10 Things I Am Still Grateful For, Plus a Few More

 Seven years ago I wrote a post on Thanksgiving with a list of the things I'm grateful for.  Today, I am grateful for that list, because in this crazy mixed up totally effed up year, it's nice to see that some things remain true.  Actually, it's not just "some things" but the most important things -- those remain solid, constant, more true than ever.  I am still grateful for every single thing on this list, so I am reposting it, and adding a few wonderful things I am newly grateful for, since 2013.  Here's what I wrote in 2013:

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I have only 16% power left on my laptop and I'm too tired and comfy to get up and find the power cord, so I better rip off a thankful list right quick.  And so:

1. NPR.  My life would be less than it is without everyone at NPR.  Thank you from the bottom of my well-informed heart.
2. Coffee.  My children would be in danger without coffee.  Thank you for keeping me sane, which in turn, keeps them safe.
3. Good pillows.  Nothing feels better than laying down my weary head to rest each night.  I usually sleep with two pillows, but one of them has been missing for weeks.  I finally found it in the dolly crib today, and I'm back to pillow bliss tonight.
4. Friends who give pie.  Every Thanksgiving, some friends of our give us pumpkin pies from Bake Sale Betty.  This year, I am especially grateful for these pies because we are not hosting Thanksgiving, and I get to bring the pies to my sister-in-law's house tomorrow, meaning I did. not. bake. or. cook. a. single. thing.  I like to cook, and I've enjoyed hosting in the past, but this year?  It's a blessing of monumental proportions that I don't have to do a damn thing.
5. This blog.  Because I get to write about whatever I want, silly, fun, serious, thoughtful, boring, or sentimental, and it's MINE ALL MINE.  And I like it when people like what I've written.  That's pretty awesome.
6. My awesome job.  I love my job.  I have a job I love, doing things I am good at, learning things that are helping me grow, with people I respect, in a family-friendly environment, for a good cause.  See?  Awesome.
7. My kids.  Seriously, yes, even the kids.  They are impossible.  But I guess that's why I'm grateful because they show me that the impossible is possible, every single day.  Sometimes, that runs more towards the "Is she REALLY going to refuse to put away the Rush Hour game, just to mess with me?  Is she REALLY going to take the smallest possible steps between here and the bathroom to brush her teeth, just to see my head spin around on top of my neck???"  Sometimes, it's more of the heart-catching variety, where I see a child of mine do something good and generous, or I get to the end of the day and realize I did more good than harm (score!), or the questions they ask challenge and stretch me as I try to answer them and then the gift of a great conversation comes my way…all of it seems impossible.  All of it happens anyway.
8. My husband.  Not because he makes delicious pizza, and delicious hot toddies, and awesome old-fashioneds; not because he vacuums like a maniac; not because he makes sure all the doors are locked and lights are off each night.  Because he is the other half of me and I know he's mine forever.  We are not a fairy-tale husband and wife; we annoy each other greatly pretty frequently and his snoring alone makes me want to rip my ears off my head and serve them to him for breakfast.  But he's not going anywhere, and I'm not going anywhere, and I'm grateful that he is my constant.  
9. My mother and father.  Five days ago, we moved my mother into a board and care facility; it was one of the hardest days I've ever had with my parents, one of the hardest they've ever had themselves.  I am grateful for the privilege of being present to them both during the past several months of struggle.
10. The ability to change the wi-fi password.  Because nothing says I love you to my sons like turning off the wi-fi in the middle of an Instagram post so they can get some sleep and keep growing strong and healthy.  

# # #

For 2020, I would add that I am grateful for:

1. Fiddle: Playing it, listening to it, seeing the beautiful instrument in my house, sometimes on a pile of laundry.  And for Maria, who made my life long dream of being a real live fiddle player come true.
2. Kids who drive, because it's every mother's dream to get actual real help, even if that actual real help also comes with a side of terror.
3. My fingers.  They do a lot of good things for me, including typing.
4. My dog Zuzu, who is proof positive that happiness doesn't come from things being perfect: happiness comes from love and messiness and neurotic pets who are way more work than even you --the mom, who should know better-- anticipated.
5. Friends, so many friends, who save me every day, which has never been more appreciated than in this whacked-out cluster of a year.

What are you grateful for?

My First Beautiful Thing

Cold kitchen, whistling kettle: the water is ready, the ground awaits.

Now for the pour-over: watching steam rise, Chemex fill, and sparkly diamonds dance as the water settles and filters – suspends me every time.

I lift the good, heavy pot from the gleaming chrome and pour.

The warm, puddle-y sound, quiet but lifting, rising in pitch as the mug fills, is dark and swirling.

A splash of cream and voila! At this early hour, 

I've done my first beautiful thing.

I Recommend Remember When

Parenting is hard.  There are many things I’ve gotten wrong over the past 20+ years, and I feel those failures acutely and often.  Some days, these people I am raising seem like a pack of cynics, a swarm of pessimists, a horde of disaffected youth.  My 16-year-old daughter said just yesterday: “We’re all just riding around on a giant rock. Nothing matters. There’s no point to anything.”

Parenting Fail?  Teenage angst?  High School junior feeling deep in her core that final exams are cruel and unjust?  In weaker moments, I’m sure their negativity is all my fault.

But on this fine, cold morning deep in the heart of 2020, the Marx Brothers might just prove me wrong.  Last night, the kids hopped on one of those fabulous memory trains, riding “Remember when…” moments endlessly through the evening.  

Remember when all the girls slept on toddler mattresses lined up on a futon frame in their tiny bedroom not fit for three?

Remember when the boys accidentally locked themselves in their own closet?

Remember when dad would make us fires in the morning before going to school, back in the days when we actually WENT somewhere for school, and we would have hot chocolate in the wee hours?

“Remember when” usually includes a few confessions, things the kids experienced together that we, their parents, weren’t aware of at the time.  Case in point: Remember when Elizabeth and Tallulah wanted to be in the older kids’ club, and the older kids said OK, you can but first you have to eat dirt and walk barefoot over these thorny brambles, and when the two youngest screwed up the gumption to do both, the older three abandoned the clubhouse and went on to other pursuits?  

Ahhhhhh, good times.

Remember when makes us laugh.  Remember when turns family lore into an exquisite cloak of nostalgia, the shared experiences of recalled moments wrapping us in love and hilarity. Thankfully, the ride continued:

Remember when Tallulah used to think yogurt was a finger food?
Remember when Sam made fun of us for pretending we were wearing jetpacks?
Remember when we used to eat paella by the backyard firepit?

And then this: Remember I Love Lucy?  And the original Batman series?  And Annie Get Your Gun?  And the Carol Burnett show and Tim Conway and the airplane sketch?  Remember Groucho and Harpo?

Watching them laugh as they remembered Marx Brothers and Carol Burnett sketches, I felt a certain pride that we had shared those particular American treasures with them when they were small.  That laughter will serve them well throughout their lives.  Surely, children with these memories to sustain them, with those particular cultural references embedded in their psyches, cannot help but emerge into adulthood with some joy and optimism!  Hooray! We did something right!

And so, on this fine, cold morning, deep in the heart of 2020, while teenagers sleep late and another pandemic day stretches out in front of me, Remember When is giving me hope.   

I will admit, however, that that confessional memory I didn’t previously know about makes me glad we didn’t have a wood chipper back in the day.  Who knows what backyard club membership would have entailed! 

* * *

Note: My inspiration for this post came from Katherine Grubb of 10 Minute Novelists and this tweet, although I'll admit that writing this took me longer than 10 minutes.

Maybe Messy is What I Need Right Now

Let’s face it, we are all exhausted at this point.  I call it the Coronelection Complex, and it’s hitting me hard. Texts from friends, zoom calls with family, and tweets from strangers all indicate that I’m not alone.  We are a weighed upon people, are we not? 

One way Coronelection Complex is showing up for me is that I often feel like taking to my bed.  All I want to do is go to bed early and wallow.  Sometimes I read.  Sometimes I stare at a blank page with a pen in my hand. Mostly I doom scroll, against all my better judgment.  Very little feels like what my restless heart is actually looking for, but my bed and pillows keep calling. 

And when I answer that call, all I want to do is shut the rest of the world out.

My family has other ideas.

