I've moved this blog over to Word Press, where it can be found at http://www.sliceofmidlife.com.
Hope to see you there!
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
The Age of Innocence
This story was written shortly after 9/11. I decided to share it with my daughters, now 12 and 10, as our family discusses the anniversary.
In a
toddlers' music class, a circle of mothers sings a song about the stars -- a
spiritual, with a haunting melody. As we sing, our children take turns
carefully placing felt stars just so on a black felt sky. They smile with surprise and delight as
the stars take their rightful place in the universe. The children are aware of nothing but their sense of
accomplishment and wonder. And
during this sweet interlude we, their parents, can briefly forget that
terrorists attacked the United States only hours before.
When
something horrible happens, the primordial instinct to protect your children
kicks in with vigor. I want to
shield mine from frightening television images of the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon; keep them away from conversations about the evil
forces that caused these things to happen. So we spend September 11 in strange oblivion, driving out to
the suburbs to shop for school clothes, sharing a chocolate covered graham
cracker before heading home. My
daughters don't know that I am trying to avoid driving on freeways and bridges
that might be targets of future attacks.
In the car, instead of taking turns listening to kids' music or mine, I
bargain for brief snatches of the news, explaining that "something
happened." Weeks later I will
be surprised when my older daughter Melanie begins using this expression as a
catch-all excuse for her mercurial behavior.
After the
kids go to bed, I am finally able to digest the horrific details of the
day. I wonder aloud to Jeff
whether we should send Melanie to her first day of pre-school the next morning. Though I expect no threat to our little
corner of America, the thought of having her out of my sight -- even for a few
hours -- is unnerving. At school
orientation the week before, I'd gotten unexpectedly emotional when asked to
sign forms releasing the school from liability should anything happen during
field trips. Now that the unthinkable
has occurred, I wonder why I was in such a hurry to send Melanie out from under
my protective wing.
We decide
to avoid disruption. Life is
topsy-turvy enough and we don't know how to deal with the recent changes in
Melanie. A summer trip to Maine to
visit family has left her raw and clingy, prone to violent temper tantrums,
refusing to sleep alone. She has
decided to move from her crib to a bed, is potty training herself and is
dealing with powerful feelings of jealousy, as her baby sister Maya becomes
more active. And she is also
starting pre-school. In terms of
the stress they produce, for a 2 1/2-year-old these changes are akin to the
adult concerns of death, divorce, moving and job change. Also, I read in my parenting books,
this is the age when children begin to experience fear.
Fear. We try talking about it.
"Are you afraid to sleep alone in
your room?" we ask, half hoping she will identify a monster under the bed
that we can chase away.
Melanie professes no fear, but runs
into our room crying each night, comforted only if one of us sleeps with
her. During the day she begins to
use the concept of fear freely, more to reflect a 2-year-old's inner turmoil
over impending independence and the power of choice than to express real terror.
"Do you want a bagel for
breakfast?" we ask.
"No, I'm afraid of bagels!"
she responds.
The
nighttime sleep disruption continues.
So does her erratic behavior during the day. I feel suffocated by her neediness, exhausted by her
emotional outbursts and my own emotional response to them. Finally, in desperation I call
her pediatrician.
"Melanie is suffering from anxiety
and needs you now more than ever," she tells me. "Make a nest on the floor of your room so she can be
near you when she is upset at night."
Jeff rises
to the occasion and lays out a double futon with soft yellow blankets. He adorns it with Melanie's favorite
stuffed cats and an array of brightly colored picture books. I am not pleased.
"You've made too nice a
nest!" I wail. "Now
she'll NEVER sleep in her own room!"
Each night Melanie comes to our room and
I begrudgingly go to sleep with her in the nest. Each day she demands bear hug after bear hug, usually when I
am occupied with her baby sister.
Sleep deprived and frustrated, feeling that I have nothing more to give,
I wonder when her anxiety would be alleviated. When will things return to normal?
In the
meantime, the country struggles to make sense of jets crashing into towers,
bodies falling from the sky, huge numbers of missing people. I remain strangely numb. People want to speculate on the
political motivation for the attacks but I, a former diplomat with experience
in the Islamic world, don't want to talk about it. The newspapers are filled with the extraordinary
details of how the plots were masterminded. I want to find answers in parenting books instead. As the days pass and a shocked country
grieves, I shut out the turmoil in the world and become more and more consumed
by the turmoil in my own home.
Finally one
morning I cry as I listen to a radio story about a hero of Flight 93, who left
behind a wife and 3-month old daughter.
Later, I speak with a friend in New York, the mother of two daughters
roughly the same ages as mine.
Then I realize why I have deliberately turned inward. My kids still have
the luxury of innocence. Theirs
don't, and neither do any of the thousands of children left without a parent as
a result of these attacks. One day
I will have to explain about murder and guns and evil and disease and divorce
and the countless senseless human tragedies that can't be fixed. But not now. Not yet. I
still have some time.
So I decide
to embrace my ability to make Melanie's world a safe haven and concentrate on
the things I can make better. Each
night at bedtime I take her outside.
We look up at the sky, identify the stars and I sing her the star
song. When she cries in the middle
of the night, I willingly snuggle up in the nest with her. During the day I am freer with bear
hugs. I want to do all in my power
to dispel any anxiety she feels and to forestall the inevitable -- the wiping
away of innocence as she learns to be afraid of bigger things, things I can't
protect her from. It'll happen soon
enough.
About a
week after the attacks, when we go outside to sing the star song, there is a
lone airplane in the evening sky -- the first I have seen since September
11. For me it signifies so much --
the horror that has occurred, the need for life to continue as normal. I wonder if I will ever look at an
airplane the same way again. But
for Melanie these are just magical, twinkling lights. It is still too light to see any stars so I point at the
airplane lights and sing:
Star shining, number, number
one, number two, number three
Oh my, my, my, my
Oh my, my, my, my, my
As she burrows her head against my
shoulder, Melanie doesn't realize that the stars are not out tonight. I am glad. And I wish I could believe in magic again too.
Monday, May 10, 2010
The Bread Head Comes Late to the Party
I've become obsessed with baking bread, or to be honest, reading about baking bread. A fulfilled Christmas request for a pizza stone got me interested in finding the perfect pizza recipe and method. I discovered Peter Reinhart's American Pie, with its fabulous recipe for Neopolitan pizza. That successful undertaking got me thinking about bread, which got me reading about bread and vowing to bake a loaf of bread every week.
I ordered books from the library and Amazon and revisited forgotten bread bibles from my ever-growing collection of cookbooks, becoming a late night grain anthropologist. This of course is nothing compared to author William Alexander, who in his new book 52 Loaves describes becoming so obsessed with making the perfect loaf of bread that he grew (and threshed) his own wheat.
But I'm not obsessed, I've always been an inveterate recipe tester and now I'm curious about how different breads fit different moods. And so followed Oatmeal Buttermilk Bread, Oatmeal Maple Bread, Simple Crusty Bread, a garden variety whole wheat bread, a break from bread baking for a while when we went to Hawaii for my mother's funeral and then caught up on life once we returned, Julia Child's baguette recipe and tonight, the basic whole wheat bread from the Tassajara Bread Book, published in 1970.
Everything old is new again. To be honest, the bread tastes kind of 1970ish, whole grain and a bit bland in a good for you sort of way, though with good butter and apricot jam it modernizes very nicely. I'm calling it Zen Bread (in honor of the Tassajara Monastery where it was born) and have decided that it is stripped of all pretense, just bread plain and simple and who could ask for anything more, especially when the house smells so good. Anyway, I'm kind of nostalgic for the innocence of the '70s sometimes and just the other day we were reminiscing about avocado and cheese sandwiches with alfalfa sprouts.
The best part of cooking is sharing the bounty. One of the four loaves I baked tonight will go to our neighbors as a peace offering for overrunning their yard during a boisterous Ocho de Mayo party. Another will go to a dear friend who is about to under chemotherapy and who will probably appreciate a little Zen. And two loaves will remain with us, so my home can feel wholesome and there will be something special to offer the kids, one of whom seems to be starving all the time.
