Mayhem in Six Minutes, or Before You Pick Up That Glow Stick

We were driving home from my youngest's soccer game on Sunday, when NPR's This American Life had us all shushing each other to catch the story that Ira Glass introduced with, "... when things go wrong. Really wrong. When you leave the normal realm of human error, fumble, mishap, and mistake and enter the territory of really huge breakdowns. Fiascos. Things go so awry that normal social order collapses. This week's show is a philosophical inquiry in the nature of fiascos —  when something simple and small turns horribly large."

Hooked, line and sinker, into the stories, we didn't go straight home but instead drove around so that we could hear the things we knew we would relate to so well. The fiasco, when in the snap of a finger, things go out of control and all moments become ones of no sense.

Halfway through the 60-minute show, I turned the radio volume down and shaking my head, I asked, "Do you all remember our fiasco??"

Today's theme: Fiasco.

It had been a quiet evening home, not a sound in the house, I was on the computer and my oldest, Alec, was on the sofa reading. The youngest, Auggie, was upstairs with the middle boy, Xavier; I assumed playing video games.

In the middle of this peace, I hear a shriek, then guttural cries, then screaming of OH MY GOD! Tripping over my chair, visual images flashed before my eyes of broken glass, even though I didn't hear anything shatter. Glass glass glass is all I can imagine -- one of my boys falling through the glass shower door. What else could it be? My oldest was pushing me out of the way to get ahead of me, shouting as he hurled over the steps, "We had a paramedic come in once last year in junior year! I know what to do!" Meant to make me feel better, I'm sure. But the scene we had here was our legs moving as slow as molasses while we heard two boys primally shrieking in the bathroom that had lots of glass shower doors all the way around. And the back of the second floor never seemed so far away.

With both of us pushing the bathroom door open so hard it hit the shower door, my oldest and I see the littlest on the floor, curled up while crying out insanely, covering both his eyes like he's just gotten his hands on a 1959 Home Science Kit where things had gone horribly wrong with sodium sulfate. The middle boy is shouting and hopping like the floor is on fire, his wild eyes tell me he's detaching from reality. I'm shouting above the din, "What the hell happened! Someone tell me what the hell happened!" But no one can answer... it's all, madness.

Fits the criteria for fiasco so far.

Answering my question would have helped so much at this time, but there is only wailing and spasms and more rolling on the floor. My mind is racing as I check the horrible possibilities. Did he drink mouthwash? Did he think it would be fun to spritz my Guess perfume into his  mouth? Did my middle boy lose his temper and hurt the little one? Did they hurt each other. But there are no answers, just sounds like an injured coyote.

I grab the middlest and through gritted teeth command TELL ME WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED! He answers me with I don't knows I don't knows. I keep shaking his shoulders, he keeps giving me more I don't knows.

It's clear now, Fiasco, and we are in the thick of it.

The oldest boy's voice suddenly grows 50 octaves deeper and pierces the wails, TELL MOM YOU GUYS! and adds the first ever heard to my ears from him, swear words. He's been spending some time with the masters, that much is clear. But despite the swears, no one snaps into shape. There's just more out of body cries, screams. The level of pandemonium and freakedoutness cannot be imagined. There are bodies tripping over each other and legs sticking up in the air and so much yelling. I am starting to see dark spots before my eyes like you see right before you pass out from hyperventilating. Oh my God. FIASCO.

The only action I can think to take is threat level orange (no sense, I know) "If you don't tell me what happened I'll call 911!"

Even louder screaming erupts, but I need clarification, damnit. I demand from middlest, "Did you hit him? And why are you screaming? Did you both touch electricity with wet hands?" (don't ask, I didn't know what my brain was sending out of my mouth at this time.)

Finally, littlest screeches between slobbery gasps, "I crack-opened a glow stick! And now I'm blind! I'm blind with pain and squishing my eyes so tight from THE PAIN!"

The room starts to spin, "YOU'RE BLIND?? You mean you really can't see?? OH MY GOD!!"

I turn to middlest, "Why are you screaming? Are you blind, too? Did you both get juice on you? How many are hurt? Where did the rest of the juice go??" because the first rule of a Fiasco situation is that all victims are accounted for.

He answers, "I'm screaming because there's microscopic GLASS crystals in there and he's blind! That's how they work, right? The crystals are glass and they glow and OH MY GOD it EXPLODED in his eyes!"

What? Glass? What? Did they say glass? SHIT. I knew it, Glass, I saw it in my visions! Then, more frightening shrieks from littlest, "Is it going to seep behind my eyes -- the glass liquid juice -- will the glass cut my brain?? Noooooooooooooo!"

Full on and out of control twilight zone fiasco. Screaming, fear of blindness, claims of impending death due to pain F.I.A.S.C.O. Along with hints of glass shards. GLASS.

Reality of what's happening starts to unfold in my mind, I need to get busy. I push youngest into the shower over everyone's body parts and I corral him under the water, shouting "Keep your eyes wide open and stare into that shower head and rinse it all out. RINSE ALL THE GLOW STUFF OUT! Just like in Clockwork Orange!"

"Like what, mom?"

"Never mind. Shit. Alec, you stay with him, Xavier, you tell me what happened! Auggie, stay in that shower!"

Xavier stammers out, "We were in here where it's dark so we could see the glow necklace and h-h-h-h-he snapped it like you're supposed to to activate it but it opened and..."

"And the glop shot straight to my EYES!" I hear littlest from inside the decontamination unit. "Like it was AIMING for my eyes -- AIMING! *gurglegurgle* and I didn't even have my hands near my face to shield my eyes and the juice shot straight to my EYES! Am I going to be blind? I don't want to be blind! I don't want to be blind, mama!,'' his little boy water filled cries echo in the stall and break my heart.

I fly down the stairs and start banging at the computer. I don't know what to google first.

• "Death by glow juice."
• "Blindness by glow juice."
• "Is glow juice dangerous."
• "What to do with glow juice explosion."

I frantically settle on the ugliest: "Will my baby be blind."

My fingers are tripping over each other on the keyboard. Yahoo! has an entire page of "Help! Glow Juice in eyes!" As I start skimming through the entries, I slowly start breathing again. They all gloriously say the same thing: "Hurts like a mofo, stings, but no death." "Happened to me at a Rave. No blindness, dood." "You'll be all right. Just sucks, especially if you're high."

I head back upstairs with the good news, still wobbly legged, but able to breathe, finally. "He's okay!," I manage to eke out. "You're okay, honey!"

Only then do I begin to hear my oldest son's voice booming above the pounding of the shower water, "MOM! I said, STOP. GOOGLING. I know so many kids that have gotten glow juice in their eyes at parties and dances. It's safe. He won't be blind. MOM!"

"What? Why didn't you tell me?" I'm in the bathroom now and begin yelling again.

"Secrets. And anyway I was shouting but you wouldn't listen! I said OMG STOP GOOGLING MOM. I told you I know someone, kids at dances. Even hand sanitizer in their eyes. He'll be okay."

"Hand sanitizer?"

"Yeah, just throwing that out there."

Fiasco confirmed.

Letting out a relieved sigh, I turn to the middlest, who was screaming louder than the littlest during the peak of the mayhem. "What were you so crazy about?"

He gasps a deep breath as if he's just broken through the surface of the Pacific Ocean, "Auggie was cracking a glow stick to get it to work and I was sitting by him and then he started screaming so I looked and he was covering his eyes and there was glow juice all over the floor and he was crumpled on the floor covering his eyes and then I started screaming too because it's Made in China and he was covering his eyes and who knows if glow juice is like those dog tag necklaces you never let us wear because they're Made in China and have lead in them and I thought he had sizzled out his eyes 'cause he was covering them and obviously in my panic, not realizing no one, not even China, would put things on the market that cause blindness as a child's toy. But you said, Mom, you said cheap products from party store catalogs like those petrolatum filled orbs, though they are cool and a fun time, are dangerous and carcinogenic. So, yeah, I started screaming and running around and I was worried Auggie's eyes were in dangerrrrrrrrr."

