What does Fantastic Mr. Fox say?

"Maybe a few of you might even read my column from time to time, who knows. I tend to doubt it."

Twenty days

I didn't feel much like writing, I guess.

That's my excuse.

That, and I was feeling sorry for myself.

Sorry that I hurt my stupid ankle.

Sorry that I couldn't run for nearly eight weeks.

Sorry that when I was able to start again I felt like I'd started from square -8.

It is humbling.

Almost as humbling as finding out your fourth grader tells the nurse "Mom is going to be mad if you call her because I feel sick."

And nearly as humbling as learning your first grader walked like a robot to lunch last week because he'd tied his shoes together. And then he cried when the teacher couldn't untie them.

But perhaps not nearly as humbling as being mistaken for a grandmother, being called a housewife, or being asked to have my husband call to authorize this transaction.

But here we are. ...

Hobbling into the Thanksgiving season no worse for actual wear, which I've decided has to mean I need to take all of this discomfort and walking it off.

Abandonment issues

Someone mentioned that today was the 26^th anniversary of the famous October snow storm that took out power in the northeast for about a week.

I couldn't believe it. It seemed like a lifetime had passed. I was in college (first year) and realizing for the first time I had options. Namely, a friend who lived in the city (with power) who would let me crash on her couch while I went to school.

My parents might have had some nostalgic hopes of being together as a family through the hardship.

But I jumped at the chance to abandoned them.

Who wouldn't pick hot showers and late-night-television marathons with friends over studying by candlelight with the parental units as they tried to cook dinner over a Coleman stove?

Turns out I'm more of an opportunist than a survivalist.

These things don't change.

I struggle with what to write here, especially with so much going on in the corner of the Earth that I call my own.

Do I tell you that I worry? Or that I'm not sure I'm happy? Do I tell you I feel anxious and ineffective? That I miss my mother? That I hate feeling any comfort at all that the woman who took her place is delightful. It makes me feel disloyal to the woman she was.

It makes me feel like I've abandoned her again.

Do I tell you that I am not prepared for the future?

I try to push it out of my mind. Think about cheerful things.

The kids are fine and growing like weeds.

Silas went from 32 pounds on his birthday in June to 39 pounds just this past week. It's making me sad that I have trouble hefting the former flyweight.

Annabel is practically a teenager, and acting like one (in the pre-teen positive sense) as she cares about the condition of her clothes and the state of her hair. Tangles are becoming a thing of the past as are mismatched colors and prints.

More often than not, I find I can't recognize either one of them when I search across the soccer field. She's taller than I remember. Her hair is longer. She plays with more assuredness. He is just as fast as the other boys and nearly as tall.

Soon they will be going to high school … and college …

The bus won't drop them here at the end of the day.

Too soon, their homecomings will be brief visits. They will have their own homes elsewhere.

I feel guilty. Like I have abandoned them too, as I spin off into the future where the ground is uncertain.

I need to stop jumping ahead. I need to stay put in the here and now.  

Normal findings

*********
I wrote this six months ago, but I couldn't bear to publish it then. Superstition perhaps? I don't know.
But it's been a year now, and today the findings are still normal. The voice in my head is calmer. I can let it go.

**********

“What are you going to do today?”

And so begins the game.

Twenty questions.

“What was the best day in your life?”

“The day you were born.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“What was the best Christmas present you ever received?”

“You.”

“But I was born a week before Christmas.”

“Still counts.”

“What about my brother?”

“What about him?

“What about the day he was born?”

“This isn't a contest. You arrived first.”

Qualifiers …

They frighten me. Always have.

So quickly our favorite holidays turn on us.

It only takes one thing to change the experience forever.

Life's ups balanced by life's downs.

“So … What ARE you going to do today?” She asks again.

She worries about me. I know I don't smile as much as I should.

The corners of my mouth are always pulling in a downward direction.

Sadly, she's never known me to be overly smiley.

I tell her not to worry. I explain what it means to be a "natural frowner." That I don't want to be a frowner … it just happens.

She's taken to just asking me to translate my expressions.

"Are you upset? Angry? Did you stub your toe?"