But is it hot in here or is it me? I can't tell if suddenly everyone is obsessed with baking bread or if I'm just more attuned to other bread heads now. When I started writing mommy essays eleven years ago, it seemed as if everyone was doing it. Ditto memoirs with food, stories about caring for aging parents and memoirs about spending a year doing something. Blogs? By the time I convinced myself (a few months ago) that blogs can actually be a good thing because they bypass the publishing gatekeepers and allow writing to be read, I discovered that blogs are passe. If it can't be said within Twitter's 140 characters then...
You reach a point in mid-life where you have to come to grips with the things you won't accomplish, the places you will never visit, the experiences you may never have outside of your armchair.
But, as Oprah would say, this I know for sure: There are levains and bigas and poolish in my future as I get ready to leave the world of simple sponge behind and make and feed my own bread starter. It won't make me famous, it might make me fat, but it will give me a sense of accomplishment within the four walls of my kitchen. It might even make a few other people happy too.
And if I get too caught up in the fact that everyone else is already making ciabatta and Turkish flat bread and somebody probably has a book deal about the year they spent making these and 50 other breads, then I guess I'll always have my good old dependable Zen bread to keep me grounded.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
My Grandmother's Thighs
We are saying goodbye, sharing stories, making sense of things and creating a legacy. So, in my mother's honor, here's the only poem I've ever written as an adult. I wrote it shortly after the birth of my first daughter and have it adapted it slightly to include my second daughter.
MY GRANDMOTHER'S THIGHS
One day, while sitting on the toilet
I looked down and was shocked to see
my grandmother's thighs.
Not just my grandmother's thighs,
but those of my great-grandmother,
my aunts and great aunts and my mother
(once she'd given up chain-smoking and
began to fill out).
I remember those thighs best
during summers at Beacon Beach,
spilling strongly and unashamedly
out of sturdy one-piece bathing suits
varicose veins glowing in the sun.
No beach cover-ups for these thighs!
They existed proudly alongside
aesthetically more pleasing specimens,
tanned, smooth, shapely thighs
that stuck unsubstantially out of bikinis
The contrast was like that of stiletto heels
and sturdy winter boots.
From a child's height the thighs
were what you saw first
as you peered trustingly up
at grandma or auntie or mommy,
waiting for them to dispense juice from the cooler,
provide money for ice cream,
or give you the go-ahead to return to the ocean,
your thirty minute waiting period after eating
finally at an end.
They were like buoys on the sand,
attached to the ever-vigilant woman
who watched you swim,
and you knew that they would propel her to rescue you,
should you be trapped
in the jaws of the angry, churning Atlantic Ocean.
At the end of the day
they peeked out from under
the shower stall and later the locker,
before being covered up again by flowered dresses,
encasing the women who led us to the car
carrying piles of blankets and coolers and bags,
the thighs supporting them and their bundles
like trustworthy yaks on a Himalayan trek.
I will never love my thighs
and will continue to run, bike and tone them into submission.
I will resent my genes for passing on to me such beasts
and will always cover them up at the beach
with exotic sarongs that say "No! I am not like those women.
I am different. I have traveled. I have done things!"
But I will also hope
that once in a while my daughters will get a glimpse of them
and experience the same sense of trust that I had.
I want them to know that I will always be there.
I want them to be aware of the strength
of the women from whom they are descended.
But mostly I want them to be blessed with
their father's thighs.
MY GRANDMOTHER'S THIGHS
One day, while sitting on the toilet
I looked down and was shocked to see
my grandmother's thighs.
Not just my grandmother's thighs,
but those of my great-grandmother,
my aunts and great aunts and my mother
(once she'd given up chain-smoking and
began to fill out).
I remember those thighs best
during summers at Beacon Beach,
spilling strongly and unashamedly
out of sturdy one-piece bathing suits
varicose veins glowing in the sun.
No beach cover-ups for these thighs!
They existed proudly alongside
aesthetically more pleasing specimens,
tanned, smooth, shapely thighs
that stuck unsubstantially out of bikinis
The contrast was like that of stiletto heels
and sturdy winter boots.
From a child's height the thighs
were what you saw first
as you peered trustingly up
at grandma or auntie or mommy,
waiting for them to dispense juice from the cooler,
provide money for ice cream,
or give you the go-ahead to return to the ocean,
your thirty minute waiting period after eating
finally at an end.
They were like buoys on the sand,
attached to the ever-vigilant woman
who watched you swim,
and you knew that they would propel her to rescue you,
should you be trapped
in the jaws of the angry, churning Atlantic Ocean.
At the end of the day
they peeked out from under
the shower stall and later the locker,
before being covered up again by flowered dresses,
encasing the women who led us to the car
carrying piles of blankets and coolers and bags,
the thighs supporting them and their bundles
like trustworthy yaks on a Himalayan trek.
I will never love my thighs
and will continue to run, bike and tone them into submission.
I will resent my genes for passing on to me such beasts
and will always cover them up at the beach
with exotic sarongs that say "No! I am not like those women.
I am different. I have traveled. I have done things!"
But I will also hope
that once in a while my daughters will get a glimpse of them
and experience the same sense of trust that I had.
I want them to know that I will always be there.
I want them to be aware of the strength
of the women from whom they are descended.
But mostly I want them to be blessed with
their father's thighs.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Just a Little of That Human Touch?
I am lying on an emergency room gurney the morning of the day I am supposed to fly to Florida, my guts churned up and spilling out of me in a blood red rage.
It's been a stressful three weeks since my mother was diagnosed with cancer, most of it spent on the phone - arranging treatment, trying to figure out Medicare and Medicaid and figuring out where and how my mother will live once she begins chemotherapy.
Three weeks and now the house of cards is threatening to tumble down. We are caught in a Kafka-esque situation. A bureaucrat has yet to enter essential information into my mother's Medicare account that is required before the Cancer Care Alliance will honor her Feb. 8 appointment. I spend hours groveling on the phone with all the relevant parties, to no avail. I have a momentary feeling of hope when I speak to a Medicare supervisor named Charisma, but when I arrange a conference call between Medicare and the Cancer Care Alliance, I am at the mercy of a bland peon who cannot help me. Charisma cannot be reached.
So I try Aetna, my mother's new drug plan provider (if you are under 65, just for kicks, ask your parents to explain their Medicare Part D coverage. Want to really have fun? Ask them to explain the "doughnut hole.")
I find a helpful woman named Stephanie and I appeal to her sense of humanity. She rises to the challenge, enters emergency notes into various and sundry computer screens and takes the gutsy step of GIVING ME HER LAST NAME AND HER EMPLOYEE ID NUMBER and tells me to call back on Thursday and all should be rectified.
So once I manage to get my guts back into my body, I take the plane to Florida and wake up Thursday morning ready to hear the good news
from Aetna. Alas, no one can find records of my call. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH STEPHANIE I want to scream, convinced she has
been vaporized for revealing too much. Finally, I am referred to The Center of Excellence (I am not making this up) where I am told that excellence entails initiating a status request to the Customer Advocacy Center, which, if I am lucky, will call me with an update, while I am on the plane to Seattle. Did you really think they would give me the phone number for the people who are supposed to be my advocates? There is no number, I was told ominously.
I've heard a lot of concerns that healthcare reform would go to the dogs if it's put in the hands of the government. But I have to believe that, as far as Medicare goes, the current public-private mix is the worst of all options, leaving the elderly at the mercy of one or more unnavigable bureaucracies. And when the people who work for those bureacracies are not empowered to deviate beyond "the systems" what we are left with is a cold, unresponsive, ineffective health care delivery system. Call me a socialist, but surely we can do better.
We'll get on the plane for Seattle tomorrow and when we land, I'll pick up the phone and keep fighting in the hopes that I don"t have to ask my cancer-ridden mother to wait a little longer for relief.
It's been a stressful three weeks since my mother was diagnosed with cancer, most of it spent on the phone - arranging treatment, trying to figure out Medicare and Medicaid and figuring out where and how my mother will live once she begins chemotherapy.
