Grown Ups Have Bad Days, Too

I'm feeling needy today.

Maybe it's because of the back-to-school crud I caught from the kids. I get down any time I spend too much time sitting in one spot or, in my case last night, lying on the couch watching Monday Night Football. The crud has rendered me immobile for most of the past two days, so I've been grumpy.

Or maybe it's because I've had too much time to think. Too little on my mind (what with not moving and all)? The dark-gray, heavy-clouded day probably hasn't helped, and the steady rain patting on the windows does little to inspire. Even Fergus seems overly mellow, his mood off a bit. Because I tutor this time of year, I'm super busy in the evenings and weekends; days are thereby a little tediously filled with straightening up this and that and this and that, as well as doing the blah, blah, blah dishes, and catching up on the (yawn) email.

But needy? That's different. Perhaps enhanced by all of the above nuances, but not really a result of them.  I don't like feeling needy, because it seems a gargantuan waste of my time. Nothing can really help.

I'm forty-five years old. What am I going to do when I'm feeling needy? My husband works hard and travels often, and tonight he even has a class. My kids express a surprising lack of empathy at all-things-mom's-sentiments. They're teenagers ager all, and their world is THE world, and I'm sure deep down inside they do spend a millisecond of consideration if I don't seem my normal dorky, happy self. But they're not exactly experts at "fixing" things these days . . . not the piles of towels on their bedroom floors, not the broken shower curtain liner in their bathroom, and certainly not the emotional earthquake rumbling through their naggy mother. I could reach out to a friend or two (I've got some great ones), but really, yuck. Why bring them down? They've got their own mama-crap going on.

My grandparents, all five of them (divorce equation) used to be a phone call away when feeling down;  although they could not necessarily fix anything, they could tell me enough random stories and tales of the obituary to distract me long enough to help. But they're no longer a phone call away. I could call my dad, but Fixing Everything is his super-power, so he'd well meaningly jump right into action telling his "Baby" what steps to take immediately, followed by a cautionary tale of "don't worry so much." On days like this, I become acutely aware that I no longer have a mother on the planet. That. Is. Hard.

So, it's me and my dog, Fergus. It seems I've become the crazy middle-aged woman who not only baby talks to her dog, sneaks him bits of pumpkin scone, and snuggles with him on the couch when freaking out over an episode of Breaking Bad, but also truly looks forward to seeing him when she comes home. He is, after all, happy to see me in ways that few people are these days. Tail wagging, he greets and licks, and my heart kinda jumps a little bit.

When the girls were little and would come to me with eyes full of tears, I used to hold their hand, listen to their pain or frustration, and say, "I know. It's hard to be five." "I know, honey. It's hard to be seven." They used to nod and wipe their eyes, and I would cross my fingers I had done at least the tiniest thing to make their tough day a little better. One time, Cammie, curls bobbing lightly, sniffed deeply after spilling the story of a long day at preschool and said, "You wemembuh. It's just hard to be fwee, mama."

Somedays, it's hard to be a grownup. On a gross day like this, when the Netflix screen shuts down and Fergus is asleep next to me, it's just me and the rain again. Needy. Wanting something impossible to define but knowing it'll pass like most middle-age ennui does, dark and stormy, rolling onward to make room for the bright and crisp autumn days ahead. Ones that hold warm apple cider at the orchard, my girls wearing homecoming dresses (with curled eyelashes, shiny gloss, and flat-ironed hair), the swish of tennis racquets, and maybe even a few hugs along the way to make everything better.

Ink, Oasis, and Trader Joe's

The Richmond Trader Joe’s sits approximately 1.7 miles from my suburban, manicured neighborhood. The thousand or so brick-front houses that surround mine all sit feet from each other and resemble each other subtly, like siblings and cousins at an overcrowded family reunion. It’s a planned community, with an impressive new high school across the street from an adorable elementary school. These are equidistant from the four-pool-and-tennis-court complex (dotted with screaming children and forty- and fifty-something moms who still look amazing in bikinis and tennis skirts), and the strip mall, replete with all essentials for today’s American family: a McDonald’s, a vet, a Subway, a grocery store, a neighborhood pub, a Mexican restaurant famous for Dollar Taco Thursday, the necessary Starbucks, and more. 

What I love about my neighborhood can best be summed up on cool, dusky evenings, when the pristine sidewalks flood with families chasing tricycles, jogging dads, gossiping moms, Indian women slowly meandering in vibrant saris, silver-haired couples holding hands, and dogs of all breeds pulling owners along. Within the homes are, primarily, good, kind people, with the mandated crazies thrown in here and there. I tell myself it’s a good place to be, and mostly I believe myself, too.

What I don’t love about my neighborhood is harder to define. There are too many rooves and not enough land shaded with canopying trees, for one. Perhaps it’s the “cookie-cutter” sameness that shoves vibrancy off the streets.  Families seem interchangeable, predictable even. Make their homes here, raise their children here, pull in and out of identical driveways. Go to work. Go to school. Go to soccer, go to dance, go to lacrosse. Sleep. Wake up. Repeat. Suburban monotony. I can’t possibly be the only one dragging under its weight. Can I? 

One afternoon recently, I took time for a good, existential look around the Trader Joe’s. I realized a couple of things right away. One, I’ve never seen the store not buzzing with people. The same streetwise local harried carpool chaos pushes down the aisles at just about any time of day. Two, parking’s a bitch. It’s life or limb, and it’s your civic duty to make sure you’re not running over small children or rolling avocados. 

Why, I wondered during the drudge of my own grocery shopping routine, do these four walls of a small, boxy retailer represent such a gloriously urban oasis in the sea of suburban sameness? The same families who I share life with, and thousands more with whom I don’t, must feel the same way. We flock to Trader Joe’s for its bargain prices and because, well, it’s Trader Joe’s! Everything there is delicious. And easy. Labels say “organic,” and even the processed foods have a relatively short list of pronounceable ingredients. It’s the cool place to be.

On my recent trip, as I contemplated the above and soaked in the atmosphere, a Trader Joe’s team member sauntered by in his red Hawaiian shirt. He interrupted my reverie by asking if I needed help; standing stock-still between the quinoa-black-bean-chips-of-heaven and the all-natural-life-changing-probiotics, I must’ve looked that way. It was his deep voice that helped me realize: It’s them. The employees.

I know from previous conversations that my neighborhood friends love the nearby Trader Joe’s employees. Together, they represent urban hipness transplanted into a 1,000-sq-foot hub approximately 13 miles from Richmond City Proper. And I am lucky enough to have an additional propelling force: my brother, who also happens to work there.

Adam is the perfect representative of your basic TJ employee all rolled into one: scraggly hair that could use a good cut (or even a comb). Semi-manicured beard that now ventures well below the chin. Jeans that sag around a hidden tush. Sad, wrinkled hole in an earlobe, where the giant plastic disc used to be. Piercings of some kind, some where. Birkenstocks. Happiness.

Genuine grins, ready to transform to casual conversation at the beep of a register. General devil-may-care swagger. “Hippies,” fellow suburbanites call them with tamed awe but what I realize now is clear envy; after all, they are “The City” and all things cool. In some intangible way, maybe they represent the road not traveled, or, more to the point, the road that currently seems infinitely out of sight. In the routine of everyday life, I believe that appeals to many of my friends. 

