She Sells Seashells

Houseladder

2011-12-11T15:38:00.001-07:00

Oliver brings home drawings nearly every day now. He's a kindergartener and his vocabulary is exploding, along with his ability to illustrate his stories.

Sometimes, I struggle to understand the captions to his pictures. For example:

Due to his tendency to confuse "d" and "p," I thought he'd written, "If I could eat anything I like for lunch, I would eat people."

I worked to maintain my composure as I made sense of this alarming picture. Had he misconstrued the vampire craze, confusing sucking blood with taking a bite? Was he trying to make his pretty teachers laugh? Who was this particular hapless stick-person whom he wanted to chew to bits? Were we raising another Jeffrey Dahmer? I could see myself on the witness stand, twenty years hence.

"No, he never tortured animals, but from a young age he did want to eat people."

I confronted him over his dinner that evening, a feast of fish sticks that suddenly looked like fried fingers. "So," I said, trying to sound casual, "What's this? You want to eat people?"

He laughed so hard he could barely respond.

"No, Mommy. I want to eat DUMPLINGS!"

Oh. Dumplings.

Other times, his phonetic spelling is perfect.

It so happens that the "houseladr" he drew looks exactly like a house we rented in Mexico when Oliver was barely three. Unless he has a freakish memory, I don't think he actually remembers it. More likely, it's a coincidental resemblance.

The Mexico house had an exterior ladder just like this one, leading up to a rooftop deck. I told the boys the story of when we stayed in that house, and Oliver climbed the ladder.

We'd traveled to Mexico with two other couples and their kids. The four children had been playing quietly in the house when we noticed Oliver was gone. After a frantic, stomach-flipping run to the pool, I turned around to see Oliver three-quarters of the way up the ladder. He couldn't figure out how to go down, so he just kept climbing. Miles had to follow him up and talk him through their tandem descent.

Oliver and Charlie listened to this story with rapt attention. They wanted to hear it again and again. As I retold it, in that autopilot setting you use when repeating things for your children, I thought about something a friend had said the day before. We were talking about our relationships with our own parents. She recalled the revelation she'd had while holding her newborn in her hands. Suddenly, she understood why her mother has such opinions about everything she does, and why her father has always been so protective of her.

"Of course," she said, making a cupping gesture with her hands, "I mean, they've know me since I was that small."

As parents, we're more than just the designated storytellers. We are our children's whole history. It's the simplest but most profound truth: we know them before they know themselves.

As much fun as that is, it's also a huge responsibility. It has me thinking about all the things that I want to do with them, about what will make the best stories. It makes me think about big things, like future vacations, but also about the smaller things, that might not even seem all that significant at the time. Who knows, maybe one day we'll reminisce about the time I thought Oliver was a young cannibal.

Here's to the lore that has yet to be lived.

Sometimes the Dragon

2011-11-15T11:03:00.002-07:00

Charlie went to a birthday party recently. The kids were invited to dress as knights or dragons. After groping elbows-deep through our massive treasure trunk of boy hero costumes, I realized we lack a knight suit. Charlie went as a dragon.

Can you spot Charlie?

The problem was, he was the only dragon. All the other boys were knights. And what's the sole purpose of a knight when there is a dragon around? No matter how contemplative your preschool is, boys are hardwired for battle. Those knights were out for dragon blood.

Trouble approaches.

As a younger brother, Charlie is somewhat used to being cast as an enemy in someone else's hero play. Still, I felt awfully guilty leaving him alone in hostile territory.

"I don't want to be the bad guy," he told me before I left, his bottom lip reaching Kansas.

"It's just pretend," I told him. "You're just playing the bad guy."

He stared at me in incomprehension. When it comes to a drop-off birthday party full of kids brandishing swords, how does it help if you're not a real dragon?

As I drove away, I got to thinking about my own inner dragon. It gets the best of me sometimes, usually on days when I haven't worked out and feel especially unproductive. The other day, I lost my temper when the girls wouldn't stop crying. I tell myself that it's alright to yell a bit in front of them before they are old enough to remember it, but I'm sure it's not a good habit to get into. I'm sure screaming obscenities in front of your eight-month-olds is not on the list of approved contemplative parenting techniques.

Other days, I feel noble. Capable of dismissing the annoyances of parenthood with a gentle wave of my hand. Meeting my children where they are, instead of where I want them to be. Seeing the humor in everything. In a word, knightly. I thought I'd seized upon an important lesson for the kids.

Charlie being led to the forest to be slain by the knights.

As I was tucking the boys into bed that evening, I told them what I'd figured out.

"Sometimes in life you're going to be the knight, sometimes the dragon."

Thus ensued a very literal conversation about people versus imaginary animals, historical fact versus mythology, and all of the cool parts of a knight's costume.

"Anyway, Mommy, you're wrong." Charlie said.

He likes to point out when I'm wrong. And he's always got a point.

"Sometimes you get to be both."

Here's to the knights and dragons of our nature.

All Things Glow

2011-11-14T10:11:00.001-07:00

I used to read a lot of blogs. I don't read as many anymore, a downside of having less screen time. But I've narrowed my list to a few that I love. Some are written by people known to me, others by strangers. Most of these blogs have themes. Children. Happiness. Design. Writing. Wellness. Mormon Superiority.

Looking at my blogroll, I got to thinking, what's my theme? And since I was in low spirits when I was having this inner dialogue, I first beat myself up for not having one. I'm too scattered to have a singular focus. My writing is too undisciplined to dedicate this space to one subject. I'm too self-absorbed to organize my thoughts into an arc greater than here-is-what-I-did-today-and-this-is-how-I-felt.

During his sign-off from 60 Minutes in early October, Andy Rooney said:

A writer's job is to tell the truth. I believe that if all the truth were known about everything in the world it would be a better place to live.

Today I am officially co-opting this observation as the theme of my blog. Yes, She Sells has been here since 2004, and I'm only now adopting a theme. My blog is sort of like an LSAT essay that way. After responding to the fact pattern of my life with a near-random stream of everything that's crossed my mind in the last seven years, I'm superimposing order with the equivalent of a concluding paragraph. Though I plan to keep writing.

What motivates me to write anything here at all is the need to examine, the hope to shake the truth from events or feelings or people that mystify me. And more than that, the need to let go of life's petty grievances, and maintain the perspective that was foisted on me when my mother died: that since all of this is fleeting, it's best to focus on the beauty. Because I agree with Andy. I think if you can find the truth, it elevates you. And I love the feeling of transformation that comes when what started out as a rant--say, about my blog's lack of focus--turns into a revelation that whatever was bothering me so much really shouldn't. To borrow a few words of God, the truth will set you free.

I used to blog about whatever I thought would get a laugh. And too often, those posts had a hard edge to them, that came from a sort of indignation. High dental bills! The rich white kids begging for spare change on the Mall! The lady who cursed at my dog! And even though I still enjoy the absurdity of things, even though I can still bitch with the best of them, I'm trying to avoid that as a focus of my written work. It's not as though I've transcended indignation. Pour me some wine and ask me about politics and you'll see. But I see the wisdom in at least trying to reach higher ground.

So that's what I'm after here, the pearl in the oyster, the creamy caramel center. The lesson that's eluding me about even the crappiest of situations. A special kind of truth. The glow. That's the theme, if you can call it a theme. Because it might be confusing if I suddenly started blogging about my crafty, photogenic Mormon lifestyle.

Thanks be to Andy Rooney.

balancing act

2011-10-03T08:29:00.010-06:00

I went to a yoga class recently, during which the teacher talked about balance. It was a crowded class, so I listened attentively, hoping to learn how to avoid crashing into my neighbors.

I'm a latecomer to yoga. I resisted it for years, after trying it a few times and failing completely. But in the last few months, I've become a convert.

Before, I just didn't get yoga. It didn't fit my definition of exercise: physical activity that is really hard, almost unpleasant, that you keep up as long as possible. I considered yoga an alternative to real exertion. How effective can a workout be, I reasoned, that begins and ends in repose?

Plus, I wasn't any good at it. Boulder is a hard place to be a yoga novice. It isn't any fun to be toppling out of a 6th grade P.E.-style tripod headstand in the middle of a room full of flawless handstands.

I'm still not good at it, but I'm beginning to get it. I could write a dissertation on all the reasons why yoga suddenly makes sense to me. I will spare you that (which reminds me of a funny anti-bucket list that ran in the back of the Atlantic recently, in which the author declared that in addition to never wanting to climb Mt. Everest, he never wants to read a book about a self-actualizing rich person who climbs Mt. Everest. I'd imagine a book about a middle age upper middle class white woman falling in love with yoga would fall into the same category. No offense to Claire Dederer, whose book on that subject I actually loved). But I will say that I've mostly gotten over avoiding things I'm not very good at. I'd be awfully bored if I steered clear of everything in that category. Besides, as Randy Pausch said in his Last Lecture, "experience is what what you get when you don't get what you want." These days I'm racking up plenty of experience.

In this particular class, we were squeezed into the room mat-to-mat, which really upped the stakes when it came to the handstand portion of morning. I soon figured out why the class was so popular. The teacher is a messianic tattooed type with a voice that could sell exercise videos. He has a way of speaking in profundities that had me hanging on his every word. While we were working on a balance pose, he talked about the nature of balance. About how if you're fighting to achieve it, then by definition, you don't have it.

It made me think about my kids, who seem to have a surprising amount of balance. They can strike a tree pose without much effort, and hold it for longer than I can. Whereas I fall in and out, all the while worrying about all the people behind me, snickering at my lack of balance.

But if there is a theme to my life as of late, it is in letting go of struggle. The addition of the twins to our family, plus the economy, have made our day-to-day life more chaotic and more challenging in certain ways. I just don't have the energy to worry about my career and my sense of self worth, let alone what a lithe twenty-five year old thinks of my effort in Half Moon.

It's a daily struggle, this not struggling, but on my better days I realize how much easier - more balanced - I feel when I focus on what needs to be done, rather than how well I'm doing it. Which is good, because I still stumble and fall plenty.

anger management

2011-10-01T04:22:00.005-06:00

Parenthood makes an inventor out of you. Every so often, I hit upon an idea with potential to not only solve some frustration in my life, but be useful to parents everywhere. First was the wearable fashionable smock, to be worn over work clothes--especially in the morning--to avoid necessitating a wardrobe change every time you get spit-up or cereal on your suit. Imagine the dry cleaning dollars saved! Then there was the strap that can turn any small bike into a backpack. That way, when an obstinate toddler insists on riding his bike, but gets tired halfway to your destination, the parent can throw the bike on her back, making it much easier to carry the kid. Lately, it's the bottle foam wedge, a device (available in a twin configuration) for propping up baby bottles so mom can attend to other things while the babies are eating. Because the babies seem to be eating, like, all the time.

Sometimes, it seems that we as parents are involved in a wider quest for invention. Whenever I have conversations with friends about what's going on with our kids, we often circle around to "What do you do" questions. How do you get the babies to sleep through the night? How do you get your older kids to school on time? What are your methods with a fussy eater? We're all looking for those inventions that make our kids run right.

So I was impressed last night, when Oliver & Charlie showed me their inventions for controlling their own anger. Charlie's teacher had read him a book called Steps and Stones, in which a boy named Ahn makes his anger disappear by walking slowly and counting his steps. Charlie took long slow steps down the hall, talking about how his anger was shrinking behind him with every step, until it was "teeny tiny enough to float away on a dandelion seed." Then Oliver took me through a "brain break," which is much like the end of a yoga class. He instructed me to lie down, close my eyes, and relax every part of my body. Then I was to imagine myself at the beach, feeling the sun on my face, and "make your breath like the waves" - in and out, over and over. We need to patent these ideas!

Now if only I could come up with the formula for a pill that would put you back to sleep for a prescribed period of time. This would be useful after an early morning feeding, when you want to drop right back into bed, and be ready to pop back up when the kids rise, all too soon. In the alternative, I guess there is always the invention called coffee.

Homes of the Heart

2011-09-26T09:07:00.007-06:00

On my way through the Cleveland airport yesterday, I had a harried exchange with a clerk as I bought a book for my flight, which was already boarding.

"Where are you heading?" he asked.

"Boulder, Colorado," I replied, eyeing the shrinking line at my gate and thrusting my credit card towards him.

He seemed not to notice my impatience, which must be as unmoving to him as a baby's cry can be to me after a long day at home with my infant twins. His voice stayed slow.

"Is that home?"

I looked back at him, startled to be confronted with the very question that swirls in my head whenever I make this trip. I realized that for once I actually had an answer.

"Yes," I said, expressing a simple sentiment that's taken me years to understand. "But this is home, too."

By now I'm used to my push-pull relationship with Boulder and Cleveland. I'm used to the last-minute reluctance that grips me just before leaving Colorado, as well as the rekindled love that warms the air-conditioned cabin as soon as Lake Erie and the Terminal Tower become visible through the clouds on descent. If home is where the heart is, then I have two homes, and have for some time. But until this weekend, I wasn't at peace with that.

I was only in town for two days, to attend my twentieth high school graduation. It was the kind of fall weekend that makes a prom queen out of Shaker Heights. The oppressive heat of August is gone but the trees are still crowned with leaves and the addling frigidity of winter is months away. As I ran around town on Saturday, I passed a field hockey game at the Catholic girls' school, and a bunch of little kids throwing sticks into an algae-covered pond at the Nature Center. The place looked young and gorgeous, and for a moment it stopped me in my tracks. I realized that a part of me will always want to be there. But my adult life--which I love--is in Colorado. And those two facts just have to coexist. Maybe part of being an adult is accepting that some things in life will remain unresolved.

Summertime, and the brownies are gluten-free

2011-07-19T12:24:00.001-06:00

The storms of mid-summer have passed, leaving us panting in the heat. I'm trying to tell myself that not having an air-conditioner bring us closer to nature, reminding us of the seasons and such. But really, without the cooling effect of the afternoon thunderstorms we've been enjoying for the past few weeks, the house remains several degrees warmer than outside.

In this kind of heat, it's easy to get annoyed at one another. The boys snap at each other more easily, and Miles and I can, too. Add in the sleep deprivation that goes along with infant twins, and you've got a recipe for overreactions and unreasonable requests.The other morning, I read a Dear Abby letter written by husband seeking advice about what to say to his wife of twenty years, regarding her habit of pushing her food onto her fork with her hands. And I had to wonder, has he been silently stewing over dinners for the past two decades, until his irritation with her manners overflowed in the form of a letter to a syndicated and possibly fictitious professional opinion-giver?

I'm happy to say that whatever small irritations boil up in the heat tend to melt away as soon as the house cools down. In the meanwhile, I'm going to spend the next few weeks before school starts sipping more lemonade, eating brownies (with gluten - we save the other version for our customers), and praying for rain.

If you're ever in the vicinity of North Street, please join me!

Succession

2011-07-14T14:05:00.007-06:00

Today is the last day of our preschool's "summer camp." I was feeling reminiscent about my own camping days, and googled Weehawken Day Camp, where I went as a child. I came across the most remarkable photos of the camp, taken in 2005, after it had been abandoned for several years. The photographer included them in his project, "Succession," which he describes as a collection of photographs of "environments that are being reclaimed by nature."

And that is the best description of the way I've felt ever since the twins were born on April 8th. I feel a bit like an iron trellis, forged in some blazing sweatshop, anchored in concrete, now being engulfed by green growing vines otherwise known as my children. Some days, their tentacles feel a little tight for comfort, but for the most part having all these little kids underfoot and attached to me feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Of course, a natural side effect to all this growth is the narrowing of my own personal time. When it comes, I'm usually too tired to do much with it. Still, I'm hoping to carve out a little time here and there to tend to things like this blog. And thanks for the encouragement, dear readers!

Instant Community

2011-01-07T11:33:00.003-07:00

Isn't it funny the way the world opens up to you when you are noticeably pregnant? I find myself engaged in conversations with strangers all the time, people who come up to me and ask about my due date. The other day at the gym, the woman on the bike next to mine turned to me at the end of spinning class and clapped me on the back. "I'm so impressed," she said, "it's amazing that you are keeping up with your workouts." Where is this kind of camaraderie in everyday life? I would love it if strangers encouraged me to work out when my belly isn't round. But there is something about a pregnant woman that breaks down our normal social boundaries.

Before my belly became unmistakably pregnant, I was eager to share my news with the world. I once jumped into a locker room conversation between a woman farther along than me, and another woman who had just approached her to ask about her due date. "I'm pregnant too," I'd said. "I'm due two months after you!" The women had smiled but eyed me suspiciously. I had broken a norm; I had interrupted a two-way conversation. And my relatively flat belly won me no forgiveness points.

No, the days of being the object of sympathetic smiles are numbered. Soon I will be back in the ordinary world, where you only talk to people you know, unless you've got a really good reason to stop someone and engage them in conversation. And sometimes, not even then. I have a cousin who lives in Norway, and I remember her describing how difficult it was to adjust to their social norms. There, you don't even say hello to someone you don't know. She said she looked like the town buffoon for months before realizing that a friendly "hey" to a stranger is considered weird, even rude.

Once nice thing about knowing this is my last pregnancy (among lots of nice things), is that it makes me more attuned to these kinds of fleeting changes. I will miss the universe of instant community that pregnancy provides. Perhaps once it is over, I will make it my mission to talk to one random person per day. You never know when your little line of encouragement or greeting will make someone's day. Besides, I will be too tired to care about looking like the town weirdo.

Resolving not to resolve, but resolving anyway

2011-01-06T00:56:00.006-07:00

As I've gotten to know myself better, I have tended to shy away from grand resolutions. I don't keep them. Does anyone?

My inner cynic rolls her eyes mightily whenever she hears me making broad proclamations of change. Hah, she says. Where will this will power be tomorrow morning when the alarm goes off?

Maybe I've been a watched pot, or maybe it's a function of age and childbearing, but lately I've noticed that I am, in fact, capable of new tricks.