Three weeks and now the house of cards is threatening to tumble down. We are caught in a Kafka-esque situation. A bureaucrat has yet to enter essential information into my mother's Medicare account that is required before the Cancer Care Alliance will honor her Feb. 8 appointment. I spend hours groveling on the phone with all the relevant parties, to no avail. I have a momentary feeling of hope when I speak to a Medicare supervisor named Charisma, but when I arrange a conference call between Medicare and the Cancer Care Alliance, I am at the mercy of a bland peon who cannot help me. Charisma cannot be reached.
So I try Aetna, my mother's new drug plan provider (if you are under 65, just for kicks, ask your parents to explain their Medicare Part D coverage. Want to really have fun? Ask them to explain the "doughnut hole.")
I find a helpful woman named Stephanie and I appeal to her sense of humanity. She rises to the challenge, enters emergency notes into various and sundry computer screens and takes the gutsy step of GIVING ME HER LAST NAME AND HER EMPLOYEE ID NUMBER and tells me to call back on Thursday and all should be rectified.
So once I manage to get my guts back into my body, I take the plane to Florida and wake up Thursday morning ready to hear the good news
from Aetna. Alas, no one can find records of my call. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH STEPHANIE I want to scream, convinced she has
been vaporized for revealing too much. Finally, I am referred to The Center of Excellence (I am not making this up) where I am told that excellence entails initiating a status request to the Customer Advocacy Center, which, if I am lucky, will call me with an update, while I am on the plane to Seattle. Did you really think they would give me the phone number for the people who are supposed to be my advocates? There is no number, I was told ominously.
I've heard a lot of concerns that healthcare reform would go to the dogs if it's put in the hands of the government. But I have to believe that, as far as Medicare goes, the current public-private mix is the worst of all options, leaving the elderly at the mercy of one or more unnavigable bureaucracies. And when the people who work for those bureacracies are not empowered to deviate beyond "the systems" what we are left with is a cold, unresponsive, ineffective health care delivery system. Call me a socialist, but surely we can do better.
We'll get on the plane for Seattle tomorrow and when we land, I'll pick up the phone and keep fighting in the hopes that I don"t have to ask my cancer-ridden mother to wait a little longer for relief.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen is 60. I am almost 50. Yet it feels like 1975 all over again.
They say as part of life's continuum there comes a time when the children parent the parents. I am, not surprisingly, there. To steel myself for the challenges ahead, I have been running, 2010-style, iPhone in hand, ear buds in place, iPod shuffle mode on, and only a phone call or email away from anyone who needs me at a moment's notice.
Sometimes these runs are Rage Against the Machine stress burners and sometimes they are Grateful for Seattle Sunshine and All That I've Got leisurely jogs. Even when I don't have the Genius feature turned on, my iPod somehow selects the appropriate soundtrack to fit or shake me out of my mood.
How did it know that Yesterday, Blue and Trouble would match my feelings of self-pity or that Hard Rain, Walking on Sunshine Shiny Happy People and Born in the USA wouldn't allow me to wallow for too long? I don't remember feeling so connected to music and its ability to soothe my savage breast since I was a teenager.
And in some ways I've reverted to that time. A kaleidoscopic parade of people from the past has emerged to help, like characters from a Springsteen song. Unbeknownst to her strict stepfather Fred, my friend Chris and I used to sneak out of the house, pile into our friend Elaine's tan VW bug and drive all over the Jersey Shore to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Elaine's Jimmy Carter peanut roach clip at the ready. Now Fred, who I haven't seen since I left for college, sends us daily email affirmations because his family has been touched by cancer. Chris, who I saw last year for the first time in 27 years, will spend a day in Florida with my mother and me, helping us sort through her lifetime of papers.
My mother's friends call me and their voices are shaky with age now. Old friends of mine are in touch and they tell stories of caring for their own aging parents. We look at each other's Facebook profile photos and laugh at how much we all resemble our mothers.
I saw Bruce on Elvis Costello's Spectacle, talking about his struggles with his teenage son. Last year, he was on the cover of AARP magazine.
The last leg of my 4-mile run grazes a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. There is a steep stairwell with 78 steps and at the top, because this is Seattle, there is a coffee shop. When I was a mother of young children, yearning for escape, I would run and when I reached the stairwell, just above me, there would be an old man handing out peppermints and three middle-aged women talking. When I reached the top of the stairs, I would head to my car and emerge with two sippy cups, which I would fill with cocoa from the coffee shop, balanced atop lattes for my husband and me. It seemed like such a precarious balance, yet the middle-aged women, emerging with their single containers of coffee, would smile at me nostalgically.
I haven't seen the old man for a long time and I worry that he is gone. And now when I run, I look down and see young women with dogs and babies in jogging strollers struggling to navigate the stairs. Maybe they are looking up at me and think that I am unencumbered. But we're all just in different places on the stairwell of life, and as Bruce would say, sometimes life takes you one step up and two steps back.
They say as part of life's continuum there comes a time when the children parent the parents. I am, not surprisingly, there. To steel myself for the challenges ahead, I have been running, 2010-style, iPhone in hand, ear buds in place, iPod shuffle mode on, and only a phone call or email away from anyone who needs me at a moment's notice.
Sometimes these runs are Rage Against the Machine stress burners and sometimes they are Grateful for Seattle Sunshine and All That I've Got leisurely jogs. Even when I don't have the Genius feature turned on, my iPod somehow selects the appropriate soundtrack to fit or shake me out of my mood.
How did it know that Yesterday, Blue and Trouble would match my feelings of self-pity or that Hard Rain, Walking on Sunshine Shiny Happy People and Born in the USA wouldn't allow me to wallow for too long? I don't remember feeling so connected to music and its ability to soothe my savage breast since I was a teenager.
And in some ways I've reverted to that time. A kaleidoscopic parade of people from the past has emerged to help, like characters from a Springsteen song. Unbeknownst to her strict stepfather Fred, my friend Chris and I used to sneak out of the house, pile into our friend Elaine's tan VW bug and drive all over the Jersey Shore to watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Elaine's Jimmy Carter peanut roach clip at the ready. Now Fred, who I haven't seen since I left for college, sends us daily email affirmations because his family has been touched by cancer. Chris, who I saw last year for the first time in 27 years, will spend a day in Florida with my mother and me, helping us sort through her lifetime of papers.
My mother's friends call me and their voices are shaky with age now. Old friends of mine are in touch and they tell stories of caring for their own aging parents. We look at each other's Facebook profile photos and laugh at how much we all resemble our mothers.
I saw Bruce on Elvis Costello's Spectacle, talking about his struggles with his teenage son. Last year, he was on the cover of AARP magazine.
The last leg of my 4-mile run grazes a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. There is a steep stairwell with 78 steps and at the top, because this is Seattle, there is a coffee shop. When I was a mother of young children, yearning for escape, I would run and when I reached the stairwell, just above me, there would be an old man handing out peppermints and three middle-aged women talking. When I reached the top of the stairs, I would head to my car and emerge with two sippy cups, which I would fill with cocoa from the coffee shop, balanced atop lattes for my husband and me. It seemed like such a precarious balance, yet the middle-aged women, emerging with their single containers of coffee, would smile at me nostalgically.
I haven't seen the old man for a long time and I worry that he is gone. And now when I run, I look down and see young women with dogs and babies in jogging strollers struggling to navigate the stairs. Maybe they are looking up at me and think that I am unencumbered. But we're all just in different places on the stairwell of life, and as Bruce would say, sometimes life takes you one step up and two steps back.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Up in the Air
I have a game plan, though it has as many questions as answers.
Some time in the next week, I will fly to Florida and bring my mother to Seattle for treatment at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. She is suffering so much pain and discomfort already that I am trying to arrange a medical mercy flight, but barring that, we will have to fly first class. I don't think the bigger seats, complimentary drinks and better food will be enough to anesthetize us during the five-hour flight. I'm not counting on the movie either.
In ever other aspect we are also flying blind. What will the doctors tell her about her prognosis? How will she manage the rigorous chemotherapy? I've read that chemo can make you so bone-crushingly tired that you can't even get up to wash your face. Not to mention the possible, nausea, diarrhea, mouth sores, dry eyes, itchy hands and feet and compromised immune system that makes you vulnerable to infection.