Oh, yes, Fiasco. With a capital effin' F.

From start to finish, the Glow Stick Fiasco probably only took six minutes, but enough time for lessons to be learned. Open the glow stick behind one's back from now on. My son has become the finger wagging community educator on Glow Stick Cracking. Yes, my fourth grade friends, this could happen to you.

Surviving a fiasco: unified by the sense of relief, that though things got crazy, we're all thankfully okay. A true fiasco, where all social structure and reason for resultant actions breaks down and the moments within, make no sense. Running around like chickens with our heads cut off, or at least our retinas day-glowed.

Ira? Pick up the phone, I've got a good one for you.

* * *

Status Update: Checking In With a Griever

-Day 1 Friday:

11:00 a.m. Mother's funeral. Wear black dress. Deliver eulogy. Host luncheon.
Survive.

2:15 p.m. Pack van up with photo boards, photo albums, candles and crystal dishes from mother's service.

3:00 p.m. Arrive home, fall face down on sofa. With little boy.

Rest of day: Still in black dress from mother's funeral.

10:05 p.m. Sleep on sofa in black dress from mother's funeral.

-Day 2 Saturday:

8:01 a.m. Wake up in black dress from funeral.

7:00 p.m. Change from black dress from funeral, into black T shirt.

7:15 p.m. Drive self in black T shirt and slippers for something to eat. Only want ice cream.

8:20 p.m. Friend drops off purple violet plant, my mother's favorite. Can barely make out velvety leaves through blur of tears.

9:05 pm. Go into garage, stare at van full of things from mother's funeral, no room for children. Walk back into house.

9:10 p.m. Turn to FB: van needs emptying. Unable to do. Sage friends advise children to empty items into back room, I go through items later.

9:39 p.m. Children empty van.

11:41 p.m. Fall asleep grateful for wise friends on FB. 

-Day 3 Sunday:

7:48 a.m. Open eyes to view from sofa of blue sky and raindrops in sun!

7:49 a.m. Shout at kids to be dressed and ready to go because Now! Now! perfect weather for visit to cemetery.

9:45 a.m. Drive home from cemetery silently, family with me, radio on but don't hear it. Only hear words in my head of how one week ago we were with my mother, and today feels like someone else's life. 

12:30 pm. Escape to movies with 16-year-old son who lets me rest my head on his shoulder during previews, and then throughout movie. He doesn't re adjust once.

6:30 p.m. Dear friend drops off pizza and salad. I take bites and swallow hard in between tears.

11:07 p.m.  Promise to re-send re-write re-word every single card ever sent to anyone who has lost a mother. Will begin with, "My apologies, I had no idea."

-Day 4 Monday:

6:49 a.m. On sofa, eyes wide open, body tired but mind too sad to sleep. Still in black T shirt from weekend.

7:20 a.m. Dear friend knocks on door and drops off card. Is taken aback by lack of wardrobe change, endears herself to me by stammering she "likes T shirt I've been wearing these days."

12:00 p.m. Take children with me to funeral home to pick up mother's cremains. Even when holding evidence of ashes, my mind says not her.

12:40 p.m. Children make me laugh on drive home when littlest says, "Who me? Oh, you know, nothing special -- just driving around with my grandmother's ashes in the minivan."

1:30 p.m. Ice cream for lunch.

6:47 p.m. And dinner.

-Day 5 Tuesday:

7:15 p.m. Place mother's ashes in car seat next to me and go for ice cream. Cry while driving, wondering who's going to ask me now about the stories in my life.

7:35 p.m. Park car at mother's favorite ice cream drive-in and begin with what was always her first question to me as soon as I walked into her room, the latest story of woman who is thorn in my side. Salty tears fall and mix into my chocolate ice cream as I tell her what's new. I still finish cone.

8:00 p.m. 18-year-old son gets surprising new job of hearse driver when mother's ashes still left in car from ice cream run earlier in evening. He takes car, and thus inadvertently takes her for ride with him. He comes home saying, "Well, looks like Nona finally got to go for that car ride alone with me."

8:09 p.m. Bring my mother's ashes in, place her in piano room, where she can now sit near front window, listening to her grand children's serenades.

9:00 p.m. Change into grey T shirt.

11:50 p.m. Fall face down on sofa in grey T shirt. Wonder what I'm going to do.

4:15 a.m. Wake with crick in my neck and see littlest next to me. Don't want him to wake and leave so let him stay in my neck cranny.

-Day 6 Wednesday:

7:15 a.m. Take Tylenol for crick in neck from littlest sleeping in there all night.

Rest of morning: Still in grey T shirt.

9:21 a.m. On sofa, chanting grade school cheer Get up! Get going! You can move and do it!  Gooooooooo me!

10:19 a.m. Shower, leave to register two oldest for high school, come back home and rest for half an hour, leave again to buy shoes for two oldest.

1:55 p.m. Return home and pat self on back for school registration completed, shoe shopping completed, and not telling every person who asked about our summer, that my mother died. Flop down on sofa.

2:05 p.m. Scoop up littlest in my arms and bury my face in his soft head. Pass out for nap. Stay like that, eyes closed, until 8 p.m.

-Day 7 Thursday:

10:40 a.m. Try singing along to radio but voice won't go faster than 33 rpm.

3:00 p.m. Attempt to do all the things I need to do around house but legs are stiff and arms leaden. Will try again Friday.
  
5:25 p.m. Five pounds chocolate covered raspberries for dinner.

1:00 a.m. Order T shirt from Zazzle, "I have no parents. Be nice."

1:20 a.m. Set alarm to wake at 6:45 a.m. then plan to go to small bakery downtown and buy all the donuts.

1:50 a.m. Take blanket to sofa, stare at ceiling and marvel that a week has passed and how strange life will be without a mother. Hot tears slip out the sides of my eyes and puddle in my ears because I don't know what I'm going to do now that the person who loved me more than anything, is gone.

* * *

 **I'm doing okay, ups and downs, and moments that strike out of nowhere when you really need them not to, like not being able to walk past the watermelon at the supermarket because we'd always begin our visits with my mother with a bowl of chilled, cubed watermelon. Your love and kindness on the internet have lifted me and given me peace and comfort. Thank you, for being there, and making all this, a sharing of love. 

You guys are the best.

_____________________________________________________________________

So I Have A Son Who's 18 Now

Our oldest son turned 18 a month ago, and I still walk around telling myself, "I have a kid who's 18." It's not something you get used to easily.

I was listening to the radio while re-stocking the refrigerator for the second time in four days, because I live with one other teenager, an 11 year old, and two men, when a segment came on about women and dreams. The mental health expert being interviewed reported that women dream more vividly than men because we deal with more emotions. "Dreams," she explained, "are when we process the emotions of our day."

There's no magisoso to what we see when we close our eyes to sleep, it's just how we humans rehash the events of our life. (that would be why all the taco shells made out of bacon make at least one appearance per night)

This theory explains exactly so much about just how my brain is processing the emotion of having an 18-year-old son.

I had a dream this week where my bicepped son sat at the kitchen table, legs kicked open, downing white milk out of a quart container, streaming dribbles of it pouring down both sides of his mouth and onto to his unclothed chest.

"Stop!" I ordered while running toward him. "You're allergic to milk. You can't drink that!"

He kept glugging, not missing a drop, while he looked me straight on in the eye. Swallowing the last of it, he said in a bored tone, "Says you."

Wiping his dairy-drenched mouth with his hand, he stood up from the kitchen chair and went from being shirtless to suddenly head to cleated toe dressed in a red and white football uniform, huge shoulder pads sticking out of the jersey sleeves. He slammed a black helmet on his head with one hand and began to click across our wooden kitchen floor with his spikes on. I watched him walk out the back door and join up with a group of other red and white football jersey wearing 18 year olds.

"You can't play football!," I called out after him telepathically, because it's a dream, and I never talk in my dreams, it's just lightning bolts of thoughts. "Remember?," I brain messaged him, "We decided you'd swim instead, right?"

No brain waves of answer back.

