know the ones I mean. In the much smaller world of people who appreciate pianos, it works a lot the same way, and with surprisingly similar price tags.

I was in Costco the other day in pursuit of chicken, and maybe some of that nice crab dip or some chocolate-covered almonds if they had them in quantities under ten pounds, and I wheeled around a corner to come cart-to-keyboard with a grand piano. Not exactly what you expect to find between the children's videos and the mayonnaise, you know?

It turned out to be a special sales event hosted by an area piano dealership, and (as always seems to be the case at these things) the featured instrument was one of those irritating monstrosities that plays itself and has a recorded backup band. It's great if you want Liberace's ghost in your living room, but otherwise it's a little creepy. Regardless, the incessant noise was an excellent deterrent to playing the other pianos, just in case you missed the polite little sign balanced over the Middle C on each keyboard. I wouldn't have, but it still kind of bugged me on principle that I couldn't. I wandered down the aisle, seeing if anything caught my eye, only looking with half my attention.

And then, there it was. A 7-foot grand, black with a subtle, soft finish, lid up, bench positioned just so, and Bosendorfer stamped across the front. Who? Oh, I'll tell you. There aren't many of them out there, and they're in a class by themselves. They're best known for their concert grand that has 92 keys instead of 88, adding four extra bass notes that (due to the quality of the piano) actually sound like notes rather than very expensive growls. I had never actually seen one. I had also never seen a piano that had been marked down to $60,000. From $90,000. Really. I'm completely serious, and I suspect the piano dealership was too.

So, can you blame me for changing my mind about the silliness of a piano show in the middle of Costco? I had to play this thing. It was not optional. I had to play it. Unfortunately, the salesman was in full Sell-Things Mode, and he had an interested audience. Since it said RIGHT THERE not to play without asking, and the electronic horror had moved onto "White Christmas", I just didn't have what it took to sit down and start playing. But I also couldn't bring myself to interrupt a potential sale just to ask if I could play a piano that I, in my jeans and T-shirt and scuffed tennis shoes, was clearly not planning to buy.

I waited. And waited. I walked away. I came back. (A Bosendorfer! I have to!) I smiled nicely at the person being sold to. I waited. I walked away again. I came back again. (But it's a Bosendorfer!) Finally, finally, he was free, I asked, he said yes, I sat down, and then my mind went blank. All those years of classical training, GONE. So I picked up the jazzy line the techno-thing had been playing, got into a groove with it, and oh my ... I was in love. People were probably listening. I have no idea. There were no people, there was no Costco, just the perfect action of the keys and the pure trebles and the rich middle tones and the heartbreaking clarity of the bass (I knew it was coming, but you're never really ready for it) and I accelerated that baby up to sixty in no time flat.

I had to stop before I got drool on the keyboard. I came back to earth, smiled ruefully at the salesman, patted it good-bye, and paid for my chicken and went home. I thought my poor faithful little piano would look small and worn and sad when I saw it, but instead it beckoned to me. The few minutes of bliss on that beautiful work of art had reminded me, paradoxically, of why I do this -- it's not the instrument. It's the music. So I played, Bach preludes and Schubert impromptus and a little bit of blues, all pouring out of my soul into my fingers and back into my soul again.

I don't need to covet. I have all I need in my heart, my hands, and my stack of beloved and battered music. I have all I need.

This was originally posted on September 22, 2005.

Multipurpose sewing machine?

2006-02-22T23:12:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 22, 2005. It cost $130 to fix.

Multi-purpose ... sewing machine??

If you had asked me the primary purpose of my trusty old Viking sewing machine yesterday, I would have looked at you a little oddly, and then answered that it was meant for sewing. Mostly I've sewn clothes for my kids, aside from some maternity clothes for myself (including a well-intentioned but unfortunately patterned summer dress with little green frogs that turned out to be a lot ... well, greener after the dress was made). If I had to think of a secondary purpose, I probably would have mentioned its ability to produce bad language, as evidenced by the first and last project I did using stretchy fleece.

I haven't done any sewing for quite a while. My creativity goes in spurts -- some months it seems to dry up completely, and other times it goes in cycles, running through the now-predictable pastimes of sewing, hand-quilting, cross-stitch, baking, scrapbooking, and the odd fling with hand-dipped chocolates. Then some months it runs riot, and it's all I can do to keep up with the drive to write-music-write-stories-sew-clothes-invent-recipes before all the creative energy threatens to tear me to bits.