We will apply for Medicaid in the hopes that it will help cover the cost of an assisted living facility, where I had to laugh when I noticed that one of the residents is named Mick Jaeger. In Seattle my mother knows no one but me. What will it be like for her to be isolated and ill in such a place? Even on her good days, it's hard to imagine my independent, younger-than-she-seems 75 year-old mother enjoying group meals or the bingo games and weekly outings to the drug store that I was told are the highlight of the residents' lives.
So my germ-ridden family and I will be her portals to the outside world. Over the past week I've begun adjusting to the fact that I will soon become a care-giver and will have to give up some control over my life. It's been hard so far to deal with all the logistics, but I've been able to take a break from cancer whenever I wanted, taking a run, hosting a birthday party, drinking wine with friends.
Now for me, every day will bring new, unavoidable responsibilities. And for my mother, unavoidable struggles.
We will truly be up in the air, hoping for a safe landing.
Some time in the next week, I will fly to Florida and bring my mother to Seattle for treatment at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. She is suffering so much pain and discomfort already that I am trying to arrange a medical mercy flight, but barring that, we will have to fly first class. I don't think the bigger seats, complimentary drinks and better food will be enough to anesthetize us during the five-hour flight. I'm not counting on the movie either.
In ever other aspect we are also flying blind. What will the doctors tell her about her prognosis? How will she manage the rigorous chemotherapy? I've read that chemo can make you so bone-crushingly tired that you can't even get up to wash your face. Not to mention the possible, nausea, diarrhea, mouth sores, dry eyes, itchy hands and feet and compromised immune system that makes you vulnerable to infection.
We will apply for Medicaid in the hopes that it will help cover the cost of an assisted living facility, where I had to laugh when I noticed that one of the residents is named Mick Jaeger. In Seattle my mother knows no one but me. What will it be like for her to be isolated and ill in such a place? Even on her good days, it's hard to imagine my independent, younger-than-she-seems 75 year-old mother enjoying group meals or the bingo games and weekly outings to the drug store that I was told are the highlight of the residents' lives.
So my germ-ridden family and I will be her portals to the outside world. Over the past week I've begun adjusting to the fact that I will soon become a care-giver and will have to give up some control over my life. It's been hard so far to deal with all the logistics, but I've been able to take a break from cancer whenever I wanted, taking a run, hosting a birthday party, drinking wine with friends.
Now for me, every day will bring new, unavoidable responsibilities. And for my mother, unavoidable struggles.
We will truly be up in the air, hoping for a safe landing.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Hero Sandwich
On some level I always knew this day would come, though I hoped to avoid it. But now, staring me in the face is this: my mother, alone and destitute, has cancer. And it's fallen to me, three thousand miles away, to support her, arranging for her treatment, housing, home health care support and emotional support. In the week since we've had the news, cancer has become an almost full-time job, piled on top of my responsibilities as a mother with a part-time job and a life full of commitments.
They say you don't know what you don't know. Little did I know that attempting to figure out her health care coverage would cause me to become unglued. Little did I know that every day, I would move one step forward and two steps back, yet still make time to bake birthday cakes and cupcakes for my two daughters, whose birthdays fell during Week One of cancer, and for whom I wanted to keep things as normal as possible. Now, facing insomnia after a particularly frustrating day, I worry that my youngest daughter, who has been suspiciously scratching her head for weeks, is harboring a nest of lice in her thick red curly hair. Lice (and cancer) is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
My mother dreads the nights, but I dread the days. The endless to-do list that is not do-able at all because of incorrect information, insurance loopholes and the sheer overwhelmingness of it all. The constant phone calls. And somewhere, buried beneath all that is the emotional toll of the news on my mother, me, my kids. It sneaks up on me, but frankly, I don't have time to deal with it.
A woman who recently lost her mother told me that she looks forward to this summer, so she can finally grieve. She's been busy with caregiving, death, the holidays and now the estate, that there hasn't been time for grieving yet.
I know I am luckier than many. I have a wonderful supportive husband, I don't have to work full-time and I have an understanding boss. Many people, friends past and present, have stepped up to offer support, the karmic pay-off of my mother's lifetime of giving to others and maybe even a reward for some of the giving I've done too.
But here I am, a native English speaker, intelligent and healthy, with time on my hands. And I am kerflummoxed at trying to make sense of Medicare and Medicaid and to figure out what makes the most sense economically. How do people with more daily challenges manage this at all? There are blogs and articles and books and they help, but they aren't enough.
It's been a bad week for me and for the universe - Haiti, cancer and the election of Scott Brown. There are a million homeless people in Haiti and red tape is preventing them from having tents to sleep in. Scott Brown was elected, they say, because of frustration over the economy, and now health care reform is stalled. We all want the same thing - simplicity, honesty and a humane approach to caring for people in good times and bad. Is that really so difficult to achieve?
They say you don't know what you don't know. Little did I know that attempting to figure out her health care coverage would cause me to become unglued. Little did I know that every day, I would move one step forward and two steps back, yet still make time to bake birthday cakes and cupcakes for my two daughters, whose birthdays fell during Week One of cancer, and for whom I wanted to keep things as normal as possible. Now, facing insomnia after a particularly frustrating day, I worry that my youngest daughter, who has been suspiciously scratching her head for weeks, is harboring a nest of lice in her thick red curly hair. Lice (and cancer) is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
My mother dreads the nights, but I dread the days. The endless to-do list that is not do-able at all because of incorrect information, insurance loopholes and the sheer overwhelmingness of it all. The constant phone calls. And somewhere, buried beneath all that is the emotional toll of the news on my mother, me, my kids. It sneaks up on me, but frankly, I don't have time to deal with it.
A woman who recently lost her mother told me that she looks forward to this summer, so she can finally grieve. She's been busy with caregiving, death, the holidays and now the estate, that there hasn't been time for grieving yet.
I know I am luckier than many. I have a wonderful supportive husband, I don't have to work full-time and I have an understanding boss. Many people, friends past and present, have stepped up to offer support, the karmic pay-off of my mother's lifetime of giving to others and maybe even a reward for some of the giving I've done too.
But here I am, a native English speaker, intelligent and healthy, with time on my hands. And I am kerflummoxed at trying to make sense of Medicare and Medicaid and to figure out what makes the most sense economically. How do people with more daily challenges manage this at all? There are blogs and articles and books and they help, but they aren't enough.
It's been a bad week for me and for the universe - Haiti, cancer and the election of Scott Brown. There are a million homeless people in Haiti and red tape is preventing them from having tents to sleep in. Scott Brown was elected, they say, because of frustration over the economy, and now health care reform is stalled. We all want the same thing - simplicity, honesty and a humane approach to caring for people in good times and bad. Is that really so difficult to achieve?
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Renewal
For most people, renewing a driver's license is merely a bureaucratic annoyance that must be endured every five years. For me, it’s a report card.
A woman’s driver’s license unflinchingly documents how she is managing the shift from girl to woman, from student to professional, from girlfriend to life partner, from no-strings-attached to mother.
The pictures on my first two Washington State driver's licenses, both taken in August at the Greenwood branch of the Department of Licensing, had turned out beautifully – nothing like the stereotypical mug shots people joke about. They were better, in fact, than most photos of me, taken in more natural moments and with better lighting. Unlike people who shamefully produce their driver's license, I’ve always been proud to display mine. Often, far too often, the me it portrayed looked much better than the fatigued, haphazard me that offered it up.
The first time I sat in the waiting room of the Greenwood facility, I had just quit an exciting international career to move to Seattle and live with a man I'd never spent more than two weeks with. I should have looked worried. But in that driver's license picture I look carefree and adventurous, dressed in a shirt of Cambodian silk, excited to begin a new chapter of my life.
Five years later, I sat in that same waiting room, fondling that portrait of the glowing, unafraid me, wondering what clues my new picture would give about how I had weathered the changes in my life.
I was older now, with shorter hair, married and at home with a baby. My traveling days were over. I was afraid that my new driver's license picture would make me look matronly and dull. And nothing about the dingy Greenwood waiting room, with its rudimentary camera equipment, suggested otherwise. But the laminated me that the clerk handed back did not disappoint.