When I walk in, I feel the same, especially when I see my brother chatting it up with a customer. Adam stands as described, except he’s a bit different. When I say that he works at Trader Joe’s, my friends ask, “Oh, which one is he?”  “He’s the short one,” I say begrudgingly. I don’t want to describe him that way, and yet, amidst all of the beards and piercings, that’s his unique identifier. Adam is 5’1” tall, noticeably short for a man. And, at 5’8” in flats, I’m noticeably taller. I hate his height for him; and because it’s a result of chemotherapy throughout his youth, I hate it even more. The unwieldy souvenir from the suckiest vacation ever.

Like the other employees, he’s all of the above rolled into a tiny, smiling man. And a microcosm of tattoos.

He collects tattoos the way I collect trinkets, cheap art, things to decorate our home. I don’t put anything on walls or shelves that doesn’t have some sentimental significance. Same with my brother’s body. He decorates himself with meaning.

It started years ago, in his teens, when he kept two, then four, then who-knows-how-many hidden from parental eyes under tee-shirts and board-shirts at the beach. With his tongue piercing came a bold sense of “Who gives a shit,” and he started broadcasting his ink and collecting more in earnest. He may have twenty by now . . . perhaps more in places sisters don’t see. 

I used to be of the old school and believed all those tattoos made him look rough, angsty. Defiant, even lazy. After all, I don’t “believe” in tattoos for me, and struggle to understand the appeal for others. So I offer the usual arguments of people who just don’t get it (which includes meddling, know-it-all big sisters): What will all of that look like when you’re 80? Do you have to have so many? How will you ever get a real job? But as time has gone on and expectations evolve with the years, they have become a part of who he is. Each new tattoo a new piece of my brother.

I feel like I should know each of them. I should know their significances, their purposes. But I don’t. Somewhere, there’s a creepy skull, a souvenir of a darker period in his life. There are artsy scrolls and swirls here and there. I do know one on his right forearm (part of a “sleeve” he’s been working on for years). It’s a giant ship, on blackish waters, clearly moving forward and out of rough weather. It represents his cancer freedom, and features the date the doctors gave him the all-clear. 1984. A few years ago, after mom died, he added a tattoo to his left bicep as a tribute to her, its enormous size emblematic of the space she continues to occupy in his heart. I should know what that says, too, but all I can remember seeing is a rose. He chose red, instead of yellow--her favorite--because he was told the color would fade. I’m glad he did, because the yellow would be too hard to look at. 

A few years ago, he added a new one. It’s on the inside of his left wrist and is an enormous pink ribbon. Beneath the ribbon, in neat, perfect cursive is the word, “Sisters.”  Knowing him, even as little as I do, I know getting that tattoo was the only thing he felt he could do to share the pain that my sister and I felt as we both discovered we carried the BRCA 1 gene mutation. We each had to have quick double mastectomies--my sister prophylactically and me to remove the multiple tumors growing within. It was a dark time in our family’s life for sure, and after we were through the roughest of it, both he and my sister got the matching tattoo as a tribute to survival. A reminder of family.

Oddly, it’s a gift to me. One that he keeps, but I cherish.

Adam is somewhat foreign to me; we are just now getting to the point in our relationship in which we hang out and discuss things like adults, not pick at trivialities and hurry past topics like teens. I love that. Perhaps I should look more at his ink, not just through it. I know this, though: Underneath all that color is a gooey, emotional man whose love for family is as fierce as his looks. He melts for my girls and celebrates the smallest of successes with relish. One of our only commonalities through the years has always been music: we both would drop just about anything to see live performances or listen to new albums. When I’m lucky, we go together to shows. Other times, on a night off, he’ll tag along to a neighborhood picnic, always the good sport and sincerely happy to be with my friends whose name he’ll never remember. He laughs at stupid “boy things” like prat falls and the Three Stooges, and I laugh at him for laughing at them.

If I could change one thing, I would wish he had more love in his life. He is single, but he lives with a roommate who is, in his words, “like a brother,” and is content with the love of our small immediate family and his growing group of groovy friends. He drives twenty minutes from his city house, from his urban, cool, craft-beer tasting, music-jamming, cornhole-tossing life to work in my suburban world because he loves it. He and his coworkers don’t do it for the customers, I’m sure. Insecurely, I acquiesce that they don’t share the admiration their customers hide. They are ours to ogle, ours to study. We, the middle-aged envious anthropologists, daydreaming, quieting screaming toddlers as we stroll. The employees do it ‘cause they can; we watch them wishing we could. 

I’m quite sure even my brother doesn’t make the commute, stock the shelves, lay out his best customer servicing, work the brutal early morning hours for me.

But sometimes I like to pretend he does. 

White Lightening

A silly little ditty from an in-class writing prompt (5 minutes of writing): "Write about an ordinary place in your life (your home, a room in your home, your yard, your car, etc.) and how it transcends the ordinary into something more meaningful to you." Of course I wrote about you-know-who.

My bright-white Honda Odyssey minivan is, without a doubt, the nicest thing I have ever owned. White Lightening, as he is known on the streets and as he zooms teenaged girls around town, joined the Lynch family on February 29, 2012. He's a Leap Baby, and my baby he is.

Long ago, I accepted the fact that, as a driver of a minivan, I no longer turned the head of any man. Of any age. At any stop light. Ever. I've since given in completely to the decidedly unsexy vehicle I call my own. To me, White Lightening is perfect. In his console, I keep his feather duster, so his dash is always sparkling. "Grab your trash!" I sing each time the girls exit the super-fancy, smooth automatic doors. White Lightening's sound system is stellar, and he practically bounces with joy when six teenagers rock out to Katy Perry or, in my rare moments alone, I cruise to the bass-throbbing Fiddy Cent.

Mostly, though, I love my little White Lightening because he reminds me how far I've come since Kibbles and Bits, my 1980 faded-yellow, overly dented, unairconditioned Subaru station wagon that was my faithful first car. I loved Kibbles (as only I called him), of course, and yes, my arms were rockin' thanks to the absence of power steering and windows. But White Lightening . . . well, now, that's adulthood. That's good fortune and a tiny symbol or reminder to be thankful. That's a commercialized, materialistic, groovy blessing parked right in my driveway.

Ink

I am beyond blessed to be attending University of Iowa's Summer Writing Festival. For my weekend class, which involved writing about family without making them hate you (I paraphrase, but barely), today's prompt was "Write about someone in your family who has a collection." An additional requirement: the essay had to include some sort of list and also a contradiction, small or large. All this in 250 ish words . . . For a first draft, I sorta like what came out.

Ink

The Richmond Trader Joe’s sits approximately 1.7 miles from my suburban, manicured neighborhood. It’s a planned community, with an impressive new high school across the street from an adorable elementary school. These are equidistant from the four-pool-and-tennis-court complex (dotted with screaming children and forty- and fifty-something moms who still look amazing in bikinis and tennis skirts) and the strip mall, replete with all essentials for today’s American family: a McDonald’s, a vet, a Subway, a grocery store, a neighborhood pub, a Mexican restaurant famous for Dollar Taco Thursday, the nearest Starbucks (there are five more within a three-mile radius), and more. 

These same families and many more flock to Trader Joe’s for its bargain prices and because, well, it’s Trader Joe’s! Everything there is delicious. Labels say “organic,” and even the processed foods have a relatively short list of pronounceable ingredients. Like everyone else, I adore this urban oasis in the sea of suburban sameness. I’ve never seen the store not buzzing with people. The local harried carpool chaos pushes down the aisles at just about any time of day. Parking’s a bitch, besides. But still, I love going to Trader Joe’s. 

