A late mother's day post

I'm not really cut out to be a dance mom.  Sure, I can put on the false eyelashes ( a proud moment when your 9 year old sports her first pair of false eyelashes) accompanied by my obligatory spiel about beauty on the inside far outweighing beauty on the outside while cussing up a blue streak when the damn lashes get stuck to my thumb and her nose simultaneously.  And I can pin up this hairpiece and watch in awe as it goes flying off her head in the middle of the competition.  The only one out of her troupe who lost her head piece.  She bravely danced on and assured me that her team got extra points for "overcoming adversity."


Then it struck me.  I am the adversity my daughter has to overcome.  She has already learned the art of rolling her eyes when I dance, sing, or tell jokes.  I have not been able to overcome my irritation or really my arrogance around this sport even though Tracie has been trying to get me to fly right about this for years.  I can't help but notice when the MC asked the girls on stage what they wanted to be when they grow up, they responded with "dancer" or "hairdresser."  Every single one of them.  The thing is, what I really don't want my daughter to grow up as is as judgmental as her mom.  Still, I'm going to be happier if she is a marine biologist (her answer had she been asked) because I think there is more longevity in a field that focuses on the intellect rather than on the physical.


I am what I am, as was my mother and my grandmother.  They let me wear white go-go boots and a red satin tuxedo short set, along with a white cowboy hat and red feather plume as captain of my high school flag squad.  Now that my friends, is a sport.  May we all overcome the adversity that is our parents and become that adversity for our children.  May it surely include some inappropriate garb and a few late nights.  Happy mother's day to you all.



Staying Put

Holy Cow, it has been awhile.  During my brief hiatus from my blog, I have been contemplating the following:

1.  Leaving my job
2.  Leaving my field
3.  Working 1/2 time
4.  Hiring a Cook
5.  Learning to weave
6.  Learning Dutch
7.  Moving to Amsterdam

We all have a default position when things start to unravel.  Mine has always been to flee the scene.  The chaos that accompanies a move, a new relationship, or a new job is a wonderful distraction from the discord that often drives change.  Of course, staying put is sometimes a move of cowardice.  So the question I am grappling with at this moment is simply...Should I stay or should I go now?

I have earned a bit of wisdom around this issue by having kids.  Early in the parenting game, I got really steamed at WCE.  He had a little habit back in the day of having lunch with an old flame whenever she blew into town without feeling the need to share that information with me.  One week-end, I took my 9 month old son and took off to New Hampshire to bust out my anger.  I'm pretty sure I did not tell a soul where I was going.  Not only that, but I took my son hiking and we got a little lost in the white mountains.  This was before I had SIRI to help me out of these kind of jams.  I had a bit of an epiphany while I was wondering around the woods with a baby strapped to my back:  the days of the grand gesture are over.  I don't get to drop out any more.  My kids connect me to my husband, even when he is being a world class ass.  Divorce is out.  Moving away is out.  Even hiking under the radar in New Hampshire is out.  His gift to me is that he feels exactly the same way:)  We take the wisdom we gained by having kids and apply it to the rest of our lives...... 

And so as I contemplate running, I realize it is my relationships that keep me moored.  I may change jobs, hell I may even change fields but I'm not going away to do it.  I like to think that my arthritic knees have nothing to do with my staying put.

Notes from the field

Nana is having a good week!  Hallelujah.  The kids are pondering mortality and of course, our beloved Beta dies this week.  That is the way.  And then, not to talk too much about the most painful professional week I have ever experienced let me just share this newly minted pearl:  It is a bad work week when Fox25 news shows up at your place of employment.  Not enough time has passed for me to write coherently about the experience except to say when the media gets involved, the world becomes less a contemplative place and much more a reactive place.  We have lost the ability to sit with hard truths and painful, ambivalent situations and instead reach for a part of something:  a part of a story, a part of a solution, and just a part of our best selves.

Sometimes the universe throws up on you and you have to make sense of it all or reframe it or just hunker down and get through it.  The Dying Warrior pose is apropos, as is any kind of long run in severe conditions.  Now is a good time to read the German existentialists, along with listening to Italian opera.  Sink into it because the only way through it is through it.

Years ago I worked at a residential school for emotionally disturbed (that was the term then, I think things have gotten more PC now) adolescents.  I remember these things:

1.  (posted on my director's wall)  Life breaks us all.  Some people become strong in the broken places.
2.  Trust the people you work with.  If you don't, change jobs.
3.  Children carry the symptoms of their families.
4.  Structure and boundaries save us all.
5.  Fake it 'til you make it.
6.  Finally, sometimes people you care about deeply will wound you out of a place of pain and despair.  Hold onto compassion for them.

I'm trying to remember these lessons this week

Coral Glynn: A novel by Peter Cameron

This is one in an occasional series of rants...can one rant occasionally?.......about the demise of the printed book, bookstores, and our slide into being plugged in to the matrix.  I am a hypocrite in this arena as I am contemplating buying a Kindle Fire even as I type.  For the record, my first Kindle lasted about a month before it unceremoniously refused to take a charge.  I feel like that sometimes.  WCE promptly decided to fix it himself and bought many tiny little screwdrivers to assist.  Cut to voided warranty.