I knew I couldn't pull him out of the marching ranks so I decided to make my next non verbal shout into the dream world a practical one. "When will you be home?," I asked via hopeful raised upwards eyebrows, ::feeling:: the emotions of wanting to bribe him with pork chops.

Clicking the helmet's chin strap, he mentally spit back his answer, "Two days." Kapow -- right between my frontal lobes.

Message received and noted.

Punk didn't even look back.

...processing processing processing...

Picture of an 18-year-old-man that is my son

 It does not compute.

* * *

Things I'll Miss About My Life When Summer Vacation Begins

School will be out within a few weeks. Aaaaaaaaaall the children will be home. Having them with me, around me, walking around in the mornings with their summer pajamas and their bedhead heads just hovering inches away, close enough to smell their night time warmness is a top pleasure in my life.

However, there will be changes, and some of these changes, will be difficult.

In no particular order, the shift from me now being left home alone unsupervised to 24 hour guarded by three pseudo husbands is about to begin, and that means:

• 1.  No more Amy Winehouse at volume 48 pleading Vaaaaaaal, Valerieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! off of YouTube while I scrub the floors.

• 2.  The 40 minute phone calls to my niece, hosted from the kitchen table, with my feet all barefooty on the edge of the barnwood, pfffffffft. A thing of the past.

• 3.  Someone will be finding my coffee mugs placed all over the house and again with the comments of "Mom, do you really drink this much coffee or do you need to make an early Alzheimer's appointment?"

• 4.  The questions, the hovering questions, of "How much longer are you going to be on the computer??"

• 5. Bright eyeballs peering over from behind the stove, unhappily commenting on the beginnings of supper. Right now, they come home so hungry from school I could serve up plucked crow and they'd kiss my feet. Also, related: no more being able to lie, "It's not left overs. I just made it."

• 6.  Having to be out of my pajamas and into a bra before the raised eyebrows that judge, "Do you EVEN plan on getting dressed today?"

• 7.  No such thing as running into the grocery store and leaving with only what's on the list, unless the list states 15 containers Pringles, 6 bags Lay's BBQ chips, 2 quarts Mint Chocolate Chip, and half a dozen Ice Cream Sandwiches. Oh. And root beers.

• 8.  Having to take on a third job to pay for the sunscreen and bug spray that three big kids' skin surface area requires. (1500 sq. in. per child x $100.00 per 8 oz of what sunscreen manufacturers think is liquid gold = enough money to make you puke) Especially for someone like me who insists on apply as directed: repeat as necessary.

• 9.  Seek out fourth job (I can work it in between 11 pm and 5 am) to cover costs of filling up gas tank for two teens' worth of summer driving.

• 10. Did I mention the snacking begins? I should have married a food wholesaler.

* * *

 **Seriously, I canNOT wait to get my children back, all three of them, for three months. The teachers have had them long enough, and now it's my turn.

This is 11

It strikes me so funny that you've turned 11, my dear youngest child, because 11:11 has always been your magic time.

When this grip of 11:11 got a hold on you, I can't remember. But it seems like for always you'd look up at the digital clock, wait for it to flip to 11:11, and then BAM, you'd say "11:11! Mama, time to do something magic!" And somehow, you always would -- just by looking at me with that smile, you would make my heart melt. Magic.

I remember a morning in summer, driving home from the pool, nothing on but our wet swimsuits and you saw the blue numbers on the car's dashboard blink to 11:11. "Mama! It's 11:11! Do something different!"

And so I would. I'd honk the horn, I'd steer with my knees while I clapped, I'd do anything for you to work your magic on me. I'd put my hat on backwards and pretend to drool and you'd laugh that laugh that would make my eyes sting with happy tears. Yes. 11:11. Magic.

You're 11 now.

That magic number 11.

11 is you still holding my hand.
11 is still able to fit together in a movie theatre seat with you.
11 is you, who still calls me mama. 

And 11 is the time of magic unseen, but I can feel.

Just like you telling me, "Mama! It's 11:11! Do something different!"

And so you do.

11 is you asking me to pack away the bedspread of dragons that you picked out for your room not so many years ago.
11 is you choosing to go with your oldest brother on rides now, instead of automatically reaching for my hand.
11 is me surprising you with a visit at school lunch time, and you thanking me for coming, then asking if it's all right if you go play with your friends, though.

Of course it's all right that you play with your friends. And that we picked out a solid orange new bedspread for your room. It's also actually good that you want to do things with your big brother now, really. He leaves for school in only a year's time.

You're 11 now. That magic number of 11. And you work that magic every time you sneak downstairs after you've gone to bed, and see me sitting here in the computer's white light. You stand behind me, your arms encircling my neck as you bend over to kiss me, and I feel your hot breath against my ear. I close my eyes and hear you whisper, "Mama, it's 11:11! Do something magic!"

Oh, I wish I could, son, but you've already beat me to it.

**I love you, Auggie. Happy Birthday, my beautiful boy.

* * *

What Happened To The Meat??

I am relieved I figured it out. I was getting scared it was me.

I thought I had it for sure.

I would get in the car and look at the dashboard to see a big E for empty, and ask myself, But ... didn't I just fill the tank?

When I would open the pots and pans drawer in the kitchen, there would be my set of white measuring cups. They belonged with baking items. But what's worse, the cups were not just in there, but DUMPED in there, scattered as if someone snuck into my house and stuck a gun in my back while I was in the middle of putting away the dishes. Either that or I had lost consciousness mid-chore.

Hunting around for juice glasses suddenly became a daily part of my life. Are they here? Did I leave them in the bathroom? I always put them by the larger tumblers, but where are they now? And why aren't they where I put them in with the other glasses?

I am losing my mind.

I open kitchen cabinets and say to my kids, begging for an explanation, "I put the can opener in with the pot holders? Why?"

And then I remember whose turn it was that day to put away the dishes.

Whose turn it was to fill the gas tank.

Who shoves things in drawers then slams it boom shut quick.

My teens.

When my teens empty the dishwasher, it's like watching the loudest silent "I don't give a s**t" in action. They stash things away in places that later make me feel like I'm living with early onset dementia. My kids frighten me, they make me worry about myself. Is it me doing things that bring me to question my faculties?

Like tonight, when I made meatloaf. My kids love my meatloaf, that's why I make it. Let me give you this freebie since you're already reading this anyway -- I use apricot jam. That's the secret to meatloaf loving kids. Jam magically holds the ground meat together and gives the baked loaf a sweet irresistible aftertaste. You're welcome.

I make this often-requested dinner entrée in double batches. It takes its sweet time (sorry can't help myself) early in the afternoon because I know the kids will walk in the back door crazy starved with hunger after their two hour swim practice. At 3:00 pm I pop the meatloaf in for an hour. I set the timer, run and get my one non-teenager to bring home from school, then pull out the meatloaf at 4:00 pm and set it atop the stove to let the apricot jam juices circulate and render the meat juicy and sweet. By 5:00, it has settled in and re-absorbed the jam and when the teens bring down the back door and they smell heaven in the oven, there is no future life partner for them that can compete. It will be TeamMama forever.

The only thing left to do is let the barbeque sauce simmer on the stove while I start some laundry and keep one ear open for them. But when I walk back into the kitchen to check on the special sauce, there is no meatloaf cooling on top of the stove.

And my alarm begins again. The inner dialogue of confused self questioning, Didn't I just make a double batch of meatloaf? I know I made a double batch of meatloaf. I could have sworn I did the recipe x two.

What happened to the meatloaf???

What happened, is this: My boys had come home earlier than expected and swooped in and ravaged the meat they saw on the stove. I was sorting and folding sorting and folding, the washer and dryer noisily running in the background, and both kids grabbed tablespoons and said Don't Mind if I Do and had at it with the browned and glazed brick slab of goodness.

Never mind the butter and garlic smothered potatoes, mom.
Forget the crisp green salad with cherry tomatoes from today's market.
Just a fistful of meat is all we need.

And with that, the meat was gone. Since I had made their ears bleed with years of DISHES IN THE SINK, that's where they had put their "dishes" aka the two loaf pans. Meat? Maybe once upon a time, but to my eyes, I saw no trace of what I had just spent two hours preparing. At least, I think I did.