It’s as if my lying down in a stupor sends a radar signal throughout the house: BUG MOM.  IT’S TIME TO BUG MOM.  The dog gets the signal too.  It doesn’t take long before beating hearts both human and canine descend on my bedroom to create mayhem.

This may sound sweet, as if they are wanting to wrap me in love and care in my time of need.  It does not always feel this way.  When they descend, they do not leave their own stress and anxieties at the door. They don’t put down their grievances or their needs or their rivalries.  They stick all that detritus in their pockets, swarm into the room in droves, and lay it all out on the comforter. Arguments rage. People talk over each other and get louder to make themselves heard. The dog decides to go mental and bark at the mirror.  Someone (looking at you, husband) decides it would be fun to wrestle with her and rile her up even more.  People dive into bed next to me to “cuddle” precisely when all I want to do is lie there by myself and flip the pillow to the cool side every few minutes.

Like everything else about family life, self-care is messy.

My 14-year-old daughter, especially, hones in immediately.  She’s usually the first to the party.  She burrows under the covers next to me, demands that I face her (instead of spooning), and commands: “HUG ME.” 

I groan internally. OK, sometimes also externally.  Because I know that thus commences a good 20+ minutes of this forceful little being thrashing around next to me, talking incessantly, playing games (“squeeze me as hard as you can!” “can I please just tickle you?? PLEASE?” “what am I tracing on your back?”), and asking for hug after hug after hug.

I’m not a monster, I promise, and I do love my children, but when I take to my bed it’s because I’m saturated with interaction. I need the downtime. I can hardly muster the energy for this level of play.

Poor me.  All this love is crushing me.

Ten years ago, that same 14-year-old said this to me, in a conversation about whether I would be going to the grocery store after her bedtime:

"Well, if you leave tonight, and you think I'm asleep, and you leave without giving me a hug or a kiss?  Well, you can still hug and kiss me, even if I'm asleep, because I really don't ever want you to leave without giving me a hug and a kiss.  And sometimes, when I wake up and your car is gone, I think you should have given me a hug and kiss before you left." 

I was reminded of this conversation recently because I wrote about it in a blog post that showed up in my Facebook memories.  Reading it felt like a sign from God intended to combat my growing resentment over having my “me time” infringed upon. 

Message translation: the kid needs hugs. The kid is a teenager and spends most of her time expressing her complete disdain for you, skirting her chores, or otherwise developing her fledgling independence. The kid will not always be under your roof, or under your covers, and will someday fly the coop for good.  Right now, she is also suffering from Coronelection. Plus, she told you a decade ago what she needs. Listen to her. Believe her. And hug her while you can.

I got the message.  I am now rethinking my attitude at those moments when all I want to do is retreat and all my family wants to do is swarm.

I still need solitude and I still get saturated. But my new 2020 project is to welcome the messiness as best I can and find the me-time another way.  Doom scrolling and other forms of wallowing are not better than 20 minutes of thrashing with and hugging my 14-year-old.  They aren’t even better than listening to teenagers fight over clothes or whose turn it is to clean the kitchen.  We are together in this time of anxiety, and under this roof, that’s better than being alone.  We will thrash our way through 2020.  And when we get to the other side – of the virus, the election, the divisions that will take a long time to heal – we will remember, along with everything else from this time, the hugs that got us through.

So Today Was Hard

Today was hard, which started two days ago. 

Two days ago, we spent $1400 on car repairs. All needed, all good, all regular wear and tear, and we did a whole bunch of things all at once. It still hurt. 

Last night, someone stole the catalytic converter off of one of our cars. This is the second time this has happened to us, the first was several years ago. I was awakened last night to the awful sound of the saw bad guys use to snatch the catalytic converter from a car's undercarriage. One quick growl-whirr got me up and to the window, wondering who the hell was using machinery at 2 am. On my way to the window, I heard the second growl-whirr, for just a bit longer, and realized what was happening. Pulling the curtain back, I couldn't see anything right in front of the house, but then a car sped past my window coming from the left, from where our two Priuses (Pri-ii?) were parked out of my line of sight. 

Rick went outside and started all of our cars -- successfully. So we went to sleep thinking that the theft had been foiled somehow. But alas, Prius cars start just fine on battery. When Rick started his Prius again this morning, and it kicked over from battery to gas power, the telltale sound of a car without a converter echoed through the quiet, smoke-and-ash-filled street. 

Yes, smoke and ash, because we are in California, which is currently battling over 300 wildfires. The air is thick, with a yellow tinge, and the girls' pod-style soccer practices (thanks COVID) are canceled because of air quality. We are also experiencing a heatwave, and our only respite from that is to open all our doors and windows and catch whatever breezes may come. But in wildfire season, that means inviting ash and smoke into the house, along with headaches and sore throats. So our house is sealed up tight and hotter than hell. 

For weeks and weeks, the only safe place to go (thanks COVID) has been outside – walks, hikes, soccer practices, socially distanced cocktails on decks and patios. Now, with the fires raging, the open air is also a health risk. Even the outdoors is closed to us. 

Oh, and I'm worrying about friends who are being evacuated in Napa County and other places. Again with the Nixle alerts and consulting maps for air quality and checking on dad in Sonoma, and generally experiencing the clutching fire-anxiety that is now an annual, weeks or months-long experience. 

Also eighth grade started today for Big T (formerly Little T but that's just not descriptive anymore). It was bumpy, not gonna lie. Distance Learning is just plain hard: teachers and schools are doing their best to do it right and do it well, and it's just a beast of a process. Today's Distance Learning experience featured three or four utterances of "I can't get into the Zoom," a few of "I don't have the right link," one of "My teacher keeps calling me Jimena," and several "I HATE THIS" blood-curdling screams, while on mute of course, or during the five-minute breaks between classes. I've got one extremely perturbed 8th grader on my hands, who I am trying to support and encourage while also attending to the demands of my own work. Also, we've got this very cute and very restless dog (no walks for us today) tearing through the house barking and burrowing into our legs and laps as we sit at our laptops.

Are you sensing the chaos?  I can't wait for the 11th grader to start the same process in few weeks, followed by the UC Santa Cruz frosh beginning her college days here at home, in the room her sisters desperately want her to vacate so that they no longer have to share. 

Today's kicker -- the thing that has me crying UNCLE -- was logging into my health insurance portal to pay a bill and discovering A SECOND BILL for over $1,000 that we didn't know existed and that NO ONE had mentioned to us as we were deciding on a course of treatment for my migraines. That one expense was for the first of four total treatments, and no one thought it might be important for us to know that we were accepting a $4K+ total expense? And I asked SO many questions about having this treatment done in the first place...except for how much it would cost and I'm kicking myself now.

So, a recap: 

• Distance Learning going awry, with more in the forecast;
• Speaking of forecasts: heatwave;
• Then we've got the fires fires fires and the worry worry worry about where they will go next; ash and smoke and hazy skies pressing in on us; 
• Expensive car repair;
• Stolen converter, which is going to be hella expensive to fix; 
• Outrageous health care bill; 
• A global pandemic raging unabated (thanks Trump); 
• Oh, and that guy is still our president. 

2020 hates us all. 

I figure there's really only one response to this cluster of a day: pour myself a stiff drink, pull out my violin and drunk fiddle until Obama's address at the DNC.  If I get nothing else out of this day, at least I can torture my teenagers.

Simplest of Things, Lost and Found

Last night, I made dinner!

One might think, what with a pandemic on and all, that I'd be doing this a lot.  One would be wrong.  In the beginning of this...oh, words escape me...let's go with DEBACLE...I did alright with the whole planning meals and shopping for them and cooking them steps.  All that has fallen off dramatically.

This is not to say we are not eating. In fact, in a stroke of genius brought on by laziness (perhaps the true mother of invention), I roped my daughters into each cooking once a week, and they are mostly doing it, and doing it incredibly well. So we are at least eating good meals two to three times a week, plus our usual once a week take out.  Add in some leftovers, and we're easily covered for about five nights a week.  Cereal, toast, and grazing take us the rest of the way, so what do they even need me for, right?