Five years after that, I’d spent months worrying about my next renewal picture, unwilling to believe that I could be lucky a third time. I was now a stay-at-home mother of two, who’d been out of the workforce for some time.
Would the new photograph capture the old adventurous me, who I hoped still existed underneath the minivan mom I’d become?
All year I’d been aware of this looming assessment of how well I was doing at finding balance in my life. I’d embarked on a diet and exercise regimen so that when renewal time rolled around, I’d be within the 10- pound acceptable range for lying about my weight. I studied my five-year old picture, convinced that wearing brightly colored clothes and make-up was key. I timed my hair appointment so that the cut and color would be fresh, but not too fresh, come picture day. Though I was offered the chance to renew my driver's license for an additional year by mail, I declined. I was ready now. Who was to say I would be ready a year from now.
On D-day I donned a fuchsia shirt and added my trademark lavender eye-shadow and pink lipstick and headed to the Greenwood licensing center, where I sat for an hour- and-a-half in the cold, beige waiting room, reflecting on why this photo mattered so much. If looks are the outward manifestation of state of mind, I decided, then I wanted to be satisfied with what I and others saw.
When my number came up, I walked confidently up to the counter and flashed a bright smile. And when the clerk handed me my new license, I saw a strong, healthy woman, the first lines of wisdom forming around her eyes.
Five months later, on a bleak January morning, my wallet was stolen and along with it, my driver's license. This time there was no opportunity for vanity. I needed a new driver's license now.
I expected the worst. The theft had unnerved me. It was winter. Instead of tanned and healthy, my skin looked sallow and green, my face careworn.
Though it seemed futile, I donned a pink sweater and the same bright make-up that I had worn the summer before.
The Greenwood facility was crowded. As I stood in line to get a number, a poster caught my eye. "If you've been issued a driver's license within the past two years, you can apply for a replacement on line." I want to say that it was simply the prospect of a long wait that made my decision. That vanity had nothing to do with it. And it's true that five minutes after I logged onto the Department of Licensing website, my application for a replacement license was processed. But the truth is, I wasn't ready to let go of that picture. I didn't want to believe that my confidence and strength were impermanent.
The Greenwood branch of the Department of Licensing closed on April 24. My driver’s license, which I was able to renew on line last year using the previous picture, expires in 2013. By then I will be the menopausal mother of two daughters going through puberty. I’d like to think that the wisdom I will have accumulated will shine through in the picture, or at least that I will have the self-confidence not to care how it turns out. But I’m not hedging my bets.
If anyone knows where the talented clerk/photographers of the Greenwood branch of the Department of Licensing have been reassigned, please let me know.
A woman’s driver’s license unflinchingly documents how she is managing the shift from girl to woman, from student to professional, from girlfriend to life partner, from no-strings-attached to mother.
The pictures on my first two Washington State driver's licenses, both taken in August at the Greenwood branch of the Department of Licensing, had turned out beautifully – nothing like the stereotypical mug shots people joke about. They were better, in fact, than most photos of me, taken in more natural moments and with better lighting. Unlike people who shamefully produce their driver's license, I’ve always been proud to display mine. Often, far too often, the me it portrayed looked much better than the fatigued, haphazard me that offered it up.
The first time I sat in the waiting room of the Greenwood facility, I had just quit an exciting international career to move to Seattle and live with a man I'd never spent more than two weeks with. I should have looked worried. But in that driver's license picture I look carefree and adventurous, dressed in a shirt of Cambodian silk, excited to begin a new chapter of my life.
Five years later, I sat in that same waiting room, fondling that portrait of the glowing, unafraid me, wondering what clues my new picture would give about how I had weathered the changes in my life.
I was older now, with shorter hair, married and at home with a baby. My traveling days were over. I was afraid that my new driver's license picture would make me look matronly and dull. And nothing about the dingy Greenwood waiting room, with its rudimentary camera equipment, suggested otherwise. But the laminated me that the clerk handed back did not disappoint.
Five years after that, I’d spent months worrying about my next renewal picture, unwilling to believe that I could be lucky a third time. I was now a stay-at-home mother of two, who’d been out of the workforce for some time.
Would the new photograph capture the old adventurous me, who I hoped still existed underneath the minivan mom I’d become?
All year I’d been aware of this looming assessment of how well I was doing at finding balance in my life. I’d embarked on a diet and exercise regimen so that when renewal time rolled around, I’d be within the 10- pound acceptable range for lying about my weight. I studied my five-year old picture, convinced that wearing brightly colored clothes and make-up was key. I timed my hair appointment so that the cut and color would be fresh, but not too fresh, come picture day. Though I was offered the chance to renew my driver's license for an additional year by mail, I declined. I was ready now. Who was to say I would be ready a year from now.
On D-day I donned a fuchsia shirt and added my trademark lavender eye-shadow and pink lipstick and headed to the Greenwood licensing center, where I sat for an hour- and-a-half in the cold, beige waiting room, reflecting on why this photo mattered so much. If looks are the outward manifestation of state of mind, I decided, then I wanted to be satisfied with what I and others saw.
When my number came up, I walked confidently up to the counter and flashed a bright smile. And when the clerk handed me my new license, I saw a strong, healthy woman, the first lines of wisdom forming around her eyes.
Five months later, on a bleak January morning, my wallet was stolen and along with it, my driver's license. This time there was no opportunity for vanity. I needed a new driver's license now.
I expected the worst. The theft had unnerved me. It was winter. Instead of tanned and healthy, my skin looked sallow and green, my face careworn.
Though it seemed futile, I donned a pink sweater and the same bright make-up that I had worn the summer before.
The Greenwood facility was crowded. As I stood in line to get a number, a poster caught my eye. "If you've been issued a driver's license within the past two years, you can apply for a replacement on line." I want to say that it was simply the prospect of a long wait that made my decision. That vanity had nothing to do with it. And it's true that five minutes after I logged onto the Department of Licensing website, my application for a replacement license was processed. But the truth is, I wasn't ready to let go of that picture. I didn't want to believe that my confidence and strength were impermanent.
The Greenwood branch of the Department of Licensing closed on April 24. My driver’s license, which I was able to renew on line last year using the previous picture, expires in 2013. By then I will be the menopausal mother of two daughters going through puberty. I’d like to think that the wisdom I will have accumulated will shine through in the picture, or at least that I will have the self-confidence not to care how it turns out. But I’m not hedging my bets.
If anyone knows where the talented clerk/photographers of the Greenwood branch of the Department of Licensing have been reassigned, please let me know.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing, Baby
Past is merely prologue, I tell my pre-adolescent daughters.
On days when they are suffering the inevitable emotional bruises of childhood, they are comforted by stories of my perceived childhood suffering. I was a chubby New Jersey girl with a dysfunctional family and an off-the-radar social persona in a small town where, as I saw it, no one appreciated my interest in foreign languages and spicy foods and people were in-your-face and proud of it. “And you know,” my stories often end, “I grew up and never saw any of those people again.”
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Just the usual childhood middle class, small town angst, often portrayed in books and movies. And yes, I did grow up and, as many of us do, I’ve lived a life of many chapters: California student, exchange student in France, world traveler, foreign service officer and later, wife, mother and writer, settling into a peaceful existence in the verdant northwestern corner of the country, where the natives are polite and healthy and nobody ever gets run over by a garbage truck.
Here I’ve found my inner swan, taking the best part of my origins and subsequent reinventions and molding these qualities into the grown-up version of me. Over the years I’ve had happy reunions with several people from the more interesting chapters of my life. Yet, hovering on the periphery of 50, I’m still a little ashamed of my roots. So I keep my Jersey self hidden inside me (like the fat person that lurks within the body of the newly thin) only allowing it to emerge on special occasions, like when Bruce Springsteen plays the Superbowl or when I am loudly (and some say inappropriately) rooting for my daughter’s basketball team.
Then, they found me.