Have I lost my mind? Do I have to make an appointment with my mother's neurologist? Didn't I make meat for tonight?

Where is the meat???

Before you begin your own down on your hands and knees APB alert for missing items and misplaced coffee mugs - and meatloaf - ask yourself: Are there teenagers in your house?

I hope, for your sake, the answer to all your mystically placed and combobulated items, is a much relief filled sigh of *yes.*

And if you need me to commiserate, I'll be here. Down on the kitchen floor, where I came to get cutting boards and instead found forks and spoons jammed in between and wondering what in Sam Hill would make me cram silverware where the cutting boards go.

I swear I put them in the silverware drawer where they belong. Didn't I? 

* * *

When Your Heart Tells You To Stop

My youngest woke up hungry and asked for a chicken sandwich for breakfast this morning, so I preheated the oven because he likes his patties 20 minute oven crunchy and not 3 minute microwave soggy. While I took care of his breakfast, he dressed and washed up, packing his books for school. It wasn't until 7 minutes before we had to leave when he sat down to eat that I realized I had forgotten to put his sandwich in the oven.

The cashier at the QuikMart who rang me up today had to call out after me, "You forgot your salad!" At the end of the conveyor belt, I had left the only thing I had gone in for, a fast lunch -- distracted by the Wall Street Journal's front page and the picture there, of Boston yesterday.

This morning I had an appointment for our minivan that needed new brakepads, not an inexpensive way to spend an hour and a half. The service tech popped his head into the waiting room to tell me my car was ready and I could check out anytime. Thanking him quickly, I looked up briefly from the television and its scenes from Boston, then got up and walked through their garage, getting in my car. I barely drove out of their lot when I realized I had never paid for the work.

It was on twitter yesterday afternoon that I heard of the bombings in Boston. Clicking over to Facebook for news snippets, I saw that it was real. And worse than the tweet had shouted. Leaving to pick up my children from school and then drive them to all they needed to do, we came home and I slammed a dinner together of sauteed chicken breasts with rice made in 20 minutes. The pan that sits still dirty in the sink this morning shows that I couldn't do more than that.

I can't focus today.

I feel unsettled, without seeking out more news on twitter or Facebook, I am saddened, shocked, heart broken. My day needs me to keep doing, though it feels like moving through mud: cleaning, doing, driving, running. But everything I do since yesterday keeps coming out with a part missing, something forgotten, things left behind, just unable to do it right.

I can't pull it together. Tears are half a second away, the lump in my throat is almost to an ache.

Sometimes you have to stop moving and take the time to honor and bless, acknowledge and bow your head. Take yourself away from everything, and find that corner, that space, wherever it is, and let the silent tears slip and release the tug in your throat.

I made myself still today, each tear sending out love and fellow humanness for all of us on this planet together. Praying so hard for the pain of loss and the sting of shock and disbelief for so many. I paused and meditated with a heart pulsing with shared sorrow, because there is something inside that won't let me go on as if there wasn't a rip in so many lives yesterday. I think of what I saw and read about what happened in Boston and it's no wonder that I can't concentrate on anything else and that everything takes twice as long to figure out and do today, I mean, Look at our fellow man.

Think on him.

Thinking on you today, Boston, with a full, still heart.

* * * 

Maybe Someday They'll Tell Me

*with special thanks to my ever musing muse, Taming Insanity.

Questions I Want To Ask My Children:

1.)   Do you walk around then stop mid pace to fart, just for my benefit? Or are your friends at school treated to this special delight, also?

2.)   During lunch at school, does the conversation also begin with your favorite blood letting scene in a movie and then end with how you'd perform brain surgery on yourself via your nostrils, or, again -- am I just the lucky one?

3.)   Are screaming goat imitation competitions held elsewhere other than this house? Or do you feel it can only be done at home, because the acoustics are best when they bounce off the back of my head like that?

4.)   I have a feeling you place bets with your friends on whether or not I will bring your lunch to you at school if you forget it at home, don't you? You know what? I don't care. The thought of you with no food just dissolves me.

5.)   I won't ever get an answer to "who left their socks on the coffee table?!," "who left the empty pitcher of kool-aid in the fridge?!," and "who left the van door open all night?!," will I?

6.)   Why do you think I can get you to school in negative ten minutes and reverse time when the rest of the world would take twenty minutes to travel the same distance?

7.)   Please explain to me, so that I can help myself understand, why I go through the work of setting the table with silverware when you each grab the meat off the platter like cavemen after a shared mastodon kill.

8.)   Do you boys know I have no special skill in finding things? When something is lost, I have to look for it in the same way as any other human being does -- search and locate, boys, just like everyone else.

9.)   Please tell me when you'd like a class on toilet paper roll replenishing. I'm pretty much home all the time.

10.)  You do know I'm on to you, right, when you tell me that no one butters toast all the way to the edges like I do, just so that you get me to do it for you? Again, I don't care, the thought of you no longer being here for me to do this for, dissolves me.

xo

* * *

Enjoy Yourselves, Still

This week is Semana Santa in our house.

Holy week.

Bigger, brighter, more talk, more reading, more about our faith, the things we believe in, than the average household.

More jelly beans, more hidden Peeps, more Cadbury eggs. Larger baskets, more cleverly hidden (we use clues leading them to the baskets and so what if they're teenagers).

How Colombians do Easter. Now with more mandatory Easter viewing of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Yes, children do have to listen while mom sings along. And later in the week, I'll smile through proud tears as I overhear all three boys at one time or another singing to themselves, "I don't know how to love Him."

Happy Easter, a Blessed Passover, so many good wishes to you all for peace, love, rest, centering.

'Till next week.

xo

* * *

The Importance of a Personal Support System

My 10-year-old son bounds out of the van as I drop him off at school. I see another little guy, back pack knocking against his body, as he spies my boy and runs to catch up to him. Their faces burst into smiles when they meet up; sincere grins that show trust and acceptance in and of each other. Secure, liking both what they see in front of them as well as what is reflected back: pure joy in knowing each other.

It's no small thing to feel accepted, valued, in another's eyes.

If we're fortunate, we have people in our lives that help us remember who we are and that we are not alone in our days here: friends, partners, co-workers, exercise buddies, book clubbers. I wrote a post earlier this month with some suggestions on where to begin looking for companions along this road of life.

There are books written, an especially helpful one by Renee Trudeau, on the value and therapeutic benefits of having people who understand us in our lives. What Trudeau calls a personal support system. Support, because they hold us up, like strong beams against a howling wind. Having friends is natural and effortless when we are young, but for me, it takes much work in this later part of my life.

What is it about relationships at this phase of our life? Busy? Yes. Excuses? They don't feel like excuses. We have important, pressing, urgent, time sensitive responsibilities to others now. There are mouths to feed and little people to keep warm and dry.

Much too quickly, we find ourselves only doing, and not maintaining.

It's not easy, and it takes effort and planning, sometimes just acting on the impulse to reach out -- to make time for friends and personal contacts -- but it's worth every bit of work. Life is better with someone there to give a pat on the back or send a kind word. Knowing there are minds and hearts out there, caring about you, sending you love. The personal support system that friendships create is something that reminds us that we have a place to turn to.

Friendships can be re-ignited, or an initial spark can be lit, in one of many ways.

Here is what I have found to be successful in maintaining, building, and connecting with people I really, really like, and need:

Reconnect
A quick voice mail to say you miss someone, a short email saying you’d like to catch up, or a simple hand written note inviting them for coffee. It is an action set into motion that will start the wheels spinning in the right direction.

Slow Down
One of the challenges of a busy life is to carve out time to reach out. Finding time. Making the time, even if you never have it. We need to tend to our relationships with others to keep this friendship alive and healthy. Making staying in touch a scheduled priority; as in, every Wednesday morning, scheduling a walk with a friend, then sticking to it. Make the time, rather than waiting for the time to appear.