I've figured out some of my trigger points, the things that spur me to action. None of them involve stand-alone pledges, like "lose 10 pounds" or "swear less." They are far less lofty, more mundane. Things like:

* Get dressed before eating breakfast. (I've got more forward momentum wearing laced-up running shoes than slippers. Slippers make me want to read every single obituary and all the lien notices; in my sneakers, I hit the local news, one or two op-eds, and then I'm making beds, washing dishes, and cajoling sleeping children to rise.)
* Floss your teeth. (I've never been a regular flosser until recently. I had no idea what I was missing. It's like a party in my mouth! So zesty! It makes me want to crack jokes, kiss faces!)
* Fold the laundry as I take it out of the dryer. (An unfolded basket of clean clothes is my Everest. I can stare at it from base camp for weeks before summiting.)

When I think of it, my good habits are all things that promote forward momentum. Action that I am in control of. Anyone with small children understands that sitting still is not an option, not for long, anyway. They drag you off your duff eventually. And I suppose I'm just figuring out how to stay one step ahead of them, or at least start the day there.

So I'm not going to resolve to "be a better mother," but I know I'm improving anyway, incrementally.

***
I've been reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. What a perfect book to read in January, even if you're resolution-averse. The book is a memoir of the year the author spent devoted to improving her level of happiness. It is broken down into monthly themes, each with their own set of personal resolutions.

I've been drawn in, sucked in, by this book. I've been highlighting and tape-flagging it, meditating on it, sleeping near it. For someone who doesn't normally like to make resolutions, I've been making an awful lot of them since starting this book.

I tried to explain the appeal to a friend the other day. It centers around the fact that I'm having twins in April.

Ever since learning this happy news, I've had a sense of foreboding. Not about the babies themselves, of course. I can scarcely wait to meet them. But having been down the newborn path before, I know what is coming (or rather, I know 1/2 of what is coming.) And I have this informed sense that if I don't get my adult self together exactly right now, then it will be years before I do. I've never been good at transitions, and this is going to be a doozy. I would like to have systems in place for maintaining my sanity before these babies arrive. Things like an exercise routine, a career plan, and a writing schedule. All things vital to my happiness.

Because if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. (I read a blog recently where a woman vowed to stay away from that phrase, as it sounds like a threat. I don't mean it that way. It's just a fact.)

***
"The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in."
- W.H. Auden

If I could complete this post with a little (more?) self-contradiction, I'd like to make a sweeping resolution. Generally speaking, I'd like to devote energy towards willing this life to be my fairy tale.

Because truly, with all of its warts and errands and unpleasant duties, this part of my life is sweet. And if I take it that way, as something almost perfect, then resolutions and happiness projects and flossing become icing. They make things prettier, and tastier, but we've already got the cake.

for Virginia

2010-11-21T15:16:00.011-07:00

I got an email the other day from a stranger who lost her mother five months ago. She was searching the internet for a greeting card she had seen once, a picture of a child in the rain, with the inscription, "Then, when it seems we will never smile again, life comes back." I have that card (available through Borealis Press) glued to the back of the journal I kept during the year my mother died. This woman found my blog because I once quoted the card here.

I've been thinking about this stranger all week, trying to work out what to say to someone still so firmly in the throes of raw grief. It sounds as if she was as close to her mother as I was to mine. In describing her despair, she said that she fears her life is over. I remember that feeling so well. It hung over my head for several months following my mother's death, five years ago today.

I was planning to mark this anniversary with a post about turning a page, about the place of peace I've reached in my new, mom-less life. I feel that way more often now, especially as I become accustomed to filling the role of mother myself. There are exceptions, of course - like the other night at bedtime, when my children wanted to know "what Grandma Chloe did before she died." Thankfully the lights were out as I tearfully recalled the litany of things I most miss doing with her.

More of the time, though, her absence is a dull ache that I can overlook. Whether it's self-preservation or just the cushion of years, I can almost convince myself that I've evolved into a different person, one who isn't always hoping for her mother to appear around every corner. But inevitably something happens to remind me that I'm not so far removed from the shattered soul I was five years ago. Last night I spent the evening with friends from high school, many of whom I haven't seen since then. I awoke today with some spasm of joy, a feeling of abated homesickness that lasted exactly as long as it took to realize that I couldn't go downstairs and sit down at the breakfast table with my mom, and tell her about the night.

So what to say to someone like Virginia? I would say that your days will fill again with life, with some kind of life. But you'll never be all that far removed from the daughter you were.

Still, I can't help but want to be optimistic.

One of my favorite childhood books was A Child's Book of Poems, with sweet illustrations by Gyo Fujikawa.

Here is a poem from that book for you, Virginia, to remind you that one day this unbearable sadness that follows you everywhere will morph into something softer.

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of the day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like the strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And tonight I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like a benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

- Henry Wordsworth Longfellow

To get you started with the music, I'll add a song for you as well.

A concert prompted last night's mini-high school reunion. We gathered to hear a singer from our hometown who has made it big. I downloaded one of his albums today and came across a tune that cheered me up a bit. Give it a listen, Virginia. Someday, not nearly soon enough, you will wake up knowing you will be OK.

A great ride, revisited

2010-08-07T14:57:00.011-06:00

Just as you can take in a new city best on foot, you learn a region best on a bike. You can feel the topography with every push of the peddle, take in the smells with your labored breathing, and listen to the birds as you coast downhill. You learn about its history by reading street names, about its people by observing the manner in which homes are maintained, and how close the cars come to your wheels as you hug the curb.

Once you've learned an area this way, in the open rushing air, you have more of a connection to it. And that familiarity comes flooding back when you return to an old ride.

I almost didn't bring my bike on this trip. We hadn't reconnected our roof rack since the time several years ago when it popped off as we tried to enter a garage with my bike still attached to the roof (thankfully, the roof rack was the only casualty of that accident). I'm so glad Miles took the time to reattach it. My bug-splattered bike first dismounted in South Carolina last week, where I got to join old friends on a fast, hard ride under the Spanish moss lining the road between Charleston and Kiawah Island. We wheeled past tiny slouching inland shacks, such a contrast to the mansions of the coast and the city. We saw people sitting on their front porches, looking like they had been there for years, growing roots. Many waved, or at least smiled, distracting us from the cracks and bumps in the road.

Since arriving in Cleveland I've revisited my favorite ride here several times. It is a 20-mile loop that heads east from my parents' house, out to the Chagrin River Valley. It's the same ride I did when I first discovered cycling, the first time I rode more than twenty miles. This was in college, when I studied bicycle commuting in Cleveland as part of my senior project for my Environmental Geology class, taught by the inimitable Dr. Aronson, who was the reason I majored in geology (and the reason I think about the "first step" in the Allegheny Plateau whenever I drive up Cedar Hill). I spent several weeks that spring riding all over the east side of the city, once all the way downtown, cars blaring their horn the whole way (I didn't choose the best route, the busy Chester Avenue, nor the best time, morning rush hour).

In contrast, this route east is quiet (as long as you avoid the evening rush hour, when all the traffic streams out of the city, toward the rarefied eastern suburbs), and green, all undulating hills, clapboard houses, and barns. It is the route I rode as a farewell just before leaving for law school, and the first route I took when I returned home, my way of reconnecting to the landscape. The ride takes me past a fancy club, and I recall the moment in my early twenties when that club suddenly seemed more like a place to escape from than gain entry to, the first sense I had of the kind of adult I was becoming (admittedly, now that I am an adult with children, I understand the allure of a safe, clean club with lifeguards, fresh towels, and a snack bar).

Before this week, it is a route I'd ridden exactly once since my mother got sick five years ago. The last time was the summer of her illness, when it was too soon a reminder of what it was like to walk the trails near the polo fields with her and a couple of dogs.

But now it is sweet again, and I am reminded of where my soul was formed. In these green hills, amidst these mossy rocks, under the trees. Did you know Cleveland is also called the Forest City?

As fist-pumping the vistas of my rides in Colorado, as lung-amplifying the altitude, these are the hills of my heart.

While I'm dwelling on transportational truths, I will add that there is nothing like driving to give you a sense of your true separation from a place you love. Flying diminishes the scale of travel. So I will be especially heartsick when we drive out of here at the break of dawn on Monday, knowing just how far I have to go before I can come back. I am already looking forward to next summer.

Trout With a Side of Humility

2010-07-16T08:24:00.004-06:00

I am pouring all my creative juice and spare time into finishing the first draft of the memoir so all the blog posts that have been swirling around in my head are currently on the shelf (save one important project: S., I haven't forgotten). In the meantime I am contenting myself with reading some of my favorite blogs.

I've noticed a certain personal entrenching lately, the telltale stodginess that comes with age. I'm becoming a bit set in my ways, a bit wed to my world view. One day soon I will wake up and realize that I am my mother, certain that those shoes are impractical and that dish is unhealthy and you really need more light if you're going to read, my dear. In short, I will know everything.*

This post at Sweet Juniper reminds me why it's good to shake things up a bit, to pay attention to the categories into which I place people and the grudges I carry around. Because sometimes the bad guys just want to serve you a little fresh-caught fish.

*One unanticipated downside to losing my mother is that it has become nearly impossible to joke about her; occasionally when listening to friends vent about theirs, I catch myself wanting to say something just the teensiest bit sarcastic about mine. But I can't do that because, you know, she's dead.

Aspen Summer Words

2010-07-14T10:04:00.003-06:00

I did get around to writing my blog post about the literary festival I attended in June, Aspen Summer Words. The blog appears as a guest post on the New West website, and you can read all about my brushes with literary greatness here.

Living it

2010-07-01T11:52:00.004-06:00

I've been thinking about a new post for days now. I spent last week in Aspen at a writers' workshop, and my head and heart are so literally bursting with newly-gained wisdom and profound words that I've had a hard time sifting through them, discerning one from another, ordering them.

I was almost there. I was formatting the post in my mind: an excerpt from a book I'm reading, a quote from my favorite author - whom I got to meet last week (which meeting, by the way, I totally blew. It is the same when I find a new friend whom I love: I come on a bit strong, and not terribly coherent), and a few words about my new inspiration to finish my book.

And then yesterday happened. We learned that a friend died this week. He was an estranged friend, the ex-husband of a close one, but he was the father of her daughters and we knew him in better days, when he was a wonderful dad. Theirs is not my story to tell, but being witness to children's grief is sobering. Being witness to their mother's grief, her fervent effort to soften this for her girls, is excruciating. It makes everything else feel less urgent, less important, just . . . less.

I will get to one of those quotes, because it seems relevant to their situation. It is from a book written by my workshop teacher, Bill Loizeaux, about losing his daughter Anna. It answers the question that comes to me in uncertain hours, about why I feel so compelled to write this book about losing my mom and becoming one. But it also speaks to what this moment, these days to come, will mean in the lives of two girls, who will henceforth live with loss:

But one thing I do know - and if we are to live and not resign: we must always come back to this trouble of love, to these small rooms of our greatest difficulty.
- William Loizeaux, Anna: A Daughter's Life.

In remembering (and, for some, writing) about the moments of our greatest sadness, we allow ourselves to live. This is what makes me feel for my friend's daughters, and my friend: they will have to grapple with this, in one way or another, always.

Radical Imperfection

2010-06-07T07:43:00.005-06:00

My book club recently read Shannon Hayes' book, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture.

I was very, very turned off by the title of this book. There are few words I dislike more than "homemaker," and to me the title just conjured up a bunch of crazy bandana-headed women running around brandishing rolling pins. In fact, that is basically the image on the cover of the book. But as person after person sent around emails to the book club along the lines of "This book is completely changing my life," I decided to give it a chance. This, by the way, is my usual reaction to anything popular, be it skinny-legged jeans, social networking sites, or cultural movements: I vow to be smarter, better, more resistant than the masses, and then I decide to just try it, and then I become the biggest devotee of whatever it was I tried so hard to avoid. True to form, I was instantly taken with the book, or at least the first fifty pages, which is as far as I got before book club. It talks about the ways in which a corporate, consumer culture has eclipsed the real work of homemaking, devaluing it in the process and sending generations of women first to therapists' couches, seeking help for a general malaise, and then into the workforce, where they earn money to pay people to do things we once did for ourselves. And to buy things advertisers on Facebook convince them they need, like skinny jeans.

The idea behind "radical homemaking" is to live life according to four basic principles: family, community, social justice, and ecological sustainability. People who practice this form of rebellion limit the work they do to furthering these ends. It sounds like a grand experiment, all these women quitting their jobs to live in solar-powered cabins in the woods, where they feed their children food grown in the backyard, along with the occasional grass-fed cow, slain by hand. Hayes paints such a picture of domestic, frontier bliss that I looked up from the book long enough to propose a backyard chicken coop to Miles. ("Hell no" was his answer. Conformist.)

The next step in my very predictable response to hype is to try to poke holes in whatever mantle it is I've decided to carry. I began to wonder, as I read the book, about some of the jobs the women interviewed in the book had given up. One of them ran a clinic for brain-injured people, another was an environmental analyst, and yet another taught emotionally disabled children. In short, they all had jobs that seemed to already be serving the ends of social justice, community, and ecological sustainability. Don't get me wrong, movements of the already-converted aren't inherently less valid. But shouldn't we strive to keep people like this in the workplace? Where is the exodus of executives from the ranks of BP, Wal-Mart, and Citibank, streaming out of the skyscrapers and into lush green meadows to put their hands to higher purpose?

And then I read a column in the NYT about a new book by Elisabeth Badinter, a French intellectual, who "loves to cut against the grain of her times." The translated title of her book is Conflict: The Woman and the Mother, and in it she argues that trends towards ecology and "natural" mothering (breast feeding, rejection of epidurals)--and the evolving morality that assumes mothers who adhere to these philosophies are inherently superior--are repressing women just as much as the glass ceiling in the workplace. And I know this is me just jumping onto another bandwagon, but I think she is on to something here, too. Boulder is ground zero for the movement towards everything natural, and I have felt the recrimination of being one who does not compost, or did use formula, or failed to buy organic.

The other day I helped my cousin plant a vegetable garden, and it took a solid five hours. If we tell each other that the only way to be a good mother is to stay home and feed your children home-grown food, those who won't feel satisfied with that way of life will become just as unhappy as the ladies Friedan wrote about in the Feminine Mystique.

Look at me! I'm riding two bandwagons! I suppose we'll only be truly liberated when we can make these choices without the pressure of feeling like one is wrong. And let's face it, you won't become a hit on the bestsellers list if you take a sort of middling approach to the issues of the day. For me, I like the concepts of family, community, social justice, and sustainability. However I serve those ends, if I am really doing so, I will be fulfilled.

Self Expressed

2010-05-07T06:20:00.003-06:00

In the event you are one of the three people in the world whom I haven't yet told about my essay in the May issue of Self Magazine, I have an essay in the May issue of Self Magazine!

It's about my mother. Please read it. And soon - those sneaky June issues will be showing up to take its place any day now.

Instructions for Peace and Happiness

2010-04-21T13:38:00.005-06:00

The other day Lori and I ordered the following titles from Amazon (we really do get some work done in between distractions):

1. The Happiness Project
2. Nine Rooms of Happiness; and
3. Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture

It's not as obvious from the title of that last one, but each of these books are guides to happiness and the deep inner peace that goes with it.

Kate Inglis of www.sweetsalty.com wrote the following recently about peace:

"To aspire to peace, in my mind, is to aspire to that glossy stuff you put on your hair to make it look shiny and smell delicious. It makes you look shiny. It makes you smell delicious. But it's not a return to some inate core of shiny deliciousness.

We are always stirred. We are varying degrees of knuckle-biting turmoil which is in itself 73% exquisite. Distress serves a purpose. It helps us find the shape of what's important. It amplifies things that go right. It is aspirational. Nothing is ever enough."

(I know. She is amazing. Read her blog.)

It is generally good to aspire to some better version of yourself - more happiness, more patience, more peace and contentment - as long as it isn't driven by too much self-chastisement over not having enough of these things. And I agree with Kate, some amount of turmoil is necessary to proper appreciation of the good stuff, the easy times. How would you recognize them if that's all you ever got? Not to mention the ways in which today's failures are themselves necessary to tomorrow's successes. As the writer Lauren Groff puts it, "[I]f you don't let failure kill you, it will usually tell you what you need to know."

So why the compulsion to buy instructional books on happiness? As we were placing the order, Lori said, "Imagine the Amazon stockist who boxes these titles up for us. He'll be shaking his head, thinking, 'Women.'" And I suppose it is a distinctly female way to combat feelings of personal inadequacy, by buying recipes to Make A Happier Jenny. People have become rich from this impulse. Be it good or pathetic, the inclination towards improvement is part of who we are as humans, lady humans. There will be no perfection, but to borrow on Kate's calculation, this is in itself 73% perfect.

Civics for Toddlers

2010-04-21T08:55:00.008-06:00

Just now as I was sitting at the table with Charlie eating breakfast, the phone rang. It was my best friend the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, making their monthly call. They've got me pegged as someone who capitulates easily in the morning. As attested by Charlie's breakfast of two GoGurts and a fruit-roll up, I just hate to say "no" this early in the day.

After I made my piddling pledge and hung up, Charlie asked me who was on the phone. I spent a few too many moments considering what to tell him. I don't want to brainwash these kids, went my reasoning, but on the other hand, we should raise them to understand what values we hold dear.

"That was a lady asking for money," I started, quickly regretting the oversimplification. "For the Democratic Party. They help run the country."

Charlie was silent, appearing to give this statement careful consideration. Then he spoke.

"If somebody gets me, I'll get a race car, and I'll crash the cars down in the store."

Note to self: they don't necessarily hang on your every word.

The Angel Band Project

2010-04-03T22:17:00.005-06:00

My friend's sister-in-law Teresa was murdered last summer, in the most horrific manner imaginable.

Now her family and friends have come together to create the Angel Band Project to make an album in memory of Teresa. Proceeds from the album will benefit The Voices and Faces Project, a non-profit for survivors of sexual violence.

If you click on the link above you will be taken to a page where you can listen to Teresa's insanely talented brother Norbert sing Patty Griffin's "Goodbye" for the album. A brother singing a tribute for his slain sister. Whatever Easter means to you, take a listen and appreciate just how magnificent love is, even after life is stolen away.