Well, after several weeks of shirking all cooking duties, I must admit, I was feeling a little...shirky.  So, I waded back into the rotation last night with a delicious meal, selected primarily by googling recipes that contained ingredients I had on hand. Here is what we ate:

• Crisp Curried Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce (from whence also comes the lovely photo at the top of this page)
• Basmati rice (just plain; a staple here). Some of us, dare I say the smart ones, drizzled the dipping sauce on the rice, and ate the chicken, rice, and sauce all together.  I highly recommend this course of action.
• Arugula Apple Almond salad, with balsamic dressing: so quick and simple. I made this up on the fly, because all the salad recipes I googled were fancy and had too many things not in my fridge. So I just chopped up the almonds and apples, and tossed everything together.  

This was a really good dinner.  It made me remember that sometimes cooking is a very, very gratifying activity.  But the best part was when Tallulah and Rick came home from playing soccer tennis, while I was still cooking, puttering around my kitchen with NPR on the radio.

Like everyone, we in the AIRY5 household are missing our routines, perhaps most especially our soccer routine.  For 15 years, we have always had evening soccer practices to go to.  For most of the past 10, this has meant every single weekday evening and some combo of kids and Coach Rick coming home between 8 and 9 o'clock.  Sometimes exhausting, sometimes hell on family life, the beloved routine was ours. When COVID-19 hit, all of that changed, and we haven't had that routine in months. 

Recently, we have started having some soccer trainings again, "pod-style," where the girls work on individual skills in a clearly marked space, distant from other players. They must take their temperature before stepping on the field; they wear masks until they are in their pod; all equipment is sanitized before and after, and never shared.  It's strange, but it's something, and our soccer clubs are working hard to provide quality training and a shared experience to families and players.   

But last night, Rick took Tallulah to play "soccer tennis," a favorite family activity.  They stayed out until dusk, and got home about the time they might have if they were returning from regular ol' training of days gone by.  Tallulah bustled into the house, smelling of the outdoors and sweat and carrying her soccer gear, with Rick a few steps behind her and the evening light fading behind them both.  

She stopped, took in a deep breath, and said: "THIS is what I miss! Coming home, just like if I were coming home from practice, and the house smells so good because you're cooking dinner, and NPR is on the radio, and I come in hungry and eat, and it's just like this!"

I hugged her tight in our warm and aromatic kitchen, so grateful that she gave a voice to those thoughts.  I didn't even know I missed those evenings too.  The virus has, these past many months, taken away the simplest of pleasures from our lives, but would we have recognized this mundane family moment for the joy and treasure that it is, but for missing it?

I'm quite glad I felt shirky enough to make that dinner.

Three Minutes

My friend Janelle texted me the other day: "Do you have three minutes?" I did not, at that precise moment, because I was driving.

When I got to my destination – a soccer field, of course, where Little T was experiencing the joy of "pod" training (thank you COVID) – I texted Janelle to let her know that I now had three minutes.  Next, she asked if I was in a quiet place.  Yes, I told her, for once, I was in a quiet place, not surrounded by my boisterous, busy family.

I was in for a treat. She sent me a link to this video and told me to listen:

Three minutes of sheer beauty and joy! Such a treat, so welcomed in this time of chaos and anxiety.

I have listened to it several times since and shared it with friends and family.  But in addition to bringing me real joy, this brief three-minute video has also taught me some uncomfortable truths about myself that are not at all joyful.  

The first time I listened to it, I couldn't focus on it. I immediately loved it, to be sure, but I was also distracted. Less than one minute in, I was already thinking about sharing it, already crafting a tweet or a post about it, already thinking about how MY take on it would be received (by my very, very few followers, no less). Mere seconds had gone by, and the beautiful music was already competing in my head with noisy thoughts about who I should send it to, who needed to hear it, why it was important, why my kids should listen, and what kind of moral decay the world was in if they couldn't appreciate music like this.  It was unsettling to recognize that I couldn't simply sit still and listen to two incredibly talented musicians for three tiny minutes; instead, I was neurotically scheming about how to use this piece of art for myself.

Thankfully, I forced myself to quit that nonsense. Don't tweet. Don't post. Just listen. Just enjoy. Just be with the music. I am out of habits like that. I am in the habits of curating my responses for social media, thinking in sound bites, and anticipating notifications. Creativity cannot compete with such foolishness: I need different habits of being. 

Today, I deleted Twitter and Facebook from my phone, the number one places where I get sucked down into the valley of scrolling death. Yes, I'm writing this reflection on my blog: irony is a bitch in heels.  

The task in front of me is to figure it all out: figure out how to enjoy art and beauty, and how to create whatever it is I'm going to create, and how to do it authentically, and how to share it authentically. I think it starts with stopping: stop being on social media for awhile, stop scrolling and reading one-liners and hot takes and having nanosecond reactions to things that barely register before I'm on to the next thing, like some never satiated hunger that grows larger with every swipe. Stop being horrified by Trump, and racists, and DeVos, and anti-maskers, and whatever new horror comes along. Scrolling is numbing me and depressing me; it is lulling me into imagining that my outrage is my activism. It is not.

We must be able to take in beauty, deep inside: it is an act of self-preservation.  I wasn't able to do that with The Swan the first time I heard it. I will keep trying.

 

Listen

In my work, we talk a lot about the importance of listening. I write about it in grant proposals; we talk about it in team meetings; we hold it up as a core organizational value. We know that the act of listening is essential to the processes of teaching and learning: transformative education isn't possible without it.  

As a parent, I know the importance of listening. Easily 80% of all family arguments are, at their crux, essentially about someone not listening to someone else. Mom gets mad because a kid didn't listen to her instructions and therefore didn't do a chore right for the fifth or fiftieth time in a row (hypothetically speaking); siblings fight with each other because one of them ignores the other's wishes or rights.  The wise observer can see that if these people would stop and truly listen to each other, the tension would ease, hurt feelings would heal, love and kindness would have space to grow.

Right now in our country, listening is more important than ever. Between the cacophony of the media -- social, mainstream and otherwise -- and our human tendency to shout ever louder to make our own voices heard, there isn't much true listening happening, even if we feel like all we do is take in information all day long. The world has never been louder; it's never been harder to hear each other.

I keep learning more about just how radical listening can be. It might just be the only thing that can change hearts and minds, the only thing that can move us from intractable defense to open-armed community. We may not know how to do it very well, but the good news is that we can practice that skill and make it stronger: the more we listen, the more we exercise those muscles, the better we'll get. So that's what we need: listening practice. Hours and hours of practice.

In that spirit, I offer three voices I have been profoundly moved by recently. They have things to say that are not comfortable and will not be easy for white people to hear. They also have things to say that every white person -- every human person -- can relate to, can understand on a deeply personal, visceral level.  So I ask you to listen, without first deciding how to respond: your job is not to, at first, respond. Your job is simply to hear what these three people have to say. Listen and sit with their words. Listen and invite these three people into your world. Cook them dinner, share a meal with them, stay with their voices while they speak. Let their words do what words can do: shape, build, connect and create.

Just listen:

Kimberly Jones: How Can We Win

Dave Chappelle: 8:46 

Catherine Pugh: There is No Such Thing as a White Ally

* * *

Last night, we were talking about some of our favorite movies, and of course, Shawshank Redemption came up.  Rick used to show it to his students back in his teaching days. The line that stays with him and that students-now-adults-with-families-of-their-own still repeat when they see him is "Get busy living or get busy dying."  I went to bed with that line rattling around in my brain, the same brain that has been consumed lately with how much we need to listen to each other as a culture. I woke up with this on my mind: 

Get busy listening, or get busy denying.  

* * *

Sign of the Times

Sometimes, simply walking out the front door can be overwhelming.

Say, like, on day #66 of Shelter in Place which also happens to be day #TooMany of a godforsaken migraine that has had me hiding in a darkened room like a gothy troll.

As in: today.  I haven't been outside in two days because sunlight has been so hard to take.  But the love of my life has been pouring himself into our garden these days and I wanted to support him, so I ventured out cautiously to see his handiwork.  I was not prepared for the many ways in which the world would bombard me.

First, it was just too bright out there, and all that glorious light hurt my head and eyes. While I expected the pain, I did not expect the anger -- which I definitely felt, sharp and sudden.  I was instantly furious because I love the outdoors and do not like it causing me pain and discomfort.  So there I was, walking down my front path with a little bit of rage.