Recently, I've been writing a bit, but it's been a dry spell on the whole. However, Peter has grown out of his pajamas, and I had two pairs cut out on the sewing table from the last round of sewing madness, so it was becoming unavoidable. I located matching thread, plugged in the iron, replaced the needle, sighed, and started in.

Now, you have to understand that in the months when I wasn't using the sewing machine, Peter was. Not for its intended purpose, naturally, but for purposes only known to the mind of Peter and occasionally shared with the rest of us. The most comprehensible was "cooking". He would turn on the sewing machine light (just like Mommy turns on the range light when she cooks), prepare all his ingredients (also like Mommy, but with rather more plastic and less pasta), and carefully arrange them on the flat bottom section of the machine. He would painstakingly cook his little plastic knight, seasoning him with cardboard game pieces if Mommy was watching, and her good-quality pins if she wasn't.

Naturally, the production of flannel pajamas required the dismantling of the cooking operation. I expected Peter to be upset about this, but the cool pictures of footballs on the flannel seemed to balance the loss. I started to sew, and as I got into the rhythm of it again, I remembered how very much I like to sew. Peter was playing quietly, the fabric was moving smoothly and confidently beneath my hands, and the sewing machine itself was emitting a cheerful jingle.

Jingle? That's odd. Usually it's more of a hum. Oh, well, it still works, and I wonder if it's really going to make that big a difference if I use dark purple thread instead of dark blue on a section that isn't going to show, and oh, didn't that line up nicely ... and I forgot about the jingle.

Right up until there was a big noise and a small explosion, and a protective plate broke and dropped clean out of the machine followed by two pennies. Apparently the machine had an extra, hidden purpose: Piggy bank.

You know ... they didn't mention this in What To Expect When You're Expecting.

a quote that made me laugh

2006-02-22T23:11:00.000-08:00

This one's from Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms, my current source of too-late nights and incurable giggling. As always, the funny story and incessant puns are sprinkled with thoughts that zing through your consciousness, the literary equivalent of static electricity.

I guess this is one reason to believe in a deity ...

On dwarves and their gods:

"...they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, 'Oh, random fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!' or 'Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!' "

Say that one more time?

2006-02-22T23:09:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 13, 2005, as a much-needed follow-up to "Somebody Else's Kid."

Today, Peter's penchant for oft-repeated phrases took a delightful turn. I was in the process of cleaning up one of his larger messes (I didn't tell you about that, did I?), this time in the laundry room. He had moved a bucket next to the dryer, used it as a step stool to climb onto the dryer, and from there managed to get into the laundry detergent and liberally sprinkle the dryer, the washer, the floor, and his hair. I was heading down the stairs with the cleaning equipment and said, for no particular reason aside from habit, "I love you, Buddy!"

He responded with his usual, "Wuv oo too." Then I heard a slightly eerie but very sweet echo of myself as he said, in my precise inflection, "So-o-o much." It warmed my heart, every single one of the seven times he said it.

Somebody Else's Kid

2006-02-22T23:07:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 12, 2005. On a whim, I printed it out and gave it to Peter's teacher and shared it with a few other parents. I was surprised and deeply moved by the chord it seemed to strike with these people, and it made it more than worth the anguish of writing it. Not all endings are happy. I think that's OK sometimes.

It's always somebody else's kid, the one who looks almost right but isn't quite, who cries a little too much or doesn't make enough eye contact, who asks the same question one too many times, even for a three-year old. Somebody else is in the grocery store with a screaming child, protecting her body from his frantically kicking feet while she tries to hold him, all the while looking at other shoppers with a slightly desperate air as she prays that they'll just leave her alone, please don't stare, he'll be all right in a minute. Somebody else leaves the playground with her struggling toddler in a practiced full-body lock, praying that nobody will call Child Protective Services.

I am somebody else, and he is my son.

And when you see that mother, consider this -- yes, he's loud. Yes, he asked that eight times already. Yes, he cried at the top of his lungs over something incomprehensible from the produce section clear to the canned foods. And when you get in your car, it will be quiet. When she gets in her car, he's still there.

Don't get me wrong, I love my son. I love him with the fierce passion that only mothers and poets can understand, and even the poets I'm not so sure about. He has my blood, he lived in my body, and I love him in a way that I can't explain, even to myself. This isn't really so much about love, though. It's about frustration and exhaustion and foreign languages without translators.