Occured to me the other day
You've been gone now a couple years
well, I guess it takes while
For someone to really disappear
And I remember where I was
When the word came about you
It was a day much like today
the sky was bright, and wide, and blue

And I wonder where you are
And if the pain ends when you die
And I wonder if there was
Some better way to say goodbye

Today my heart is big and sore
it's tryin' to push right through my skin
I won't see you anymore
I guess that's finally sinkin' in
'Cause you can't make somebody see
By the simple words you say
All their beauty from within
Sometimes they just look away

But I wonder where you are
And if the pain ends when you die
And I wonder if there was
Some better way to say goodbye

Published!

2010-03-17T14:43:00.002-06:00

My first ever short story has been published online by Word Riot. Check it out!

Two Projects

2010-03-12T00:26:00.006-07:00

I don't believe in fate anymore, but I do believe in making your own luck.

I stayed up late last night working on a project. Two years ago, I purchased this dress kit from Clothkits, a delightful online store that sells sewing kits that are "made very well in england."

I bought it on an optimistic impulse, but have stowed it away unsewn ever since.

It is luck-making time, so I stole three hours from last night to put it together.

When I was pregnant last fall and hoping for a girl, a friend advised me to hang a dress in the nursery room closet.

This dress is for a little girl, probably unborn, in a land far, far away.

This morning we drove to an office park in south Denver and began an odyssey to find her.

Transmogrify

2010-03-04T08:45:00.007-07:00

Let's say for a moment that this is not a door in Sayulita, Mexico.

(It is.)

Let's say instead that the door (and the room behind it) represents an entire year of your life.

It's not a very good year. See how dark it is in there?

But you have to go through the door. You have to spend some time in that room.

While you're in there, you'll grope around a bit. At least until your eyes adjust.

By degrees, you will get used to it. And some of the things that felt so foreign when you first arrived will be full of a color you couldn't see until you held them to your face.

You will get so used to the dark that you will forget what the sun felt like. But as you move across the room you see a light shining through the cracks in the back door.

At some point, you step through the back door and you are outside again. The brightness hurts your eyes and it takes some time to get used to that, too.

But you do and then you size yourself up. You look mostly the same. A little paler, slightly fatter? Mostly the same.

The sun warms you up and it feels good. But you will stop and look over your shoulder from time to time. You will realize you miss some of the things you found and felt in that room.

Still, you prefer the light.

One of the Very Best

2010-02-07T13:06:00.007-07:00

What is the measure of a man? Bob Matthews was the gold standard. He wasn't just a good guy, he was the good guy. He was the man you want your sons to become, the lawyer you hire when everything is on the line, the only person you trust to take your husband flying.

His plane fell out of the sky yesterday, a burning ball that sailed slowly to the ground, held aloft by a red and white parachute. How many of us, watching it fall, thought, "It couldn't be Bob." More than most, he seemed invincible. We've lost a great repository of honor and integrity, a pillar of many societies, a modern-day hero who went quietly about his business, raising up everyone around him. The world is poorer for his absence.

Photograph: Faegre & Benson LLP

Neither Short Nor Terribly Sweet

2010-01-08T08:03:00.012-07:00

Parenting is full of these heartbreaking moments when your child utters something so sweet and unwittingly profound that it brings tears to your eyes, shortly before running off to smear poop all over the bathroom. So there you are, feeling weepy about his proclamation that "when he's an adult, he'll still want to live with you," and in the next moment you are cursing his curly head as you douse the bathroom in disinfectant, bleaching your incredibly sexy sweatpants in the process. Such was the scene in our house last night.

I just finished reading Anne Lamott's memoir about the first year of parenthood, Operating Instructions. It is a very conversational book that must have been written as she went, so full is it of tiny little details no one remembers because they were part of the sleep-deprived beginnings of a child's life. One of the things she describes with dead-on honesty is the way your heart expands when you have your first child, when you become so overcome with a brand of love previously unknown to you that you can scarcely breathe. And at the same time, you are suddenly so attuned to all the grief and misery in the world, because now you've got this person whom you need to protect from all of it (even though that person will one day smear poop in your bathroom). And at the SAME time, you have your moments when you sort of hate your baby because the damn thing won't let you sleep.

For some reason, my new-mother-blues were all about the Holocaust. During Oliver's first few months, we spent most of our time in the hideous La-z-boy we bought for his nursery (which, in a vain attempt to improve, we had upholstered in fabric that literally cost three times as much as the chair itself). The chair was next to a tall window that let in just the right kind of light for reading but not too much for sleeping, and I would rock and read while Oliver nursed or slept in my arms. One of the books I read in that chair was called A Thread of Grace, by Mary Doria Russell, about Jewish refugees from France hiding out in northern Italy during the Holocaust. Incidentally, I once recommended this book to a friend, who later called to tell me that she couldn't find A THREAT of Grace anywhere. This struck me as hilarious. A story about grace being foisted upon the decidedly, purposefully, un-gracious. Anyhoo.

The book recounts the refugees' passage from France into Italy, over cold mountaintops, on foot. I was consumed by this image of women carrying little newborns. I spent a significant amount of time trying to gauge whether I would have made it, what I would have carried, how I would have kept Oliver quiet when we were hiding from SS patrols and whatnot. We have friends who live in San Francisco who have an elaborate earthquake escape plan. In those first few months, I found myself concocting all sorts of escape plans - what to do in the event of fire, flood, and even the unlikely Nazi invasion.

That sort of hyper-insane terror of the world and all its perils lessens over time, mostly because as your baby becomes mobile, real consideration of all the dangers that lie outside your door would render you a rocking crazy person, catatonic with fear any time you venture anywhere with him. And your extreme irritation (somewhat dangerous itself) lessens as you get more sleep, though the fury can be resurrected from time to time by poop smearing and other unholy incidents.

One thing that never shrinks, though, is that overwhelming sense of love you feel for these funny little beings you create. One of my favorite moments of the day comes at the end, when I sneak into their room after they finally collapse into sleep and tuck them in. I lean over their heads and become so intoxicated by their sugary scent that it brings a stinging sensation to my nose, every time. Even after a night like last night.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

2010-01-06T11:46:00.006-07:00

The second essay in the textbook for my new writing class is by Judith Oritz Cofer. She explains the way she teaches students to write prose, which is to start with poetry. She quotes Emily Dickinson, "tell all the Truth but tell it slant," and says that poetry is a device to find the "Truth" that is worth writing about, and to discover "a new slant for an old story." Of course, her exercise is to write a short poem about a real-life event that interests you deeply.

I've never understood poetry, and maybe that is because I've never tried to write it. Brevity is hard, and good poetry stays with you because it is short enough and powerful enough to be memorable, no small feat.

This won't be that.

Double Occupancy

The tan woman in the next bed talks about her tennis game
When will it come back?
Her voice is raspy, hair too long and stringy
for her age.

When she left they took her bed away and I thought our luck was turning.
But they wheeled in a bigger bed.
You knew what it meant: “That’s for fat people.”
And she was. Really fat.
She watched television all night long, blue meaningless light that made the room feel empty.

The surgeons came to visit, but yours did not stay long.
He was no saviour now and he did not like the reminder.
I saw him lifting weights in the gym once, years later.
He stared at himself in the mirror.

The oncologist came, only for you.
In one of the world’s best hospitals,
In one of the world’s richest countries,
You shared a room with recovering tennis elbows and laproscopic bands.

You cried only twice (that I saw).
Once when you woke up.
And once the morning they had to help you back into bed.
"I'm not having a very good day," you said.
Even though it was summer outside.

That's Why

2010-01-05T23:29:00.005-07:00

In a few weeks, I will begin my third writing class since last spring's epiphany that if I wanted to be a writer, I had better get around to writing something. Did you ever see the (apparently now unavailable) Someecard that pictured a man with a briefcase alongside the phrase "I'm an angry writer type who hasn't written shit"? That was me.

Now I can proudly say that I HAVE written . . . shit. But at least it's writing. Honest-to-goodness words on a page strung together to try to make a point.

The first two classes I took were fiction short story classes through the miraculous Lighthouse Writers Workshop. This time I'm staying closer to home and taking a creative non-fiction class through CU - Boulder. I won't miss the weeknight drives to Denver, sluggish in the best of circumstances.

Since I spilled a beer all over my computer last weekend and haven't had it at my disposal the last few days, I've been doing a bit more reading than usual. First I quietly reclaimed the book I bought my husband for Christmas and have spent the last few days utterly immersed in the uncommon life and outrageous death of Pat Tillman. If you want to read a story that will first renew your faith in superheros and then break your heart, pick it up. There is little sense in trying to describe why this book is so great; it is written by Jon Krakauer and if you've read anything of his, you know of his ability to weave together history and philosophy and freak events to tell a true story that you won't believe even though you saw the headlines yourself. The story is more than great, though - it is important. I keep starting sentences to explain why but I cannot do it justice. Read it. Please.

Now I'm starting the textbook for the next class. It's a collection of essays by nonfiction writers which each end with an exercise or two. The first essay asks the reader to answer the question, why do you write?

The answer to that question is so deeply personal as to be almost unanswerable, for me at least. But having it asked has caused me to take note of the things that stir the creative impulse. And in reading the excerpts from Pat Tillman's journals that are included in Krakauer's book, I recognized at least one of the reasons I like to write, which is that I like a good conversation, even with myself. Tillman was good at taking stock of his life, and left his own testimony to it in the process. I like the exercise of summing up, casting things into a context that makes sense to me. Life is not just a series of random events, even though it is always unpredictable. There is a discernable arc to it, dictated by a person's passions and interests and circumstance. I like to take note of these things, so I can keep myself trending in the direction I want to head. Even though his life was cut short, Tillman's writing reveals that it was lived consciously, on his own terms, to great glory indeed. That seems like a goal worth writing towards.

2010-01-01T17:37:00.009-07:00

esolved:

to make it a year
for the record books.

Happy 2010.

Ghost Sledding

2009-12-28T12:40:00.008-07:00

He brought me out into the hall (I could have sworn it was haunted) and told me something that I didn't know that I wanted to hear: that there was nothing that I could do to save you; the choir's gonna sing, and this thing is going to kill you.
- the Antlers, "Two"

I want a book that acknowledges that life goes on but death goes on, too, that a person who is dead is a long, long story.
- Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

It's not just the holidays that make me obsess (is that the word for this lingering, always-present if mostly dull longing?) over my mother's absence, but all this family time does invariably strike a chord with long-ago Christmases. These holidays are wholly different from anything I've ever known: the creation of magic is different from being cast in its spell. It's hard to get caught up in the former without feeling just a little bit of the latter, though. So when I see old pictures that so clearly reflect that same wonder I saw in the faces of last Friday morning, I am momentarily transported back to a snowy lane when everything seemed possible and safe. A wintertime landscape guarded by a grandfather in a woolen coat.

These days, my children believe all of what I tell them, unless I do it in my most sing-song, teasing kind of a voice. I have to choose my words carefully when they ask about our dog, one year dead, and the mythical Grandma Chloe, who overlapped with them in only the most passing fashion. Long enough to gaze at a fetal silhouette and correctly predict he would look like me; too briefly to graze her lips across even one round, peach-fuzzed head.

After imparting to them the simplest and most honest answers I can, they inevitably come to their own conclusions. It pains me not to correct them when they sigh and say that Grandma Chloe, like Ruby, is not ever coming back. But I try to balance it out by talking about her as much as I can bear it, so that her story will go on. The pictures tell it best, and today they talked about the time I went sledding with Grandma Chloe as if it happened last week. It's not the same as coming back, not by a longshot. But small people talked excitedly about her this morning; she was a subject, associated with action.

Four years gone and she still goes sledding.

Thirty Acres: December 26th, 1976

2009-12-26T06:50:00.015-07:00

From Thirty Acres (26 Dec 1976)

I'm a (Randomly Selected) Winner

2009-12-15T21:02:00.002-07:00

Sweet Juniper ran a contest recently. I am a randomly-selected winner!

To enter, you had to create a book on Shutterfly. I've been meaning to make a photo book for my Aunt and Uncle to thank them for our visit last summer, and this was the perfect prompt to get it done. I will be making more of these books; they are great gifts.

Check mine out here.

One Afternoon in Early July

2009-12-12T01:13:00.016-07:00

I always could eat more than you. I used to watch you pick at your broccoli and wonder how someone so delicate could have hatched such ravenous offspring. You would nibble on half of your fig newton and I would throw my hands up and say what's the use. I'll never be satisfied with half a fig newton.

The afternoon we tried to share a frozen yogurt was hot but we'd spent too much time indoors, surrounded by bottles of pills and the pottery you bought at craft fairs in better summers. We went to the new shops, the ones built around narrow walkways meant to imitate cobblestone streets. There are no blacksmiths in these lanes, just store after store of the same outfit, something vaguely plaid and trim fitting. You couldn't go far anyway, and I wasn't in the mood for shopping, so we stopped at the frozen yogurt store. You said it sounded good, and that was promising. Nothing sounded good to you then.

Two young girls and a boy were working behind the counter. They were punching each other and laughing when we came in. The girls looked so tan. They seemed to be living in a different season than us. They stopped smiling when we entered, serious about taking our order as though a manager was watching. I wanted them to keep laughing so I could watch. One of the girls had a bag over her shoulder, like she was just coming or going, and it had pictures of birds on it. Her mom probably picked that bag off the floor several times a day. Maybe they argued about it sometimes. Those are the kinds of fights you have when you can count on a future.

I wanted chocolate but you wanted vanilla and really I just wanted you to eat. If you would eat it meant I was right, it meant you could still be OK. You just needed to get out and go shopping. You needed to remember what it was to want something that you could have. You insisted on paying and we sat next to the window where we could watch mothers and daughters on the cobblestone paths. I pushed the yogurt towards you and you took the smallest of bites, maybe a quarter of a small white plastic spoonful. I looked outside, afraid if I stared you would become self-conscious. I could see when you pushed the yogurt back towards me. "I'm sorry. I can't eat right now." And I knew you would never gain enough weight for chemotherapy. Ten pounds, the doctor said. We were going in the wrong direction.

I had to swallow bile as I ate, forcing spoonfuls of pale cold cream down my throat. I had no taste for sweets that summer. They seemed preposterous. As did the identical shops and the sunshine and the stupid fake cobblestones; it was all so forced. The girl with the bird bag left the store, her bag bumping against her back as she walked towards the parking lot. I imagined a bronze-faced mother with big sunglasses waiting for her there, reading the magazine she would take to the pool later that afternoon.

We walked back to the car carefully so you wouldn't fall. You slept on the way home. It was quiet without you, and I missed you already.

Middle School Hell, Revisited

2009-12-11T08:38:00.011-07:00

Judith Warner is one of my favorite NYT columnists. She writes wisely on the subject of parenting and motherhood, particularly of mothering daughters (she also wrote my hands-down favorite essay on the subject of Obama's election to the presidency. Read it here.) She's also the author of Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, a book I've written about before.

Today's column is about trying to relate to a 12-year-old who is going through the particular hell of being a girl in middle school. It's also about the unreliability of our own memories of those years.

If it wasn't for Facebook, the tyrants of my middle school hallways would have remained very one-dimensional characters in my memory. They were the girls who made fun of my outfits (Admittedly, it is hard to judge them too harshly for this. Over my mother's objection, I insisted on wearing all of my new clothes to school on the first day after Christmas break in seventh grade. Unfortunately I had received white jeans with black polka dots, and a pink and purple striped top.) They were the girls who refused to walk next to me in the hallway, telling a mutual friend that if she insisted on showing her face with me on the way to class they would have to catch up with her later. (To her everlasting credit, she stuck by my side.) They were the girls who didn't invite me to their birthday parties, didn't sit next to me at lunch, and didn't talk to me at school socials.

They were the girls my mother told me not to care about. But of course I did.

One of the queen bees befriended me on Facebook not too long ago. I am beyond embarrassed to admit that it gave me a small sense of satisfaction. Finally. Acceptance. I was reminded of a story about her, one that I have told many times since. In eighth grade, one of the girls in our class moved away. This girl was popular and pretty, a tennis player, and unusually kind to boot. At some point there was a falling out amongst her popular clique and she was ostracized. The story goes that on her last day of school, the queen bee and her minions brought balloons to school that said things like, "Goodbye Sally, and Good Riddance." "We Hate You Sally." "We Won't Miss You Sally." Afterwards, she ran through the hall with tears streaming down her face.

But maybe that didn't really happen.

It has only just occurred to me that I did not see the balloons. They were described to me by a friend who was not exactly a reliable source of information. The same friend who convinced me that the one boy who asked me to "go steady" during all of middle school was doing so as a joke, so I dumped him. She might have even done it for me. She was dating him within the week. Yet I took the balloons on faith. And all this time I've ascribed to the balloon-bearing queen bee a capacity for meanness that she may very well have never had.

Though she was a little mean. Then again, so was I.

Take, for example, another surprise Facebook friend. She went to a different high school, a private all-girls school that I pretended to hate but was secretly fascinated by ever since visiting it in the first grade. The building looked like a medieval castle, and the classroom where I spent the day had window seats built into tall stained-glass windows. These window seats were cushioned in brightly-colored pillows. School, I thought, would be lots of fun if you could sit on those pillows all day long.

Anyway, this girl was everyone's favorite villain, mainly because she was beautiful, presumably rich, and dated the best-looking guys in our school. She and I went on a church-sponsored trip one summer to the Dominican Republic, where we helped build a hospital for Haitian sugar cane workers. Another friend on the trip nicknamed her "Workhorse" for her propensity to sit on the sidelines and suntan while the rest of us sloshed cement around the site in wheelbarrows. I laughed right along with everyone else, thinking that she couldn't possibly care what we public-school kids had to say about her. But of course she did. Besides, I'm not so sure about the sitting on the sidelines part. Maybe she worked her tail off. Who am I to say? I just wanted in on the joke.

One of my dearest friends told me a story several months ago about her eldest daughter, who had an accident in her kindergarten classroom. She was taunted throughout the day for being "smelly," and came home in tears.

Wouldn't it be nice if at the end of that kind of day, you could show your daughter a snapshot from the future, when those same girls are changing diapers and furiously rubbing moisturizer into the lines beginning to form on their foreheads. When they become human. Facebook proves that age and accidents happen to us all. Maybe those girls we feared so much weren't nearly as bad as we thought. Or at least they're not so bad now. And maybe we weren't the victims we remember ourselves to have been.