Second, Rick has done so much work! Seeing our beautiful garden emerge – RE-emerge – is impressive and gratitude-inducing and wonderful.  It made me so happy.  A few more steps down the walk, and rage and joy were hand in hand.

Third, the air outside smelled so sweet and fresh it made me want to weep.  It reminded me that Coronavirus sucks, that migraines sucks, and that both are conspiring to trick me into not realizing that the world keeps turning and the season of renewal is here.  The beautiful earth keeps doing her thing, and when virtually everything else seems to be completely falling apart, the glory of Springtime is profound and also, the best news ever.  Spring felt so good on my skin and all around me, and now, on my walk down the sidewalk, I felt a little melty.

And fourth: that sign. That "Proud Home of a 2020 Graduate" sign we put up the other day.  I can't even with that sign.  I have all the feels about that sign.  Rick put it up in the front yard for us, and I feel love and pride and joy that I have this small gesture to offer for my daughter, and at the same time, I feel a little crazy from the frustration, and yes, a little more rage at the helplessness of missing the rituals of graduation and celebration.  Rituals matter.  They mark time for us, they shine a spotlight on people.  I want that for Lola.  She deserves it.

She doesn't deserve it more than anyone else: she deserves it because everyone does and every single life needs its moments to be honored.  So, she won't get this one, at least not in the way any of us expected.  Next week, we will take her, decked out in cap and gown, to campus to walk through an empty gym and be filmed receiving her diploma.  The school is producing a graduation video and streaming it on the original graduation day; we will watch from home.  She won't get her Senior Prom, senior ditch day, last day of school, Baccalaureate Mass, or Graduation Ceremony.  She'll have other rituals in her life, and I know, in the long run, she will be fine.  So why am I swinging back and forth so hard between "whatever, graduations are long and boring, usually too hot, with too many speeches, and like two seconds where you get to hear your graduate's name" and "give me my moment in the sun to reflect on 18 years of love and support and hope and aspiration and becoming and beauty and joy, and give it to me in public with balloons and flowers and other people telling her how special she is!"

I can't decide where to land.

Not that it matters where I land, since I have no say in the matter.  It's just that I'm keenly aware that my mind and heart are all over the map these days.  I'm high in the treetops of love and gratitude for my family and knowing that having them safe and whole is having absolutely everything, and simultaneously way down low in the swamp of rage and helplessness from not being in control of what's happening and wanting so badly for so many things to be different.

So this is what I realized when I walked out the front door today: I'm walking with love and joy, rage and fear, gratitude and frustration. Maybe tomorrow, if I'm brave enough, I'll venture farther than the sidewalk and learn even more about how overwhelming the world can be. 

* * *

Music Love

what should I name her?

Music is a fascinating teacher.

The more I play this fiddle, and the more music I listen to, the more fascinated I become.  Today, as I was listening to music while riding my exercise bike, I felt like I was falling into a little musical portal. I was so captivated by sound, it felt like catching a glimpse of what improvisation or composing might be like, what understanding the language of music must be like.

It amazes me that a musician knows exactly what sound she will hear if she plays a specific note.  And not as in, that right there is B flat, so I will hear a B flat.  As in, she knows the sound, can hear it in her head, before she plays it.  Maybe I'll get there someday.

Also on my mind lately?  The fact that scales are miraculous. A scale is like an autopilot coach for my fingers: do enough of them, and my fingers seem to start doing them perfectly on their own.  I am in love with music.  Playing it, listening to it, thinking about it, having it in the world.

For most of the past year, I've rewarded myself for time on the exercise bike with binge-worthy television.  It makes sense -- there's so much to do around here that there are very few, if any, other ways to justify too many hours of Grey's Anatomy.  And since I tend naturally toward sloth-dom and away from sweat equity, I typically have to force myself through a workout.  Often, I can barely make it from minute to excruciating minute.  Being convinced I've ridden for well over 10 minutes only to discover it's been more like a minute and 34 seconds is BRUTAL.  TV helps numb me through the whole healthy business.

But these days, I am having severe eye sensitivity problems, particularly with screens, and since I have to use a laptop for work, it's imperative that I avoid screens as much as possible all other times.

A happy fact, as it turns out!  Instead of mind-numbing TV, music carried me through a vigorous 45-minute ride today and it was glorious.  And yes, I realize most of the fitness-crazed world is totally on to this strategy, it's just one I deliberately have eschewed so that I could watch bad TV without guilt. Oh, but the music this morning! It was so joyful and energizing that I feel I must share my playlist with you.  Here it is, in all its eclectic weirdness, annotated because this is my blog:

• Bottomless Lake, by John Prine – started with this one because I am trying to learn it on the fiddle so that I can play it on our family zoom calls with my dad on banjo, my brother on guitar, and my sister, her family, and my aunt (plus anyone in my own house who I can wrangle) on vocals.  Pretty sure I won't wrangle anyone in my house.  It will still be epic. Just the attempt will be epic.
• Seven Nation Army, by The White Stripes – because this song is on my daughter Tallulah's Pump Up Playlist for her soccer games, and she really misses her soccer games these days, so listening to it this morning was an homage to what she and we are missing.

FOUR selections from Rhiannon Ghiddons because she is just that damn good. So good. Achingly good. Treat yourself:

• At the Purchaser's Option – heartbreaking.
• Don't Let It Trouble Your Mind – freeing.
• Shake Sugaree – delightful.
• Up Above My Head – envigorating.

• Everything is Broken, by Bob Dylan – not once, not twice, but THREE times because (a) that song is perfection; (b) that song is too short; and (c) it's almost his birthday and I'm gearing up to celebrate. Also, that song reminds me of my house and family and lets me know I'm not alone.
• Come Together, by The Beatles – because most playlists in the world are made better with a Beatles song and also because a delightful rendition on Facebook brought this song back to me this week and I found myself craving the original.
• Finally, I cooled down with another John Prine, which, frankly, was kind of a downer ending, but there is a line in this beautiful song that I stole and used in my last blog post, so it's been top of mind lately.  No one turns a phrase like Mr. Prine.  

Thank you, quirky playlist, for morning joy and exercise. Music and language all mixed up together: there is no more powerful force.


 * * *


Why are you still here?  Go listen to something!  She's a good teacher, but an even better companion.

We Left Resentment At the Lake

Yesterday, Tallulah and I went for a walk around Lake Merritt. We left at 8am, which apparently is excruciatingly early for a 13-year old person. The day before, she asked me if we could go for a hike. This being remarkable on many levels – not least of which the fact that she can barely tolerate my presence these days – I decided it had to happen. Then, by the time it did, she was just not that into me anymore. Ah, the difference a few short hours can make in the mother-daughter relationship.

I had to coax her with avocado toast and throw in a stop for hot chocolate just to get her out of bed. And before she would peel back the covers, she wanted to know where we were going. I guess she had to weigh the destination against her comfy pillow and warm blankets.  I had been researching places we could go that I wasn't already tired of and that were still open during SIP -- most of the places I thought of were closed.  Then I thought of Lake Merritt, which I've loved on my walks with Susan and would be new to Tallulah.

Perfect! I thought.  Meh, was Tallulah's general response.  Even still, with enough cajoling in the form of avocado, I got her in the car and off we went.

With. No. Aux. Cord. THE HORROR.

She wasn't interested in (a) NPR, (b) the radio or (c) the lone Scottish fiddle CD that's been in my player since fiddle camp last June.  We opted for silence.  Combine a reluctant teenager with an early-for-her morning and no acceptable music, and you get a very quiet car ride.

In my head: Mom's just over her behind the wheel thinking "It's OK...it's time together...it'so OK...it's time together..." and trying hard not to fill the silence just to make herself feel better.

The few sentences Tallulah did speak were on the order of "What is this place, anyway?" and "Are we stopping for hot chocolate first?" and "I said I wanted to go for a HIKE not a WALK."

With such enthusiasm, the morning was bound to be joyful!  Yeah, not so much.  Our walk consisted of me walking slightly slower than I wanted to and still staying two paces ahead of her – probably because she preferred it that way – and me biting my lip when I wanted to point out something pretty or interesting.