So I'm driving home from work listening to this: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/14/147962963/coral-glynn-the-art-of-repression.  It sounded good, courageous repression and Jane Eyre plainness and British miniaturists.  I need to know what those are.  So the interview lodged in my book psyche.  Cut to Barnes and Noble, one week later.

To wander in a bookstore is an endangered past time.  One walks in, not knowing in advance what is going to make the cut or what genre will issue forth a siren's call.  As I am pondering the new paperbacks, the interview comes floating into my consciousness, sans the title or last name of the author.  I walk over to information on a mission:

Me:  I hate to do this to you guys but I want to track down a book and I can't remember some key components....the author's first name is Peter.
Lovely book-loving clerk:  This happens all the time...what is the book about?
Me:  Kinda of aVictorian novel set in the 1950's, repressed love...it may have Glenn in the title.
LBLC:  Ok, let's put in a partial title search...hmmmm, nothing is popping out
Me:  See, I heard this great book review on Fresh Air
LBLC:  I love Terry Gross...hey, let me get the manager, she has some program that she can use to track down books that have been reviewed and I really want to learn how she uses it.
Manager:  Ok, when was the interview?
Me:  Sometime last week
Manager: (after some work)  Could it be Coral Glynn?
Me:  (loud scream).....That's it!!!!!!

I don't know how good this book is going to be but I had to have it.  I will remember how I got it probably long after the plot fades.  Books should mean something and getting them should sometimes be hard or at least multi-layered.  I want to read this and pass it on to Tracie who will pass it on to Lorette who might recommend it for a book club or two.  It should move forward in an organic and human way. 

We are on the verge of losing something.  I feel it coming.

The Patina of Experience

It has been a tough couple of weeks; a dear family member has cancer, work continues to consume more than it's psychic share of time, and we seemed to have skipped spring and jumped right into summer.  Although it feels nice in the moment, the snow will return or the tornadoes or the hail and will pound the daffodils back  into the earth.  And so it goes. (apologies to Vonnegut for plagiarism)

This time of year brings the annual I-have-been-skiing-therefore-I-must-be-in-running-shape runs.  Those runs hurt.  There was no snow this year in New England so the skiing was sparse and yet again did not keep me in running shape.  Maybe the skiing as training philosophy is a false path.

As I was coming up on a hill that can only be described as gruesome, I spotted this by the side of the road.  The next time I ran that course, it was still there..... where it remains.  I look for it now, and smile when I think of my new talisman, a rusty chain.  I'm tempted to pick it up but am hopeful that it is providing fortitude for other runners or walkers.   

WCE said at dinner tonight, "I think I just like working with older people."   I think we are becoming the older people, actually.  Our parents are aging, our bodies are complaining, and our kids are beginning to think we are decidedly uncool.  My daughter actually has a specific look, only used for the special occasion for when I dance.  I want to say to her "Have you won 50 dollars at a dance contest with your gay boyfriend?  No? Then shelve the look sister" but instead I smile wisely and say nothing.  Her day will come.

So is it rust?  I think not.  I prefer the patina of experience. 

Let it Roll

We own, in our little family, 12 helmets.  They are for skiing, climbing, biking, sledding, and sometimes trying to cut a tree off your car after an ice storm so you can get to work.

Sometimes having a helmet does not help the situation.

I spent an hour in abject terror watching my two kids and their best pal careening down a hill yesterday, dodging planters, the swing set, and each other.  I had some time to ponder the metaphysics of it all, and came up with a few things:

1.  Our kids are usually not going to get hurt when they are helmeted up.  Buy as many helmets as you can think of, and make them wear them whenever you can....the danger is in what we can't prepare for.......the tumors, for example.

2.  The higher pitched the scream, the faster you should issue forth edicts about stopping what just brought forth that scream....or let it roll and place your faith in the helmet.

3.  Be careful what you create in your offspring; fiery, fit, fearless children are going to raise a ruckus and scare the hell out of you.  Make sure you have insurance.

4.  Pull yourself and your kids out of your schedules and sled whenever there is snow.  It all melts so fast.

5.  Be in the moment with them.  They get it.  Follow their giggles and energy and let it roll.

Mom-dar

I was talking with my mom a couple of days ago and it went like this:

Is everything OK?  My sister and I have been eerily surprised for 30 years at our mom's uncanny ability to suss out anything amiss in our lives and with me, it is at a distance of 2000 miles.

I'm fine, just busy.

You haven't been blogging in a month.

Has it been that long?

Yes, you wrote about the Science Museum.

I go on to reassure my mom that everything is alright, and for the most part, it is.  The thing is about moms....they notice when you stop blogging and they wonder why.  My mom has always been my biggest fan.  I can remember early attempts at poetry, piano playing, bassoon playing (my teacher breastfeed her little one and still played an uncanny Bach) running for student council, marching in the band, running on the track, and the biggest adventure of all.....leaving Texas.  Each step of the way, my mom not only told me that I could do it but that I was the best one to have ever done it.  Heady stuff which inoculated me against more than I ever realized.  I picked up and moved across the country, not knowing a soul, because my parents believed that I could do that and did not try to stop me.  I was 23 years old.  I landed where I was supposed to be because my mother had the courage to let me go.  I'm not sure I will be strong enough to do the same when it is Emma and Luke's turn but I will try.

So, mom, thanks for noticing when I take a break.  It does mean that I'm out of balance but with a little help from my friends, I return to true.

I love you!