Kitchen Comforts

2009-12-07T01:32:00.005-07:00

December has most definitely arrived. The temperature today was cold enough to form icicles on your eyebrows, and it is dropping. This kind of weather used to send me to the mall or work or the movie theater. But now it sends me no further than my kitchen. I tried six recipes this weekend, approximately four more than I tried during our first three years of marriage combined.

My newfound cooking enthusiasm has made me appreciate certain reliable appliances, not the least of which is our almond-colored Osterizer Imperial blender, circa 1976. Lodged between its buttons is all kinds of grit that has built up there over the years, likely including remnants of my own baby food:

These sell on ebay for $19.99. It's an official family heirloom.

I didn't lug it from Cleveland for sentimental reasons. I noticed it in the back of the pantry during a trip home years ago when I was in the midst of a protein shake kick. But now that it's here, I can't help but love it a little bit more than my Target crock pot or even my Kitchenaid mixer. It's not just a blender, it's a piece of family kitchen lore. I remember Dan making his special peanut butter banana shakes with it in high school. I remember Will using it to mix up a batch of soup from god knows what leftovers were lurking in the back of our ever-packed refrigerator. And now I use it to blend bits of spinach into yogurt, the only way I know to get the boys to eat vegetables.

This weekend I found myself looking around the kitchen and wondering which of our current accessories will go the distance, which ones will become so deeply associated with home and food and warmth and comfort that our kids won't be able to look at them without feeling just a little bit safe. And hopefully not sick to their stomachs.

Thanksgiving, as Told Through Text Messages

2009-11-28T18:36:00.003-07:00

Landed!
This brother has landed!
Can you see if whole foods has cornbread mix?
Can you also get some cheeses to go with the crackers?
Hey! We are at Breadworks having a coffee. We'll grab some bagels and head back in about 15.
Happy turkey run!
How was it? We headed out for our pumpkin spice lattes.
It was fun. Maddie the kids race which was cute. Hope u have a nice dinner.
Parade starts at 9. You can bring them here or I can come get them. Also, found salad recipe.
Getting all the chocolate!
Are you coming out?
Staying in. Come watch a movie with us.

Hope yours was as full of food and parades and people you love as was ours.

Creation

2009-11-19T00:02:00.005-07:00

After a rocky day, I went ahead with the craft night I had planned for the ladies on my street this evening. I am so glad I did. There was something very appropriate about sitting by the fire in a sewing circle of womankind tonight.

Our project was borrowed from Tiny Happy and her tutorial on how to make an adorable embroidered brooch.

Since I am a one trick pony, my one trick being apple trees, my effort contained happy apple trees on cream felted wool. Apples in the snow. Like all the half-eaten apples the kids chuck outside when they don't want me to see that they didn't finish them. It was soothing to create something today. A good note to end on before climbing into bed with the sleeping husband who gave me time for this tonight.

Warning: graphic material

2009-11-18T11:17:00.005-07:00

The title of this post is not tongue in cheek. If you are squeamish don't read on.

For some reason I feel a need to keep a real-time record of this miscarriage. Maybe because someone else will one day find her way here while she is in the midst of her own.

Everyone's experience is different - I've heard and read about a bunch of them in the last few days, and some sound truly horrific. I suppose this morning's events will seem worse in hindsight but right now they just seem very . . . biological. Last night before bed I felt intense cramps, more like a prolonged contraction. I was a bit worried about what the night would bring, but I fell asleep to an episode of 30 Rock and woke up to sunlight coming through the window. I went to the bathroom and felt something come out. Because I'd been given a cup of saline solution and asked to bring in any fetal tissue, I retrieved it and put it in the cup. It looked like a little pouch and felt hard, like it contained a small mass. I did not investigate further.

I will bring it to the doctor later this afternoon and hopefully this will be the end of it.

The thing I keep thinking about is this illness I've had for the last few weeks. Ominously enough, it began on Halloween night and got steadily worse and I'm only now getting over it. I know that the miscarriage happened sometime between when I got sick and two days ago. And I just have a strong feeling that the two are related. The doctor was dismissive of it, but I think he was just trying to make me feel better. I don't feel guilty about it - I obviously did not want to get sick - but it does make me wish I'd gotten vaccines in September. I could not have gotten the H1N1 vaccine then (nor do I know that I've been sick with H1N1), but if it was the seasonal flu and I could have avoided it . . . who knows?

I know there are a million reasons why miscarriages happen, and this could have been a genetic abnormality as well, but I just have a strong sense that it had something to do with my illness. And sometimes instinct is an accurate diagnostic tool.

In her garden, around her neck, and in my kitchen

2009-11-17T15:33:00.006-07:00

If I'm recalling correctly, high school health class was all about preventing pregnancy, not on providing practical guidance for its aftermath. But someone should really come up with a bullet point lesson plan explaining that miscarriages happen, and providing a list of activities to help you pass the time while you wait to see if yours is going to finish up on its own. There is just too much time to think.

Perhaps it is a good time for thinking. I tend to minimize things that happen to me, only to discover later that I'm a good deal more bothered by whatever has gone wrong than I thought I would be. And I think this is one of those experiences you have to recognize as significant and choose a way to symbolize that. A friend told me today that when hers happened, she planted the remains in her garden. This struck me as the most beautiful, loving, mothering thing to do. Another friend said she bought a necklace after her miscarriage, and whenever she wears it she thinks of that baby.

And just as I was thinking about these little tributes, wondering what mine should be, I heard a rustling at the front door and looked out to find a beautifully-wrapped gift there. It bore a card saying the bowl inside represented wholeness and fullness. So I will keep it someplace where I can look at it often and be thankful for what I've got. Which really is a lot.

Exit Life

2009-11-16T17:05:00.006-07:00

The doctor confirmed what I already knew by the time we got there - this pregnancy did not take. I learned all sorts of gruesome details today, most of which I will not recount here. But the one that sticks with me the most is that once a fetus dies, it starts to shrink. So when you are looking at remains that the doctor says are the size of a nearly six-week-old fetus, it means the baby died sometime after that, and has regressed to its current size. It reminds me of the world described in the Phantom Tollbooth - where people are born at their adult height and grow until their legs touch the ground. Will this baby keep shrinking until it reaches the size it was at conception, just a tiny dot of tissue? Of course, it won't. Sometime in the next few days it will exit my body, unassisted or by medical means.

I am in mourning, but it is not as sad as it sounds. It is the death of one possibility--yet as a friend pointed out today, that means there is room for another. Still, when this little being leaves my body, it will be the end of a potential, and that is always disappointing.

It wasn't until I entered my own childbearing years that I became aware of how many women experience miscarriages. One in three! In our society it is a hush-hush affair, a dirty little secret you're not supposed to share. And I guess this is the reason you're not supposed to tell people you're pregnant until the end of the first trimester. But to that I say: there's no way in hell I'm walking around with a noticeable belly without explaining it away. Too vain? In all seriousness, I'm just not a person who can keep happy news to herself. I wanted to shout this pregnancy from the rooftops, and I did. And I will do it all over again the next time. Because when there is a baby inside of you, there is a great potential for bliss, and that is always something to celebrate.

Emergency, possibly

2009-11-16T09:55:00.006-07:00

A few weeks ago, the Brazen Careerist ignited a controversy after tweeting about having a miscarriage at work. Before reading it, I had no idea that most miscarriages happen at work--because no one ever talks about it. But of course, it makes sense. As Penelope Trunk said in her blog post on the subject, twenty-five percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and seventy-five percent of pregnant women work--so really, what's so surprising about it?

I don't know how many pregnant women also have children that they drop off at day care in the morning, so I'm not sure what the likelihood is, but I think I experienced the beginnings of a miscarriage at the boys' preschool this morning. I got myself out of there pretty quickly--I'd really rather not be known forever as the woman who lost a baby in the employee bathroom--and all the while I was thinking, how often have I passed by a woman who is running for cover in the middle of a miscarriage? How often has she been serving me coffee or helping me try on shoes or brushed past me, seemingly rude, on her way out the nursery school doors?

I'm off to the doctor now.

A Path, Once Well-Worn

2009-11-10T15:32:00.006-07:00

Here I am, tramping my way through the overgrown weeds to reach this spot.

Here it is, familiar but strange: a place where I lingered when I longed for time of my own; a place I rarely visit now that I have it.

Why do I have trouble finding my way here lately? What about my new life as my own boss makes it harder to record it? Sure, part of my blogging absence can be explained by the common lament of the business owner: I'm never "off duty." Plus, the headspace that used to be available for this pastime is now engaged in other writing pursuits that I finally have time for (long live the Lighthouse!)

But the real reason for my absence is that my purpose here has changed. This used to be the place where I came largely to dream about a life I wasn't living. One that was more in step with my values, professionally and personally. Work that satisfied me but didn't suck me dry of the real stuff, the sweet nectar of motherhood that ferments fast when it is stashed away in hot dark spaces for long stretches of time, only to be dribbled out at bedtime and maybe in the morning if everything goes perfectly according to plan.

These days are full of plenty of challenges and worries, but they are of an addressable variety. We are working hard to keep us all afloat - but leaving ourselves with enough energy to dance a bit on these boats. Barring the ever-possible disaster, this feels like a course we can maintain. And that feels like the dose of sanity I was missing in the years I filled these pages.

My challenge now is in repurposing this place, and making sure to visit myself here more frequently. Because that, too, provides a mental relief unavailable elsewhere (except maybe therapy, but this is free!) It's nice to come back.

Goodnight, Evening Light

2009-09-11T20:02:00.005-06:00

What is it about this time of year, when one day you're sweating through your tissue-t, and suddenly a fulcrum tilts and you're sliding headlong into fall? It felt that way today, when the I had to close the shower window I've left open all summer, and tonight, when I had to turn on the lights on my bike to see us home from school.

Already these seem like pictures taken a millenium ago. Before the potato salad and white wine fades too far, we remember:

. . . an afternoon of slip-n-slide at the MacPhails' house in Shaker:

. . . first bat on the Kelling baseball diamond in Hudson:

. . . the fountain in downtown Chicago, where the boys chased our friend Mabel back and forth amidst a teeming, intersecting mass of small wet people:

and a discovery on the beach of Lake McConaughey, NE, where we stopped on our drive back from Cleveland:

Goodnight, summer 2009. Thank you for being so languid.

I'd Like to Introduce You to a Friend of Mine

2009-09-08T21:41:00.003-06:00

His name is Twofer Magrufelis. He is handsome, handy, and holy shit that's a big tattoo!

I guess that's why they call it Labor Day

2009-09-07T14:14:00.002-06:00

Sick today.

While I was using a snow shovel and a dust pan to pick up the kids' toys, they merrily spilled lemonade up and down the hallway.

I need my mother.

Since You Asked

2009-07-25T21:11:00.003-06:00

What's that smile on my face, you say?

Oh, it's nothing.

Really, nothing . . .

Well, there is something. But it's a small something.

C'mon, lay off, I need to go to bed.

You really want to know? You sure?

'Cause it might sound like bragging.

But it's not.

Well, it is, but don't worry, I'm convinced it is a fluke. Beginner's luck.

If you simply must know . . . I entered a contest! A writing contest.

And I didn't win!

But I did get second place!

Thank you Lorian Hemingway!

Pap Smears in the Prime of Life

2009-07-22T07:40:00.009-06:00

I went to the doctor yesterday. The lady-kind.

It felt like a lifetime since I'd last been in. In fact, it had been - Charlie's two years.

Any insured woman who has borne a child in modern-day America is familiar with the seemingly endless prenatal visits. First they are monthly, then bimonthly, then weekly, daily, and finally you move in for a few days - something you felt you should have done months ago, just to save yourself time.

But then you have your baby, and instead of riding the elevator up to the third-floor OB department, you stop on two for pediatrics. The screaming you can hear before the doors slide open is a stark contrast to the serenity of the OB waiting area, where swelling bellies balance issues of Parenting, Wondertime (well, not anymore, sniff sniff), and, screw it, Mademoiselle.

As I was sitting in the waiting room yesterday, I heard someone down the hall call out "Welcome back!" I looked up from my book, thinking that someone had actually missed me. After all, I'd been a regular customer for two straight years. (It turned out to be a doctor welcoming the return of a colleague from holiday. Natch.)

The nurse who greeted me did, in fact, register recognition. "Going to try for number three?" she asked. Of course, she probably had just flipped through my file, but she was also the weigh-in nurse during my back-to-back maternities of 2005-2007. I certainly remember her, witness to the dizzying heights of my heft.

Once we settled into the room, she began asking the barrage of questions to which the computer demands answers. First date of last period? Number of drinks per week? How often do you exercise? Monthly self breast exams? Any specific concerns, questions, requests?

As I downloaded the very un-interesting specifics of my routine, I was surprised to realize that I have one. On the first go-around, my answers to these questions were haphazard. How many drinks per week was, I thought, a ridiculous question. Some weeks, 0, other weeks 15-20. Same goes for exercise. My life was like a hurricane season, calm and sunny one week, a swirling maelstrom the next. First date of my last period? My calendar was too full of real deadlines to clutter it up with such inconsequential matters. It comes when it comes.

But yesterday, these questions were posed to a full-blown adult. One who has, out of necessity, begun to see the wisdom in tracking things, be it bank accounts or menstrual cycles. One who has, out of desire, rearranged life to be more sheltered from those nasty storms. One who is cursed with the knowledge that we can't prevent all disasters, but blessed with the awareness that some can be minimized by preparation.

Most of the time, I still feel out of control, and a little bit old. But yesterday, while retrieving my insurance card from its designated wallet slot, describing my now-tempered life, and considering the prospect of one more set of tiny toes, I experienced an oasis. I realized I'd evolved a little closer to my ideal, which will always be my own monumentally capable mother.

And then I picked up the kids.

Frank's Ashes

2009-07-21T13:18:00.004-06:00

It is a sad truth that the reverberations from Frank McCourt's death were but a minor note in the worldwide symphony of grief still playing itself out after Michael Jackson's. Or maybe it's not so sad, since people are far more fascinated by the utterly bizarre than the utterly brilliant. Let's face it, the transformation of McCourt from pauper to teacher to literary legend doesn't translate to the pages of People as well as the mutating face of the King of Pop.

Don't get me wrong, my running mix contains no less than three MJ songs.

I just mean McCourt's mostly quiet life of remarkable work deserves its due. In some ways, I suppose it's getting it - here we are, a full two days after his death, and there are still half-page articles devoted to him in national newspapers. The 24-hour news cycle makes 48 hours seem like a long time to continue telling a story, usually reserved for the likes of Anna Nicole Smith's death and so on. A mark of real celebrity, often coupled with a grotesque element. In McCourt's case, though, the stories are driven by an increasingly unusual characteristic: pure, unadulterated respect. In the Arts section of today's Times, one of his students was quoted as follows:

"Frank was the Lou Reed of high school English, sending writers, chroniclers and those with memory out into the world aware and ready to savor experience for its own sake, long before he ever took pen to paper to compose his now famous trilogy."

A teacher capable of making high school students "aware and ready to savor experience" must truly be a great one. What better thing can one person do for another than to open their eyes to precious moments as they pass?

But causing one to belt out the refrain to Billy Jean in the middle of a long run does come a close second.

Comes with his own uneasy silences

2009-06-30T13:02:00.005-06:00

You never do know what you will find in the free section of Craigslist. Enjoy for yourself:

In case you can't read all the text, I'll paste it here:

Free Middle Aged Northern English Husband (Boulder)

46 years old, Slightly balding..

Mild beer belly..

Employed, but not well..

Snores like a train..

No sense of humor whatsoever...

Has no idea how to treat a woman.. seriously, no idea.

Prefers to sit in his man chair and watch The Who in concert on DVD rather than having shagfest in bedroom..

British accent used to be his saving grace, but after hearing him shout at and degrade me in Mancunian and being called a daft bitch and an insane cow, the novelty value of the accent wears a bit thin.....

Not really broken down, but not working quite right. Since this is an older foreign model, I dont think he can be repaired, but you can give it a shot.

Decent in bed when he does it (maybe each New Years eve?), but it seems that the stereotypes about the prude british and lack of libido sadly runs true...

Good luck to the next owner. Hope you enjoy getting an electric leg razor and a $5 dvd on your birthday instead of a romantic holiday weekend in bed or out on the town .

Comes with his own green card, pajamas, mini van, uneasy silences, vacant stares, lack of motivation, and horrible cooking sense.

In the 11th Hour

2009-06-30T11:54:00.005-06:00

I used to get an odd sense of satisfaction when I stayed at work late enough to listen to the BBC's morning edition during my drive home. It felt like I was getting a jump on the whole country. You know how eating poorly can inspire you to eat more poorly? Well, working late tended to inspire me to work late again (and eat poorly, but that's not the point here.)

You see, invariably, the reason I was staying late was that I had some looming deadline that forced me into mad productivity. As predictable as the lunar cycle, my work habits ebbed and flowed in accordance with the number of times I was "snoozing" my deadline reminders.

The arrival of kids removed an essential element of that pattern: the satisfaction part. Billable hours and early indicators provided by the UK Index offered no consolation; long days just made me resent the fact that it had been almost 24 hours since I'd rushed my children off to nursery school.

So I put my head down and focused on maintaining a more steady and routine schedule. When that didn't work, I quit.

I am finding tremendous satisfaction in the daily exercise of parenting, to be sure. If anything requires you to be steady and routine, it is the regular, relentless needs of small children. But I find myself missing that 11th hour drive. Is this why people hire life coaches? So someone can give you a deadline to get your sh!t together?

As you age, you get to know things about yourself. Sometimes the realizations are a bit disconcerting. I react well to forced discipline, even if it makes me miserable. It's figuring out how to impose just enough discipline on myself to remain productive - while still meeting the daily demands of family life - that's got me stymied. Let's call it a work in progress.

Please, someone give me a deadline.

That Fiber One Bar Comes Out of Your Inheritance

2009-06-16T16:27:00.005-06:00

Crushing bouts of self-doubt are just par for the course when self-employed. They tend to fall on days like today, when I spend the day mostly doing things other than work because, well, I can. It's then, when I pick my head up from doing laundry at 10 am (something I used to fantasize about) and think: if I had a regular job, I would have to BE somewhere right now. And maybe that would be a good thing? Because then I would be forced into something that is not only productive (like folding hundreds of pairs of small pants) but also lucrative.