I couldn't help myself, after too many steps taken in silence, from pointing out a large collection of ducks and geese, one of which was drinking water.  Drinking water is a laborious process for long-necked waterfowl, as they take a drink and then have to raise their heads up high to let the water shimmy down their throats, gulping several times for what seems like a pretty small amount of water. I called this to Tallulah's attention, but alas, I misspoke:

Me: "Look at that duck drinking water: it's so much work for him!"

Daughter disdain dripping: "That's not a duck."

"Right. Goose. Look at the goose. My apologies."

More silent walking.

Families walked by chatting.  Friends walked by deep in conversation. Couples walked by engrossed in each other.  Joggers ran by all healthy and purposeful.  We plodded on in silence, mom in front, daughter two steps behind.

Around a bend, we encountered a flock of geese, easily twenty or thirty of them.

Me, playfully: "Look at all those ducks!"

Her: Icy stare.

More plodding.

Her, annoyed: "It's so hot out here!  Why did you make me bring a sweatshirt???"

More plodding.

Her, annoyed: "Are we going all the way around this WHOLE lake?"

Me: "Hell no, I've got better things to do than take a morning stroll with resentment."

I'm 99% sure I didn't say this out loud, instead beginning my answer with:

"We can turn right up there and go back along Grand Avenue instead of going all the way around.  I'm sure we'll pass a coffee shop along there too."

So we did.  We cut short the walk, which was only about 40 minutes long at that point, found a cafe and got her a drink.  She opted for raspberry lemonade, what with it being sweltering and all.

While we waited for her drink, I noticed we were right across the street from Children's Fairyland.  This spot is near and dear to my heart, from the countless trips Rick and I made here with our children in the early days of our parenting.  Later, the kids' Kindergarten class made an annual field trip here too, which we chaperoned whenever we could.  So many happy memories.

For some of us at least.  I was jolted out of my nostalgic haze by Tallulah:

"What's Children's Fairyland?"

How was this possible?  How could she not know Fairyland?  Where had we gone wrong that this special place was not firmly fixed in her memory?  Incredulity...shame...parental regret...wondering if her gangly arms and legs would fit inside Mother Hubbard's shoe if we tried to make up for lost time and brought her here now: many things went through my head.  It was so striking to me, I texted Rick.  And then I sat on Grand Avenue, waiting for T's lemonade, soaking up the sun and feeling disappointed in our sad, plodding little walk and in myself for failing to be the same parent for #5 as I had been for #1 and #2 and probably even #3 and maybe even some for #4.  Time goes too damn fast and I don't know how it slipped away from me.

We picked up her drink, and walked on.  The skip in her step returned only when we could see the car, and her escape from the entire tortuous morning seemed finally at hand.

But then on the drive home, lo and behold, the sun that had shone down on all those lake walkers finally emerged in my car.  She actually DID remember Children's Fairyland, Mother Hubbard's shoe specifically, which prompted her to remember other funny things about Kindergarten and childhood and pretty soon, stories were spilling out of her and she was chattering and giggling and lovely. My heart eased. I got the time back.  She even forgot how annoying I was, and did not recoil from the sound of my voice! Victory! Only 15 minutes in the car, but suddenly the sad, plodding little walk was golden and perfect.

And just like that, we left resentment at the lake.


* * *

Blowing Stuff Up, Blowing Stuff Open

The Flaggy Shore of Ireland

Driving with my daughter the other day, she said: "I really don't want to become a grown-up."

And in my mind, I answered her: Ahhh, daughter.  I hear you. This pandemic. The tragedy everywhere around us. Trump at his Trumpiest. The appalling behavior of other grown-ups and especially those in power. The shooting in Nova Scotia. The stories you hear on the news and in your parents' discussions about the state of the world.  It's all just too much, isn't it?

My heart clenched when she said those words, as my mind unspooled in a stream of second-guessing.  Maybe we shouldn't watch Rachel every night and bring that daily dose of downer and despair into our home.  And we definitely need to be checking in with the kids more and seeing how they are processing the news about the coronavirus and everything else going wrong around the world.  What kind of support does this child need? What do they all need?  What have I missed, what have I not noticed, while I've been in one Zoom meeting after another?  How can I make it up to her?

And then she went on:

"I mean, you have to remember so much stuff as an adult!  I don't think I can do that!  For example, I learned in science class that if you just mix a bunch of chemicals together, you could blow everything up!  What if I don't remember that?  I mean, YOU remember that, because we've never blown anything up, but what if I forget and then the whole house explodes?  I'm never going to remember that.  I'll never remember all the things I'm supposed to remember! How do you do it?"

And once again, I am reminded that a child's perspective on the world is endlessly interesting and often hilarious.  The rest of the car ride was a rather enjoyable romp through imagining all the possibilities of things blowing up.

She's not wrong.  Being a grown-up means remembering, among other things:

• to lock the doors at night;
• where the batteries are;
• when you last gave a child #1 medicine;
• what child #2 asked for from the store;
• not to blow stuff up;
• that YOU are the adult, meaning it's not advisable to have a tantrum in the kitchen with the entire family watching;
• when to change the oil;
• to take the chicken out to thaw;
• to make follow up appointments.  Also?  To go to follow up appointments;
• to pay the bills;
• birthdays;
• to switch the laundry;
• that the garbage cans have to go out on Sunday nights and be brought back in on Monday morning;
• that kids are not always pains in the ass;
• that kids are not yet fully human and therefore require otherwordly amounts of patience and compassion;
• where you put your patience and compassion -- check under laundry pile;
• that the best way to raise a kid is to be good to your spouse (if you are lucky enough to have one);
• to eat your vegetables;
• to exercise so that when you're 80 you can still move;
• to drink water.  Lots and lots of water.  More water than beer.  Or bourbon.  For some reason, this one is hard for me;
• who is allergic to what;
• to wear sunscreen and make everyone under your roof do so as well;
• to pack the sunscreen;
• to get the CUBED pineapple at the store and not the crushed.  Your teriyaki skewers will thank you, and your people will not be disappointed;
• to always put your keys in the same place;
• not to scream every time you want to.

And so much more.  Apparently, it also means never assuming you know what a kid is talking about until you listen just a little longer.  I went from heading down a rabbit hole of worry to giggling with Tallulah about stuff blowing up in a few short seconds.  It's not the first time I've experienced the whiplash of parenthood; it won't be the last.

Later, as I was weeding in the garden, I thought about how much there is we want our kids to know about life and growing up. There's no getting around the intense impulse to teach them things, so many things, ALL the things. We are, as the saying goes, their first teachers. As Rick and I get ready to send our third child off to college this Fall (hopefully: who knows what tricks corona's got up its sleeve), I know I'll once again feel that familiar urgency to make sure she knows how to cook rice, be smart at parties, navigate bureaucracy, iron things, stand up for herself, talk to professors, and the list goes on.

But the list is not what matters. The What You Need To Know Before You Go To College list is not the measure of successful parenting, any more than the Things Grown-Ups Remember list is the measure of successful adulting.

The longer I am a parent, the more I suspect that all of my lists -- things to do, things to teach, things to manage, for my family, for myself -- while important, are not the be-all and end-all. Teaching my children things pales in comparison to what I hope I do better than anything else in life: loving them. And enjoying them. Celebrating them. Crying with them. Talking to them. Listening to them. Laughing with them. Cooking with them. Listening to music with them. Being with them, always.  I suppose that's a list of sorts, but one you never cross things off of. You get to get up every day and do all of those things again and again and again, in endless variety, in constant relationship.

Teaching them stuff will only take them so far. Giving them a soft place to land, a hard surface to bounce things off of, a net that will always catch them, and arms that will never let go, no matter how far they travel, will take them everywhere.

It turns out, parenting is the Flaggy Shore of family life:

Useless to think you'll park or capture it

More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

-- Seamus Heaney, Postscript

* * *

If We Were Siblings

Based on the news, my Twitter feed, and the depressing New Yorker articles I've been reading lately, I have come to the conclusion that life in the time of corona is marked by fear and mistrust.

Americans do not trust each other, and without that trust, we will not stand.  We will be a house divided.  If we could fight like siblings, we would stand a chance, but we fight instead like strangers who cut each other off in traffic and give each other the finger as we blaze past with furious indignation oozing from the glares we leave behind.