Why? My brother works there. He is almost forty, but the sight of my baby brother behind the register most certainly pulls me out of this suburban life I don’t quite belong to and brings me home. 

My neighborhood friends love the Trader Joe’s employees. Together, they represent urban hipness transplanted into a 1,000-sq-foot hub approximately 13 miles from Richmond City Proper. My brother is the perfect representative of your basic TJ employee all rolled into one: scraggly hair that could use a good cut (or even a comb). Manicured beard that now ventures well below the chin. Jeans that sag around a hidden tush. Sad, wrinkled hole in an earlobe, where the giant plastic disc used to be. Piercings of some kind, some where. Birkenstocks. Happiness.

“Hippies,” suburbanites call them with awe and clear envy; after all, they are “The City” and all things cool. Genuine grins, ready to transform to casual conversation at the beep of a register. General devil-may-care swagger. In some ways, they represent the road not traveled, and in the routine of everyday life, that appeals to many of my cohorts.

When I walk in, I feel the same, especially when I see my brother chatting it up with a customer. He stands as described, except he’s a bit different. When I say that he works at Trader Joe’s, my friends ask, “Oh, which one is he?”  “He’s the short one,” I say begrudgingly. I don’t want to describe him that way, and yet, amidst all of the beards and piercings, that’s his unique identifier. Adam is 5’1” tall, noticeably short for a man. And, at 5’8” in flats, I’m noticeably taller. I hate his height for him; and because it’s a result of chemotherapy throughout his youth, I hate it even more.

Like the other employees, he’s all of the above rolled into a tiny, smiling man. And a microcosm of tattoos. 

He collects tattoos the way I collect trinkets, cheap art, things to decorate our home. I don’t put anything on walls or shelves that doesn’t have some sentimental significance. Same with my brother’s body. He decorates himself with meaning.

It started years ago, in his teens, when he kept two, then four, then who-knows-how-many hidden under tee-shirts and board-shirts at the beach. With his tongue piercing came a bold sense of “who gives a shit,” and he started broadcasting his ink and collecting more in earnest. He may have twenty by now . . . perhaps more in places sisters don’t see. 

I used to be of the old school and believed all those tattoos made him look rough, angsty. Defiant, perhaps even lazy. After all, I don’t believe in tattoos. So I offer the usual arguments of people who just don’t get it (which includes meddling, know-it-all big sisters): what will all of that look like when you’re 80? How will you ever get a real job? Do you have to have so many? But as time has gone on and expectations evolve with the years, they’ve become a part of who he is. Each new tattoo a new piece of my brother.

I feel like I should know each of them. I should know their significances, their purposes. But I don’t. Somewhere, there’s a creepy skull, a souvenir of a darker period in his life. There are artsy scrolls and swirls here and there. I do know one on his right forearm (part of a “sleeve” he’s been working on for years). It’s a giant ship, on blackish waters, clearly moving forward and out of rough weather. It represents his cancer freedom, and features the date the doctors gave him the all-clear. I should know that date, and I can guess at it, but I don’t. After mom died, he added a tattoo to his shoulder as a tribute to her, its enormous size emblematic of the space she continues to occupy in his heart. I should know what that says, too, but all I can remember seeing is a yellow rose, her favorite flower. It’s hard to look at. 

A few years ago, he added a new one. It’s on the inside of his left wrist. It’s an enormous pink ribbon. Beneath the ribbon, in neat, perfect cursive is the word, “Sisters.”  It was the only thing he felt he could do to share the pain that my sister and I felt as we both discovered we carried the BRCA 1 gene mutation. We each had double mastectomies--my sister prophylactically and me to remove the multiple tumors growing within. It was a dark time in our family’s life for sure, and after we were through it, both he and my sister got the matching tattoo as a tribute to survival. A reminder of family.

Oddly, it’s a gift to me. One that he keeps, but I cherish.

Adam is somewhat foreign to me; we are just now getting to the point in our relationship in which we hang out and discuss things like adults, not pick and hurry past topics like teens. I love that. Perhaps I should look more at his ink, not just through it. But I know this: Underneath all that color is a gooey, emotional man whose love for family is as fierce as his looks. He melts for my girls and celebrates the smallest of successes with relish. One of our only commonalities through the years has always been music: we both would drop just about anything to see live performances or listen to new albums. When I’m lucky, we go together to shows. Other times, on a night off, he’ll tag along to a neighborhood picnic, always the good sport and sincerely happy to be with my friends whose name he’ll never remember. He laughs at stupid “boy things” like prat falls and the Three Stooges, and I laugh at him for laughing at them.

If I could change one thing, I would wish he had more love in his life. He is single, but he lives with a roommate who is, in his words, “like a brother,” and is content with the love of our small immediate family and his growing group of groovy friends. He drives twenty minutes from his city house, from his urban, cool, craft-beer tasting, music-jamming, cornhole-tossing life to work in my suburban world because he loves it. I’m quite sure he doesn’t do it for me. But sometimes I like to pretend he does. 

Ode to May 27

Comings and goings. Invoking memories, or nothingness. 

Passive: One’s comings and goings. Go to work. Come home. Go run an errand. Come back to church. Go there, come here. Reflexive almost. Your legs, your minivan, your lives moving without your brain’s input. The passive comings and goings add up, piling on top of each other until they’re a mound of weekdays and weekends and hours and minutes without margins, blending together in a heap. A colorful mass of blurry mess.

Active: Being a part of it all. Go to your daughter’s dance recital. Come home to a surprise meal. Go pick your daughter up from the nurse; she’s sick, and wants to come home to her bed. Come here, you yelp to the puppy. Go on a luxurious vacation, not believing your luck. Come away with me, my friend. Go away, you silently shout at the rain. Go get some food truck deliciousness. Come to my house with bells on. Come visit, family, we miss you. Go on!, you laugh and laugh.

Blessings come into our lives if we listen, watch for, breathe them. People go whether we want them to or not.

May 27 has come and gone six times since the day--the instant, the milisecond--everything changed. The day life became “after,” and “before” had to go. The thing about life-changing moments is that you actually know your life is changing right THEN, in that second. The time-space continuum slows tangibly, and you become hyperaware of some of your surroundings and completely oblivious to things like where you are or what you should be doing. I remember the thickness of the May evening air, heavy with the scent of suburban potted flowers. Now, I can recall the precise feel of the warm bricks under my ass, the sound of laughter ebbing and flowing behind me. But in that moment, I was concentrating so deeply, so intensely on what my breast surgeon was saying, the diagnosis and new strange words that were coming into my life, that I hardly had a chance to watch my old life go.

But I felt it. The before became the after right there in my lap.

After the phone call, when I sat for an eternity with my head in my hands, someone came outside to leave, to head for home. So stunned that someone else has penetrated my night, my thick air, the end of my old life, I jumped, surprised to see another human where they didn't belong. After a mumbling of excuses, I left for home, but just drove around and around, ending at a friend's house before beginning in my home . . .  beginning the process of telling those I love that my old life just ended on a front porch and my new life was about to begin.

That was May 27th. So it is today. The air around me is fragrant, carrying me with it to memories that thankfully are lodged too deep to fully grasp.