I had lunch with a friend from my old job today, and then walked around the office saying hello to old friends. It was nice to see people, and nice to be reminded of what it was once like to make money. And work in a space with windows. And free coffee. But then I went to day care and picked up my boys. They were still rosy-cheeked from their naps, and quite pleased to be the first kids picked up after years of being dead f-ing last, every day.

And then I hauled them down to the office, where they are sitting on the couch untangling computer cords while I jam out a few emails. And I think: if I had a regular job, they would not BE here right now, eating all the office snacks we bought ourselves at Target. And that would most definitely be a bad thing. Because then I'd be staring at their pictures between meetings, consoling myself with the thought that their college savings accounts are growing, while the moments until they go away are also piling up.

The reality is, there is no perfect solution. Unless you're a Hilton, life really is about trade-offs. But at the moment, this compromise seems to meeting most of our immediate needs, except the financial one. And that seems like conquerable.

In the meantime, at least I get to go home to folded laundry.

He Slept Here

2009-05-24T09:11:00.008-06:00

Now that the boys are 3 and 2, we decided it was time to get them out of their cribs.

I've been scouring Craigslist for a bunk bed (since they share a room) that can be split into twin beds (since sleeping one of them on a top bunk at this stage of development would likely result in our arrest).

Last week, I found a listing for what seemed to be the perfect bed. It even includes two large storage bins that roll under one bunk on casters, perfect for stashing all manner of childhood accessories, like the sticks and rocks that their fickle emotions love with wild abandon one minute and cast off like the lawn detritus it is the next.

The ad said the bed was in near-perfect condition, with one exception: "Our son's named is scratched on the side of one of the rails, but it could easily be sanded out." Easy enough, I thought.

I arranged to retrieve the beds yesterday, on a morning that threatened rain. We made it a family outing; it just felt like the kind of momentous event we should all have a hand in.

We pulled up to a blue, split-level house in one of Boulder's older neighborhoods, tucked under the Flatirons that define our town. As the four of us walked up the driveway, the couple descended the front steps. The husband eyed us with what I wrongly assumed to be irritation. He didn't bargain for this transaction to be slowed by the beds' next inhabitants, I thought.

We were led to a bedroom. It belonged to their daughter, now a senior in college. The bed appeared as advertised, and Miles and the husband began disassembling it. Meanwhile, the wife, who had disappeared, returned with a tupperware box, containing Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. She got down on the floor and showed them to the boys.

While Miles and the husband carted pieces of the bed to the truck, and the boys engineered some confusing Potato biology, I tried to engage the woman in idle conversation. "Was this your daughter's bed?"

"No, it was our son's."

When did he outgrow it?"

"Oh," she shook her head, smiling a little. "He stayed in it until he was 15."

She went on, smiling wider now. "He would sleep in the top bunk, and we turned the bottom bunk into a train table. He stored his trains in those drawers." The drawers are huge.

"He must have had a lot of trains!"

"Yes," nodding her head more slowly, her smile fading. "He really got into them."

Miles entered the room as I asked how old their son is now.

"He died a year ago. It was actually the day before his 17th birthday."

And just like that, the dimension of the moment changed. We weren't helping them make room for grown-up furniture. We were dismantling their son's physical presence from their home.

We expressed our regrets as delicately as possible, trying to toe an impossible line between sympathy for the unbearable loss staring us in the face, and respect for the fact that we were mere customers, strangers. I gathered up the boys, painfully aware of the sweet memories they would leave in their wake, strewn about the floor amidst Potato parts.

As we drove back through town, we passed a line of cars streaming into the parking lot of the University's event center for the local high school graduation. I felt hot tears on my face, struck by the thought that those kind, sad people should have been spending the morning dressed up and shifting in uncomfortable seats in a steamy auditorium.

After the beds were set up, new sheets and blankets tucked in, I located a name, scratched into the side rail of one bed.

A boy lost at 17 never gets much of a chance to make his mark on the world; we will preserve the mark he made on his bed. I like the idea that a little bit of him will remain in a Terabinthian land of childhood. One day we'll explain to our sons that these beds once belonged to a boy named Bryce.

. . . And There Was Much Rejoicing

2009-05-13T00:03:00.008-06:00

We've marked a few turning points around here lately.

Charlie turned two, a fact that dawned on me as I was filling out his daily sheet at day care. Date? 5.12. 5.12!!! A hallowed date in the Sullivan Corkern family annals (two n's)! I always feel like someone should be throwing ME a party on their birthdays. I did all the work, right? So it's even worse that I didn't remember OUR birthday until we were a few hours into it. I played it cool, though, casually raising my head to inform the teacher that I would be bringing cupcakes at snack time. Naturally.

God love these years when the small transgressions will not be recorded by the small brains. What matters is the cupcake did show up, eventually. I think this is one of those kindergarten universal truths. It's hard to hate a day that involved some form of chocolate.

After putting the birthday boy, his brother, and their engorged stomachs to bed, Miles and I headed downstairs to work a little basement magic. No, that's not an oblique romantic reference. I'm talking about renovation - which has become as intoxicating as any champagne and caviar night in a hotel room, the closer we get to completion.

We hung the door to the boys' "fort" under the stairs (which Oliver has, for some mystifying reason, christened the "Brokey Place"), complete with the homemade curtain door that I am quite sure they will never properly appreciate. But I will. Oh yes, I will.

But the coup de grace belonged to Miles. For weeks, he has been joining, sanding, painting, sealing, and putting up hardware to hang a pair of sliding "barn" doors. We decided to do the job ourselves after pricing it out and realizing it would cost $1000 just for the hardware (along with the concomitant realization that we had no money left whatsoever.) The whole project probably came in under $500, as long as you place no value on the good doctor's time.

The doors themselves are each two pieces of plywood joined together to look like a thick butcher block type of wood. It's the same material he used for my fabulous desks, which are so smooth and pretty I like to rub them affectionately. Miles cut a hole in the bottom of one door for the sake of Evil Black Cat Who Loves Only Me (for which I adore her), so that she may access her boudoir.

The finished products look amazing, in my humble opinion.

I will post more pictures as we wrap things up. Just a few more enchanted evenings, and we will effectively double the size of our house. Hurrah!

The 4-Wheeled Bogeyman

2009-05-05T06:46:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, I took the kids to day care in the jogging stroller.

As we made our way down a fairly busy street, I noticed a young girl, maybe 7, riding her bike on the opposite sidewalk. She was wearing a bike helmet and a backpack and I wondered, "Is she riding to school BY HERSELF?"

I thought back to my days in elementary school, when as early as first grade, I would walk home alone. I was always supposed to be with a friend, but I distinctly remember lying to my parents on days when she took the bus. I loved skipping down the sidewalk, unsupervised.

For reasons I blogged about recently, I was one paranoid kid. Whenever a car would slow down, I would run up onto the front yard of whatever house I was passing. But I never considered walking home alone a dangerous act.

As I listened to the boys chatter about the squirrels and the birds, it made me sad to realize how much my ideas about what is safe and acceptable have shifted. What is wrong with a first- or second-grader riding her bike to school along a well-traveled route? Statistically speaking, she is safer doing that than riding in her parents' car.

Later in the day, Miles happened to send me an article on Salon.com about a new book written by the subway lady. Remember her? The woman who garnered the ire of a nation by allowing her 8-year-old, NY native son to take a subway trip alone? Her book is called "Free Range Kids" and in it she advocates that kids are just as safe as they were in the early seventies, and we should restore some of the freedom we parents experienced back then.

It's an idea worth considering. Of course, to do so, you'll have to cut yourself off from any mass media and its attendant daily warnings and reminders about children gone missing. Not to mention any blogs that harp on such awful but thankfully extraordinarily rare tragedies.

Apparently, the Universe Reads My Blog

2009-05-02T09:13:00.003-06:00

After yesterday's fishing expedition for reassurance, I got it (though not so much from the "instruction manual" comment. What was up with that?) While at a reception last night, I ran into the editor of the local bar association newsletter that will run my first published article next month. He had glowing remarks about my piece that I eagerly lapped up, using all my restraint to avoid following him around for the rest of the night, pulling on his sleeve and asking "What else? What else did you absolutely love about it?"

I sorely needed this kind of reassurance because I made the mistake of asking for further details on the reason for my rejection from the workshop to which I'd applied. The two-line response included the adjectives "lackluster," "trite," and "predictable." The good news is they were only critical of the language and the theme, so, you know, the rest of it must be good.

Yesterday was also a banner day for SullivanWelty. We received a decision in our first case, a win.

So thanks, Universe! And hey, if you're not too busy containing the swine flu, read back a few entries. You'll find I've also been complaining about poverty. Hint, hint.

Rejekshun

2009-04-30T21:16:00.006-06:00

It's official: on the heels of my first written submission, I've received my first rejection.

When I first decided to dust off my writing hobby, an experienced friend recommended I start submitting pieces so that I could start collecting rejections. "Because you're going to get lots of them. Inevitable." As my husband reminded me tonight, John Kennedy Toole died in obscurity and is now a literary legend.

But still, it's depressing to write your heart into something and have it overlooked entirely. It makes me lose that heart a little bit, at least momentarily.

Springtime Sentiments

2009-04-28T08:25:00.010-06:00

You have to believe the buds will blow, Believe in the grass in the days of snow; Ah, that's the reason a bird can sing: on his darkest day, he believes in Spring.

I don't know who D. Mallock was, but that quote got me through many a Northeastern Ohio winter. It used to hang in my grandmother's guest bedroom, and now it will hang in ours.

One nice thing about blogging is it makes you more self-aware. ("Oh, THIS is why I make up monsters to get to sleep!")

Of course, it can also make you self-conscious. ("Why didn't anyone comment? Was that too much of a downer?")

In the interest of counterbalancing yesterday's post, I offer up some happy thoughts. Along with the self-conscious observation that springtime is evidently my most nostalgic season.

I am making some gardening-related gifts for two friends whose birthdays are coming up. I go all out for the spring birthdays; call it a personal bias. In keeping with the gardening theme, I made cards to accompany the gifts from copies of an old postcard that my grandmother kept on her desk. If this sentiment doesn't make you want to don your flowered gloves and pick up your spade, nothing will:

The Kiss of the Sun for PARDON
The Song of the Birds for MIRTH
One is nearer God's heart in a GARDEN
Than anywhere else on EARTH

On the back of each card, I pasted quotes that I typed out on my typewriter, a vintage Facit 1620 that Miles gave me for Christmas two years ago.

The first is a quote a friend gave me during law school. We were on a picnic. He, being the world's smartest man* and possibly from the future, had a card catalog of notable quotations in his head, and scratched this one down for me on a scrap of paper torn from his datebook. I've still got it on my bulletin board:

It is a quote from Hilaire Belloc, and reads "From quiet homes and first beginning, out to the undiscovered ends, there's nothing worth the wear of winning, but laughter and the love of friends."

And this is a quote that I've always adored.

It's Proust, and says "Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."

If you are reading this, consider yourself a charming gardener.

*second only to my husband, of course, upon whose brilliance I will elaborate one day soon

Some Things Wicked This Way Come

2009-04-27T10:21:00.008-06:00

I've always found comfort in make-believe monsters.

When I was growing up, I would soothe myself to sleep by imagining slim white ghosts skimming over the fields next to our house. To my child's mind, they couldn't permeate walls, so we were safe.

As an adult, I sometimes imagine a cataclysmic "Day After Tomorrow" sort of storm swirling outside as I snuggle in for a snooze. I like the thought of the house as a barrier to wild weather. Even if it's a bit of a sieve in its current condition.

The summer following first grade, a playmate from my nursery school was kidnapped. The cold facts of her disappearance were in the papers and on our milk cartons. Missing. From Maple Heights Ohio. June 13, 1980. 2:45 p.m.

Afterwards, I had night terrors that kept me paralyzed in my bed for hours, unable to fall asleep. The same kind that haunt plenty of kids, except mine had a specific real-world root. The ghosts were a way to direct my runaway imagination to a controlled threat. Yes, there were scary things out there, but they couldn't get in.

After my mom died, the ghosts lost their power to lull me to sleep. Four walls couldn't protect us from a cunning beast that could enter the house inside a body.

The ghosts were replaced by swirling storms (and sometimes mountain lions), real threats that can actually be defended by shelter. When worry is inhibiting sleep, I conjure up the storms and the lions.

The thing is, it gets harder and harder to train my mind on the make-believe monsters when there are so many real ones bearing down. Swine flu, melting ice shelfs, expiring ARMs. Masked men running out of the jungle with machetes.

All of it makes me want to build a fortress for our children and all of their friends. Inside will be secret gardens and tulip fairies and friendly, talking trains.

One of the greatest tasks a parent faces is introducing children to risk, enough to encourage caution, but not so much to create terror. Perhaps one of the best tools we can give them is an active imagination, one that can deliver make-believe monsters to overcome the real beasts.

Images for a Rainy Saturday Morning

2009-04-25T10:53:00.006-06:00

One of my favorite books is my copy of The Secret Garden. My grandparents gave it to me for my seventh birthday, and I've read it countless times since then.

I love it for many reasons, not the least of which is that the front page contains my grandmother's squared-off handwriting. I used to spend hours at her desk with a stack of her watercolor paper, trying to emulate her handwriting. I also love the sticker showing that it was purchased from The Learned Owl Book Shop, a good old-fashioned book store in my mom's hometown, still in business today (now with a website!)

Mostly, though, I love the story. It's the literary equivalent of a rainy spring day. A day like today, and most likely much like the day I unwrapped it. My favorite part is when Mary Lennox enters the secret garden for the very first time.

Page 70:

It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the keyhole. . . . Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight.

She was standing inside the secret garden.

Will little boys be as enchanted by this story as I once was? What are the books that little boys fall in love with? I suppose it doesn't matter too much, as long as they love to read. What better way is there to spend a rainy day, than lounging someplace comfortable in the soft light, lost in another world altogether?

Here's hoping your day is filled with a little excitement, and wonder, and delight.

Fewer and Farther Between

2009-04-23T08:50:00.009-06:00

A post a day turned out to be too ambitious for this month. Our new law firm is a needy baby. Between nighttime feedings and keeping her clean all day, I haven't had the same time for the quiet contemplation usually required for weeding out my deep thoughts and planting them here.

The pace lately has reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, by Emerson:

No one suspects the days to be gods.

It's part of a longer line that I like equally well (but haven't quite memorized):

Heaven walks among us ordinarily muffled in such triple or tenfold disguises that the wisest are deceived and no one suspects the days to be gods.

I like the introduction of a little magic into the ordinary. What if you could transcend your most frazzled moment by reminding yourself that this vomit on the carpet is only a freckle on the face of something beautiful? Or that this impossibly slow post office clerk is a single brush stroke on a stunning piece of work?

Of course, it's hard to keep a handle on the larger context of your life when the small moments seem so excruciatingly full. If we were always sizing up the forest, we wouldn't plant nearly enough trees. But I suppose I inevitably return to this blog because I need to lay down my shovel from time to time and admire the garden. And it is heavenly.

Two New Favorites

2009-04-18T08:39:00.000-06:00

I've only had a few minutes to "flip" through the pages of this online addiction, but I can already tell that's what Antler Magazine is going to be:

The essays in Skirt Magazine are going to go a long ways towards helping me lean up my book-buying budget. And just look at the kind of artwork they feature on their site. Etsy, with print!

Summer Hours

2009-04-17T07:47:00.002-06:00

There is something about the preview for the movie Summer Hours that makes me want to crawl inside it. French movies tend to have that effect on me. Everyone is effortlessly thin, despite drinking vats of wine with their five-course meals every night. Amelie. The Girl from Paris. Those weird Black/White/Red movies. Everyone subsists on a diet of mostly cheese, with no apparent downside to their physique.

This movie seems to have all the elements I enjoy: beautiful cinematography, a dysfunctional family, emotion, drama. Nice clothing. Very little action. I think a matinee in May is in order. It will be a rainy workday afternoon, and I will be wearing a comfy sweater and snacking on my smuggled popcorn (now that I've got a WhirlyPop, I can't eat anything but stovetop-popped corn). Join me?

A Day Can Change Just Everything Given Half a Chance

2009-04-16T06:58:00.007-06:00

. . . or maybe Facebook can.

The title of this post is my favorite line from the book my brother Dan gave me for my birthday (that guy can really take a hint).

I should be able to see it coming by now, but every year I'm caught off-guard by a birthday funk. It swells in the days prior and ends the morning after.

My birthday is an annual reminder that no one present in the room when I was born still walks the face of the earth. The fact that this is true for so many people is all the more depressing: who knew the world was so full of grief and bereavement? Until a few years ago, it seemed like a pretty damn sunny place. My mom was so reliable about remembering my birthday that it was easy for me to pretend it was no big deal. It's like when your rich friend tells you that money can't buy happiness. It's easy to pretend you don't care about/need something if you have it in spades. But despite my best effort to pass off my birthday as just another day, I sheepishly crept out the door after the postman's visit on Tuesday to see if anything special had arrived. Turned out to be one of those rare days when all of our mail was in the recycling bin within minutes - not even a little birthday bill!

Does everyone harbor a child-sized hope in their adult-sized heart for a birthday parade?

Shoulders slumped, I turned on my computer. My email inbox started loading: 3, 6, 18 . . . 82 messages! This was my first birthday on Facebook, and I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I lapped up those well-wishes like a neglected puppy dog. Truly, Facebook saved my birthday.

Of course, I am not a neglected puppy. I received all sorts of gifts on my birthday, tangible and not, which I list here in no particular order:

1. The birthday card from my boys and the specific gift I requested from my dutiful and observant husband (yes, I shoved the catalogue in his face, opened to the page with the sharpied directive "BIRTHDAY APPROACHING" and big arrows all over it; in my defense, when I did that, I was a 35-year-old without a matching set of silverware. Now I'm 36 and everything is different!);
2. The reminder from my brother Will that a few years ago he gave me the best birthday gift that keeps on giving: his first date with my beloved sister-in-law was on my birthday in 2005. I think you could call it the one good thing that happened that year;
3. The email from that sister-in-law that reminded me again why I love her so much! Seriously, she's perfect;
4. A call from my longtime bestest, featuring a song by her little boy;
5. This amazing post by the person who knows me as well as I know myself, which flatters me to no end;
6. The knowledge that amid snowstorms and sickness, my dad bought a card for me;
7. These images posted by Dan following his Herculean attic-clearing efforts, which remind me of just how much you can love inanimate objects;
8. The thoughtful gifts from my mother-in-law, who also never misses an occasion;
9. The decadent gift certificate from my friends who know what I like;
10. All the emails, especially the one from my mom's closest friend, which was as nearly a message from my mom as I could hope for; and
11. The first gift to arrive, the book from Dan - which will remind me time and again that no matter how bad a day is, another morning is right around the corner.