I wish we could fight like siblings.  Sure, we’d probably still flip each other the bird and we would definitely get just as enraged at perceived injustices and stupidity.  But maybe sometimes we would stick around to thrash it out too.

----

Everywhere I look, I see the ways in which we don't trust each other.  It's in the protestors who want to open the country back up, facing down the health care workers who want us to stay at home.  It's in the vicious twitterstorms we consume in great, endless scrolls.  It's in the way we talk about virtually every issue we face as a country.

Take health care: Low-income Alabamians are opposed to the Affordable Care Act because they don't want "aliens and welfare queens" to take advantage of taxpayers' hard-earned money.  Have they asked for proof that this actually happens, or are they believing their so-called leaders -- leaders who very well could have ulterior motives for wanting to pit poor and oppressed people against each other?

You can blame the New Yorker, and Eyal Press specifically, for this rant.  His piece A Preventable Cancer is on the Rise in Alabama got my brain and blood both boiling.

Why do the "have nots" give their solidarity and loyalty to the "haves," who show no capacity for generosity or justice or simple decency?

To the question of people gaming the system: how many welfare queens would be acceptable if it means poor people could get the health care they need so they don’t die from easily preventable disease?  If 100 deserving citizens get covered through the ACA, while two or three welfare queens pull a fast one, sneaking themselves and their 10-12 children on to the rolls, even though they’re lazy, good-for-nothings who waste their time and our dime, would that be worth it?  Or 7-8 of them?  What about 20?

And what exactly is a welfare queen? Should we take a look at what life on welfare actually looks like and root out the people who are living like royalty? Does that even happen?  Should we find out who is actually being prosecuted for fraud?  Does anyone besides me suspect that it might be mostly white people?  Not necessarily because they're worse people but because there are more of them?

And don't get me started on the 10-12 babies thing.

As if people have babies to make their lives easier...
As if big families deserve less of a safety net than smaller ones...
As if the people complaining about 10-12 babies from welfare queens aren't the same ones saying All Lives Are Precious, meaning, apparently, only the unborn ones because once you draw breath, suddenly you're a drain on honest taxpayers -- at least you are if you're born into a family that doesn't fit American mythology.

Swerving from that New Yorker article, with its wider implications for health care during a pandemic, to the coverage of Trump doing his trumpiest and protestors with rifles demanding the right to go out for burger, I can’t help but wonder if people on opposite sides of the most important issue we face can ever come together.

The divide feels too deep to cross.

Even siblings have to fight like hell to bridge their divides, to remind themselves to be compassionate, to put themselves in each others' shoes.

It seems that Americans take for granted the things we say we stand for.  We behave as if slogans are true without effort, that flags and symbols are enough all on their own, that we don't need vigilance and struggle and conversations and challenge and compromise.  Maybe that's why human beings keep fighting wars: because being on the righteous side of a fight does in fact unite us, perhaps like nothing else, and because so often, we need to be brought together again.  Being united against a common enemy lays bare the secondary importance of daily grievances and even policy differences, by stripping away what does not matter.  What's left is truly, only, what is worth dying for.

So what do we do when we can't even agree on what is worth dying for?

We've got front line workers who show us, every day, that other people are worth dying for. And we've got other people, some of them elected leaders, who seem to believe that the economy is worth dying for -- MORE worth it than saving the lives of a whole lot other people.

If we take this second group at their word, they are willing to have Americans die from COVID19 so that the economy survives.  Don't they see that the vast majority of those who will do the dying are those for whom the economy wasn't working in the first place?  Their policy ideas belie their blindness to how millions upon millions of Americans actually live.  When they say "the solution can't be worse than the problem," they belie their privilege and their inability to truly see what is happening around them.

And what do we do as a country when one solution will minimize how many of us must die while damaging the fortunes of corporations and the other solution will minimize the economic damage while increasing the number of people -- likely poor -- who will die?

If we were siblings and had to choose for our great big family, wouldn't we choose life over dollars?  Call it a choice between two bad outcomes: in perfect world we wouldn't have to choose.

But the fact that the choice exists is not evidence of moral failure. The problem we have does not mean that libtards suck or that MAGAs are a bunch of deplorable #BranchCovidians.  The reality we are facing does not require us to lay blame at each others' feet.  The problem is that we are battling a global pandemic that is big, nasty, overwhelming, terrible, and that touches everything from the personal to the political, the systemic to the idiosyncratic.  The problem is, basically, a war -- a battle that should be uniting us to come together and save lives.

When we don't do that -- when we can't be brothers and sisters and agree on the enemy -- when that happens, no flag can help us.  If we want that flag, our country, to save us, then shouldn't we put some energy, time, and goodwill into the fight, with our questions, our actions, our kindness?  Shouldn't we each give the best of ourselves to each other, instead of our vitriol and venom?

So many of us are making masks, and hosting neighborhood "distance happy hours," and showing solidarity with the Class of 2020, and finding ways to help, soothe, comfort.  We are coming together in those important ways and places.

But in perhaps the toughest places of all -- the places where we disagree -- nothing feels farther from the truth than "we're all in this together."  We're too busy shouting at each other for that to be true.

And so, a plea: If you disagree with me, please don't flip the bird at me and rush past in disgust.  Engage me. Ask me what I care about and why. Tell me those things about yourself.  Tell me what you are afraid of.  Push, with love, on the most urgent questions we are facing together.

I want to do the same.  I want to be your sister.

Say Zoom One More Time

I dare you.  Go ahead.  Whisper it or shout. Weave it into conversation.  See what happens.

I can't be held responsible for the reflexive, bitter stream of vitriol that might come your way.  You have been warned.

Don't get me wrong.  I've zoomed my way through a few delightful happy hours with friends. My office HR department hosted a lovely little virtual water cooler gathering that warmed my heart.  My fiddle teacher's band live-streamed a concert in place of one they had to cancel, and it made me happy.  And there's no question that I am able to work from home productively thanks in no small part to the wonders of teleconferencing.

And yet.  My household participated in at least ten zoom meetings today, and we didn't make it to all of them.  With three "distance learners" and two "distance workers" -- none of whom have nearly enough distance from each other -- the bloom has officially faded from the rose of virtual meetings.  (We also have one grocery store employee who is still heading out that door to work each day: he's our very own superhero.)

Day seven, and I don't feel so much connected to the world by Zoom as bludgeoned over the head with it.

The virtual requests keep coming: all three girls' soccer teams are or will be holding online sessions; Rick will be hosting online sessions for the two teams he coaches, in addition to the coaches' meetings he's already doing.  Tomorrow I have four separate online meetings for work.  My fiddle lessons are now virtual.  Here at Casa de Alatorre, we're Zooming.  We're Google Hanging-Out.  We're FaceTiming.  We're FB Living. We're doin' it all and we might just be losing something in the process.

Every external activity we engage in, for work, health or recreation, has moved online.  It seems that the entire world is offering to zoom on into our home to provide connection! exercise! wellness!  interaction! community! self-improvement! fulfillment! nirvana!

Ok, maybe no one is offering nirvana-via-zoom.

The new Zoom-infused reality we are living in has got some kinks to work out.  The onslaught comes from a truly well-meaning place: people need connection, kids still need to be part of their soccer teams, work still needs to get done.  But the virtual frenzy needs to calm the f*** down.  We need to take a minute. a real, non-virtual minute, to process what's happening and how we can and should respond.  I'd calgon myself away from this madness, but chances are, someone's in the bathroom with a laptop or phone, and that's not the kind of livestream I think anyone needs right now.

Maybe, just maybe, we all need to take a breather.  Shelter in place is hard.  But maybe the answer isn't frantically figuring out how to deliver every possible experience via the internet.  I, personally, need some time to prioritize and think and consider what virtual experiences are actually going to help me and my family in this monumentally challenging time.

As varied and mystifying as family time can be, as hard as it is to be sheltered together by necessity, the situation does present a family with a unique opportunity to spend time differently.  Virtual gatherings of all kinds are not necessarily helping, and may instead be making it harder for us to come together and weather this storm.  When the world can come inside the house at all hours of the day and night, it feels like we have less control as a family over how our family is, simply with each other.

This is not a new observation for me: I've long despised the long tentacles of marketing that are able to reach my kids through their phones, robbing them of precious quietness of mind.