The first blast from the past came from my mother, a 75 year-old web surfing enthusiast, who, for most of her life, has been the living embodiment of a social networking site. Though, predictably, she lives in Florida now, she keeps up with the doings in our New Jersey hometown, remembers her high school years fondly and even lunches with her former classmates once a month. She found and later directed me to the website for my upcoming 30th high school reunion. Like a cyber peeping Tom, I looked but didn’t act.
A few weeks later I received a call from one of my best friends from high school, whom I hadn’t communicated with in 25 years. She still lived in Jersey, was going to be traveling in my neck of the woods, and wanted to get together.
Sitting in a neighborhood sports bar that I hadn’t known existed, I cringed as her husband, a die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan, scream epithets at his team as the game went into unexpected overtime. Near another big screen TV, polite Seattle fans quietly cheered every small triumph of the beleagured Seahawks, making polite allowances for their flaws. It was like being with an embarrassing, yet lovable relative.
Later, we showed my kids our high school yearbooks and my friend filled me in on the lives of people I had forgotten existed – the stoner had become a Port-a-Potty millionaire, the jock was a doctor and several people seemed to have done quite well selling cars.
All of this made my past real to my kids and I decided it was good for them to meet people who had meant something to me and with whom I could still enjoy an easy rapport, despite distance, different politics and years gone by.
Then came Facebook.
Egged on to join by some foreign service friends who had posted some amusing old pictures, including one of me circa 1986 wielding a (fake) gun, terrorist-style, I succumbed to Facebook after months of resisting. I lost my innocence in the traditional way of Facebook newbies, wasting several hours the first afternoon reading the profiles of my many (thanks for finding them, Facebook) friends, prompting me to announce in my first “What Are You Doing?” posting, “Alison is regretting that she joined Facebook because she finds it as addictive as crack cocaine.”
Friends complained about the pressure to join Facebook, and relaxed in a sheepish, conspiratorial way when I admitted that I had joined too. Some justified it as a way to monitor their kids’ on-line activities, which we all know is the equivalent of saying you read Playboy for the articles.
It was only a matter of time before high school caught up with me via Facebook. The affable senior class president (now a media professor in Milwaukee) contacted me, I responded and we became “friends.” You know what happened next. Friend requests came in from one of the reunion organizers (still a die-hard Yankees fan), the audio-visual nerd (now with a struggling indie-music record label) and a woman last seen sneaking off to make out with my cousin (she appears to have settled down).
Requests also came in from people who weren’t my friends then, making me wonder why they wanted to be my friends now. I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want to open myself up to superficial and time-consuming encounters.
“Just ignore them,” my seasoned Facebook friends advised. “Everyone does it.”
So I did and I settled into a comfortable routine with Facebook, checking my “wall” (an ironic name for something meant to break-down barriers) once in a while, learning how to set my filters, ignoring martini requests and never getting around to writing 25 Random Things About Me.
Then he found me.
Actually, I found him first. I admit it, that first addict-like day, I didn’t just react to the friends Facebook sent me, I went trolling for people I knew and in the process learned that a lot of other people that I had once pigeon-holed had happily reinvented themselves too and that some (the senior vice president at Warner Brothers) would be well within their rights to have the last laugh.
While searching for my niece, I found 80 or so Krupnicks, none of whom was familiar to me… except one.
The postage stamp-sized photo revealed the unmistakable hair and brow of my father, who had been deceased for more than 20 years. The name, hometown and birthdate were familiar to me too.
Here was my half-brother, whose birth, when I was 13, coincided with my permanent estrangement from my father.
I clicked the page closed and enjoyed telling the story for a few days. Facebook had the power to literally raise the dead.
But then, after a few months, he found me.
The nuances of Facebook are perhaps more, well, nuanced then email. His approach was tentative, “Are you related to the Krupnicks in New Jersey?” My response, less so, “Yes, and I’m also related to you.”
Both his parents were now dead. I felt a surprising tenderness for this man/child I’d never met. I’d heard from my older brother that he had not had an easy life, though he had the standard carefree Facebook photo.
“I’m your half-brother,” he said, adding “I hope it’s okay that I contacted you.”
I am the veteran of a three-year, pre-internet, long distance relationship, which happily led to marriage. My attempts to choose the right words and the right tone and to interpret what my new Facebook correspondent was feeling, reminded me of the emotionally charged “voice-reading” I used to engage in during telephone conversations with my taciturn boyfriend-turned husband. At least then I had something to go on. These exchanges were much harder to decipher.
“Strange way to find a half-sibling,” I responded, trying not to betray the emotional turmoil I was feeling, “but nice to meet you. I hope you have had and are having a good life.”
Talk about an etiquette dilemma, this exchange was clearly on a different par from those Facebook stabs at friendship whose expectations had worried me. I wondered how far this would go. I wondered how far I wanted it to go.
Because Facebook had opened up the possibility that I could gain answers to the questions I’d never been able to ask my father. Doubtful, since my half-brother had been 12 when our father died. Maybe my father, whose bitterness at my mother tainted his relationship with me, wasn’t the same father he had known and I’d get to hear about his positive qualities. Maybe we would share a sense of regret and unfulfilled possibility, since we’d both “lost” our fathers at roughly the same age.
Was he feeling the same jumbled mix of emotions and, if so, what did he want from me? After all, we were strangers, with nothing in common but some genes and a last name that means Cold Barley Soup.
I guess I’ll never find out, at least not via Facebook.
Because despite my carefully thought-out response, I never heard from my half-brother again.
Was I too casual, inadvertently putting up a wall between us with my breezy “have a nice-life” sensibility? Maybe I wasn’t casual enough and should have added him to my “friends” list, though to me that smacked of insincerity. Or maybe, as many do, he had widely cast his friendship net to see what he could catch and had moved on.
It makes a good story and it’s one I’ve told often, most recently during a face-to-face encounter with a friend I hadn’t seen for thirty years. The internet brought us together but I realize that only a human connection will keep us that way.
Marvin Gaye had it right.
Funny how the music from one’s youth still says it all.
On days when they are suffering the inevitable emotional bruises of childhood, they are comforted by stories of my perceived childhood suffering. I was a chubby New Jersey girl with a dysfunctional family and an off-the-radar social persona in a small town where, as I saw it, no one appreciated my interest in foreign languages and spicy foods and people were in-your-face and proud of it. “And you know,” my stories often end, “I grew up and never saw any of those people again.”
Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Just the usual childhood middle class, small town angst, often portrayed in books and movies. And yes, I did grow up and, as many of us do, I’ve lived a life of many chapters: California student, exchange student in France, world traveler, foreign service officer and later, wife, mother and writer, settling into a peaceful existence in the verdant northwestern corner of the country, where the natives are polite and healthy and nobody ever gets run over by a garbage truck.
Here I’ve found my inner swan, taking the best part of my origins and subsequent reinventions and molding these qualities into the grown-up version of me. Over the years I’ve had happy reunions with several people from the more interesting chapters of my life. Yet, hovering on the periphery of 50, I’m still a little ashamed of my roots. So I keep my Jersey self hidden inside me (like the fat person that lurks within the body of the newly thin) only allowing it to emerge on special occasions, like when Bruce Springsteen plays the Superbowl or when I am loudly (and some say inappropriately) rooting for my daughter’s basketball team.
Then, they found me.
The first blast from the past came from my mother, a 75 year-old web surfing enthusiast, who, for most of her life, has been the living embodiment of a social networking site. Though, predictably, she lives in Florida now, she keeps up with the doings in our New Jersey hometown, remembers her high school years fondly and even lunches with her former classmates once a month. She found and later directed me to the website for my upcoming 30th high school reunion. Like a cyber peeping Tom, I looked but didn’t act.
A few weeks later I received a call from one of my best friends from high school, whom I hadn’t communicated with in 25 years. She still lived in Jersey, was going to be traveling in my neck of the woods, and wanted to get together.
Sitting in a neighborhood sports bar that I hadn’t known existed, I cringed as her husband, a die-hard Philadelphia Eagles fan, scream epithets at his team as the game went into unexpected overtime. Near another big screen TV, polite Seattle fans quietly cheered every small triumph of the beleagured Seahawks, making polite allowances for their flaws. It was like being with an embarrassing, yet lovable relative.