What have been the goings these six years? Fear of conformity. That’s gone. Worry that I’m not good enough as a mother, a friend, a wife, a daughter, a sister. Gone? Not entirely, because worry is what I do. But gone is the self-loathing that once consumed me. Gone too is the phrase, “I’m busy.” I simply won’t say it any more . . . I’ll either make it not so, or pour myself into what I’m doing to bring happiness. 

Gone too, however, are losses too tragic, too soon, too sad. Friends to cancer, neighbors with hearts that broke for real, a mother to addiction, the childhoods of my daughters whispering past before I can breathe them in.

What has come into this new life, this Life Number 2? A collection of treasures, of memories, this time around with sharper edges, in focus, appreciated in the moment and cherished as often and as deep as my middle-aged mind will allow. Not a mound of mess but a armful of love. Exploration. Laughter. Tears. Fun. Embracing messiness, because it happens, and it happens often. Learning. Always learning.

Realization that next steps may lead to unexpected bliss. And that I am not afraid to take them.

Anything is possible.

Every day I look at the sky, say a prayer of thanks, and hope that I remain on this earth to make more comings than goings. 

22: Taking a Swing

1. I'm back. Really
2. I refuse to abandon Project 360. I dig it. I'm going to catch up, dammit.
3. Below is a piece of writing I submitted to Valley Haggard's Life in 10 Minutes. (Go check it out!) Valley is a local writer whose work and overall outlook on this here life I've admired for a lonnng time. I decided to cross-post my somewhat-awkward first attempt here. Part of what stops me from writing sometimes is ironically not writer's block; it's actually the opposite. Too many things come to mind, too many experiences, laughs, heartaches . . . the stuff that life is made of. It's hard to know where to start.

Anyhoo, Valley's site is a good place for me to make a re-start. The goal is to write for 10 minutes. Simply live a piece of yourself for 10 minutes. Here's what came out . . .

The one and only time I got in a fist fight, I didn’t actually throw any punches. That’s a technicality, though, I choose to ignore when I see some hunky, sweaty actor punching an obnoxious drunk across a bar. Or when, up on the movie screen, a hurt hero loses it, just loses it, quick enough to send “ooohs” through the shocked crowd eating their popcorn below.

Didn’t see that coming, they think. 

I didn’t see my make believe fight coming either. In 1981, I was more focused on neighborhood kickball rules and the colors of my new braided barrettes to worry about adding angst to my world. That would come years later as my teenage years usurped my emotional stability. As the bell rang for the first and only round, I was an 11-year-old lanky, gawky girl--all legs, which stood firmly planted in the cul-de-sac gravel, the place where I felt most at home.

Then what’s-his-name came along and messed it all up. He knocked me in the shins with his stupid words, and everything, for a fistful of minutes, changed. I’ll never forget the feeling of the anger that rose into my throat, finally exploding out of my mouth, raining bile and fear all over the road.

He looked at my brother. My brother, tiny, age six, outside and free, ready to play with the big kids. But it was the big kid who threw his punch: “Look at the baldy standing there. Bald like an old man. Baldy!”

The words hit my brother hard, but me harder. They took the wind out of me, and within the five seconds it took me to throw my imagined punch, I managed to picture all of needles, the burning of my brother’s veins, the vomiting on the side of the road from drugs designed to kill the beast inside him. The radiation table that sucked him up away from me, the pain in my parents’ eyes. It was too much. 

I lashed him with the only weapon at my disposal: words. 

So it wasn’t a punch I threw at the knock-kneed idiot on his ugly dirt bike; more likely, it was every piece of me that had been trapped inside for too long. I hope it burned. I hope it scarred him so much that he’d think twice before ever again throwing his own punch and anyone else forever and ever.

Movie punches. Cul-du-sac punches. Sometimes you just don’t know what else to do. Even if you are only eleven.

21: On Eyelashes

On Eyelashes

Today, a friend at work chimed in to a lively, intelligent conversation about last night's episode of The Bachelor. He mentioned that one of the ladies who got sent home had insane eye lashes; I believe he called them caterpillars. He's right. We laughed for a sec, made a few more wise insights about helicopters and roses and back tattoos, and then got back to work.

The discussion of eyelashes, however brief, reminded me of something. I couldn't remember what, until I got home. And it's this: I've written about eyelashes before. I know it was a piece that I liked, and I know it was a piece about having them and then losing them. I remember it felt a little melodramatic to me, but at the same time very real.

Home in my chair, Fergus snuggled up too close against my left arm (so much so that I have to keep pressing delete to retype words that require me to use my left hand--which are surprisingly many), I sat down to answer the day's emails, finish a letter I've been working on, read the LostAngeles Blog I so adore . . . but I found myself distracted by eyelashes.

So I peeked into my electronic file cabinet, and there, deep within the heart of my Mac, was an essay I had originally called "Surprise in the Shadows." I'm fairly certain I posted it on my Caring Bridge page way back when, because someone told me recently they think of me every day when they put on their mascara. And now I think of them thinking of me. And now I'll think of Ashley from the Bachelor. . . . and so on.

For old time's sake, I'm going to post it here. It felt strange to re-read it. Like I was reading someone else's journal, or, rather, watching an old home movie. The part that got me the most was remembering the fatigue--that feeling of not wanting to move an inch. No, scratch that. The sentence that got me the most was when I mentioned the feeling of my girls' little fingers on my bare head. That, I remember perfectly. Literally, perfect-ly.

Here it is. So I'm kinda cheating by posting something I already wrote, right? Maybe you'll forgive me since the above poetic masterpiece paragraphs are original and fresh. I'm glad I kept track of a few thoughts from a grody time, because they keep me grounded, appreciative, super-duper happy to be here.

Surprise in the Shadows (written in fall 2009)

The official word came on May 27. Today is October 8, and at times, I am still surprised. It makes sense, I suppose. Do you ever really expect to hear you have cancer? Even now, months later, without all of the tests, without my hair, and without my breasts, I still find myself thinking, “I can’t believe this is happening. This isn’t me.” The moment passes, as reflective moments tend to do, and I get back to whatever it is I have to do at the real-life, pressing-needs moment. Mostly, that means taking care of my two girls. These days, it includes taking care of me.

Reflective moments are a luxury, after all. Especially for moms. But diving into these luxurious moments head-first helps me to slow down time and decipher what all of “this” could possibly mean. Like many folks living with cancer, too afraid to yet call ourselves “survivors,” finding the larger purpose, the life lessons, becomes somewhat of a past-time. We discover much about our selves. Besides, that's what just about everyone seems to want me to do: Slow down. Breathe. Relax. Heal. Thinking (and then more thinking) comes organically.

This much I know: My family has embarked on quite a little adventure these past few months. That much is for sure. To say that the journey we've been on is a lesson in self-discovery is to say we've learned only one small bit of what this journey can teach us. Because there is oh-so-much to learn about life and love and everything that fills each day, only a fraction of which have we been blessed enough to know so far. I certainly don't know everything I'm guessing I'm supposed to know. I'm left, between rounds of chemo when I actually feel like thinking again, with that nagging feeling like I'm supposed to be learning a larger lesson here. 

And for me, left alone with my thoughts more than I probably ever have, that objective--self-discovery--is certainly the most powerful. I'm guessing its effects will be the most lasting. The urge follows me around like a shadow so that even when I laugh, I can hear it whispering, reminding me that I have much to learn about myself before I ever again take anything for granted. I sense it lurking when I am in the open air, breathing deeply on a sunny rock or praying quietly beneath a particularly beautiful sunset. 