But this feels like next-level infiltration, dressed up in good intentions, and it's currently colliding with the intense experience of six people trying to navigate COVID19 without losing our minds.  There is a reason we come home and relax, finally through the work and school and practice day: home is where we escape the grind.  Now, it feels like the grind is zooming into where it does not belong.   I want to say ENOUGH, but I don't yet know what we can say no to and what we can't -- and everything is happening so fast.

Zoom and all the other platforms out there are good tools that will help us through Shelter In Place -- but they are not the answer and they might be obscuring the question.  What are our families not figuring out, as we turn to online platform after online platform?  I don't know: I want the time and space to wrestle with this question.

Still not gonna miss my 8am virtual pilates with Starr, and bless her for zooming that particular activity into my home.  :)

#FamilyInPlace

Family In Place: Reality Check

With Shelter-In-Place in effect, I have rushed to fill my social media with fun posts and photos about my family's response to this new reality.  The incredible responses I've seen from around the country and the world -- Italy's citizens singing to each other at their windows, friends hosting Yoga via Zoom, the endless hilarious memes that make us laugh -- have inspired me to be creative with my family and to focus on staying positive and motivated in the face of this daunting challenge.  This makes sense: we all need inspiration and motivation.

But last night, my 17-year-old daughter said: "Mom, your social media posts are making it look like we are having fun with all of this."

Good point.  It has not been fun.  There have been bright moments, and I'm proud of my kids for how they have managed things so far, but it has not been fun.  Here are some real moments from AIRY5 in the past few days:

One kid, screaming at another: "STOP LOOKING AT ME OR I WILL KILL YOU."  This was not said in jest.  It was not playful.  It came from a deep and primal place, familiar to siblings around the world.  The scream reverberated throughout the house and hung in the air for a good long time.  Speaking for myself only, it definitely depressed me, while simultaneously causing me to question my parenting and worry about the future of my childrens' relationships.  Temporarily, anyway.

I added a blank list of 5 or 6 lines to our family mural, with the heading: DAY 2: HOW WILL WE SURVIVE?  Then I texted everyone and asked them to help fill it in.  My oldest wanted to put "Eat the little one" on the list.  I didn't let him.  The list went unfilled, except for one suggestion: "Rob a bank."  No one was feeling like coming up with hopeful and creative ways to help each other through Day 2, apparently.

Despite the art mural on our dining room table, despite the basketball hoop my son made out of a Sierra Nevada six-pack container, despite the kickback Rick constructed yesterday for the kids, the most common sight in this household is still teenagers with bad posture, staring at their phones.  Rick and I have talked about the need to institute "tech-free time" each day, and we will do that, but we haven't yet.  What can I say: we are weak.

Yesterday afternoon, I took to my bed, overwhelmed and sad. I'm overwhelmed by the sheer number of articles and resources coming my way, sent by family and friends and posted all over social media.  I'm saddened by what is happening around the world and how many people are suffering.  I'm horrified by how our president is talking about the crisis.  I'm scared because it feels like this country is not doing what needs to be done.  I'm sad for my daughter, who is a senior this year, as she faces the possibility of not having any of the senior-year milestones and moments she and we have been looking forward to.  Did I, without realizing it, watch her play her last soccer game a few weeks ago?  I stayed in bed for two hours, before forcing myself to get up and take the dog out.

THIS.  IS.  HARD.

I told my kids that our family's Shelter In Place experience will be filled with all kinds of moments: good, bad, ugly, and strikingly beautiful.  I believe this is true.  And we should acknowledge all of it, and let it be.

Hang in there, community.  Share what makes you happy, but also feel free to share what makes you feel sad or scared or mad, if you want.  You are not alone.

#MyCorona

cute dog pic cuz she's my
favorite baby right now

Well, THIS is going to be interesting.

And by "interesting," I mean excruciating.

People, Rick and I are now trapped in a small house with three teenagers and a 21-year old male.  So essentially, four teenagers.  The fifth boy child is still away at college: his university is closed down, but he lives in a house, not a dorm, so for now, he's staying where he is. He is safer there than here in the Bay Area, where cases of coronavirus are growing.

It is true that when we heard the news today that as of midnight tonight we would be sheltering in place for the next three weeks -- along with 6.7 million other Bay Area residents -- my teenagers looked at me with equal parts horror and fury.  It took me about five seconds to recognize the look in their eyes, eyes pointed AT ME.  I knew what that look meant: it meant they were pissed AT ME for the shelter in place.

A tense silence hung in the air until I said: "Just remember, I personally did not decree this shelter in place, despite how you might be feeling or tempted to react."

One of my daughters pointed right at me and said: "I WILL BREAK YOU! I will NOT stay here for three weeks.  I WILL WEAR YOU DOWN AND I WILL LEAVE THIS HOUSE!"

Me: "So, this is starting off well."

• • • 

Today was tough.  One college kid home and pissed off that he can't go anywhere...one 7th grader bumping through the process of figuring out how to do "distance learning" on the computer...one senior in high school confronting the possibility of no prom, no graduation ceremony, no final spring soccer season, no life...one child sick and, yes, feverish, and one doctor-by-phone-appointment to determine that she likely has a sinus infection...one proposal deadline for the job I'm still responsible for...and one shelter-in-place order throwing a giant curveball over all of it.

Rick went to the closest grocery store shortly after the shelter-in-place was announced, and spent 30 minutes shopping and almost two hours standing in line waiting to get to the cashier.  Never fear though, he brought home 9 bags of chips and a whole lotta beer: I'd marry him all over again today. (In his defense, the store was completely out of everything that was actually on our list: EVERYTHING.)

I went to pick up a prescription for the sinus infection, and the scene at our local Kaiser hospital was surreal: a triage center out in front, people pulling up to the curb looking very very sick, everyone in masks, lots of health care workers shouting directions to everyone.

It's almost time for bed here, and Rick just said to me: "Well, we made it through one day!"  I had to remind him that yes, we did make it through one day, but the three-week process actually starts tomorrow, so...

These are strange times.  We are all going through something monumental both together and alone.  One thing is certain: the next three weeks will be a fascinating study in family life, the good, the bad and the ugly.  Can a person be both subject and researcher at the same time?  

We shall find out!

• • •

She Makes Me Happy. And Tired.

Good Lord.  Yesterday nearly did me in.

Some of you may know we got a dog for Christmas, 2018.  Ever since losing our beloved black lab, Tule, on Mother's Day 2017, most of our family has been lobbying hard for another dog.  I was the lone holdout, so when I -- as the mom and all around boss (sorry, hon) -- decided we were ready, we were finally ready.

This was that special moment:

Zuzu is now a little over a year old, and she is adorable and awesome and so much fun and...problematic.

We take her for hour-long off-leash walks, where she frolics like a maniac with other dogs, as often as we can, and it's not enough.  She needs more.  When we got her, the people selling her told us she is part black lab, part Australian Shepard.  This may or may not be true, but she is 100% pure energy, plus another 35% neurosis.  She's a hot mess most of the time.  All that puppy energy, plus a couple of breeds with high activity quotients means we basically adopted a full-time job.

No worries, you're thinking: this family has five kids!  Plenty of help with a new dog!  Riiiiiiight.  Have you met my children?  I love them to the ends of being and ideal grace, but they're basically worthless when it comes to sharing any kind of workload.

Don't get me wrong, I went into the whole "let's get a new dog" thing with my eyes wide open.  I knew it would be Rick and me doing most of the work.  Luckily, I fell so hard in love with that little munchkin that I'm ready to sacrifice cooking for my human children to fulfill her needs.  I am repaid handsomely in love and devotion, so it all works out.

Anyway, I recently realized that our hour-long walks are not doing the trick, so yesterday I had a mission: Get. Zuzu. Tired.

I found a book the other day called Bay Area Hikes with Dogs, and found a lovely hike less than 20 miles from home that looked like it might take me a couple of hours and introduce me to some local nature trails new to me: Bort Meadow Trail, sort of near Lake Chabot. I loaded whacko little Zuzu in the car and off we went.  This is how she felt about the experience shortly after we arrived:

And this is how the rest of the experience went:

Turns out, Bay Area Hikes for Dogs is less than exact in its trail directions, and what I thought would be a two-hour hike turned into a 3.5-hour long epic, during which I asked myself several times "Am I lost?  I'm not lost, am I? I'm probably not lost."  And while texting my husband, I assured him I was not lost, while not exactly sure of that myself.  (True story, hon.)