Something There is That Loves a Baby Shower

2009-04-11T15:32:00.002-06:00

I love baby showers. They celebrate motherhood, and at the same time are so very unlike it.

All your girlfriends are hanging around drinking mimosas on a Saturday morning. You can dress up without fear that small hands will besmirch your outfit. And you can direct your full attention to the conversation, without having to keep one eye on the child who is looking for the hostess' most fragile object.

A friend and I were talking recently about the silly stresses we experience as mothers, especially new ones. These fears certainly don't feel silly in the moment. In hindsight, though, you scratch your head as you box up too-small clothes. Why did I think I needed 16 bundle blankets? If you'd known that the day your child would begin ingesting pure sugar was right around the corner, would you have worried so much about every ingredient in his baby food?

We wondered, is our hyper-mothering syndrome an outgrowth of the Bowling Alone phenomenon? Although we compare notes on the playground, we parent under fairly isolated circumstances. When your baby is refusing to go back to sleep at 2 in the morning, chances are, you can't give a holler to a girlfriend to reassure you. When he is still crying at 6 am, you can truly feel like the most miserable and sleepy person on the planet. Logic tells you that others are having the same kind of a morning, but logic can't bring you a cup of coffee and pat you on the back.

A baby shower offers a rare opportunity to take on motherhood as a sorority. Imagine if every Saturday was like a shower, except with the babies. If we co-existed a little bit more, maybe we'd all recognize that there is a range of normal, and a wide variety of ways to be a really excellent parent. Sure, Junior might seem awfully difficult right now, but look - Susie is, too! You use a Boppy? I like a pillow. Seems like none of the kids like vegetables.

Still, they are growing.

We're Not All Bernsteins and Woodwards

2009-04-10T16:24:00.002-06:00

I've been unhappy with our local newspaper lately. On April 1, a couple was killed in a murder-suicide near our house. I didn't know either of them, but the woman went to my law school, and worked with a friend of mine at a Denver law firm. Tragically, the couple had two young children, ages 3 and 6. They were not home at the time of the killing/suicide.

The initial reporting on the story was slanted, due mainly to quotes from neighbors who were friendly with the father. These first stories portrayed the man as a doting dad and the woman as a selfish mom.

Our newspaper has a "comments" section below each story where people can weigh in. There is no way hide the comments; they just show up on your screen. In this case, people wrote horrible, unfounded, ugly things about the female victim. These rumors made their way into the public conversation on the story, and by the time police investigators provided real details of the story, she'd been all but convicted of the crime by the Boulder public.

Two days ago, the police revealed that the husband did the killing, after having plotted it for some time.

I love the first amendment as much as any liberal, but I do not think that the rumor mill should be given equal footing with the real press. It should have its own section, one labeled "opinion" rather than "news." So I wrote a letter to the editor, which I pasted below. My two cents. What do you think?

Letters to the Editor Blog
Posted by Camera Staff
Jennifer L. Sullivan: Online blog comments
Posted April 9, 2009

The recent reporting on the Oakley murder-suicide, and the public comment free-for-all that ensued, has convinced me that it is time to turn off the public comments on the website.

I consider myself a Boulder liberal with a fervent belief in first amendment rights. But the way the news is disseminated has changed, and I think we need to consider how it is presented, and where public opinion belongs in relationship to the reported stories.

In this case, the initially slanted reporting that painted the alleged murderer as a saintly dad and the likely victim as an uncaring mother led to a public outcry against Katie. It began in the comments section. Should the anecdotal story of "laughinghard" ("I knew an attorney in town also in oil and gas and she ran rampant all over her husband-really wanted status and eventually dumped him for someone rich and powerful she'd met through the job. She was pretty horrible and narcisstic, so I may be reading too much into katie's personality from this other person") really be published alongside the story itself? Especially when commenters can spread their smut in total anonymity? If you've got something to say, append your name to a letter to the editor and get it published in the opinion section. Want to be anonymous? Get a blog and preach from your own pulpit.

Public comments section or not, people will spread malicious lies about tragedies like this. I just don't think the newspaper website should help them do so.

Sincerely,

Jennifer L. Sullivan, Esq.
Boulder

What Does Betrayal Taste Like?

2009-04-09T07:03:00.008-06:00

My book club is reading Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies.

Typically, the hostess of the next meeting plans a meal that is somehow related to the book. When we read Eat, Pray, Love, we ate Italian food; when we read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, we ate local food. When we ran out of books with three-word list titles, we panicked.

This month's book poses a culinary challenge because there isn't any particular food that corresponds to its characters or plot. It's about a couple of blue-blooded East Coasters who get married, have two kids, and move to Ohio. After her childhood in New York City and their high-falutin academic life in Cambridge, the husband, a brilliant poetry expert, joins the faculty at Oberlin. It's really about what happens after that, which is when the husband, a narcissist of the highest order, falls in love with another professor and leaves his wife and kids. Since it's a small town and an even smaller English Department, this is all done in the most scandalous and humiliating manner imaginable.

It is a painful and horrifying read. The author is a relatable writer, despite the fact that she happens to be a leggy blonde who was on the cover of Seventeen magazine as a teenager and has appeared regularly on Law & Order. One of my friends confessed to being scared to read the book. This friend is in a strong marriage, so it's not a fear that it could happen to her per se, but I know what she means. Mothering small children is a challenge under the best of circumstances, even when you have money and support and can sneak away for the occasional pedicure. Having your husband, the father of your children, present and carrying his share of the load is just part of the equation, or it should be. The thought of losing him - strike that; of WATCHING HIM DECIDE TO LEAVE, is gut-wrenching.

It's not exactly a cautionary tale, because the philanderer is a prick of such ginormous proportions that you're not going to relate to him at all (unless you happen to be married to someone like him, in which case, sister, GET OUT NOW.) It would be easy to be irritated by the author's reluctance to face the music and just give up on the bastard much sooner than she did. But although she is something of a modern-day princess, she adheres to some old-world values. Namely, once you have kids, you see a marriage through, even a difficult one.

I know just where this principle comes from; my mom was a strict adherent. A few days before her death, my mom's closest friend visited. The two of them had in common many things, including difficult husbands. They talked about their shared belief in persevering in a marriage for the sake of the family. I'm not saying this is the right choice for everyone - I fully support divorce if it is better than the alternative - but it's easy to appreciate this old-fashioned perspective on the institution.

One can only hope Gillies' ex has suffered the opprobrium he so richly deserves. But college campuses can be insular places, and you sort of wonder if it only adds to his sexy rock star image amongst his students (if not his peers). If that is the case, he should probably stay on campus for awhile. Anyone who encounters him after reading this book will want to pelt him with stones.

SullivanMade

2009-04-08T17:17:00.010-06:00

It's springtime and I'm suddenly on a crafting tear. Quite a few new babies are coming on the scene, so I've had reason to spend my evenings before a whirring sewing machine, making oddly-shaped creatures.

True or not, I nearly killed Miles when he recently told some friends that I like to stay up all night "making stuffed animals." That makes me sound like a raspy-voiced, wrinkled woman in a muumuu. She's got red lipstick smeared far outside her crudely drawn liplines, and drives about town in her Lincoln Continental with beanie babies lining the back window. Don't you think?

I've also got the spring clothing bug, which I'm attempting to cure by means of my own manufacturing. Last night I made this skirt, which is impossible to self-photograph.

I made it from the Amy Butler Barcelona skirt pattern, and a fabric scrap I picked up at my favorite fabric store in Portland. I want to go to there.

Mostly, I am just thrilled to have an office in which I can follow my homemaking bliss, blog freely, and store the yards of fabric I've squirreled away over the years. I am gonna make one helluva crazy old lady one day!

Madness, Pure and Simple

2009-04-07T13:30:00.006-06:00

Ahhhh. Deadline met.

The article I was working on is about juggling the demands of work and home. In connection with the article, I've been reading Judith Warner's book Perfect Madness. A friend sent it to me a few years ago, just after I'd had Charlie. At the time, we were living in our friends' scraper of a house, just prior to the scraping. This was what I like to call the Summer of our Discontent - after watching the youthful carefree people through the looking-glass at the wedding in Montana, we returned to our temporary home, all discombobulated. Then Oliver broke his leg, and we were discombobulated with a big red smelly cast. There's nothing that screams out "inattentive mother!" like a toddler with his leg in a cast.

So I picked up this book but quickly put it down when I grew altogether depressed by the fact that we don't live in France. You see, the first section is all about how great mothers have it in France. They've got low-cost, state-sponsored childcare, three years off work, and best of all, a culture that expects them to spend healthy parts of the day away from their children, eating brie. I'm sure it's not quite as idyllic as the author cracks it up to be - she's got to make her point - but it sounds pretty darn superior.

I'm really enjoying the book this time around, though. The ultimate point is an examination of current-day motherhood in America. And it's made me realize: we've gone a little crazy.

We talk about breastfeeding in terms of "failure" or "success" (did you "make it" for one year? no? your kid is damaged goods!) We develop detailed "birthing plans" and then feel inadequate when we can't follow them. There is an odd notion that "natural" childbirth is better - but if our finger gets infected, most of us will opt for antibiotics over chopping it off, the "natural" way. We diagnose infants who would have been tagged "colicky" a decade ago with vague syndromes and put them into therapy. We enroll children who can't walk yet into enriching classes, and then get exasperated when they suck on the instruments rather than play them. (I realize this rant sounds a little ridiculous on the heels of the post in which I pledged to put tiny string instruments into my toddler's hands.) I once had a conversation with a mother whom, with great smugness, told me that she doesn't give her child toys; rather, she provides him open access to all household items, and then waits to see what he "brings to the table." He was 11 months old at the time. While she talked he stood just outside her peripheral vision, trying to wrestle a red plastic truck from my son's chubby hands.

Then there is the Boulder brand of overparenting, exemplified by an interaction I overheard on the playground the other day: a mom was carefully explaining to her four-year-old, who was climbing on a rock, that he should "maintain three-point-contact at all times."

Most of us, myself included, are haunted by an ever-present concern that our kids will be left behind if we are not exposing them to new skills, languages, and sounds all the time. As Warner puts it, we're a generation of control freaks, and we've become "mothering perfectionists." I think we're giving ourselves too much credit and not enough of a break.

Music for World Peace

2009-04-06T23:00:00.003-06:00

It's very strange to get to know someone socially, and then discover that they have this unbelievable talent that makes them famous. Tonight we went to see our friend Julie perform at CU's Grusin Hall with her sisters. Together they are the Albers Trio (that's Julie on the left). It was the second of three sold-out shows.

If I didn't know them, I really wouldn't think it possible that such a combination of beautiful and talented sisters could occur in nature.

We already knew Julie was a professional musician and world-renowned cellist. But we'd never seen her play. I am a pure neophyte when it comes to classical music - though I've enjoyed it for some time, I've never understood it. But listening to them play was magical. It put goose bumps on my arms and made me want to learn about the score, who wrote it, and why.

In the second half of their program they played Mozart's Divertimento in E-flat, K.63. According to the program notes, Mozart wrote this piece later in life, when his wife was ill and he didn't have any money. And even my untrained ear could actually hear that in the music. In fact, the second movement, an Adagio, reminded me of music that would play during one of those montage scenes in a movie, when some longer and bittersweet period of a character's life is compressed and set to music. I can't think of any examples, but hopefully you know what I mean.

The whole thing made me want to run out and buy tiny little cellos and violins for Oliver and Charlie, in the hopes of having a trio one day. That's right, I said TRIO.

Music for World Domination

2009-04-05T17:21:00.003-06:00

When I've got a deadline to meet, I like to pump myself up with a song or two before I get to work. I can't actually listen to music while I'm writing - I tend to get distracted by lyrics.

But lyrics make or break a psych-up song. Like Stuck Between Stations by The Hold Steady.

For some reason, this refrain really does it for me:

She was a really cool kisser and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian
She was a damn good dancer but she wasn't all that great of a girlfriend.

Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it's the Sal Paradise reference (hate the book, but for some reason love the narrator). Maybe it's the way he sings Chris-t-y-an. Take a listen and see what you think.

All in a Day. Literally.

2009-04-05T16:11:00.004-06:00

Procrastination, I know and loathe you. I am working on a deadline so must make this short.

If you've been to our house or received a gift from me in the past three years, you know of my love for Nikki McClure. So it was with great excitement that I learned of her newest project, a children's book she illustrated called "All in a Day." One day soon I will visit this website to buy it "for my kids."

You Gonna Eat That?

2009-04-04T07:43:00.003-06:00

One of my perennial complaints about our house is its lack of a dining area. All we have is a longish narrow space in the kitchen that used to house a second refrigerator, back when the place was inhabited by 6-12 college guys and their random hookups. I made the mistake of opening that refrigerator when we were looking at the house. I won't speak of its contents except to say things were green that shouldn't have been. I'm fairly certain something in there waved at me.

Barring a Congressional push for a bailout of the residents of 1432 North Street, we won't be adding on anytime soon. So last month, I broke down and bought a dining table. Our requirements dictated such odd proportions that I had to reach back in time for a suitable fit. I ventured to an amazing antique store in Denver and found a table that is so narrow you can hug someone across it while you both are seated. I'll let you know when that property becomes handy.

I love its history: it was built in Sweden in the 18th century, and used in the fields for meals at harvest time.

We introduced it to 21st century food with some friends last night. I bet it never encountered miso chicken in the 1700's! There was something very cozy about breathing in our friends' faces while we ate dinner across its ancient wood, an April snowstorm kicking up outside.

And just like a trio of 18th century Swedish farmers, after a hearty meal, the menfolk retired to the lounge.

Some things never change.

A Different Kind of Man

2009-04-03T13:09:00.004-06:00

A few years ago we went to the wedding of some friends. They actually used to be Oliver's godparents, but have since forsaken us, so now they're back to being just friends. Whom we never talk to.* Anyway.

This wedding was attended by a host of creative types. I had just taken up sewing at the time, and had been excitedly working on a project to present to them on their wedding, a set of placemats and napkins. Miles was screenprinting cool bird designs on the napkins, and we even got them a personalized stamp to use on the underside of our offerings, memorializing their wedding day. We did all of this at night during the same week we sold our old house and moved half our stuff into storage and other random bits into Miles' parents' house and also some stuff into the temporary house our benevolent friends let us use that summer to keep us off the street. Oh, did I mention that Charlie was born three weeks prior, so I was hauling around a spare tire, a toddler, and a sorta-but-not-yet-human-being who was sucking on my body for extended periods of time each day? (If you dutifully slogged through the curse on modern-day motherhood that is the book Babywise, you know that the first three months of a person's life are actually the final stage of gestation and only spent on the outside because, well, the women would kill all the men if babies came out any later.) Add to that my unexpected and likely hormone-exacerbated despondency over trading our cute little house next to our beloved neighbors for one that is larger but devoid of all cuteness. But proximate to some other now-beloved neighbors.

Due to technical difficulties with the screenprinting process, we didn't quite get the gifts done in time to bring them to the actual wedding. (It would have been the first time I've ever brought a gift to the actual wedding. I like to run out the clock on that one-year rule. Is that a myth, by the way? No. Don't tell me.) Only two napkins shy of the full set, we finally admitted defeat around midnight the night before the morning we were supposed to get up early, pack the car, attend the closing on the house sale, and then drive to Montana.

When morning broke on the first day of the wedding week, we walked into the main lodge for breakfast and encountered the most uniformly cool-looking group of people I've ever seen outside the city limits of San Francisco. Seriously. The place was wall-to-wall ironic t-shirts and perfectly-shaggy-hair and bodies shaped by yoga and lean from a lifetime of cigarettes for dinner. Oh, and it turned out one of them was a professional seamstress who had MADE the bride's amazing wedding dress. (We still have the napkin-and-placemat set.) I've never felt so strappily midwestern, in the hippy, child-bearing sense, in my life.

As the week progressed, I tried to make some friends, or at least avoid breaking any of the twiggy girls with my enormous post-partum body. But between the regular feedings and the gross body sweats and the newly-ambulatory toddler, I was sort of off my game. At one point, I recall having a conversation with the one other person there who admitted to being a lawyer. Except he was a lawyer for the common musician or some such. After explaining what it was that I did - a painful explanation using terms like "derivative" and "securities" and "class action" - he looked at me for a moment and said,

"So, you work for the man."

Except I think he was really saying: "You ARE the man. One who happens to have milk shooting out of your boobs." I neither ran crying from the room nor kicked him in the shin, but only by means of great restraint. And I know I shouldn't be bothered by some edgy stranger's perception of me, but this dumb remark has stuck with me ever since.

After meeting with our severely overweight, arthritic, and barely-conversant potential client this morning, it occurred to me: this is now the man. And it is good.

Another voice rendered a tiny smithereen. Ahhhhh.

* In the unlikely event one of them ever reads this, this situation makes me sad and it would please me greatly to repair it.

While Seashells Was Sleeping

2009-04-02T08:01:00.008-06:00

Quite a bit went on during my month away. Directly relevant to my lack of posting (and its resumption) is our ongoing home renovation. My home office has gone from looking like this:

To this:

Miles made the endless supply of desk from pieces of wood and pipe. I could not love it more.

I wish that I wasn't quite so exacting when it comes to my workspace requirements. But it is almost impossible for me to be productive unless I am surrounded by order, and lovely artwork. Things must be arranged just so. If not, instead of working, I just sit there and obsess. Example: last night, Miles tried to borrow the lamp from my desk to shed better light on the project he is working on. This should have been fine: it's a small room with a bright overhead bulb. But with my lighting regime altered, I just could not bring myself to type one more word. So I retrieved a lamp from elsewhere in the house and delivered it to Miles, who was already covered in drywall dust.