A Quick Conversation Still Works
With the internet, emailing, voice mail, twitter, Facebook, there really is no reason we cannot have a quick two minute check in, to ask how they are, retell a funny story, update someone on our life, wish them a good day. It can be done. And we can do it on our own timetable. It's communication that keeps a friendship alive.

Keep It Simple
If we wait for the right time, the right words, the right event, we can end up waiting for a time that never comes. We need to grab, snatch, make, the few minutes it takes to feel connected. It can be so simple and doesn't need to be a half hour phone call -- five minutes will do -- a quick gesture or words saying, “Hello, I miss you, and I’m so glad you are in my life.” This is how you let someone know they are important to you.

Small accommodations with a huge pay off. These daily, mini gestures on my part have made an amazing difference to me and to my presence in my friends' lives.

It’s the power of a deliberate effort that brings its reward. And the reward of feeling connected and bonded just from a few minutes of my time on a daily basis far outweighs the few minutes I am able to give here and there. We're social creatures, craving that presence of another.

Just one soft touch down in someone's life can keep that person in your life.

My son sees his friends every day. They are vested in each other through laughter and shared lunch times. No wonder their smiles light up as big as the sun when they see each other again the next day. Smiles as telling as mine when I see my friends; the ones I sit down for at 11 p.m. at night to send them an email -- the people I'm so much happier with, than without.

* * * 

Pre-Marital Quiz - Can You Say "I Can" To This

There are a few things that will stretch a relationship's happiness zone-- how money is spent, style of living, basic morals and values, drinking drugging and sexual behavior. Important stuff, right?

But there lurks within, something so essential, the black and white of it all, the glue that will separate at the slightest variation of degree. And that's exactly what is at the crux of the union:

How do you both feel about degrees?

Warm, balmy degrees.
Invigorating blustery arctic degrees.
Degrees that require hermitude 300 days out of the year.
Splayed outside pretty close to bare nekkid for maximum square inch Vitamin D exposure degrees. 

Before saying "Yeah, I could do this with this person for the next 60 years," there's a quiz that needs to be brought out for a topic of discussion.

Point blank out and ask each other: How Do You Feel About Weather?

If someone is bow-and-arrow-struck-determined-to-have-you-as-their-mate, they might worm around your question by answering, "I love it! I love weather!" To find out the environment they really pine for, though, toss this printed sheet at them. Look them in the eye, firmly point a sharpened No. 2 pencil at them, and stand cross-armed behind then, while you watch them scribble in the dots. Take special note of shifty-eyed, brow-wiping responses.

The Only Pre-Shacking-Up Quiz That Counts:

1.  In the animal kingdom, how do you imagine yourself?

a.  Look at me! I'm an elephant! Squirting water all over myself with my own hose because I can't take the heat. Is that a cool mud pool over there?

b.  Sitting on this block of ice, with this snow flying in my face is my dream life and I am so happy I was born a polar bear. I can't feel my butt anymore and I love it.

c.  Just give me a scorching rock and some blazing sun you could fry eggs under. I may get blisters and die but it feels so good because I'm a lizard.

2.  When I think of spending time outdoors, I see myself:

a.  Indoors in one of those perfectly calibrated sub-zero environments that let you be outside, but still be inside, so you don't have to be outside in that pesky heat.

b.  Please tell me there's lots of snow to shovel! And frigid temperatures that leave my cheeks both burning and tingling like they're being stabbed with little ice picks! Please tell me!

c.  Was that sizzle I just heard breakfast bacon frying or is my skin on fire? Aaaah, pass that Banana Boat Tan Accelerator 50 this way, please.

3.  When considering placement of my SAD lamp, I:

a.  Placement? I welded handles on that flippin' thing and carry it with me like it's my newborn baby.

b.  I don't have one, but I think I know someone who has a cousin who needed one once that might still have it for me to borrow, if it ever happens that I have to get one.

c.  What's a SAD lamp?

4.  Cold weather makes me:

a.  Grateful for the invigorating change of seasons.

b.  Feel so alive!  

c.  Just bury my body there...


Total up your answers, and sit down for a discussion. Better to head problems off before you find yourselves at an impasse. If despite now knowing the truth, you still feel you can't live without each other, let me tell you: there's a lot of consolation that can be found while sitting under a pile of velour blankets that your partner carefully chose for you at Christmas in the middle of a sofa that your SO has tenderly placed right where you can catch the most midday sun, as he fetches you your third cup of hot cocoa sprinkled with mini marshmallows--just the way you like it.

There's also this--while you're in the bathroom crouching down next to the heater in there, smile as you think about what you're going to do tonight. It's what you do every night. Why let resentment build for having to live at this latitude and longitude--just *accidentally* let your ice slabs of feet slide right in between your lovely partner's cozy warm thighs. Oh, let's say, around 3;00 a.m.?

Love comes up with some divine payback.

* * *    

On Feeling Lonely

Me and my little man, the one who pulled me through.

Pushing the bright green stroller that my mother had just given me, my 3-week-old son asleep inside, I circled lap after lap of the closest indoor shopping mall to our house. It wasn't yet 8 a.m., but I was already there, alongside the early mall walkers in their white velcro shoes. I didn’t know it then, but I was doing the exact thing that I needed to be doing for my mental state at the time. I was getting out.

Almost 35 years old when our first child was born, I had worked outside of the home since I was 16. Most of my friends were from work. We stopped at each others' desks every morning before entering our own cubicles for the day, we shared lunch together, on Wednesday nights after work we'd all go out for tacos; then, literally overnight, I found myself alone.

After years of spending 47 hours a week among voices, laughter, whispered confidences, my life was now one of staying home full time, alone, with a baby. I had left my friends behind at work--I knew that none of my co-workers had decided to stay home after their children were born, they had all returned to work after a six week maternity leave. I knew that. But I had been so focused on finally having the baby that I had been waiting my entire life for, that I never thought about who I would be with when I no longer worked.

Who would I be with? Now, I can see how alarmingly unprepared I was for the overwhelming floodwaters of change that came when I went from working outside of the home to just staying home.

I was lonely, and it hurt.

Lonely in the most devastating description of the void and desolate hole I felt I was living in. 4:15 in the afternoon would find me staring out my front window, my quiet baby in my arms, anxiously scanning the road for my husband's car. I was only able to begin breathing again at the sound of his key in the lock. To this day, the turn of the lock and then the push of the door remains one of my favorite sounds.

How would I start to make friends? I didn’t know how. My social world consisted of one. I ached for someone to talk to, the comfort of community, but I never felt ready to meet anyone. I looked a mess, unshowered and in my husband's T-shirts. Any free time I had I thought should be spent in keeping up my home and playing with my baby. Having an infant with colic who only slept two hours at the most at any one time, and then only if Christmas carols played in the background while he faced the fish tank--left me with no time for anything other than trying to get some solid sleep myself.

It wasn't too long before the emptiness that I felt since I quit working began to creep darkly over my entire life, leaving me frozen and numb, unable to smile and worsening the isolation that enveloped me. Even if I were to meet someone, I wouldn’t have had the mental energy to string three words together to form a sentence, much less manage a give and take conversation with interest and a smile.

But here I was, on this early morning, alone--pushing my three-week-old newborn in his equally new stroller, lap after lap, along with the mall walkers. I talked to my baby, telling him stories as if he were 35 years old; I talked to the air, telling it about the upcoming TV shows I was going to watch. I was scared that if I didn't practice talking that I'd forget how. I was lonely, but I was out of my house; somehow, my survival instincts were still intact enough to shout out, “interact, interact!”  And so I did.

On one of these early morning mall walks, I saw that the bookstore at the west end hosted a Toddler Story Time on Tuesday mornings. I decided to go. The first day before walking in, I took a deep breath. I froze when I saw no other moms with newborns there. Immediately, I felt out of place among the put-together moms with toddlers that already seemed to know each other and were there with their friends. But I resolutely made my way toward the back of the children’s section and stayed for the entire reading. I was embarrassed, both at how haggard I knew I looked and at how desperate I must have appeared--a three week old at a story time?? Come on. But I knew I had to keep coming, to show up every Tuesday, making my way past the pretty moms who were there with their crew, to my same spot in the back, where I would lean against the tall book cases and nurse my baby, closing my eyes and losing myself in the sweetness of the sound of conversations around me. Interact, interact. Interact to survive, and maintain sanity–interact.