Later, we showed my kids our high school yearbooks and my friend filled me in on the lives of people I had forgotten existed – the stoner had become a Port-a-Potty millionaire, the jock was a doctor and several people seemed to have done quite well selling cars.
All of this made my past real to my kids and I decided it was good for them to meet people who had meant something to me and with whom I could still enjoy an easy rapport, despite distance, different politics and years gone by.
Then came Facebook.
Egged on to join by some foreign service friends who had posted some amusing old pictures, including one of me circa 1986 wielding a (fake) gun, terrorist-style, I succumbed to Facebook after months of resisting. I lost my innocence in the traditional way of Facebook newbies, wasting several hours the first afternoon reading the profiles of my many (thanks for finding them, Facebook) friends, prompting me to announce in my first “What Are You Doing?” posting, “Alison is regretting that she joined Facebook because she finds it as addictive as crack cocaine.”
Friends complained about the pressure to join Facebook, and relaxed in a sheepish, conspiratorial way when I admitted that I had joined too. Some justified it as a way to monitor their kids’ on-line activities, which we all know is the equivalent of saying you read Playboy for the articles.
It was only a matter of time before high school caught up with me via Facebook. The affable senior class president (now a media professor in Milwaukee) contacted me, I responded and we became “friends.” You know what happened next. Friend requests came in from one of the reunion organizers (still a die-hard Yankees fan), the audio-visual nerd (now with a struggling indie-music record label) and a woman last seen sneaking off to make out with my cousin (she appears to have settled down).
Requests also came in from people who weren’t my friends then, making me wonder why they wanted to be my friends now. I didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want to open myself up to superficial and time-consuming encounters.
“Just ignore them,” my seasoned Facebook friends advised. “Everyone does it.”
So I did and I settled into a comfortable routine with Facebook, checking my “wall” (an ironic name for something meant to break-down barriers) once in a while, learning how to set my filters, ignoring martini requests and never getting around to writing 25 Random Things About Me.
Then he found me.
Actually, I found him first. I admit it, that first addict-like day, I didn’t just react to the friends Facebook sent me, I went trolling for people I knew and in the process learned that a lot of other people that I had once pigeon-holed had happily reinvented themselves too and that some (the senior vice president at Warner Brothers) would be well within their rights to have the last laugh.
While searching for my niece, I found 80 or so Krupnicks, none of whom was familiar to me… except one.
The postage stamp-sized photo revealed the unmistakable hair and brow of my father, who had been deceased for more than 20 years. The name, hometown and birthdate were familiar to me too.
Here was my half-brother, whose birth, when I was 13, coincided with my permanent estrangement from my father.
I clicked the page closed and enjoyed telling the story for a few days. Facebook had the power to literally raise the dead.
But then, after a few months, he found me.
The nuances of Facebook are perhaps more, well, nuanced then email. His approach was tentative, “Are you related to the Krupnicks in New Jersey?” My response, less so, “Yes, and I’m also related to you.”
Both his parents were now dead. I felt a surprising tenderness for this man/child I’d never met. I’d heard from my older brother that he had not had an easy life, though he had the standard carefree Facebook photo.
“I’m your half-brother,” he said, adding “I hope it’s okay that I contacted you.”
I am the veteran of a three-year, pre-internet, long distance relationship, which happily led to marriage. My attempts to choose the right words and the right tone and to interpret what my new Facebook correspondent was feeling, reminded me of the emotionally charged “voice-reading” I used to engage in during telephone conversations with my taciturn boyfriend-turned husband. At least then I had something to go on. These exchanges were much harder to decipher.
“Strange way to find a half-sibling,” I responded, trying not to betray the emotional turmoil I was feeling, “but nice to meet you. I hope you have had and are having a good life.”
Talk about an etiquette dilemma, this exchange was clearly on a different par from those Facebook stabs at friendship whose expectations had worried me. I wondered how far this would go. I wondered how far I wanted it to go.
Because Facebook had opened up the possibility that I could gain answers to the questions I’d never been able to ask my father. Doubtful, since my half-brother had been 12 when our father died. Maybe my father, whose bitterness at my mother tainted his relationship with me, wasn’t the same father he had known and I’d get to hear about his positive qualities. Maybe we would share a sense of regret and unfulfilled possibility, since we’d both “lost” our fathers at roughly the same age.
Was he feeling the same jumbled mix of emotions and, if so, what did he want from me? After all, we were strangers, with nothing in common but some genes and a last name that means Cold Barley Soup.
I guess I’ll never find out, at least not via Facebook.
Because despite my carefully thought-out response, I never heard from my half-brother again.
Was I too casual, inadvertently putting up a wall between us with my breezy “have a nice-life” sensibility? Maybe I wasn’t casual enough and should have added him to my “friends” list, though to me that smacked of insincerity. Or maybe, as many do, he had widely cast his friendship net to see what he could catch and had moved on.
It makes a good story and it’s one I’ve told often, most recently during a face-to-face encounter with a friend I hadn’t seen for thirty years. The internet brought us together but I realize that only a human connection will keep us that way.
Marvin Gaye had it right.
Funny how the music from one’s youth still says it all.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Maddy Walking
I live in a neighborhood that used to be made fun of on a local late night comedy show.
We were known for driving with the blinker on, eating smelly lard-preserved fish and responding to everything with a deadpan repetitious catch-phrase.
Now we are impossibly hip and are regularly spotlighted whenever national publications feature Seattle.
But before all that, before we were cool, there was Maddy.
I first noticed him shortly after quitting my job to stay home with my first child, around ten years ago. The neighborhood renaissance was just beginning and as I walked the 'hood with my stroller, wondering how I would keep myself occupied during the long days, I noticed I wasn't the only one walking.
Our first independent coffee shop had opened, with fabulous European-style pastries. I used it as my reward, trying to get through as many hours as I could before allowing myself to visit. I even tried to structure naptime around it.
The shop closed at 3:00. Sometimes I would skate in just prior to closing and there would be Maddy, bantering with the barista. I have to admit, sometimes that frustrated me. I wanted my coffee and I didn't want to wait for the banter. Sometimes it frustrated the barista, who would often be trying to close. But Maddy would stay and talk while she mopped the floors and wiped down the tables and she always had a smile for him and gave him all the time in the world.
I started spotting him other places, always walking. My house is between a commercial street and a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. Maddy would walk from the coffee shop, along my street, and over to the bluff, day after day.
I began to wonder if the walks were his reward too, his attempt to fill up the long days, that like mine, used to be filled by a job and meetings and other important-sounding events. He was old, but not that old. But as the years went on, I added another child to my stroller, and found new ways to fill up my days, I would still see Maddy walking, eventually leaning on two titanium canes. Sometimes I would encounter him in other shops and it was the same. Everyone made time for him. He was a local personality.
The street with the European coffee shop now sports an artisan beer shop, a sushi bar and a bakery. The street closest to the bluff is home to a Green Grocer, a video store, and a new Italian trattoria. I don't walk as much as I used to and the other day I got to thinking that I hadn't seen Maddy recently.
But on Sunday, while selling Girl Scout cookies outside the video store with my now ten-year old daughter, I ducked into a nearby coffee shop, decidely un-hip and a favorite with the neighborhood stalwarts, who are fewer and farther between, and I saw a sign on the window. "Closing at 6:00 for a memorial service." I wasn't surprised to walk in and see Maddy's obituary propped up on the counter.
In our busy world, none of us walks or banters as much as we might. I feel privileged to live in a neighborhood and to have a life where that is still possible. My husband and I talk about whether we should move to a town closer to where he works and with a more solvent school district and I say no. "I wouldn't be able to walk," is my reasoning.
From the window of the room where I write this I can see the street where Maddy used to walk and where other old and young people walk each day. I recognize them and I am out walking they recognize me, though we've never been introduced. We nod a quiet acknowledgment knowing that we are participating in a vital, yet dying pursuit.
We were known for driving with the blinker on, eating smelly lard-preserved fish and responding to everything with a deadpan repetitious catch-phrase.
Now we are impossibly hip and are regularly spotlighted whenever national publications feature Seattle.