Last week, Peter wandered around the house crying pitifully, "I want to go home! I want to go home!" We heard the words and gave the best answers we could. A typical conversation would sound like this:

"I want to go home!"
You are home, Buddy. This is home.
"I want to go home!"
This is our home! This is where we live. Yup, this is home.
"I want to go home!"
We live here! This is our house. It's a nice house!
"I want to go home!"
This is Peter's house. He lives here. Mama lives here. It's a good house!
"I want to go home!"

We finally realized that he meant he wanted to ride in the car. Whenever we left his grandmother's house, we would say, "Peter, it's time to go home!" and we'd get in the car and go for a ride. Same words. Completely different definition.

We're on Rounds Two and Three of this linguistic battle this week. He looks out the window in broad daylight when it's 55 degrees outside, and says, "It's hot outside! It's dark outside!" And the conversational loop begins again, the same inconclusiveness, the same frustration. What does he want when he says it's hot? Ice cream? The wading pool? Sidewalk chalk? His sandals? What does it mean that it's dark? He's tired? He wants to have his teeth brushed? He needs his blanket? Maybe the earth's rotation is making him dizzy?

I don't know. Nobody knows. I hope that some time this week we will have the translator's breakthrough that gives the key to yet another set of concepts. He speaks English, but it is not the English I speak, and there is no dictionary, no vocabulary list to work from.

In the meantime, I will go in his bedroom tomorrow and wake him up. I will dress him in long pants and a flannel shirt against the chill, and I will open the shades to let the golden light of morning spill into his room. He will say, "It's hot ouside! It's dark outside!"

It's dark in here too, little buddy. It's dark in here too.

tall

2006-02-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 7, 2005.

I hadn't intended to post any follow-up to this, but I changed my mind today. Thank you, with all my heart, to those of you who posted here and e-mailed me privately about the "small" post. Your thoughts were welcome and deeply appreciated, and your friendship even more so.

I am still feeling a bit smallish today, but my friend's gracious forgiveness helped me to pick up my stuff off the floor at least. It turns out it wasn't quite so badly stepped-on as I thought.

I wish I could say I had learned my lesson and I would never offend someone again, but I know better than that, unfortunately. I can say, though, that I will try to be more thankful for forgiveness and friendship, since the last twenty-four hours have given me far more than my fair share of both.

small

2006-02-22T22:59:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 6, 2005.

I am 32 years old. I have a college degree. I am a proficient musician. I am a good teacher, a decent mother, and I think not a bad writer. I send thank-you notes and compose music and grow beautiful roses in my yard. I have, or so I thought, grown past the insecurities of my teenage years and can stand up straight and be a grown-up.

And then I hurt the feelings of a friend today, and I am suddenly thirteen again, with unruly hair and braces and spotty skin. I feel small and embarrassed, and the bottom has torn out of my bookbag and my papers have fallen under the feet of the big kids in the hallway, and now they are dirty and unmendable.

How does that happen? How does a competent, confident adult suddenly lose nineteen years of her life? I don't know. All I know is that I am sorry, and I am still not quite old enough to know how to say it right.

I swear, she was here a minute ago.

2006-02-22T22:54:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on September 5, 2005.

When I was in college, I dated a very nice young man whose primary flaw was that he was almost as absent-minded as I was. The relationship ran its course before we were even close to being in danger of marrying and procreating, and I used to laugh that it was a good thing -- between the two of us, we would have misplaced kids right and left. "I haven't seen the girls in a while, have you?" "No ... not since we left the beach." "Oh dear."

I did eventually have my own children, and I worried about losing them as easily as I lost my keys. I've always been bad about keys. Some people lose their glasses -- that was never my problem, since I was so near-sighted that I only took my glasses off after I was in bed and had turned the light off, because I might not be able to FIND the bed without them. I've lost schoolbooks, fully completed Social Studies homework (that one lost me a straight A in 1987 and I've never forgotten it), purses, day planners, cars (but I always found them) -- pretty much anything you could possibly want the next day, I've lost it one time or another. But keys were the worst.

Losing my keys was the only one that sent me directly into a raging fury, automatically bypassing all the intervening steps of concern, frustration, renewed determination, exasperation, philosophizing, anger, and foot-stomping. If the keys were lost, I could pretty much guarantee that this was not going to be one of those calm, reasonable searches in which the lost item would turn out to be in the second-most-likely place, or perhaps in my jacket pocket. No, if it was my keys, they were equally likely to be in my laundry hamper, behind a stack of classical piano music, or in a soap dish in the bathroom. It wasn't all that effective to rampage through a room, crying and swearing and doing the full Insane Burglar treatment, but it sure felt good.