I was lonely. The solitude sat like a balled up sandwich stuck in the middle of my chest.

I knew I had to find something, some way, some route out of my suffocating existence. I looked through the self-help book section after a Tuesday morning Story Time, and found a study on loneliness published by The Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. They found that loneliness has a broad and profound health effect on our overall well-being. People who are lonely have significantly higher incidences of diabetes, heart related illnesses, sleep disorders, obesity, and high blood pressure. These are just the physical tolls, there is a multitude of emotional, as well: increased occurrence of anxiety, insomnia, depression, and withdrawal from others. As I read, I felt refueled by this information.

Loneliness was as toxic as it felt. Loneliness was a force that needed to be reckoned with.

There I was, head over heels in love with my new baby, but at the same time, being swallowed whole by one of the bleakest periods that I have ever lived through. I remember how robotic I felt during this time when I knew no one, as if I were watching my life through a video camera--feeling untethered from any identity I once had. I was alone, so alone, and when my husband traveled, days could go by without the sound of another human voice in my life. The silence around me so deafening that not even every radio turned on in the house could drown it out.

Clearly, changes had to be made, for me and my new family. I had a child now, and he needed a happy mother, and I needed to be a happy mother. And so one morning, as I held my infant close to me, my silent tears wetting his little cheeks, I planned a path to dig myself out of the dark tomb that was choking me. I began by looking through church bulletins and joining their moms groups. I then checked the newspaper for diaper bag clubs at health clinics, and joined their morning sessions. I joined a stroller walk club from a posting I saw up on the Y's community board. Since I was breast feeding, I looked for a La Leche League and found one through The Quaker Society.

Whether I made the meetings or not, it didn’t matter, I was part of something. On my calendar, I had a place to go penciled in and scheduled for every day of the week. When I had had enough sleep the night before to be a safe driver in the morning, I went to whatever group event or activity I had written in on the calendar. Monday through Friday, getting out of my house had become my new job.

I can't say that I felt that I belonged in every group that I tried, because I didn't. Many of the women at the groups I walked into already had friendships in place, and I often felt like a fifth wheel. Were there sparks of potential friendship at some of these meetings? Sometimes. I longed for a smile from someone who knew me, but what had to come first was learning to find my place in this new world that was now my life. When I was lucky, a bright face eagerly awaited me at one of these groups, but more often not, there wasn't.

I never knew what would meet me on the other side of the door when I walked into these places; I was grateful when the atmosphere was an open-armed welcoming one to strangers. But when it wasn't, I kept my chin up and promised myself to return the next week, to try again, despite the disappointment of being the one there without a friend.

I didn't click with everyone at these outings, but I did make the friends I needed to. Women like Anne, from across the street, who come springtime, shared walks with me. And Carrie from The Quaker Society, a single mother who gave me courage to do more things on my own by setting an example; and Laura, from Ireland, who had a baby boy, Devon, on the same day that I had my Alec.

These women, these once wonderfully steady fixtures in my days, have since drifted out of my life. I don't remember how. I get misty eyed at this loss because they were an essential part of the fabric I was then weaving of my new life as a stay at home mother; they were the golden threads throughout this new tapestry, holding the loose stitches in place for me when I couldn't.

It took the entire first year of my new life to find people to talk to, to have phone numbers that I knew by heart. It was almost fall when I finally met someone I could call spontaneously to spend the afternoon with me at the park. I had survived what I now think of as the most bewildering, pathless year of my life.

During this time, I found a book called Lonely; a memoir written by Emily White. Inside these pages, I had just what I needed then: manageable action items to finding friendship. There was a checklist in the book that I followed like a tourist depends on his travel map: volunteer, create park play groups, start a church play group, attend free lectures, form a book club. Emily White's book offered limitless ideas for starting points in looking for friendship.

In the midst of feeling hopeless for myself and for my baby--for having a disconnected mother--there was a light bulb moment. As overcome as I was by my life that was now barely recognizable from what it once was--it hit me, the critical importance of being proactive in creating a social community.

Passively hoping for people to come into my life was not a plan. I had to find my friends. My mental and physical survival depended on it. Interactions and smiles with my child depended on it. My little boy needed a happy, unlonely mother.

Through that almost unbearably lonely year, I grew to realize that life should be lived fully, not merely survived. Just existing did right by no one. Friendships, even surface ones in the form of acquaintances, can tide us over during the changes in life, the transitions to a new being, that leave us stripped of who we used to know.

Some people are in our lives forever, some are our life lines for just that moment that we need them--neither less precious than the other. If you have to work to find people, to have them be your oxygen during these achingly desperate times, then that, I determinedly whispered to myself one winter morning while my beautiful son and I walked to our Friday morning Moms Club, then that, is what you have to do.

I smiled with the hope that maybe this time, there might be a new mom there, and she'd be looking for a friend.

***

Be Gentle As You Walk With Grief

Walking with Grief -- A Celtic Prayer

Do not hurry as you walk with grief
It does not help the journey

Walk slowly, pausing often

Do not hurry as you walk with grief
Be not disturbed by memories
that come unbidden

Swiftly forgive and let
Unspoken words, unfinished conversations
be resolved in your memories

Be not disturbed
Be gentle with the one who walks with grief

If it is you, be gentle with yourself
Swiftly forgive, walk slowly,
Pause often,

Take time

Be gentle as you walk with grief

--Author Unknown 

***

Wanted: Dead or Alive

photo credit: hugovk via photopin cc

The other morning, my ten-year-old son came downstairs, and walking past me, said, "Mom, seriously, that dinner you made us last night tasted like you were trying to kill me or something."

And good morning to you too, honey. Before I even had my head half way whipped around to ask just what he meant by that, the two teens saw their in and jumped at it.

"Yeah. It's like you think you're a wizard or something, making up potions."

"You've made up stuff before, mom, but this one would get the blue ribbon in a chemistry class."

"I know! Like the time she chopped up the left over turkey hamburger with the left over spaghetti and then made into a pie. I thought I'd be dead by midnight that night."

"Remember when she scrambled up the tofu with the left over hash browns and made it into a casserole with that saffron stuff? I wanted to put Wanted: For Murder posters up in the hallway."

The ten year old feels the power of his brothers' back-up and so now he's up on his toes, "No! The worst was when she laid out that old bread flat in the cookie sheet and then covered it with that shiny sauce and she got mad when I told her she should be on America's Most Wanted..."

It was like inmates rattling their tin cups against the jail bars. I put my hand up and looked over at my husband. I raised my right eyebrow at him, wasn't he the sheriff in town?

My husband just slunk into his newspaper, nervously clearing his throat, "ehhem, ehhem."

With my hands in the air, I tried to explain; I'm busy. I had to be at work. The food is perfectly safe. They're too picky. How about doing left overs like the rest of the world??

But between me and you and the lamp post, I couldn't deny it. I mean, I can deny the murder part, or the food poisoning part--I label everything with a sharpie and discard within 3-5 days. The meal was a pretty bad concoction, one of my worst. That night's fly out the door dinner was so bad that after I threw it at the kids and rushed to work, I had to confess to my boss as soon as I got there, "Whoa. What I made tonight for the kids to eat was really bad."

"Oh, it's all right," she tells me. "We all have those days." [she really is one of the finest humans on the planet]

"No, this was bad. I mean left over boiled potatoes, chopped up deli meat, sliced tomatoes, all skilletted together with Catalina dressing over. Sliced peaches for dessert."

"Oh." [first time I've ever left her speechless]

The slapped together last minute meal. Why would I even try, what was I thinking, I mean throwing a hot dog and a bag of chips at them would be better.

I think it's that hope--that somehow blindly optimistic or else thinking too highly of myself, with some hating-to-waste ethics I grew up with, that have me thinking it's so crazy, so crazy that it just might work. I know it's a kitchen fail as soon as I start rummaging through the refrigerator--I'm surprised the kids haven't picked up on that behavioral clue yet. When mama starts moving aside the tupperware containers in the fridge to see what's in there, might wanna fill up on some bowls of cereal first.