The directions in the book, while less than clear, matched many of the things I saw.  The book said that at one point, it would seem like the trail ended, but that I should continue on the paved portion of road for .2 miles until picking it up again just past the water tower.  Well, long after having taken a wrong turn that I blame on the less than clear directions, I did in fact come upon a spot where it seemed like the trail ended and a paved path took over for about .2 miles.  I picked up the trail again and kept going, for a long while.  I passed a golf course; I passed Lake Chabot.  The book did not mention either of these rather significant sightings, and I started to get suspicious.

Finally, I came upon a trail map and consulted it, and could tell I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be.   So I started backtracking.  I drank all my water. I ate my apple.  I stopped seeing people.  It got cold and windy.  I started cursing all that nature.  I became a bitter, unhappy hiker. It was ENDLESS.

Did I mention the signs that warned that this area was home to coyotes?  That was fun.

Also fun was the part where I was finally less than half a mile from my car, and the only path back had a sign next to it saying: "Trail closed; this path will be reopened when it is safe for the public."   It took me about 5 seconds to decide to take my chances on the closed path rather than (a) backtrack for another two hours or (b) continue on the main path with no idea where it went or how it would get me back to my car.  The book said that this smaller trail -- Buckeye Trail -- was a lovely, very secluded path back to Bort Meadow.  Damn that “closed path” BS, I needed the shortest distance between me and my Prius. Blowing past the TRAIL CLOSED sign, I felt like such a little nature rebel.  But here I am, writing about it, so we know it all worked out.

At the end of the whole thing, I had walked 21,000 steps, I was dirty, dusty, grumpy and tired.

But LOOK WHAT I DID:

It's hard to take a photo of a black dog, but trust me: that pup was OUT.

Success! So basically, I need to quit my job and devote myself to making this dog tired 4 hours of every day.  We might not be able to feed the kids, pay college tuition, or keep our house, but Zuzu will be well cared for, so it's all good.

She makes me happy.

Better Parenting Through Selfishness

The other day, Elizabeth told me that a friend of hers "aspires to be like you when she's a mom."

Photo from a recent hike:
I do those for myself too!

Um...come again?

First of all, I was not previously aware that I had made any impression whatsoever on said friend.  To be honest, I wasn't even sure that if I saw this girl somewhere without my daughter in tow, she would know who I was.  Second, what could she possibly be basing this aspiration upon? How well I pull up to the parking lot to pick Elizabeth up from soccer practice?  The food I bring to games when I miraculously remember we are on snack duty?  My mad sideline cheering skillz?

Before I got too puffed up about inspiring the younger generation, I had to ask: Why, Elizabeth? Why does your friend want to be like me?

Turns out, she aspires to be like me because I "do pilates" and take violin lessons and otherwise do things for myself and not solely for my children.

FASCINATING!

Here we are killing ourselves to do ALL OF THE THINGS for our kids and gnashing our teeth over whether or not we're doing it all right, and it turns out, the children like it when we take care of ourselves!

This is very good news.  Never mind putting the needs of the child first.  Don't worry about those permission slips and nutritious lunches (unless they are for you) and clean, matching socks.  Release yourself from carpool duty and school supply shopping and bedtime/bathtime routines.  Really, the key to parenting success is to treat yourself right.  Have drinks with friends, go to baby goat yoga, play an instrument, train for a 5K fun run or for a marathon -- the world is your oyster!  And if you wanna eat oysters -- with or without horseradish -- DO IT!

It makes sense too: it must not be that interesting for kids to watch parents who have no lives beyond pick up and drop off, who make adult life look like it's solely about doing stuff for other people.  It turns out, kids want us to be happy. It helps them look forward to adulthood and see family life as more than just years and years of impossibly hard work.  They will surely figure that part out for themselves.

So, to those of you who have lists of things you need to do this weekend for your kids: shred that thing immediately. Start over, and this time, make a list filled with fun things that will make you happy.

Do it for the kids. 


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Bring On the 40 Days

Welcome, Lent.


This year, I am using this season to force myself to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time now: re-establish the habit of writing.

I stopped writing regularly awhile ago, and as a result, I don't know what I think about pretty much anything anymore, except that I really want the Trump presidency to come to a screeching halt.  But other than that, I can't really figure out much about life.  Writing used to help me make sense of things, and I'm hoping it will again.  Things like:

• Why do my teenage daughters' midriffs (and sculpted eyebrows and endless, curated selfies) bother me so much?
• How can one person make a stand against the divisions and rancor that are everywhere?
• When will I figure out how to make my iPhone serve me, rather than the other way around?
• Why is life so unbelievably hard?  Why is life so unbelievably beautiful?  And why is it so hard to focus on the beautiful?

I used to write a ton on this blog about raising my kids.  Now, I am deep into this parenting thing and have been doing it mostly without the outlet of writing.  I've now been parenting for almost 22 years.  Still have quite a few more years ahead before that day in the distant future when I invite my grown kids over for dinner.  I think about that day a lot -- what it will be like, who will be there.  Will I like the people my children bring in to the family?  How many grandkids will I have?  Will my adult children trash my house then as they do now?

I feel simultaneously seasoned at motherhood and baffled by every new experience that comes my way as each individual child grows and changes.  It's stunning, really, how unprepared I can still feel for the things that life throws our way.  And I think life is trying to teach me to never feel like I have arrived, to always stay open to learning more and changing and becoming who I am.

This week marks one very gigantic milestone in my family: we officially change pediatricians as of March 1, and I'm seriously deep in mourning over it.  21.5 years ago, after I had failed at one of the first TO DO items I ever became aware of as a newly expectant mother (research, interview and carefully choose a pediatrician for your new baby!), we were lucky enough to give birth on a night when Dr. Maria happened to be on call checking out all the newborns.  She asked if we had a pediatrician and I sheepishly said no.  She offered to be ours, and what the heck, she seemed nice, so we said YES.

It turned out to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.  Ever since, she has been by my side.  She has helped us through the usual fevers and ear infections and viruses and sprains.  She got us through a lacerated kidney and a rather unusual bowel movement issue (nuff said, truly).  She has a perspective and approach to medicine that is fundamentally based on the relationships she is able to build with parents and kids, and IT WORKED FOR US.  I have never, for one minute, been a mother without the amazing Dr. Maria in my back pocket, as it were, and we -- me, my husband, and all five of these little shits -- are beyond fortunate to have fallen into her lap.

Alas, health insurance rates don't care one whit about those relationships.

Faced with a choice of sticking with Dr. Maria and seeing our health insurance cost go up by $450 per month or switching to a plan that will only go up $150 -- which is to say, not much of a choice at all -- we "adulted" and did the totally sucky responsible practical fiscally smart very sad thing, and switched.  (I'll have you know that I consciously chose not to use commas in that sentence because that's how it feels in my head: a steady, uninterrupted litany of yuckiness.)

It's fine.  We'll all be fine.  Maria will still be a big part of our lives (because BONUS: We became FRIENDS over the past two decades!  We play FIDDLE together!).  The kids will get another doctor, and I have a recommendation for a great one at Kaiser, where they will now be seen.  It will all be fine.  So why do feel like I'm in mourning?

Maria has been formative to my mothering, and to my identity as a mom.  So now, I have to forge a new mom-dentity, with a new pediatrician who doesn't know our history, who doesn't know that Sam is the sweetest boy ever, or that Vincenzo and Lola are basically Picassos, that Elizabeth is wicked smart and hilarious, that Tallulah is a force of nature that we're gonna try not to screw up too much.

The new doctor will learn.  She will come to see these kids as the freakin' miracles that they are.  If she doesn't, I'll find a new doctor.

I saw Maria tonight (fiddle lessons every Thursday, yo!), and told her of my heartbreak.  She gave me a hug and said: "I'll always be your pediatrician.  You can always call me with stuff -- I just can't prescribe for you anymore."

See?  She's gold.

Looking forward to seeing what I write about tomorrow.

Peace.