Speaking of lovely artwork, my next project is to frame some of my grandmother's paintings. In summer, Anne Crum would decamp from northeastern Ohio for picturesque seaside villages in New England, where she took watercolor workshops. When we cleaned out her house during my senior year of high school, I snagged as much of it as I could. Adults took the more finished pieces, so I was left with smaller works in progress. It doesn't matter - whenever I look at it, I remember sunny afternoons on her huge front porch with root beer. And the way she would hold my face with both her hands when we arrived for visits. These pieces have traveled with me, to college and law school and clerking and apartments and houses. They are my treasures. And soon they will have permanent, framed homes:

I could not love it more.

Retrieving a ball from its sad lonely corner

2009-04-01T21:00:00.001-06:00

~~The masses~~ my brother ~~have~~ has spoken. I am back. With a new logo.

I don't know what it is about transitions. They are never seamless, at least not for me.

In February I traded my nice, steady job for uncharted territory: business ownership. Crazy, right? The economy has never looked so bleak, my home life has never been so full, and I have an entire house that needs renovation and decoration. Plus I'm the one who has waxed ambivalent over the practice of law.

Yet in the midst of all this risk and upheaval, I have a sense of quiet calm. More than that: mad confidence. And I would have to chalk it all up to my wingwoman.

I've written here before about the wonders of Lori. But I had no idea how mighty we'd be as a pair. We're off to a pretty incredible start. I don't mean in terms of vast riches, though I expect we will do well enough in time. I'm talking about something more substantive, less tangible.

I've spent most of my career feeling like an actor. Which would be fine in certain professions. For instance, acting. Not so good when you're trying to impress people with your smarts, while silently wondering when they will call your bluff. Whatever mix of good fortune and standardized test acumen had gotten me this far, I was certain that I'd just gotten lucky. A part of me believed what one awful man I encountered in the beginning of my career once told me: I really wasn't cut out to be a lawyer.

But sometime during the sudden zig zag my path has taken this last year, I moved past that. Don't get me wrong, I do now and will always harbor some mild insecurities that rear their green warty heads when I'm feeling blue. I don't know if it's experience and the wisdom of age, or just the early stage of that period of mid-life, when I stop caring what people think and begin wearing mom jeans (have you seen that SNL skit? "Because I'm not a woman anymore - I'm a MOM!") But whatever liberating force has enabled me to stop stressing about ability and just do the work, I'm grateful. And I think it has a lot to do with partnering with my mental doppelganger.

When you work with a lot of people, some degree of anonymity masks your contribution. But when you work face to face with someone, when you spend your day trading ideas with one other person, there is no chance that your skills and your weaknesses will remain a mystery. It's all out there on the table, or in our case, across our mated desks. Your best thoughts, your worst habits, what you ate for dinner last night, who you dated in high school - you can't hide any of it, even if you should. So if that person across the desk is someone you respect, just keeping up with her makes you feel worthy. And knowing she's happy to have hitched her horse to yours? Well, that's enough to silence the internal skeptic and the crush those nasty voices from the past into tiny smithereens.

The point of this post was to be an examination of my tendency to drop a lot of balls when I'm in transition, at least until I get used to handling the big shiny new one that has bounced into my life. But I've got 29 more chances to do that this month.

If you've made it this far, thanks for hanging in. I'm a little rusty here.

Triumphant Return

2009-03-30T16:10:00.001-06:00

It's coming! Today I took the oath:

A Message from Your Loyal Readership

2009-03-21T13:28:00.001-06:00

WE ARE THE GREMLINS WHO DEMAND MORE SHE SELLS SEA SHELLS! DON'T UPSET THE GREMLINS! OR WE WILL SEND THIS FELLOW:

My Achy, Breakin' Heart

2009-02-23T11:35:00.003-07:00

We are back from a wonderful vacation, and today is the first day on the job with SullivanWelty LLC.

I will blog about both later, but for now I wanted to take note of another momentous occasion: today is Oliver's first official day in Preschool. For the occasion, he dressed himself in swishy sweatpants (the ones I consider his "breakdancing pants") a cowboy hat, and his new cowboy boots.

I plan to force him to reprise this outfit on his last day of high school.

Come Alive

2009-02-14T21:48:00.008-07:00

What is the first thing you should do upon trading your comfortable, salaried job for self-employment during the worst recession of modern times?

Go on vacation, of course!

For the next week, we will be changing the diapers in Todos Santos, Mexico. We're traveling with the only kinds of friends with whom we dare travel at this stage of life - other parents of small children. The house looks heavenly, which is nice, because in order to reach it we are going to go through hell.

This punctuation to my years of steady employment feels fitting, in all respects except the pocketbook. Yesterday, after finishing my last day on the job, I stopped at the tea house near our house. (Is it awful to admit that I do this frequently in order to squeeze every last minute out of the nanny?) From time to time, the tea house features the work of local artists. This is currently hanging over the cream and sugar:

It quotes a guy named Howard Thurman, doing his own spin on JFK:

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

The directions tell you to grab a piece of paper and jot down whatever makes YOU come alive, and pin it to the board:

From there it is simple: go out and come alive, because coming alive is contagious.

I'm pretty sure I am in the midst of coming alive, and as long as it doesn't come at my family's expense, it feels pretty damn exhilarating.

So, I'm curious - what makes YOU come alive?

Embark

2009-02-13T17:30:00.007-07:00

Agnes de Mille said "No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently."

That was before the Internet.

How much of our destiny is tied up in this decision is yet unknown. But with the mulberry tree* as our talisman, we're harnessing our legal forces for the greater good. We're bound by the belief that there is nobility in this profession, and room for working mothers.

We begin.

*THE MULBERRY TREE: is a symbol of wisdom, and associated with the goddesses Minerva / Athena. The mulberry puts out no growth whatsoever until all danger of frosts are past, then it works so swiftly that all the buds may appear almost overnight - causing Pliny to deem the tree both prudent and patient. It is also an extraordinary truth that one single tree may put out leaves of varying shapes; and the trees reach a great age if cultivated with a little care, as they can easily be rejuvenated with good pruning. (We hope the same can be said for us.)
- thanks to the source of this info

Happy Birthday, Beautiful Boy

2009-02-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

Today, like every day that you have been with us, is truly our lucky day.

Out Loud

2009-02-12T17:19:00.008-07:00

Blogging really is a universe unto itself. Where else can you knock about the world, reading strangers' diaries and looking inside their purses in total anonymity? Every once in awhile, though, someone breaks the silence.

Barb of what happened in between wrote a really nice thing about She Sells today.

For reasons that will become clear tomorrow at 5:30, I've been at odds with myself this week. A change is coming and it makes me feel, well, like breaking loose with a little hooptedoodle. I am nervous and sweaty but also possessed of surprising conviction that everything is going to be all right. And Barb's post somehow confirmed that. It was like the universe telling me to relax, because I am right where I'm supposed to be. Otherwise how would someone so in tune have found this little patch of internet?

So thank you, Barb, for speaking up. This is harmony.

thoughts that count

2009-02-11T22:35:00.008-07:00

Do you know what it is to be blindsided by kindness? To realize, with surprise, that you are considered by someone far away, or appreciated by someone close by? Or to be reminded of a sentiment perfectly expressed, that sustained you in an hour of shattering need?

I have. All in the last 24 hours. And it makes my heart feel full.

A friend an ocean and almost two decades away sent me a link to a post that spoke directly to me. How did he know?

A coworker whose opinion has come to matter greatly said some things that truly mattered. He was watching?

And last night, while sifting through the shards of the worst period of my life, I came across a note. It was from a longtime friend, the very thought of whom reminds me of singing. The note contained a single word:

persevere.

From time to time, people make proclamations to one another: tear-soaked, over wine or before a congregation. And those grand displays of feeling highlight life's super-sized moments. But it is the understated expression of empathy that binds one soul to another. The unexpected remark that whips you from the mundane and wraps you in its arms for a moment, whispering quietly: you count.

And that alone is reason to persevere.

Tell Me the Way to Castle Yonder

2009-02-07T09:33:00.007-07:00

In 1967, children's book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak wrote a book about his recently-departed dog, a Sealyham terrier named Jennie. The book, "Higglety, Pigglety, Pop! or There Must be More to Life" sat on my bookshelf throughout my childhood.

It is a slightly dark tale about a dog named Jennie, who has everything, including "a master who loved her." Nevertheless, she packs her black bag with the gold buckles and prepares to leave. Why? asks the plant she is eating.

Because, said Jennie, snapping off the stem and blossom, I am discontented. I want something I do not have. There must be more to life than having everything!

Jennie sets off on an adventure, eventually making her way to an elusive place called Castle Yonder. A few years ago, I noticed the book had been inscribed.

It was February 1968. My mom was living in San Francisco, and her friend Marty was preparing to leave for a life in Australia.

Dear Chloe,

Xantha gave me this book for Christmas, as I was about to "pack my black leather bag with gold buckles" for Australia. In reading the book, I thought "Why, this is me."

Convinced, as I am, that you are Jennie too, I wish to say that sometime, somewhere when we meet again, the place will be "Castle Yonder."

With love,
Marty

I've always felt guilty for running off and leaving home, leaving my mother behind. But in reading this book to the boys last night, I realized again what kindred spirits we were. Two generations of "Jennies", who at some point followed the impulse to pack our black leather bags with the gold buckles and head out to see the world. I can only hope we will one day reconvene at Castle Yonder.

solitary figure

2009-02-04T12:30:00.001-07:00

It had been a busy week.

A week that met the new definition of "relaxing" - chasing runaways and wiping noses in beautiful surroundings, while drinking vats of coffee. And wine.

The indicia of vacation - books, stationary, board games - had been packed away, together with gifts exchanged. In our inexorable fashion, every inch of the place was wiped clean, in advance of the caretaker's arrival. Cars were idling and I had run in for one last sweep, grabbing the sunglasses I almost forget everywhere.

It was the only time I had been alone all week, or at least it felt that way. And that's when I saw her.

A figure strolling on the beach below. Hands behind her back, wearing a navy blue jacket and beige pants and a knit hat. She was tall and shaped like my mother. And she strolled the way my mother did, head down, scanning the rocky shore for seashells.

There are jars of seashells in our basement.

It came back in one wave of intimate familiarity: her voice, her laugh, the skin on her hands. The way she listened. The way she heard.

These things fade with time. These lost things, once the contours of our world, are now part of a place that we miss very much but don't inhabit anymore. Their absence settled over us like a fog. And after a time, the unthinkable happened: we got used to it. But even though her ship is very far out to sea, it only takes a fleeting recognition to bridge the distance.

A figure in a crowd, in the grocery store, on a beach. That's what we're missing. Not the sweater she wore on weekends, or the dog-walking shoes that fit my feet too, but the body that inhabited them. And when a physical being puts me face-to-face with her apparition, it is jarring. It is startling to see something so familiar, so long loved. And you know what? I live for those moments. I love to be reminded of what it felt like when she was alive. Even for an instant.

And an instant was all it was. I watched her watching the waves, and then turned to go. As we pulled out of the driveway, I had the unsettling feeling that we were leaving something of ours behind. I guess we always are.

Welcome, Solomon!

2009-02-03T15:09:00.001-07:00

Our hip, smart, and well-traveled friends in Chicago have added a male-child to the mix. Welcome to the world, Solomon! If you've got any questions, just ask Mabel.

in which I develop a girl crush but ultimately fall harder for my husband

2009-02-01T21:34:00.011-07:00

Hello there! Welcome to my blog post.

What's that you say?
Oh, I have some green things on my teeth?
Still? 'cause I tried to erase them with iPhoto.
Anyway, thanks for telling me. As you can see, no one else at last night's party saw fit to do so.

Postscript:

The waiting ended. Ruby's exit could not have been more peaceful. If you face the same situation, do yourself a favor and look into in-home options. The wonderful people at Broadway Animal Hospital offer it as an alternative to euthanasia at the clinic. It made a convulsively sad situation bearable, knowing she was not afraid and did not suffer. She just ate a hot dog and went to sleep.

As Oliver said the next morning, "We miss Ruby today."
And we do.

On a lighter note:

Doesn't this box make you wonder what it does, in fact, contain?

Video Segment:

I read an article recently about people who become famous after making a name for themselves on You Tube.

I hope that is what is happening to this girl:

If I could come back as someone, she'd be it.
(do watch it all the way through, ESPECIALLY if you've ever wondered what a damien rice/vanilla ice medley would sound like.)

In praise:

I married me a handyman.

Here he is, making the stained glass windows that will go into the downstairs bathroom.

Doctor by day, general contractor and resident artist by night. As my hairstylist said today, I married a good one.
And I did.

Waiting

2009-01-26T13:51:00.006-07:00

. . . for the vet to arrive. He will be here soon.

I did a lot of research this weekend about how to determine when it is time to put your sick animal out of her misery. The responses ran the gamut from "when she is having a lot of bad days" to "only after you have put her on oxygen and inserted a feeding tube down her throat." The single piece of wisdom that was most-repeated, and most sensible, was "when she is no longer enjoying life."

Last night, she looked at me with eyes that said "now I am just surviving." She still thumps her tail when one of us enters the room, and she ate a hot dog today, but do we really want to wait until she no longer does anything that reminds us of her? One of the difficult but comforting aspects of pet guardianship is the ability to make this decision. We have reached the point where she has wrung what she can from this life, and we have the option of ending it in the twilight. While we can still see her.

The rational adult in me is sitting here, sipping my latte and stroking her head, knowing we are doing the right thing. But the . . . other part of me is inconsolable. I remember these skinny legs running full-throttle down a path after my call, chasing prairie dogs, and sleeping on our bed. It may be time, but that doesn't make it easy to let her go.

Excavation

2009-01-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a short story. I think it sort of stinks. "Workmanlike" is the adjective that comes to mind over and over while I'm writing it. But I have this story in my head and I am bound and determined to get it on paper. It's only the first draft, and I am hoping that during the rewrite I'll be able to make it feel less clunky. I feel like I'm stirring the batter, and if I try to make it into pretty shapes and dress it up with sprinkles too soon, I'll end up with an inedible mess. When it comes to creating, I'm not very patient with the first steps: cutting out patterns, collecting ingredients, casting on. I have to keep the finished product in my head to keep me inspired. And since I'm relatively new to actual creative writing, it's hard for me to get a visual on what it will look like when I'm done. There is no dough to taste, no small section of scarf to drape across my shoulder, no pinned-together piece to model before the mirror. There is just a bunch of words, which may or may not be compelling to anyone besides myself. I can see their trajectory and have a sincere belief that a better storyteller could work wonders with this idea, but I'm not entirely certain that I have the tools to refine it well enough. I'll stop before I start talking about "voice" and "character development" and stuff that I've heard of but don't really understand.

When it comes to writing, one thing that does inspire me is the Boulder Book Store. First of all, there are all those books! Shelf after shelf after three floors of shelves, crammed full with the work product of countless authors. Mainly, though, it is the ballroom upstairs, where I want to pitch a tent and spend every afternoon from about 2 until 5. It is cavernous. It is full of literature, some very familiar, much unknown. It has endless little corners with benches where you can read in the quiet and perfectly filtered sunlight. It is straight from a storybook, and it is my happy place.

Yesterday, on a whim (an inexpensive whim, Miles), I bought a little book by Anna Quindlen called "Being Perfect." It is in the fashion of "A Short Guide to a Happy Life", which my mom gave me years ago. My copy of that book is now stuffed with inspirational emails and articles, and the pages after her inscription ("I hope you like this little book") have been turned and turned and turned again, usually in times of stress or sadness. If a book can be a security blanket, that is mine.

"A Short Guide" is a contemplation on perspective, on not taking things for granted. "Being Perfect" is written in a similar style, but it is about the life you can miss while you are striving for perfection.

Someday, sometime, you will be sitting somewhere. A berm overlooking a pond in Vermont. The lip of the Grand Canyon at sunset. A seat on the subway. And something bad will have happened: You will have lost someone you loved, or failed at something at which you badly wanted to succeed.
And sitting there, you will fall into the center of yourself. You will look for some core to sustain you. And if you have been perfect all your life and have managed to meet all the expectations of your family, your friends, your community, your society, chances are excellent that there will be a black hole where that core ought to be.

This passage in particular resonated with me. Events in your life can indeed cause you to fall into the center of yourself. It happens, and it can make you feel like a crazy person sometimes. It doesn't have to be a sad event necessarily, though grief awakens things deep within you whereas joyous events like love and birth cause you to reach outside of yourself, to expand yourself in ways you never thought possible. But when you are stripped of something you needed to survive and have to search yourself for the grit to carry on, you can excavate your true self in the process.

Anyway, I nodded when I read this quote, at least until I got to the "black hole" part. Maybe I'm naive, but I think that anyone can find their core, no matter how deeply it is buried. It will just take some longer than others.

This day, these words

2009-01-20T11:03:00.005-07:00

What a time for living.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

President Barack Hussein Obama, January 20, 2009

Probable Shrinkage

2009-01-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

There are times when I wish to holy hell that my D40 was smaller so I could tote it around with me and capture "Boulder Moments" like this one. You can't get the full flavor from this far-away image, but the man across the street was shirtless and wearing surfing shorts that hang halfway down his backside, and no discernible underwear. This was taken at about 8 am outside of my office, when, my friends, it was cold. Damn cold. So cold that it took me a moment to process him, especially since he was walking jauntily down the street with the mailman, displaying his pecs and not a little bit of crack, while deeply engrossed in conversation. It was like a "before, after" warning for postal service professionals. The mailman got down to business while I was scrambling for my iPhone, so I couldn't capture the full effect. But what an effect it was.

Mighty 200

2009-01-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

This is my two hundredth post to this blog. I'd better make it good.

I've been painting my home office lately. I call it "my" home office instead of "ours" because, despite his plans for sharing, it is inevitable that all my crap is going to crowd out Miles' few meager desk accessories. He seems resigned to this, and hasn't even voiced an opinion on the color. It's just white and cream; I'm going for a serene and clean feeling.