The Desperation Dump Dinner. I don't want to admit that time got away from me. I don't want to say I couldn't do it all today. It's never laziness or lack of desire to give them a good meal. I try to ignore the voice in my head that pops up when I look at all those round containers of left overs in the fridge and says, "and so you think it's all right to use your kids as the garbage disposal?" As my ten year old told me, "Either way, mom, it goes down the sink, or comes out of our butts."

The ten year old is right. I need to start over and be open to the reality that some nights may just be frozen chicken patties and a sliced banana. There can be honor and beauty in accepting your limitations.

I could also do without the price on my head.

***

You Don't Have To BlackFriday It, Did You Know That?

Due to financial instabilities of the economy within the world of this household, we are not going to be a part of the Black Friday money-saving madness today. People spend to save, but it's still spending.

Black Friday makes people lose their minds. McDonald's opens at 2:30 a.m., stores open at 4 a.m. with "Door Buster" savings where they only stock five or six of that bustin' item advertised to get you to show up and bust their doors down. They have no fear of you turning around and leaving when you find out the $89 flat screen TV you wanted is sold out; "well, as long as I'm here, I'll buy something else."

I'm sleeping in the day after Thanksgiving. I'll get up and walk around in my well worn mismatched pajamas, sipping on my newly habited Decaf, and make cinnamon rolls for my children. I know what I'll be missing, HUGE deals, 40 percent off and more! sales.

I'll especially miss out on things like this:

-Getting my face pepper sprayed when going for the last coveted door buster Xbox.

-Being trampled while already lined-up customers duck underneath a lifting store gate.

-Getting carried away in a sea of humanity over $2 waffle irons.

-Climbing across and into vats of sweet potatoes to get to a video game.

-And if you smugly think this wouldn't happen to you because you never go to the likes of Walmart or Best Buy, here's a scene of a hipster crowd at Urban Outfitters, showing the theft detector devices that were stomped down in an insane gates-opening dash.

There's a lot to miss.

This holiday, let's re-think the old habit of imitating what the mainstream does. Consider rejecting the spirit of greed and consumerism: not just because of the b.s listed above, but so that your family watches and learns from you. Do it for them. Let them see that the holidays are about sharing all we've been blessed with, with those that are struggling.

A holiday season without any thought for those without, or at a loss, is an impoverished holiday. 

Think about this: 1 in 4 children in America goes to bed hungry because of unemployment, neediness, the mental and physical health of their caretakers. You know how hard it is to fall asleep hungry? These children do, every night.

If you venture out today, let it be to a grocery store. Take your kids with you and let them fill a whole shopping cart with food for others. See those big food donation barrels placed at almost every grocery store door starting this week? Fill them. The best items to donate are baby cereal, dry cereals, delicious flavored instant oatmeals that only need water to prepare, packs of tuna, instant add water only pancake mix, canned soup or ravioli or beefy mac, jars of peanut butter, the mac & cheese that comes with the prepared sauce and doesn't need butter or milk.(see the pattern? Get the Add Water Only--we take much for granted, including that ALL households have milk, eggs, butter ... they don't.)

Go crazy that way. Lose your mind and buy every single box of ready-made Kraft there is and climb over each other to get them in the Food for Families food barrels.

Wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to see on the news tonight? People knocking each other over to fill those donation receptacles? Maybe someday, we'll get it right.

Peace Out.

xo

The Shaping of Ourselves Via The Lunch Box

Every morning, I pack my three children lunches that are full of the kinds of things I dreamed of finding in my lunch when I was a kid.

What kind of lunches did I wish for when I was a little kid in school? Oh, nothing special. Just the usual non-traumatic kind that wouldn't cost me thousands of dollars in therapy as an adult.

I'll bet that for most of you out there, when I mention "school lunch" you cock your head to the side and smile a wistful memory smile. Say "school lunch" to me and I head for the bed, piling up the blankets--only my nose peeking out so I can breathe. I'll also bet that other kids wanted to trade lunches with you, right?

You  probably remember yourself, back in second grade, sitting at the long lunchroom table across from  friends (have to interrupt here--what was that like?) chattering away while pulling out the contents of what your very American parent had packed for you. Such a sweet, happy memory; reminiscing about swapping lunches makes you smile and doesn’t conjure up a knot in your stomach, does it?

What you had in your school day lunch is a piece to the puzzle that we grow up to be. My lunches, my first-generation American lunches, can only be described with the word “PANIC.”  I’d watch American children around me reach into their bags and pull out amazing items like I had seen on TV. Angels would sing as they'd fish out Little Debbie snack cakes, shiny bags of potato chips, factory pressed fruit pies.

My South American lunches were from another planet, in sight and smell. The grip of anxiety that came when I'd open my thermos and release the kraken of my lentil and rice soup with garlic and cumin. "Yo, anyone wanna trade with me?" I don't think so. The School Lunch Trade–when the contents of my lunch shouted out who, and what and where I came from. Oh, to be part of the consumer crowd, the land of processed cheese food and deli meats, the gooey blob of Hostess Snowballs, the Sunny-D with 10 percent juice.

Hey! Who wants to trade me their bologna and mayo on Wonder white bread for a big fat slice of musky goat cheese and guava jelly! Look! My Abuela threw in a chunk of mango on top  for extra Latino measure.

You could hear the squeals of non-delight that came from the American children as they watched me carefully stack a cube of white cheese on top of a cube of guava on top of a cube of mango … mmm mmm, that’s good eatin’, right there.

What are you eating?? Eww …

Mmm … mmm ... mmm ... mmm and mmm. This? This is a delicious guava jelly and goat cheese breadless sandwich. Yum Yum. I’d trade with you but I just want it all for myself.

And so I’d rehearse my script, thinking I could fool the kids into thinking I was glad that they never asked me to trade with them. At noon every day, I’d mentally practice my words. Yup, I would convince them that the lunch I had was just too good to give up to anybody. I knew the lunches my Colombian Abuela would have packed for me would be red hot up on that ethnicity scale. The possibilities of what I'd find inside my lunch box made my scalp prickle: would she have thrown in a peeled, diced platano? Chopped avocados? Maybe a papaya?  Could I be lucky enough for a thermos full of the Colombian signature dish, Calentado?

I would almost faint from the combination of late morning hunger and forgetting to breathe as my heart pounded over what was in my clearance-shelf padded white Monkees lunchbox. The minutes ticked closer and closer to the big reveal. My lunch time plan was always the same: Sit down, lay out a spot, and present the contents as a thing of beauty. Everyone at the table would know that their palettes weren’t sophisticated enough to trade their lunch for mine.

The fantasy of this scenario played out daily.

I wanted to be part of the fun, to be in on the food trading, to hear other children go oooh and lick their lips when they'd see what I was packin'. But this was the late 1960′s, and cultural diversity was just not part of the landscape. Especially not in a parochial school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This memory is from so long ago, but still feels like the day before yesterday. When I pack my children’s lunches today, I tell them of my Abuela’s slices of white goat cheese with a generous slab of guava jelly atop, garnished with tropical fruit, then sprinkled with pomegranate.

They ask me if that’s why I’m so weird.

It might be.

Can’t be 100 percent positive, but probably.

That which doesn’t kill us, makes us funnier, I tell them. Which means I should be getting my own special on Comedy Central any day now.

***

It's Never Too Late To Get Involved

Every day on twitter, facebook, pinterest, in magazines, on television, the radio, there is some guilt-producing mass message about HOW WE ARE FAILING OUR CHILDREN! How the internet and iPhones and our instant access to other adults has taken us away from where our time should be spent - down on the floor in eye-to-eye contact with the pieces of our heart that walk around outside of our bodies - the children we adore.

We can't win. If we dedicate ourselves too much, we're told to develop a fulfilling interest and get a life. If we decide to go get that life, we're told to get back down on that rug and play that ninth round of Candy Land.

Can't win.