When I was pregnant and discovered that my new baby would weigh slightly less than my purse, I think you can understand my immediate concern. She was going to be so small! Smaller than the cat, and he hid from us all the time! I mean, I'd lost stuff WAY bigger than that without even trying. What if I put her in the laundry basket by accident, or set her on the counter and stacked papers on top of her? (Oh, you don't want to know. The stack on the counter involved regular cursing.) What if I put her in the closet with the clean towels? I had nightmares about this.

Well, not too surprisingly, it is very, very hard to lose a baby. For one thing, they're LOUD. For another, they don't balance on counters very well. For another, they smell bad at regular intervals, so even if you did set one down for a while, you'd find it again in a hurry. Mostly, though, it's because you love them so much. I discovered that I was no more likely to lose her than I was to lose my own self. At any given moment, even if she was napping, you could have spun me around with my eyes closed and I could have pointed unerringly to where Mary was. I may have wanted to get a full refund on her now and then, but I wasn't in any danger of losing her.

Then time happened. Six years' worth, actually. And I can't find the baby. I distinctly remember putting her to bed in her crib, and now the crib's dismantled in her little brother's room under the Mr. Incredible poster. She was wearing a little blue and white nightie with puppies on it, I can still see it, but it's down in the basement in a box labeled "3-6 months clothes -- KEEP." She liked to sleep with a stuffed plush dog, rather mundanely named "Doggie" -- he's still around, but he's not quite the same color now and his nose has been almost entirely worn off.

I looked in her room tonight, and there was no baby -- instead, there was a long-legged colt of a girl, dark blonde curls still damp from her bath, face buried in her new Tinkerbell comforter, wide awake with anticipation for tomorrow's adventure into the first grade. I kissed her forehead through the floppy tangle of growing-out bangs, and she sat bolt upright and gave me an update on the cat's most recent foray into her room. I smiled and told her to sleep, and closed the door as I have so many times, so many nights.

I'm excited, too. She's bright and funny and social, and her first year of all-day school will be a much-needed outlet for her quick mind and energetic friendliness. First grade is a good thing.

Every now and then, though, I still catch myself looking for the baby. I don't look behind cushions any more, but into the fine bones of her sweet face, memory overlaying her perfect nose and wide grin with the soft cheeks and tiny lips I spent so many hours admiring. I wouldn't want her to stay tiny forever, as some mothers claim to wish for ... but every once in a while, I miss the baby.

random thought

2006-02-22T22:53:00.000-08:00

Do lemmings ever have second thoughts? When they see all their little lemming friends diving to the Promised Land, do they ever stop and think in their tiny lemming minds, "I wonder if my theology's correct?"

Domestic Bliss: The Zen of Ironing

2006-02-22T22:49:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on August 26, 2005.

Housewife. The word conjures up images of flowered skirts with elastic waistbands, crocheted cotton dishcloths, and the inevitable mop. It's not a comfortable part of the twenty-first century vocabulary. The term "domestic engineer", set forth in the often-forwarded e-mail most young mothers have read this year, sounds a little more liberated and proud, if a bit unwieldy. But deep down, we know the truth: It doesn't matter what you call us when we're scrubbing the underside of a toilet seat. (Yes, it's necessary. Don't ask.)

While shooting the breeze with my senior English classmates at age seventeen, dreaming and planning, I was assured that there were all kinds of exciting careers available to me. I could write books! I could be a concert pianist! If worse came to worse, I could always teach. At the ten-year reunion, they all wanted to know What I'd Done With My Life. As it turned out, I hadn't written a book, and I hadn't become a concert pianist. I had spent several years teaching, but I wasn't a college professor -- I was teaching small children how to play the piano. No, instead I had gotten married and had a baby, and I was well and truly a housewife.

What I didn't tell them was that I am also a part of a quiet, subversive minority within the profession. We don't make waves, we don't hold rallies, but we cling to our secret with fierce pride: We like our jobs.

At some point, I realized that I was going to have to clean the house and do the laundry anyway, and it was going to be a lot easier if I enjoyed it for its own sake instead of for the highly transitory accomplishment of having finished it. And I made a startling discovery -- maintaining a household is actually not a bad job for a logical, detail-oriented mind.