There are times when its presence is much more obvious, its lessons more acute. My third grader is learning about geography. “What is a symbol?” I quizzed her the other day, while I lounged in my recliner, still woozy from last week’s chemo. “Something small that stands for something greater,” she paraphrased, and I nodded, giving her credit for virtually nailing the definition. I liked the way she said it. Confident. Natural. And I liked the definition, too. It made me want to do something with all of this thinking, with the quest to learn something larger, so I decided to write about a few symbols of my own. Tiny moments of self-discovery that will, I have no doubt, lead to more and more as the weeks, months, and years of survivorship that I pray for come into focus. 

First, I no longer wear mascara. True, this may be in part because I am running a little thin on the eyelashes these days. But lately, even when I'm officially dressed up (i.e., wearing my wig) and have something other than my Levi's on, I can't bring myself to wear any, no matter how much of a wardrobe staple it was for me mere months ago. The truth is, I'm afraid. I've become superstitious to a fault, and I realized something this spring: the more mascara I wore, the more I cried it off. I cried it off because I was given something to cry about, seemingly over and over. The diagnosis of my daughter's diabetes in February was only the first of it, and the months following seemed to bring bits of bad news after bits of bad news. When the heavy hitters started coming in--the doctors' visits, the tests, the biopsy results, The News of the C-Word . . . well, I just didn't know I had that amount of tears in me. Nor the need for that amount of tissues.

And it was the tissues that did me in. Or, rather, that forced me to seal up my mascara tube for good. Loving friends looking kindly at me, not knowing what to say; well-meaning, concerned doctors speaking softly to me; my dear family being strong for me to hide their hurting  . . . all the while, there I was, pathetically covered in smeared mascara, looking even worse than I felt. The mounds and mounds of black-covered tissues eventually got to be too much. Mounds in my hands. Mounds on the bed. Mounds in the trash can. Reminders everywhere.

So one day, as I went to put on my make up, it hit me. If I didn't put on mascara, I wouldn't have to wipe it off later when I would be, invariably, crying. There wouldn't be the mounds of tissue, the proof of sadness. I'd at least look stronger. Without it, there would be no evidence to the contrary. As days came and went, I found myself picking up the pink and green tube and then dropping it down as though it burned me. 

In the hospital after my mastectomies, I didn't wear it for obvious reasons. Those few who saw me there know I didn't even wash my hair for days (much to the dismay of my insistent nurse who made several comments of disgust regarding the matter). But then, out of the hospital, home greeting visitors, and eventually out and about, I neglected my lashes each day. Until one morning I realized something else entirely had happened--a twist of my original intent. I went to apply my mascara and physically could not. My heart started beating a bit too hard, and at that moment I knew, I just knew, that if I put that mascara on, I'd cry it off later. Something bad would happen. Some news would come or some test result would appear and there I'd be, a black smeared, shiny-faced mess again. Without it on, maybe nothing would happen. Maybe things would go well. Just for that day.

Now, I have no eyelashes. Well, I have one or two pathetic stragglers poking around. Who knows when I'll wear it again. But I know I will one day.

A second discovery has come with some shame. It involves my sweet friends and family, folks who are sending me love in the form of letters, notes, gifts, and packages. These arrive at my doorstep or in my mailbox daily, and I am in awe of the support and continued (for months now) outreach from those who just want to show me and my family how much they are thinking of us. But I've discovered my weakness: the emotions that come with opening them.

There lies, on the floor beside me right now, a different mound. Not of tissues, but of love. Packages, letters, cards, and loving notes from loving people await, but I have avoided opening them for weeks. Is that rude? Hell, yes. And if any of the packages contains brownies or other perishables, then it's also considerably unsafe. The list of thank-you-notes-owed is growing at an astounding rate, even if no one really expects one. But I’m a coward when it comes to facing the insane rush of emotions that these gifts will bring out in me. I simply can't do it to myself every day. 

So instead, I wait for the mound to get to the point where it endangers my small dog, make myself a cup of coffee in the quiet hours of the morning, and go through each note, card, thought, written prayer, kind deed, and loving moment shared with me. Doing that helps me. It helps me to have an outpouring of love and laughter and occasional tears, while I open each item one by one. In that way, I can wrap myself up in the blanket of prayers and love that is inevitably left lying in my lap. And I love that. 

Each day brings another symbol of self-discovery. Among them, the following precious gems: that chemo creates in me the ability to burp more impressively than any drunken sailor. That the sound of ice being crunched will make me either want to vomit or want to punch someone in the face. That I rather miss the sight of my C-cup breasts shoved in a camisole under a sweater, looking like a curvy girl. That I don't know WHAT I would do without reality t.v. That the sound of my daughters' giggles can make me feel better than any medicine possibly could. But that the sound of the kitchen cabinets being slammed can echo like a sledgehammer in my brain. That I can (and will) cry at the drop of a hat and in the most public of places. That losing my hair was by far the hardest part of this journey, for both me and the children. But that being bald oddly liberates me, and nothing beats the feeling of their little fingers rubbing my scalp. And that I will never take for granted again the fact that I can get up and go for a walk or to the gym or have coffee with a friend or lunch with my girls or see my daughter on the field hockey field or my other one singing her heart out on stage.

But perhaps the most vital lesson in self-discovery is also the one that has been the most surprising. That there, in my shadow, following me around where ever I go, is more strength than I ever knew I had. I've never really considered myself a strong person. In fact, if you had asked me last year to divulge the truths of me, I would've called myself "disorganized," "lazy," and "flat-out exhausted," but never "strong." Now, though, I've gotten myself through all of the muck of these days somehow, waking up each morning first to the beautiful ignorance that sleep brings, and then to the drowsy realization that yes, I still have cancer, and yes, today may suck.

On days when it hurts, emotionally or physically, to get out of bed, I do it because I can. I do it because I want to. I do it because thousands of other women who have been faced with this nightmare disease before me have done it and have survived and are living to help others (like me) through it. I do it for my baby girls, and I am bound and determined to do it for them every day until their 80th and 82nd birthdays (at least).  I do it for my family and friends and for all the love they are showing me, not just in the mound on the floor, but in the hugs, the kisses, the laughter, and everything else I can't possibly list here. 

I do it for my future, the one I deserve to live.

My diagnosis on May 27 surprised the hell out of me. But this strength has been the greatest surprise of all. Did it take The Big C to make me slow down, think, and prioritize? Maybe. Maybe not--maybe I would’ve done it anyway. But the reality is, it may have taken losing pieces of myself, including my eyelashes, to discover what makes me whole.

I'm on my way.

Twenty

Catcher in the Parking Lot

There are a few lines in The Catcher in the Rye about holding hands. Holden, being Holden, over-insightfully analyzes the process of holding hands with a girl he loved. I don’t recall the exact words, but I know he discusses how, with this girl, he didn’t feel awkward; he probably said something to the effect of it being “Goddamn swell.” The girl didn’t need to move her fingers around; he didn’t worry about sweating. They could sit there in a movie and hold hands, in the same position, and it was just great.

I love this part. I love it for a few reasons, one of which being that it’s just so Holden. Another is the beautiful weight, the simple significance Holden puts on the act of holding another person’s hand. Typical Holden, he manages to mock convention while discovering beauty in it at the same time. Ever since I was 18, there’s probably not a time in my life when I’ve held hands that I haven’t thought of Holden, of his sweet observation about how much love can transpire between palms. 