But before all that, before we were cool, there was Maddy.
I first noticed him shortly after quitting my job to stay home with my first child, around ten years ago. The neighborhood renaissance was just beginning and as I walked the 'hood with my stroller, wondering how I would keep myself occupied during the long days, I noticed I wasn't the only one walking.
Our first independent coffee shop had opened, with fabulous European-style pastries. I used it as my reward, trying to get through as many hours as I could before allowing myself to visit. I even tried to structure naptime around it.
The shop closed at 3:00. Sometimes I would skate in just prior to closing and there would be Maddy, bantering with the barista. I have to admit, sometimes that frustrated me. I wanted my coffee and I didn't want to wait for the banter. Sometimes it frustrated the barista, who would often be trying to close. But Maddy would stay and talk while she mopped the floors and wiped down the tables and she always had a smile for him and gave him all the time in the world.
I started spotting him other places, always walking. My house is between a commercial street and a bluff overlooking Puget Sound. Maddy would walk from the coffee shop, along my street, and over to the bluff, day after day.
I began to wonder if the walks were his reward too, his attempt to fill up the long days, that like mine, used to be filled by a job and meetings and other important-sounding events. He was old, but not that old. But as the years went on, I added another child to my stroller, and found new ways to fill up my days, I would still see Maddy walking, eventually leaning on two titanium canes. Sometimes I would encounter him in other shops and it was the same. Everyone made time for him. He was a local personality.
The street with the European coffee shop now sports an artisan beer shop, a sushi bar and a bakery. The street closest to the bluff is home to a Green Grocer, a video store, and a new Italian trattoria. I don't walk as much as I used to and the other day I got to thinking that I hadn't seen Maddy recently.
But on Sunday, while selling Girl Scout cookies outside the video store with my now ten-year old daughter, I ducked into a nearby coffee shop, decidely un-hip and a favorite with the neighborhood stalwarts, who are fewer and farther between, and I saw a sign on the window. "Closing at 6:00 for a memorial service." I wasn't surprised to walk in and see Maddy's obituary propped up on the counter.
In our busy world, none of us walks or banters as much as we might. I feel privileged to live in a neighborhood and to have a life where that is still possible. My husband and I talk about whether we should move to a town closer to where he works and with a more solvent school district and I say no. "I wouldn't be able to walk," is my reasoning.
From the window of the room where I write this I can see the street where Maddy used to walk and where other old and young people walk each day. I recognize them and I am out walking they recognize me, though we've never been introduced. We nod a quiet acknowledgment knowing that we are participating in a vital, yet dying pursuit.
Monday, March 9, 2009
If a Blog Falls in the Woods...
I'm nobody, who are you? Are you nobody too?"
I can't remember who wrote that poem but I feel a little like the nowhere woman, writing my little blog for nobody to see because I'm haven't put it Out There yet and am not sure how far I'll go.
This was a day with weather like mood swings -- snowy and st0rmy one minute, sunny and calm the next. A great day for writing and cooking - my favorite simultaneous pursuits, though too much reflection can sometimes lead to disasters in the kitchen, I've learned the hard way.
I'm starting to see the appeal of the renograde elements of blogging, publishing what you want, when you want -- a big difference from the long time-lag between sending out a query letter, struggling over edits and actually getting published and paid.
I've had an interesting time trying to come up with a unique title for this blog (Ruminations from the Minivan seemed too long). Haven't found one yet.
Turns out there are a lot of creative people out there. If the traditional world of publishing is a tough nut to crack, at least you send your work out in a vacuum. The blogosphere enables you to see it all - there is no slush pile. So out comes the yardstick and one wonders if one measures up. Yet it also makes you glad for all the voices that can be heard.
Yesterday I saw the film Phoebe in Wonderland, in which Felicity Huffman gives a performance that hit very close to home as a mother and writer conflicted over which would leave her with the more important legacy.
I'm contemplating whether blogs, like meals, can sometimes be small masterpieces that are short-lived but satisfying.
And just like that, as I was writing this, my first comment came in and a very empowering one at that. Lighten up and have fun, she said, in so many words.
So thank you very much, I will. And I'll reflect (but not too much) upon that while making broccoli soup and sweet potato bread (thanks for the recipes, Orangette) to sustain my busy family.
I'm out there. So far, so good.
I can't remember who wrote that poem but I feel a little like the nowhere woman, writing my little blog for nobody to see because I'm haven't put it Out There yet and am not sure how far I'll go.
This was a day with weather like mood swings -- snowy and st0rmy one minute, sunny and calm the next. A great day for writing and cooking - my favorite simultaneous pursuits, though too much reflection can sometimes lead to disasters in the kitchen, I've learned the hard way.
I'm starting to see the appeal of the renograde elements of blogging, publishing what you want, when you want -- a big difference from the long time-lag between sending out a query letter, struggling over edits and actually getting published and paid.
I've had an interesting time trying to come up with a unique title for this blog (Ruminations from the Minivan seemed too long). Haven't found one yet.
Turns out there are a lot of creative people out there. If the traditional world of publishing is a tough nut to crack, at least you send your work out in a vacuum. The blogosphere enables you to see it all - there is no slush pile. So out comes the yardstick and one wonders if one measures up. Yet it also makes you glad for all the voices that can be heard.
Yesterday I saw the film Phoebe in Wonderland, in which Felicity Huffman gives a performance that hit very close to home as a mother and writer conflicted over which would leave her with the more important legacy.
I'm contemplating whether blogs, like meals, can sometimes be small masterpieces that are short-lived but satisfying.
And just like that, as I was writing this, my first comment came in and a very empowering one at that. Lighten up and have fun, she said, in so many words.
So thank you very much, I will. And I'll reflect (but not too much) upon that while making broccoli soup and sweet potato bread (thanks for the recipes, Orangette) to sustain my busy family.
I'm out there. So far, so good.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Testing, 1, 2 3
This is an experiment relating to a book I tried to write: Ruminations from the Minivan: Musings from a World Grown Large, then Small.
Part chronicle of new motherhood, part travelogue and part food memoir (what isn't these days) the manuscript showed early promise -- excerpts were published in literary journals, it won an award at a writer's conference and even attracted the attention of a couple of agents.
But for some reason I couldn't finish it.
The same things that make me uncomfortable about blogging or participating in Facebook made me reluctant to finish the book, even though it was originally written as a series of messages to my daughters and wasn't intended for publication at all.
We live in an era that is saturated with personal revelations, some true, some embellished. In memoir writing classes they teach you that they key to a successful memoir is finding the big, universal truth that makes your story relevant to others.
So even though I have enjoyed the memoirs of others, I've avoided finishing my own memoir because I wasn't convinced that my take on things is so special that I need to share it with the world. This despite the fact that a few of the pieces I've published, most notably an account of the death of a young mother, have touched people and I've been proud to have told those stories.
Instead I turned toward impersonal (and more lucrative) article writing.
But last night at my daughter's basketball game (the new baby I started writing for is now 10), several women were raving about a food memoir written by a woman in our neighborhood. It's called "A Homemade Life" and it started as the blog Orangette. I immediately ordered the book from Amazon (because our neighborhood book store is already sold out of copies) and checked out Orangette's blog entry tonight -- a lovely ditty about tomato sauce.
I was inspired to write in part because of New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, who, one reviewer said "is able to see the entire world through a single grain of sand."
One small blog entry about tomato sauce affected me the way the first taste of a pungent tomato sauce does -- it was a wake-up call. Orangette advises you add butter to the sauce to take the flavors to a whole new level.
So this blog is the butter in my sauce, as it were. Maybe writing it will be the kick in the pants I need to finish the book. Maybe it will be just be the daily writing practice I've been avoiding. Or maybe it will enrich my life by providing creative outlet I've been avoiding.
And maybe, just maybe, because blogs can be the equivalent of the Schwab's drug store soda fountain in Hollywood (where Lana Turner and a bunch of other "starlets" were discovered), some hotshot literary agent will pluck me from obscurity, sell my finished manuscript, send me on a book tour, then option the screenplay and sign Meryl Streep to be in the movie (hmmm, I'll have to write a role for her).
On verra.
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