Remember the standardized tests, the ones with the multiple-choice questions and the little bubbles to fill in? There were always a few of us, usually the ones who wore our jeans rolled up at the cuffs a year after everybody else stopped, who whispered shamefacedly behind our notebooks that we actually kind of liked them. We liked the fact that even if we'd gotten the wrong answer, at least there was a right answer. There was something satisfying about seeing that nice neat column of dots, all filled in to the edges, and if you didn't get it already, we couldn't explain it to you.

This is the same sort of thing. While the rest of the world bombs itself to oblivion and has heated arguments on national television over complicated banalities, I am the queen of my tiny world. Sugar bowl's running low? I can fix that. Laundry baskets getting full? Got it. Stack of papers to file away? I'm your girl. Clean the mirror. Make a lunch. Fill in the circle with a number two pencil.

Now, before you start getting the wrong impression of me, let me reassure you that I am not one of those scarily cheerful women whose idea of a crisis involves the words "unsightly streaks". I have not dusted under my computer monitor stand for several months. I once had so much ironing "temporarily" stacked on the end of the ironing board that the whole operation tipped over, spilling six week's worth of clothes all over the office floor. You know those little bowl-shaped things under the burners on the stove to catch the occasional drips? Most people have silver ones. I have black, because I refuse point-blank to clean them unless they catch on fire. (Yes. Twice.) When they get so gross I can't stand to look at them, I throw them out and buy new ones.

But there are elements of this job that I have come to enjoy. Ironing is one of them. There is something satisfying about the warm heft of the tool in my hand, something industrious and decisive about the sound of the whooshing steam. I like seeing a crumpled piece of material submit to the inexorable pressure of the iron, emerging as a crisply pressed shirt, a beautifully swishy skirt, a neat and tidy child's dress. It always works the same way -- no surprises here, just the calming rhythm of order imposed on chaos.

If I had the proverbial million dollars, there are a few tasks I'd hire out in a heartbeat and never look back. If I never had to stretch on tiptoe to wipe spots off a mirror again, I wouldn't miss it in the least. But the ironing I think I'd keep. It's productive, and it's cheaper than therapy. Let the wealthy have their cooks and their maids and their personal shoppers. I'll be a quiet rebel, a peaceful renegade. I have ironing to do -- and I like it.

Inspiration, Perspiration, and Scribbling

2006-02-22T22:40:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on July 26, 2005.

Thomas Edison once said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." But when you're writing music, there is another key aspect: Scribbling.

Written music, of course, is not English or anything like it. It is a visual language and a highly practical one. It has a few extra bits and pieces, appendix-like remnants of the Baroque era and the days when a choir director might determine the tempo by taking his own pulse. Even so, the vast majority of the musical language has a purpose and a meaning that is as readable to a musician as a photograph is to anyone else.

Scribbling is not that. Scribbling is what happens when I wake up from semi-sleep at 11:05 p.m. with a musical idea that I know will be entirely gone at 7:00 the next morning, dissipated overnight into an ephemeral echo of something that could have been perfect. It's always 11:05. It got to be a joke at my house in the days when I wrote more -- I'd jolt awake as I was just drifting off, look at the clock, and say, "Yep ... it's 11:05." And I'd haul my weary self out of bed and to the piano, where I'd quietly play the idea ten or twelve times until it was solid enough to start scribbling.

This used to happen on all sorts of items -- napkins, church bulletins (those were frequent), the backs of copied pieces of sheet music from long-past accompanying gigs. I now have a book, though, that I try to use whenever I can. It's nothing unusual or eyecatching-- I think it's an old practice record book from high school that my mom bought for me. Blue, spiral bound, full of nondescript staff paper. Its back pages are covered with bits of attempted choral arrangements and random ideas for new songs that were discarded years ago.

Right now, though, it also holds pages that are important enough to me that I would retrieve this book from a burning house. They feature badly drawn musical notes, free from such constraints as stems and barlines and correct penmanship, roaming all over the page with impunity. They are decorated with wildly written notations that say things like "B section lower" and "needs focus!" and "check against theme to Love Affair -- too close." My handwriting, usually so elegant and precise, runs riot into exuberant curves and slashes, punctuated with underlines and exclamation points but entirely lacking other niceties like commas and proper grammar. The titles, scattered apparently randomly over the pages, can be squinted at and recognized as "Oh Shenandoah" and "My Bonnie" and "Dixie."