Today, at 45 years old, I was reminded of Holden yet again.

After driving 45 minutes, I finally found the suburbanly hidden, supposedly “less busy” Social Security Administration office I’d been meaning to go to for months. Just there to take care of some long-ignored, mainly irrelevant old paperwork, I was hoping it’d be a quick visit, but as soon as I pulled up, saw all the cars and the security guard out front I knew I’d best get ready to settle in for a long winter’s visit.

Initially chastised by the guard for bringing my delicious Panera Iced Tea TM near the building, I had to run back to the car. Walking across the parking lot in my second attempt to enter the building, I was approached, rapidly, by a 20- or 30-something short-haired and serious young woman. She walked awkwardly, stumbling a bit, and was focused intently on getting to me as quick as she could. Behind her, a tall, beautiful, well-dressed young woman of about the same age followed, calling her name, urging her to wait, to slow down. Putting two and two together, I figured out that the woman approaching me had some sort of special needs, but I had no time to be nervous about how to respond to her or worry that I was ill-equipped or awkward or anything of the ridiculous sort, because suddenly, she was close. Then, she was beside me, reaching for me.

“Hi!” I said as she grabbed on to my arm, holding on tight. Her caregiver was right behind, clearly on her way over to intercept her approach. She called her name softly and urged her to get in the car so they could finally head home. The woman holding my arm I guessed to be nonverbal, as she was trying to tell me something important but couldn’t. I said hi to the caregiver, as the caregiver explained to both of us that it was time to go home and get something to eat, since [name of other young woman here] had been so patient and good for such a very long time. I said that sounded like a great idea, and that’s when it happened.

The young woman holding my arm slid down toward my hand. I was distracted, talking with her caregiver, when all of a sudden, I felt a tightness around my hand. It was then and only then that I looked into her eyes.

They were huge, almost black, and beautiful. They spoke loudly, urgently. In the bottom of each of them, settled deeply in each lower lid, were tiny pools of tears that seemed to ebb and tide as she rocked back and forth. Beneath her eyes, her brown skin was streaked, lighter brown tracks streaking downward, indicating the path where many of the tears had recently fallen. It was these streaks that held my gaze. They told a story, a story of being trapped, both in a small, somewhat smelly waiting room and in a tiny body.

She held my hand oddly--tightly around it, closed like Pac Man, like a puppet eating its dinner. Somehow her tiny hand engulfed mine. At the exact moment I became mesmerized by the streaked face and pooled eyes in front of me, I felt the hand around my hand tighten. I looked down, saw her dark skin surrounding my pale hand, and suddenly felt a small jolt, an unyielding electricity transpiring between us, a story unspoken. I couldn’t have let go if I tried. Instead, I looked upward at those giant eyes. She was telling me she was ready to go home. She was asking me to take her, I knew it. I knew everything she was saying, all at once and with all kinds of energy. Pulling her caregiver back into our moment, I told the young woman I know you want to go home, and you did a great job. That wasn’t fun, I know. You can go home now. 

Her sweet, quiet caregiver unlocked our hands, told me to have a great day, and guided the young woman toward their car. I stood there for a second in the middle of the parking lot, iced-tealess and alone, watching them walk away, and I could still feel the tingling from the jolt in my hand. Then it was gone.

Inside, waiting (and waiting) for my number to be called, I just sat there. Instead of answering emails on my phone or checking Facebook, I thought about Holden Caulfield. I’m still not sure what transpired out in that parking lot, but I am grateful to have been part of it, because I know it was something really cool, really special. Those are the kind of moments in which you have to listen, to open your eyes and ears and realize that something wonderful is taking place and that you’re a part of it. 

That jolt invigorated me, and that young woman made me feel special for approximately 25 seconds. It came out of nowhere, but, like Holden, I know it was swell. Like Holden, I won’t forget it. I don’t know what this connection was or what it meant, but I do know it was wordless and it was wonderful.

Nineteen

Dreamer of the Dreams

We met with a financial planner today. 

The simple fact that this was on my calendar was enough to send me into fits of grumpy pouting. “But I don’t waaaannnna go to the financial planner,” I imagined myself whining to my husband for several days once the meeting was set. “Finances? Ewww.” Instead of saying anything, though, I pretended to be a grown up about it. Yes, it’s good for us. Yes, we’re good about saving but really need to make a stronger plan to take care of our future. Yes, blah blah blabbity blah blah bluh.

Financial planning, the term itself, embodies all that just isn’t “my thing.” I want to save for the future, retire on time, be comfortable and not make my kids suffer in the future because we were dumbasses back in the day. But call it my probable (according to my therapist) ADD, or the fact that I’m an ENTP, or the fact that I’m an Aquarius on the Capricorn Cusp . . . whatever. The fact is, “financial planning” bores me. 

I worry about this. I don’t have a spending problem, or at least I don’t think I do. Mine are not outfits adorned with designer logos or gold thread; rather, they sport the Mossimo tag from the Bullseye Boutique (aka, Target) or the Gap signature “outlet” dots under the label. But homeslice does like to travel. And nothing strikes my fancy more than eating out with friends or, occasionally, my family. Budgeting is not my strong suit, but I’m not out of control. Money comes in. Some of it is spent, some of it is saved. That’s really about all I think about it.

And that’s why I worry. I’m an intelligent person, after all. I know what I should be doing to prepare for the future. But financial planning? So. Many. Numbers. Guilt builds as I realize I rely mostly on my husband to do both the budgeting and the worrying. I tell myself, it’s what he’s good at. It’s his job, like I cook and grocery shop and figure out the fastest shortcut behind Target to get to get the carpool to dance on time. I juggle our family’s social commitments and calendars and appointments like a BOSS. Packing lunches, writing emails to teachers, organizing rides to and fro . . .I’m on it. So is it a bad thing that I withdraw from something that is so mind-numbingly gross to me? Maybe not. So why can’t I let go of the guilt.

Thus the trip to see our new best friend, Financial Advisor Mark. I tell myself (and my husband) that I’m on board, I’m ready to manage a budget and keep receipts more organized than strewn in the bottom of one of seven purses I may be using at the time. Walking into the office, I pep talk myself through the parking lot. “You GOT this. Focus.” As I open the door, my husband, who is waiting there and not one for mushy or superfluous compliments, tells me, “You look like a movie star.” Random, but praise accepted. I feel good. I’m ready to focus, make some money for my family, prioritize, become so financially savvy that Trump will weep.

Within minutes, sitting across from Financial Advisor Mark, I’m bored to tears. Of course. Self doubt creeps in, as my mind wanders. What color is that on the wall? Who are all those kids in that beautiful black and white picture over there? My husband, however, is on his game, firing questions and responses with ease. He’s in his pleasure zone, so I force myself to focus. I nod, I truly listen, and I learn (even though it actually hurts my brain. I have to take three Advil when I get home).

Why are we here, Mark wants to know. Why now? “What are your financial goals?” he questions earnestly. Oooooh, fun! I think to myself. Make-believing, dreaming about the future, setting lofty plans? This I can do.