"Serene and clean" as opposed to the melee that has lately broken out in my mind. Painting does the same thing to my head as swimming: causes it to circle repeatedly around one drainpipe of a thought until it drives me crazy, at which point my head goes blank and I come to later wondering what I've been doing for the last hour. Today's thoughts revolved (and revolved and revolved) around the annoying phrase "what color is your parachute?"

Specifically, why I've never seriously considered this question before. One would think that before signing up for six-figure debt, I would have taken some personality tests, done some soul-searching, seriously considered whether, one day, I would actually want . . . to . . . be . . . a . . . lawyer.

But interest and job satisfaction didn't enter into the equation, not really. My parents encouraged me, I rocked the LSAT, and I had a vague sense that there were all sorts of different jobs my JD would qualify me for. I didn't realize that the debt I'd swallowed to get the JD would single-handedly disqualify me from most of the interesting ones.

I don't regret the years I spent working my way up the ladder at my old law firm. That experience introduced me to smart and interesting people, provided me real intellectual stimulation, and toughened me up. My creamy nougat center needed a harder shell. But (enter inevitable reference to death of mother) when my mom died, I lost something I needed to keep me on the track I was on. I lost the ability to take things for granted.

Before she died, there were all sorts of things I would do "one day" - have children, spend more time with her, pursue writing, etc. It shouldn't have taken her death to make me realize I might be procrastinating too many important things. But it did.

Oddly, though, I now feel unable to take ANYTHING for granted. My health, that of my family, the sun and the moon and the stars above - I'm suddenly, keenly aware that it could all be taken away tomorrow. And that makes it very hard to do anything except live in the moment. Which in turn makes it nearly impossible to continue on doing something that I don't feel good about.

Before it was discontinued, I used to get inspiration from the New York Times' Shifting Careers blog, authored by Marci Alboher. Marci is a former lawyer who recreated herself as an author/journalist/speaker (and wrote a book about "slash" careers, which I vow to read one day.) Her blog gave me the courage to leave the law firm and try something different.

Through Marci's blog, I recently discovered JDSnub, a website "to inform and inspire law students and lawyers seeking alternative careers." I don't know if I should be depressed or excited that so many people find themselves in the same boat as me. But I do readily identify with the blog author's tagline: "I'm a writer trapped inside a lawyer's life." I might not be a very good one, but lately I feel so compelled to give writing a try. It's just my luck that this is possibly the worst moment in history to do so. Nevertheless, I feel the weight of some invisible hand pushing me in that direction. Stay tuned . . .

Non-noteworthy, you know?

2009-01-12T08:09:00.002-07:00

I start feeling a little twitchy if too much time goes by between posts. I'm not sure why, except that writing here makes me feel rooted, connected to some part of me that might otherwise be overlooked in all the hubub. If nothing else, it shows that I was here, and that periodically, I Took Stock. I can't stop the sands but I can describe the lay of the land, here in the bottom of the hourglass. Or is this the top? You get the picture.

It's curious to me that on days like today, when I stare at the screen and can think of positively nothing noteworthy to say, I can say something anyway. A testament to my ability to blather on, I suppose.

It started snowing early this morning, sometime between the hour the milkman delivered our three quarts and time the paper boy made his haphazard toss in the general direction of our house (it's like a treasure hunt most mornings). A heavy, wet, sudden blanketing that hasn't seemed to affect traffic but has kept my regular coffeeshop surprisingly empty. Which makes me slightly lonely. I guess I like the hubub.

***

I read an article yesterday that has prompted me to think about personal tics and what you might unwittingly be revealing to the world about your deepest insecurities. I guess it goes without saying that if you put yourself on the political stage, your every move is subject to critique and evaluation. Yesterday I read an article analyzing use of the phrase "you know" by Hillary Clinton and Caroline Kennedy. In one Clinton speech, she used the phrase something like 88 times in the context of describing her husband's pardons. The author theorized that her usage was an effort to make herself seem like "just folks", one of the masses. Kennedy, on the other hand, recently used the phrase on the order of 130 times during one interview. That, the author concluded, is the result of her lack of polish and fears that she is not qualified for the Senate job. Maybe the author is correct, but it seems like an odd coincidence - the politician believed to be ruthlessly confident is using the phrase for schmarmy ends, while the new politician questioned for her qualifications is using the phrase as a crutch. At the end of the day, don't people just diagnose others with conditions they believe to be consistent with their preexisting impressions?

I am going to spend some time today analyzing my quirks and figuring out how they can be spun to reveal secret wisdom, strength and prowess. For example, my misuse of the word "like" is not because I came of age in the 80's and lacked discipline in my grammar studies, but is rather an intentional effort to make others feel at ease by not using language that is too perfectly polished. You can see where I'm going with this.

Fri(en)day: Ruby

2009-01-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

Before she becomes a sweet memory, a tribute to our faithful friend Ruby.

A month after our wedding, we took the predictable step of adopting a dog.

They told us she was 7.5 years old when we met her at the pound. A bit overweight, but sweet, playful, and obedient. She knew how to sit, she liked to play ball, and when it was quiet she would lie down and put her head flat on the ground, watching us sign the paperwork to make her ours.

We brought her home, took her for walks and then runs, and watched the pounds melt away. Our own Benjamin Button, her newly athletic frame convinced us she could only be 6. She was the categorical “first child” who went to the expensive doggy day care with the online camera, so we could keep tabs on her during the workday or while on vacation. She joined us for errands, shared in our meals, and cycled through a number of expensive dogbeds before we agreed she could sleep with us.

She fully embraced her home security duties, providing me company and protection on nights when Miles was on call. She has understanding eyes and a ready kiss, and was my own nursemaid through loss and gain.

She welcomed the additions to her pack with the joy of a mother. Upon introduction to the newborn burritos, she gently licked each of their fuzzy round heads. She carefully guarded the smallest members of the herd, softly growling when strangers approached our outdoor café table. In turn the boys have treated her like an older sister and a jungle gym, pulling and tugging and crawling all over her. She has never protested, not once.

In the last years of her life, she even reached an uneasy détente with the cat. I’ve seen them touch noses after one or the other has been outside. Despite their sometimes confrontations, I am certain Isabelle will look for her friend once she is gone.

We haven’t been as good to her in the last two years as we would have liked. But we will now nurse her through her illness with all the love of family. And when it is time, we will do her the final kindness of ending things before they get out of hand. It will be done in the soft surroundings of her home, in the care of her faithful friends. She has been a perfect companion and a true love.

If It Kills Me

2009-01-07T04:53:00.006-07:00

2009 is getting off to a somewhat rocky start. While we were away, Ruby's health took a nosedive and by the time we returned she seemed to have aged 5 years (in dog years . . so she went from being, like, a girl in the throes of midlife to an elderly, feeble old lady). She is scheduled for an ultrasound today, but we fear she could be at the end of the road. This has made for a lot of attention being poured on her each night, something I am ashamed to say is a new thing for the boys. As every young parent knows, the animals get the short shrift when the kids show up. And the boys are so willing to lavish the love on her! Oliver is full of heartbreaking observations like "We take Ruby to the doctor and she get better and then she come home!" - and the one that sent me out of the room - "We love Ruby all day long and she will feel better!"

Add this to the withdrawal symptoms I exhibit (depression, despair) whenever we return from a prolonged holiday with my family, some major professional challenges, and continuing home improvement snafus, and it hasn't exactly been a banner year . . . yet. So we've adopted a new theme song for some much-needed rallying: This Year by the Mountain Goats. And though I don't know anything about this Kathy, I am clinging fiercely to the notion that there are indeed good things ahead.

I am gonna make it. Through this year. If it kills me.

The Edge of the Continent, at the Edge of the Year

2009-01-01T20:56:00.005-07:00

We are holed up in a beach house on the Oregon coast to ring in the new year. My family is here: my brother Will, who makes it his conscious objective to help us all enjoy the best of everything, especially coffee, beer, and wine. His wife, Kate, whose presence fills a giant hole in the sands of our family that shifted so drastically three years ago. My brother Dan, whom despite a wild travel schedule (he touched both oceans on Monday!) remains the binding agent. My dad, whom we all rally around, even (especially?) now. And my own little flock, the smallest of which spent the last day of the year enjoying the entitlements of boyhood, including jumping in puddles and stuffing their pockets with rocks. It was a long day, the kind that allows you to indulge in fantasies of togetherness, to dream up tree-lined streets where your children play with their cousins, while you spend Sunday mornings sipping coffee with your entire family on someone's screened-in porch. I'm not ready to leave.

Sidekick

2008-12-24T10:55:00.003-07:00

This is our Ruby, lounging in my office today.

If you have to be at work on Christmas Eve, it's awfully nice to be able to bring your dog along with you. I'm going to send her out to the shops shortly.

Oh Tannenbaum

2008-12-23T08:39:00.007-07:00

What a difference a tree makes. After very nearly skipping the tree this year, we finally trekked out to a farm east of Boulder on Saturday and picked up a little potted pine. And I am so pleased. Our new yard is large and woefully unforested, and we will plant this beauty in the spring. As long as it survives the winter, that is.

I suppose we will get around to decorating it tomorrow evening. I like the idea of adding tree decorating to our little solstice observance, but we missed the mark this year. I blame a sore wrist. But really, I find the undecorated tree calming. Isn't it amazing how live green things can do that? Its thirsty body would get dried out living indoors all year (note the heat vent on the floor right next to it), but I would otherwise be happy to give up some valuable real estate in our living room to keep a piece of the forest inside.

The tree is also a reminder that Christmas Eve is . . . tomorrow, and I am nowhere near ready. I wish I had taken a picture of this room at midnight last night. It was strewn with fabric, scissors, and wrapping paper. It's going to take another long night to complete the projects that are underway.

My friend Lori and I got our families together for an early celebration two weeks ago. This was nice, as I felt I had the luxury of time, and used a lot of it in crafting these bags for her girls. I got the idea from Tiny Happy (she has the best ideas!) She called them "foraging bags" and I love the idea of giving children a big bag to use for collecting treasures found outside. For the exterior, I used a sturdy upholstery fabric I found at my new favorite thrift shop - it is located across the street from a fabric store, and they sell leftover pieces at incredible prices. The lining is fabric I purchased from one of my favorite Etsy sellers, sweetflavor. And the buttons are from the hamper we bought before Oliver was born that has slowly come unraveled under the weight of two boys' clothes. I was happy with the results:

Naturally, the girls wanted to know what was in the bags! But Lori assures me that they love their purses. They are little girls, after all!

Scarred for Life

2008-12-21T09:44:00.008-07:00

I've always felt conflicted by solstices, especially winter. On the one hand, it's the shortest day of the year. Darkness wins out over daylight. The sun couldn't be father away. On the other, the days will now get longer. We've got to walk the gauntlet of Winter, but we're on a course set to Spring.

I considered it appropriate that my mom's birthday fell on December 21st. She was a person worthy of having a birthday on such a magical date. Today would have been her 70th.

But now the 21st of the month is riddled with bulletholes, as death dates always are. And not just November, the month of her death. My family mourns and remembers every time the calendar flips to 21, our own personal Ides.

And, like Caesar in the days approaching March 15th, the approach of the 21st puts me on guard. I see would-be assassins everywhere as I recall the killer that lived in our house in 2005. I cry easier and keep myself busier to avoid too much time to think. But a curious thing happens as the date approaches in December.

If you've seen the movie Cars so many times you can mouth the words, as I have (so much for our "no TV" household), you're familiar with the racing scene at the end. "Light Queen", as the boys call him, is racing for the crown after a life-changing experience in the desert town of Radiator Springs. As he bears down on the road, focused on the obstacles that stand between him and the title, his concentration is unexpectedly broken by thoughts of a casual drive down a pleasant forest road with a beautiful ~~lady~~ Porsche. Despite his best efforts to focus on the nitty-gritty task at hand, he repeatedly escapes to this idyllic drive with a ~~woman~~ car he loves.

I never thought I'd say this, but I know just how McQueen feels. As I race through my days in late December, focused on the details of our daily life, my mind plays tricks on me. One minute I'm simultaneously dusting a stack of unread periodicals and refereeing a fight, the next I am sitting on mom's brick red couch with my legs tucked under me, reading a book while she cooks dinner in the next room. One minute I am maneuvering a gigantic fire truck cart down the cereal aisle, the next I am lingering over the cheese section at Miles Farmer's Market, strategizing with my mom about how to slyly replace my very thrifty father's colony of moldy cheeses with fresh. Now I am listening to the plastic toy that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" ad nauseum, now I am at Severance Hall with my parents, listening to the Cleveland Orchestra. For some reason, I'm always sitting behind them in that mental construct, looking at the back of their heads. Anyway.

So it was this month, as the days ticked by towards her third birthday since we lost her. I find myself weepy and sad, but also periodically spellbound by some memory of a small moment together. Not from the months of her illness; those memories are always close at hand. Though I cherish that time, it was painful and wretched and purely bittersweet. Instead I recall little fluttering instants when we were ourselves before cancer. Those golden moments when we still had possibility at our disposal. Trees rustling overhead as we walk together making plans. "Let's take a trip together to San Francisco, just you and me." "Let's make that horseradish cranberry sauce again at Thanksgiving this year." "I'm going to live near you when I have kids."

The world, we know, keeps right on spinning when you lose someone dear. If you're lucky, you get a few weeks to recalibrate your equilibrium. But sooner rather than later, you are expected to fall back in line and give make-believe answers to questions about how you are coping. Three years down the road, your grief is something of an embarrassment, best reserved for prolonged moments in the car or shower. I don't mind society's lack of patience for the long wallow. I am myself impatient with too much self-absorption and self-pity, at least when it interferes with your daily life. But I do allow for my continued grief to seep into my relationships and activities. It is as much a part of me now as the fact that I once had a mother. And for that reason, I did something a little radical yesterday. Radical for me, anyway. I did this:

For a permanent mark, it was a very spur-of-the-moment decision. One minute I'm working in a coffee shop, the next I am googling "tattoo parlors Boulder". The first one that came up was called "Scarred for Life." Perfect, I thought. That is exactly the point. They were able to get me in within twenty minutes.

I can't say it is a tribute that my mother would have appreciated. Horrified might be too strong a word, but she would have been seriously confounded. And in a strange way, this is why I wanted it. Before she died, I never would have gotten a tattoo. Aside from the fact that I just wasn't that into anything that I'd choose to emblazon on my body, I wouldn't have done something she would have disapproved of. And now there will never be any person whose opinion of me matters so mightily in my conscience. Of course I care what Miles thinks of me, and my other family and friends, but she was the person I was living up to. Everything changed when she went.

As a character in the novel "As a Friend" by Forrest Gander puts it, “It seemed all of a sudden like a wind had slacked off and I was left leaning off-balance in a world something considerable had passed through.”

Tomorrow the day will be a little bit longer, and longer after that. We will celebrate the addition of daylight, even as we mourn the onslaught of winter. And I will walk around with my 21, an outward symbol of my altered state. Not all bad, not all good. A bit off-balance. And though my mind sometimes pretends otherwise, always undeniable.

Pigeons

2008-12-18T22:14:00.002-07:00

One of my flock emailed this to me today. It's like she read my mind (or my blog). It is a reading by Kelly Corrigan, whom I've somehow not heard of until now. Do not watch this at work, but do watch it, preferably with tissues at hand. A most moving tribute to the power of friendship.

If you are reading this and you are a friend, thank you for being part of the fabric of my life. In her last letter to me, my mom wrote that she knew I would lean on my strong support network. I have, I do, and I will. Thank you for bearing the weight. I hope to never have to repay the favor, but when the time comes, consider me a fellow pigeon.

Frozen/Toasty

2008-12-18T00:23:00.003-07:00

I took this photo Monday, when we were knee-deep in a cold snap. A come-from-behind, sneak attack of a cold front that rolled in overnight on Saturday. We went to bed after a sunny, drippy, springlike thaw and rose to a deep freeze of midwinter. And it hasn't officially begun.

It was the kind of cold that prompts me to don my boots twenty minutes before leaving time to warm up the car. Yes, I know it's not the greenest of habits, but small children allow you to rationalize concessions to your every weakness. Mine involve hating the cold and loving chocolate chips. Once we're in the toasty car, I repeat a mantra to no one in particular (at least, no one who is listening): "isn't the car warm and cozy?"

It was the kind of cold that causes me to worry incessantly about homeless people and animals.

It was the kind of cold that brings out the heaviest hand creams and the thickest hats. Wool sweaters that haven't seen the light of day since last March are shaken out and put within easy reach. Coming home at night feels like entering a warm lair that I don't want to emerge from, ever.

The relative warm spell that followed hasn't melted the snow, but it has made it easier to move around outside without feeling my blood freezing in my veins. We're in for another chilly blast this weekend, a prediction that has me stocking up on chocolate chips in anticipation of a housebound weekend of baking. It's the kind of cycle that I will be thoroughly tired of by mid-February, but for now, there is something so delicious about snuggling in with my family in the chilly days before Christmas.

And there is something else about the cold. However messy or imperfect the details of your life, an unbearable chill strips things down to their essence. Your renovation project is progressing slower than hoped? At least you've got a warm place to call home. Your handmade gifts aren't turning out as you'd envisioned? At least you have family and friends who will love them nonetheless (and maybe even more). Your job keeps you away from your children longer than you wish? At least you are able to provide for them.

Happiness, gratitude, self-fulfillment: it's all a matter of perspective. Yesterday, I had a horrible morning with the boys. Both were crying intermittently while I hastily cleaned up the dog pee from the welcome mat my mother made by hand. Bending over, madly scrubbing the irreplaceable against a backdrop of wails, I quietly joined the bedlam. I inhaled ammonia as I swallowed my wracking sobs, induced by the one thought that runs an infinite loop in my mind's playlist: "I need my mother." I pulled it together and got through the day, hollow and heartsick inside. That evening, though, my tireless and generous husband pushed me out the door for a few hours with friends. And what a relief it was.

I get by. With some help.

And maybe it can't come from my mother. But it comes. From my friends. From my family. From my husband with a soul that is larger than life. And from my children, whose morning cries are like a chorus of angels in this cold and sometimes callous season. Sheltering them is my greatest challenge and my highest calling. So bring on the weather, you wild world: we will keep the home fires burning.