Right now they are scribbles. They are the seeds of music, arrangements of American folk songs, as unlike the finished product now as the apple seed is unlike the green tree. Some day, they will grow and have substance, and even if they are never recorded, they will still be alive.

So for now, I cherish my scribbles. I hum them and play them and take them apart and put them back together again, and I love them for what they may become.

Lips and Lizards

2006-01-20T23:11:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on 7/26/05.

Tonight I am thankful for emergency rooms.

They're something you don't normally think about, like grocery stores or your spleen or the shocks on your car. But, like those, you'd miss them if they were gone. Every time I get a cold and wake up a few days later, suddenly and blissfully able to breathe, I tell myself I will always be thankful for good health, but I forget. We all do. There's too much good in the world to live in a constant state of awareness of all of it, as much as you'd like to on those very thankful days.

Peter fell down in the bathroom right before dinner and landed facedown on the edge of the potty chair, giving him a nice, neat quarter-inch slice down the middle of his upper lip. It stopped bleeding fairly quickly, but when we called his pediatrician we were advised to take him in and see if stitches were required to avoid "permanent deformity". (Not words a mother likes to hear.) He calmed down in a few minutes and, being the pragmatic soul I am, I fed us both dinner before heading off to the emergency room. The previous times we've visited have taken three to four hours, and I figured we might as well have full stomachs.

Well, this was a good time to be wrong. Our ER has been remodeled and reorganized since the last time we were there. We were moved efficiently through triage, directed to comfortable seats (in an ER! who knew!), and taken to a room within fifteen minutes. The rest of the process, in which we saw a nurse, a doctor, and two lab techs, went smoothly and with a minimum of fuss, and Peter went home less than an hour later with a neatly bandaged lip and a stuffed plush lizard.

You never really think about the people behind places like that until you need them. The workmen who make sure the sliding door opens properly. The nice young man who taped Peter's bracelet around his wrist. The employee who checks that the printer has ink to print his paperwork. The techs who make sure the blood pressure monitor works as it should. The nurse who went to school all those years to take care of Peter and hundreds of little boys like him with split lips like his. The orderlies who keep the floor so clean you don't worry about setting your purse down. The doctor and the years of training behind her "gut reaction" to leave his lip alone instead of opening it up to stitch it. The inventor who came up with the idea for the multi-levered hospital bed that Peter found so intriguing. The young aide who brought our discharge papers and knew where to take all the copies so that everything would happen as it should.

All of them, unknowing, have a little bit to do with my tired son, sleeping in peace in his bed with a lip that will very likely have a cool scar and nothing more. He is not in a country where disease and filth will guarantee infection and deformity. We didn't have to walk five miles in the dust to get help. He will wake up in the morning a little sore, but he will also have breakfast, clean clothes, a fresh diaper, and a rainbow-colored lizard.

And tonight, I will remember to be thankful.

Oh, oh! Look, look! Phonics works!

2006-01-20T23:08:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted on my parenting board in 2004 and published in the church newsletter.

See Dick go.
See Jane go.
Go, go, go.

Not all that inspiring, is it? I'll tell you what, it sure is when it's your own kid reading it, one careful sound at a time. Mary has been able to say the alphabet since age two, name all the letters on sight since three, and give all the sounds of the letters (including a few long and short vowel sounds) since preschool at age four. We have been trying most of this time to help her learn how to put sounds together, but it wasn't clicking. She would look at the word BAT and say, "Buh, aa, tuh. Buh, aa, tuh. Buh-aa-tuh. ...Bird?" It just wasn't working. We got this whole little reading system with ten books that use carefully graded lessons to teach reading, and tried it several different times, but she always got too frustrated because she couldn't figure out how to connect sounds.

Well, a few nights ago I could hear Michael reading to her and I could tell Peter was getting in their hair, so I had Petey come upstairs with me. After about 20 minutes, Mary came running upstairs saying, "Mom, I can READ!" I thought, "Oh, sure." Sorry, I know that doesn't sound very nice, but she has been known to memorize books and inform people that she could read, so I was skeptical. Well, we sat down together and with plenty of help she sounded out all the words to a chapter of a Dick and Jane book. She was so excited about it that we did the next chapter too, and tonight we read about Spot and Puff. I was so very proud of her!