I think about his question and, while Mike speaks responsibly about providing for our family in the future and blah blah blabbity blah, I dream about what I’d like to say:

My financial goals? I’m glad you asked. More Disney World trips. Tickets to see each Tony Award nominee on Broadway, preferably every spring. My very own segue to ride around the neighborhood, mostly because it would be funny as shit. A red Toyota 4Runner that I will dub Big Red. My very own pair of Frye boots, just because they seem indulgent. A trip to Belgium and Amsterdam (and perhaps we can swing by Paris, a few towns in Germany, because I heard it’s so damn beautiful there, and Prague . . .  via a quick cruise of Alaska). A couple of writing workshops at the University of Iowa, which I dream of attending every year but it feels so far out of reach to do so. Box seats at every NFL stadium in the US, but just for one season because I need to be fiscally responsible. An apartment in San Francisco, my favorite city, for future visits. Annual and indefinite season passes to Austin City Limits music festival. And a family 1,000-pack of movie tickets. But those are just off the top of my head.

As I sit across the composite cherry L-shaped desk, looking back and forth between my husband and Mark, I suddenly realize that it’s my turn to speak, and I think better of being honest. At least for the time being. Instead, I said, "Um. College for our girls, hopefully two weddings, and retirement." It seems cruel to sum up our savings and planning and next 20 years so succinctly. But it must be done. I’m a mom above all, and the other stuff may work its way in there here and there in the coming years. I can make it happen. It’s my job to plan the fun, after all. To daydream some of the unrealities into our actualities.

For now, though, I better get to work on my book(s) ideas. That 4Runner isn’t going to drive itself off the lot.

Eighteen

Likes

In my last post, I wrote ad nauseum about the highs and lows, contemplations and revelations of being an active Facebooker today. The primary thing that keeps me coming back again and again to the addictive little pain is the connection to other friends near and far. There’s that word: connection. In the hectic, sometimes claustrophobic world of a part-time working, middle-aged mom, connection feels more important now than ever. 

Aside from the general connectivity Facebook affords most of us, deep within its “Likes” and emoticons and memes and videos of sharks dancing at the Superbowl, there are delightfully juicy and groovy specific examples of human connection at play. Any Facebook user knows what I’m talking about: instances that make you want to share immediately with others in the room or that cause you to giggle aloud when you’re sitting alone in a coffee shop. Moments of “No Way!” coincidences or heart-tugging sweetness. Pictures of old friends who now look more fantastically gorgeous or woefully bedraggled (or a combination of both) than they did when you last saw them face to face. Teensy weensy threads in the broader web that trap us with their sticky appeal.

A recent example, so you can get what I’m trying to say in my rambling. This story is just so cool that I had to share. Through Facebook, I keep in touch with a friend of mine from a publishing job I held 20 years ago. My friend is a gifted painter, editor, writer, you name it. And he’s got a great wife whom I adore. He’s also a little older than I am, and he’s jam packed into all of his years activities, jobs, travels, and more that are also just so cool. Recently he wrote about an experience he had as a “liquor delivery driver” in Los Angeles many years ago. He mentioned that at one celebrity’s home (whom I shall not name here since it’s not my story), he was instructed to leave the liquor at the end of the driveway, at which point the celebrity would wave down and say, “Just leave it down there,” the actor would yell down from a random spiral staircase up the driveway.

My friend, let’s call him John, posted this the other day in connection with a mutual friend’s new project. Just so happens, however, that one of John’s friends just happened to be on Facebook and saw John’s post. As it turns out, John’s friend’s dad knew this celebrity back in the day, and his friend had BEEN IN the celebrity’s home once or twice when the liquor was delivered! He remembers the celebrity calling down to the liquor delivery guy (John!) and telling him to leave it there . . . so he wouldn’t have to tip him!

John responded, of course, to this crazy, crazy coincidence, made even crazier by the fact that we live across the country from Los Angeles several full decades later. For me, it was a cool story. For John, it was an exhilarating story, one that also answered an age-old question: Why did I have to leave the liquor at the bottom of the driveway?

I’ve seen old elementary school friends post pictures of long-since-forgotten Halloween parties (with me dressed like, of all things, a cleaning lady, standing next to a drink-swigging hobo). We, the friends in the photo, had a full “discussion” in the comments section, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t feel pretty close to hanging out with them. People I know from around my huge neighborhood simply by passing them in a school hallway or beeping at them as I drive by have the ability to make me laugh out loud simply by sharing a Jimmy Fallon video or making fun of my dorky ways. Seeing my friends’ kids grow up on screen may not be as good as giving them hugs in real life, but it’s pretty damn close. Dozens of ways each week, I see, feel, read, hear, marvel at, and yes, even occasionally roll my eyes at these little threads in the web.

Believe it or not, I feel like I’m getting to know the folks around (and not around) me through little “likes,” “dislikes,” status updates, and other correspondences on Facebook, and I really like that feeling. Like being connected to a community, making my great big giant global existence feel a bit smaller, a bit more understood. Sorta like college, when, for the most part, we had no heavy duty worries or responsibilities weighing us down. All we “had” to do was hang with our friends, act like idiots, and laugh. For me, that’s the gift FB gives me: a little escape time.

I encourage others to give it a try. If it annoys you or if random crazy folks (and they are out there) start to post mean things on your wall or rant out of control, either de-friend them or get off the ‘Book. But I think you may like it. It feels good to be connected, after all.

Seventeen

Social Networking

Today's topic is a bit controversial. Most people stand solidly on one side or the other, for or against, while some straddle the fence, juggling the pros and cons in the thick air of cyberspace.

I speak, of course, of Facebook.

In the past week, four people (that I can remember) have remarked that I’m “always” on Facebook. The response this elicits in me is sincerely juvenile--I become both defensive and embarrassed. “I’m not always on Facebook,” I apologize, “I just check it whenever I have a few minutes.” This is not the first time I’ve heard such proclamations about my time on the ‘Book. On and off throughout the years, friends both close and not-so-close have commented that I spend a lot of time on the site. Most often, I genuinely feel that I’m not being judged--that they are, for some bizarre reason--impressed at how I spend my time. They comment that I make funny observations, or my friends and family from afar say how happy they are to feel like they’re in touch despite the miles. 

But occasionally, I do feel like I’m being judged a teeny, tiny bit. As though I must not have enough to do in my life or important things to occupy my time. I suppose that’s part of the reason why I get defensive. If I were to be honest, though, it’s not the only reason I quickly respond as such; in truth, I think I have to defend myself from myself. From my own judgment, my own fear that there are a zillion things I could be better doing with my free time. From berating myself that, by focusing my attention on a computer in front of me, I’m not reading, hiking, playing tennis, spending time with my family, walking my dog, writing, or any number of activities that make up the very-favorite-things-of-Tracy. From neglecting real-life humans in favor of invisible ones, devoting more of my wit, love, and even compassion to the people on the screen than I am to those around me (friends, family, dogs). 

Therein lies the rub of social networking in this day and age. How do we stay in touch in a digital age while not losing touch in an actual age? I’m a straddler on that fence, for sure. I’m a Luddite who loves, loves, loves being with, learning from, and connecting with people. What’s a gal like me to do?

The answer may be quite simple. Perhaps it’s just a matter of doing what I feel is right for me. That goes without saying in real-life after all, a rule of thumb that’s been pounded into our brains from the time a parent first muttered, “If your friend jumped off a bridge, would you?” Going with what feels right to me, without judgment on others (or, heaven forbid, myself) may be just the solution to quiet the dueling should-I-or-shouldn’t-I electronic communication doubts that whisper to me every so often.