I know, that in my life, I take contrived comfort from lists, quizzes, checklists, how-tos; that tell me - well, how to strike that balance and be a parent with a life as well as a parent who is in their child's life. But some of the quizzes I've taken either leave me feeling I'm about as life-achieving as a sloth in its seventh year, or as detached of a parent as Miranda Priestly.

It's times like these that I take matters into my own hands and design my own reality. What else is there to do? When research studies show that involved parents have healthier parent-child relationships and that their kids do better in school and in life, I gotta come up with a quiz that assures me that all is well on the homefront. So, I have come up with this, for me, and for you:

My Quiz To Tell You You Iz Doing A Good Job at Home:

--You support your child's learning by allowing him to do his homework at home. *give yourself 100 points

--You wonder if it's too late to become involved and worry about this. *give yourself 100 points for caring

--You ask your child how school is going. *give yourself 100 points for being involved in your child's life

--You tell your child "good job!" when he brings home good grades. *give yourself 100 points for being supportive

--You volunteer in some sort of capacity that involves your child, like lunchroom duty or Career Day: What a SAHM Does. *give yourself 100 points for selflessly giving of potential internet time

--You read aloud to your child, book-magazine-newspaper, doesn't matter. *give yourself 100 points for parent/child bonding

--You let your child know that effort counts more than anything else. *give yourself 100 points for being the cheerleader that everyone needs in their life

--You talk about disappointments and setbacks and the less than stellar moments in your life. Sure, being called Olive Oyl  hurt way back when, when I was thirteen-years-old and 5 foot 6, 102 lbs., but I got over it. *give yourself 100 points for showing you're human and haven't always been the perfect that they see you as

--You pay attention to your children's facebook friends, the texts they send out, what they do on the computer with who, and who they walk home with from school. *give yourself 500 points for secret spy ninja abilities and keeping them safe

--When your child makes a mistake, you listen with open arms and a shut mouth, never asking, "What were you thinking??" *give yourself 8,000 superstar points (the very best kind of points)

--You let your children know, that - just as they try to do their best - you, also try to do your best. So, if you're on the computer or your phone a little longer than usual some days, it's what's in your heart that counts. Make some strawberry shortcake, extra cream, and make it all better. For everyone. *give yourself 1,000 points for a rousing "we're all in this together."

***

"One hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much I had in my bank account, or what my clothes looked like.  But the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child."

Ways To Milk a Birthday

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As a kid, I had to share my birthday.

I know.

I.Know.

My younger sister will cite the same complaint, and realize that it's nothing personal. It's just that, it's your birthday, you know? And you have to share a cake? And the birthday table?

We were a family of six children, and my sister and I had a birthday just three days apart. I'm sure we should have been grateful that we got chocolate cake with cherry icing. And I'm over it now BUT now that I'm in control, I like to stretch that birthday out as long as I can. And have it all to myself.

I would have been a lot less grimacey and grumpy back when I was little had I known that one day I would be lucky enough to live in a houseful of men where I reigned as the only queen.

Hence, my birthday weekend. I begin announcing the upcoming event a week beforehand. I'm not one to bury my head in the pillows, falling into extended crying jabs, because someone forgot the big day to celebrate me.

I don't take that chance.

This morning was the official birthday start, and the queen's trumpets will sound until its end late Sunday night, about 10:30ish. I ask the kids to write up a home-made card, rather than a store bought one, telling me why I'm the best mom in the world and I give my husband a shopping list for the small things I want. I'm a believer in asking for what you want - no disappointment that way. And why risk unnecessary suffering?

I see my beautiful childrens' cards on the table as I type this, along with pretty packages wrapped in light pink and pear green (the colors I've told them I like).

I don't have to cook, my husband runs out and picks up whatever take-out I ask for. The kids do the chores I ask them to. Everyone is happy. And everyone understands.

They know the story.

I remember first telling my children about the shared birthday, watching their eyes open in horror - a horror to them more terrifying than watching a Twilight Zone episode by yourself at 10 PM when you're five-years-old. (note to self: post on how I know it's terrifying to watch Twilight Zone by myself at 10 PM)

While I'm grateful to the sky and back for my family and how much they do for me, I'm also grateful for all of you. Your tweets and facebook posts and emails to me today, wishing me a Happy Birthday, go beyond making it better for all those years of sharing a cake and never really having a day that was mine.

Just the act of wishing someone Happy Birthday is such a kind, loving one.

Thank you all so much. I don't regret the years of the semi-birthday where it was more of a "Hap Bir!" to me rather than a whole complete "Happy Birthday!" to only me. My family did the best they could, and they were just being grown-up practical.

I get that, and in a way it turned out to be the reason why I love the birthday wishes just for me today.

And why my younger sister and I call each other on our birthdays, and ask, "How about that cake THAT BELONGS TO ONLY YOU??"

 ***

P.S. In a statistically improbable life turn of events, our two boys have birthdays three days apart (can you believe it?).

When the second one was born, my MIL said, "Oh! How nice! Now you can share birthdays!"

I ugly screamed, "NO!"

She asked me, "Don't you think you're overreacting??"

No, I thought, No, I'm not.

Someone Tell Me, What Is This Called?!

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It has to be something. I refuse to believe it's indicative of or a measure of intelligence.

But when you tell me something in a tweet about calling your dad's cell, I gasp and almost type back "What?? Your dad's in jail?!"

Almost type back, because I've learned to stop myself. Time has taught me that.

If you tell me the family's mouse is dead, I kindly touch your arm, and suggest a pet shop on Highway 60. The reaction I get is 'you're funny!' and I laugh back - fast - pretending I get the punch line. 

Play along play along, I tell myself, just like the way I'd pretend to get all the dirty jokes in second grade.

Yesterday, my son was looking in the mirror and audibly lamenting, "I can't believe these are my genes!" 

Excitedly, I told him we could go shopping later, "I've got a 20 percent off coupon for The Gap!"

I'm not dumb. I cleared A's through grade school, was on The National Honor Society in high school, and made the University's Dean's List and Honor Roll.

So, what the heck?

What is this?

Could you call it literalitis? I guess you could. But it's more of missing the whole gamut of the other use for words: homonyms, homophones.

I've tried to commit Venn diagrams, like this one, to memory; hoping it would help me keep in mind: words have more than one meaning.

I run this like an undercurrent through my brain, hoping it takes as a filter before I speak, "Words have many meanings. Words have many meanings." But I still get snared every time.

I know it has to be something, but maybe I'll just accept it and enjoy what it's brought me - making people think I'm quick as a whip and queen of the double entendre.

Actually, it comes in pretty convenient. How else could I get away with announcing, while holding the door open for the brooding, dark-haired, mystery of a man that delivers pizzas to the Friday night basketball games, "Hot Stuff coming through!"

Because, duh, obviously I'm talking about the pizza.

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Thank you to Mommy Unmuted, for gifting me with The Versatile Blogger Award. I am so honored, and happy that you thought of me. Thank you.

The One-Year Latin Haircut Rule

Abuelas, Nanas, Nonnas, Omas, Babcias, Grandmeres, Memeres, Bubbes, Nai Nais.

If you're fortunate enough to either still have a grandmother, or remember the presence of a grandmother in your life, then I'll bet you'll have an old wives' tale you can pass on to me. Something you heard from your meemaw's lips, some firm belief she entrusted to your care, to then cast over your own children's lives.

For us, growing up raised by my Colombian Abuela, one of the first wives' tales we heard was "No cut a baby's hair before he is one year old! No!" Bad things could happen if you did. So don't tempt the fates - don't, and leave well enough alone within that one year rule; the way mothers have been doing since the first generation of child-rearing.

Today, I tell the story of what happened when I almost broke the almighty one-year no haircut rule, and took my son for his first haircut - with my mother present. You can read all about it at TikiTiki Blog today, where I write a monthly memoir column. TikiTiki Blog, one of my favorite sites because of the culture, the variety, the passion and pride that you see displayed on every page.

I hope you click over, read about a bi-cultural life, and knowing when to pick your battles.

The One-Year Haircut Rule, at TikiTiki.