What really made me laugh (somewhat ruefully, I'll admit) was that when she finally put it all together, it wasn't with our fancy-dancy reading system, or even with a nice politically correct modern book with carefully planned introduction of sounds and no history of controversy over sexism, racism, or gender stereotypes. It was with a scrungy old copy of We Come and Go (written in 1940) that my parents gave us because they couldn't stand to throw it out. The cover fell off long ago and the pages are stapled together, and it looks pretty ratty, but apparently the magic is still there.

Sure, it's boring. The words are short and they say them fourteen times in a row. But when it's your daughter reading them and laughing for sheer joy to hear herself reading...it's great literature.

How To Buy a Pair of Pants

2006-01-20T23:05:00.000-08:00

originally posted on wheresgeorge.com in response to a post about the difficulty of buying well-fitting pants

Damn. I hate buying pants. I mean, how hard should it be? Two legs, cover up your butt, stay around your waist, it really doesn't seem like it should be that complicated, but it IS. OK, I'll try the Gap. Sure, why not, it can't be any worse than anywhere else.

Nope, it's worse. What are these things, Barbie pants? All right, we'll try them in a ten.

Nope. Twelve?

Nope. Now I've got like four inches extra in the waist. What, all women who have actual muscles on their legs have 35-inch waists now? All right, all right, no pants at the Gap. Um ... Eddie Bauer?

Regular. Relaxed. Boot cut. Loose fit. Petite. Long. Tall. Sally. No, kidding on that last one, but not by much. Yeah, whatever, these are the right color, let's try 'em.

Nope. Will someone please explain to me what you wear if you're 5'4", which is the dividing line between petite and not? Petite jeans are sort of the right length if I don't mind people knowing what brand of socks I'm wearing, but the waist is in the wrong spot. Meaning, not where MY waist is. Regular jeans fit fine in the waist, but I haven't rolled my jeans up since 1985 and I'm not about to start up again now, which means I am NOT going to buy jeans that cover up my toes when I put them on. So OK, not Eddie Bauer then.

Old Navy. Hmmm. They look great on the mannequin. Too bad the mannequin has the legs of Claudia Schiffer and the butt of a first-grader. You know, I think I'll just stand in the middle of the store and yell, "Hey! I'm kind of short and my waist is too small and my rear is too big for your pants!" There -- I'm humiliated and I didn't even have to try anything on! Cool.

So, Cinnabon it is. Extra sauce please. And a diet Coke.

elephants

2006-01-20T22:51:00.000-08:00

This was originally written summer 2003 and posted on my parenting bulletin board.

Have you ever looked at an elephant? I mean really looked at an elephant? Neither had I, until the day we traveled to the Oregon Zoo.

If you've ever taken a small child to the zoo, you understand the phrase "through the eyes of a child." For instance, my first reaction was, "Oh, another monkey." Four-year-old Mary's reaction was to jump up and down, waving her arms, shrieking "Mommy! Look at the monkeys! They're jumping!"

And indeed they were. I hadn't noticed the little ones at first, and there they were, hopping from rock to rock and rolling around on the grass below. On the other hand, the magnificent leopard sprawled out on its rock impressed me far more than it impressed her – after all, it wasn't jumping.

A few things needed some parental editing as we went along, and I was glad she was so young. I didn't think she needed to know exactly what the polar bears were eating (remember, they're carnivores--enough said). "They're having a treat" was enough information for her.

Thankfully, she didn't see the pooping zebra or the peeing lorakeet. She did notice the two fruit bats who were, um, propagating their species, but I didn't feel that it was necessary to explain exactly why the bat was making that funny face. There are some advantages to the slightly oblivious nature of most pre-schoolers.

To tell the truth, I'm not sure what Mary thought of the elephants. She liked the baby elephant, was properly impressed with the big elephant, and laughed at the one giving itself a dust bath.

I was paying more attention to them than to her, I confess. I mean, they're so weird. All that skin, the enormously heavy feet, the dry wrinkles. (Can you imagine an entire lifetime spent in the sun without even a drop of your favorite moisturizer?) My husband Michael, watching one scooping dirt up with the surprisingly facile tip of its trunk, remarked, "God has a sense of humor." I couldn't argue with him. I mean, if you had the power to create anything you wanted, why an elephant? How would you even think of one?

That said, I came home from the zoo with a renewed appreciation for the world in which I am bringing up my children. I want a world with democracy, good medical treatments, enough to eat, and freedom of speech.

But as long as we're here, I'm glad it's a world silly enough to have room for a few elephants.