For me, this involves setting some rules:

• I will try not to invade my kids’ privacy by posting personal crap about them. They deserve their privacy; having someone’s mom comment on their teenage quirks or silly mistakes invades that privacy and makes them trust me less. I know. I’ve screwed up a few times on this end for sure, and I’m sure I will again. 

• I will put down the phone more, watching, experiencing, being there instead of recording. 

• For me, it’s important to stay positive, so I’ve tried harder and harder to post things that help others feel that way, too. It’s not always easy, and again, I’ve made the mistake of groaning in my status updates, but I want that to be the exception, not the rule.

• I will limit my Facebooking, as a verb, to times when my kids aren’t necessarily around: take a peek around over my morning cup of coffee, or when sitting in a waiting room alone, or when I have a rare five minutes to catch up with peeps electronically.

• I will look at the positives of what other people post: calls for prayers, exciting news, pictures of big events, achievements, honors, and other causes for human connection through the screen.

Because, when all is said and done, I do find more positives than negatives in the Great Facebook Debate. I’m able to hear news that my best friend’s husband’s cancer scans are clear. I see how my friends’ children in California and around the country are growing by the day and embodying the spirits of their parents (whom I miss) in the process. When I’m feeling grumpy, I can watch a damn adorable video of cats and dogs cuddling. I can stay tuned to big goings on in those whose lives I care about, if they're thousands of miles away or just around the corner. I can regularly laugh at my friends’ wit, humor, ironic senses of self and life, and ridiculously funny insights on what it means to be a middle-aged parent, employee, spouse, and friend. After all, I fell in love with Facebook initially when I was on chemotherapy, occasionally homebound and lonely, and people from all over my digital world sent me words and photos full of love and encouragement and humor. They were important to me. They still are. I can feel part of something bigger by remaining tuned in a touch to the Big Blue F.

I can connect. So Facebook, for now, will stay a part of my life. Because for me, that means a bunch of really cool people can, too. That brings me joy and makes me feel the invisible ties that bind a little more deeply. This silly little thing called Facebook may be a passing fad, but for now I’ll enjoy it for what it is: a way to stay in touch in a world (or perhaps a stage of my life?) that doesn’t make a whole lot of time for that any more. Are there negatives? Absolutely. So checks and balances shall and will remain in place. And I will learn to not cringe when “complimented” on my Facebook “prowess.” 

I’ll just be me, enjoying this fun, odd way of maintaining and making friendships. Next post, I’ll talk about some of the amazingly groovy connections Facebook has treated me to. For now, I’ll work on my clever Bachelor insights and look to my friends to do the same.

Reporting live from my living room, I give FB a hearty thumbs up.

Sixteen

Toys That Teach

One of the most interesting moments of awareness I’ve had in a long time happened mere minutes ago. It didn’t involve another person, though, or a dog or animal of any kind, nor even a picture or video tape of another human. It took place between me and me alone. I’m not quite sure that falls within the Project 360 boundaries (moments of connection); but it affected me in such an interesting way, sort of a slap across the face, that I dropped the three other topics I was considering to let myself explore it a bit.

Put it that way, it sounds crazy exciting. It’s not, sorry. But it is interesting in a sort of evolution-of-me way. And considering I’m basically just a boring old mom with two teenagers, I figured it probably will ring true to a few folks out there in cyberspace as well.

Enough ado about nothing . . . 

I must kill an hour while my younger daughter is in her jazz class. When I’m feeling inspired, I’ll occasionally run to the gym down the street from her studio. Sadly, I’m not too inspired lately. But I AM inspired to write, so a warm and cozy Starbucks up the road seemed a perfect spot in which to write. Dreaming about my warm hot tea with honey, I pulled into the quaint strip mall, letting bundled shoppers cross in front of me out of the night, through my headlights, and into the busy Kroger’s for some last-minute groceries. Making a sharp right, I headed up to the parking area that loops in front of the Starbucks, a Hallmark store, a bagel place. As I rounded to the left, I saw a store, straight ahead, lights warming the sidewalk. Toys That Teach. Its sign hangs above on the low shingled roof, inviting and cozy in its child-like lettering.

Only able to get a glimpse into the closed shop, primary colors and endless shelves of games caught my eye quickly. I either said out loud or loud enough in my head to surprise me: I forgot about Toys That Teach!

And immediately, I was sad. I had totally forgotten about the existence of an imperative part of my daughters’ childhood. 

I can envision the aisles now, although I sit approximately 500 feet away under a speaker playing Ingrid Michaelson. Creative, mind-stimulating toys designed with minimal buzzing, blinking, sirening, these were the toys that were fun in the pre-technology sense of the word. Fake food for miniature kitchens. Three-dimensional puzzles, that traffic game (in which you have to rescue a white car from crowded vehicles of various sizes) that my younger daughter used to rock, while I sat beside her sweating out of anxiety, unable to find a way out. Pony sticks with stuffed heads. Toy animals of every size, shape, and color. Little scooters that perfectly fit tiny little pampered tushes. Fun carpet, sweet ladies behind the counter, tell-tale wrapping paper recognizable at any birthday party we attended from 1999 to 2012 or so.

Picturing all the stores vibrancy now, I easily, reflexively, see two little girls walking through the aisles, jumping from toy to toy with a frenetic energy barely matchable by their eager words. Pony tails and dimpled hands. Smiles with baby chicklet teeth or gaping holes. Mary Janes with cuffed socks. Happy, happy eyes. I picture my baby girls in one of their happiest places, a place we would head if they were “good” during errands, or after they split a bagel with cream cheese, or--most excitedly--when it was time to buy a birthday gift for a friend. 

The flood of it hurt for a second. Hurts even now, as I allow myself to remember a little deeper. 

I’m recognizing a pattern in my thinking lately, and I suppose it’s natural with one daughter in 10th grade and one heading to high school next year. It’s a pervasive feeling that things are changing too fast, without my say. Being a mom to my little kids was one lifetime ago, and here I am in another, raising teenagers who don’t necessarily think I’m the greatest person on earth any more. And who are slowly, necessarily discovering themselves without Mama as part of the picture.

Strangers in Target always warn you of this phenomenon, attempting to prepare people they don’t know for the inevitable: “It goes by so fast.” When someone tells you this as your three year old is lying on the linoleum floor screaming and your two year old is jumping out of the cart with green snot coming out of her nose, well, it’s hard to truly listen. You hear, but you don’t listen. Without warning, I’ve become that stranger. You’d think I would’ve seen this coming, but I don’t believe I did. Suddenly everything feels like “the third-to-last time we’ll vacation as a family over Winter Break,” or “the second-to-last time you have a first-day-of-high-school.” It’s a countdown I want no part of, both because it’s depressing and because it’d make my kids think I’m even more of an emotional weirdo than I am. But try as I may to stop the countdown, that damn clock keeps on ticking.

Forgetting about an icon of my babies’ childhood, even briefly, was a huge surprise to me, but you’ll be proud to know I’m handling it okay. I’m thinking, taking note, realizing that I better freaking enjoy the highs and lows and frustrations and wet towels lying on the carpet next to the bathroom door. I’m enjoying getting to know the people my girls are becoming. I like them. A lot. I guess driving by Toys That Teach just reminded me of the little ones I used to know, and I guess it’s okay to miss those little ones every now and then. 

Memory lane can exist in the form of a parking lot, after all. It feels more important now than ever to stay alert. Keep my eyes open. I never know what will jump out in front of me.