“No, no. I'm fine. Just have a lot to do today. Have to get started as soon as you get on the bus.”

“So … what ARE you doing today?” she asks again.

“Oh … I'll putter around; walk the dog, feed the cat, clean up the breakfast dishes, finish up some work I've been procrastinating … get a follow-up diagnostic mammogram … and maybe, if there's time and inclination, I'll go shopping. For Christmas presents.”

I didn't tell her that middle thing.

I didn't really want to think of it, either.

When I counted six months forward from the last time -- the time they found possibly suspicious looking calcifications in an area of my left breast … that weren't there nine years ago … before children … before breastfeeding … before I had anything as big as a family to lose – that put the follow-up smack dab in the middle of Christmas.

Merry-frickin'-Christmas.

My husband was nervous, too.

His questions skirted the issue even better than my answers.

“What do you want for Christmas?”

“I really don't want anything.”

“No really? What?”

“The only thing I want is to not have cancer.”

I can't say such things to my kids.

It's Christmas. And they still believe in all the magic it promises.

I tried to go on as usual. I tried to put it out of my mind, but I didn't. I didn't shop, or write cards. I didn't even walk the dog or clean up dishes. 

Instead I sat in a room with a half-dozen other women – all of us dressed in a kimono-style uniform –

one question bouncing around in our heads: “What if I have cancer.”

I don't have cancer.

The woman with my folder smiled when she told me.

I smiled, too. First time all day.

But can't say I felt enormous relief. Not after sitting in a room with women just like me. Only maybe some of theme weren't as lucky.

Holding my breath

A friend wrote about that feeling that might be summed up by people in our lives in a single word: Disillusionment. But how it's really something much more complicated.

She wrote about how a momentary thought breeds other momentary thoughts. Usually harmless day dreams of what life would be like in an alternate universe. Where you've made different choices.

It stirred me.

When I'm at my worst - I think of disillusionment as moribund.

A death spiral. Nothing good will ever be again.

The clinical amongst you might call that depression. I'm sure it is that and more.

But it's complicated.

At the point of disillusionment we try to measure our worth against the perceived value we've placed on others.

It is a losing strategy.

There's always a thumb on the proverbial scale.

I keep having to tell myself that my shortcomings are each important cogs in some machine I can't fully comprehend but must trust.

We could be self assured and be wrong. We can be angry and be wrong. We can be happy and be wrong. We can be kind and wrong. We can be wrong any number of ways. We will be wrong many number of ways.

We can be right and be wrong.

But if we have hope we can be wrong and move on.

We may not know how our stories end but we know they will. Someday.

So today, I must remember that there is always something else. There is always a place to go. To be. To explore. To rediscover.

This life is insignificant and everything - it is tiny and huge - and no one, especially ourselves, has all the tools needed to measure it with any real precision.

Importance is relative.

Placement is arbitrary.

Happenstance can be amazing.

None of it matters.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Eat the Bird

Is it strange to wake up the day after Thanksgiving and realize you and nine or 10 of your friends and relatives sat across a table from one another to share a meal yet never once shared in conversation the things for which we are thankful?

Is it horrible that we never took the time to reflect on what it was that got us to this place?

History?

Happenstance?

Luck?

Good or bad?

Perhaps.

For a moment I felt a twinge of guilt ... as if the failure to verbally examine gratitude made me as ungrateful as if I'd spent the last Thursday in November greedily shopping for things I didn't need.

It didn't last long. I know what I am grateful for and for whom; and trying to put those thoughts into words doesn't give them any more weight.

I am grateful for everyone who has ever made me laugh ...

or smile  ...

or feel important.

And yet, perhaps more surprisingly, I'm just as grateful for everyone who has ever made me irritated or anxious or feel at loose ends. For all the things that have frightened me. Saddened me. Made me think about the world and all the parts of it I can't control.

As I sit there, looking over at my parents, it feels wrong to be thankful for things that just plain hurt.

Thankful for acceptance.

It just makes a speech about gratitude seem as awkward as the silence. 

Tinder and tentacles

He. Never. Looked. Back.

Not even a glance.

Kinda makes me want to gather up all those kindergarten preparatory books  (you know, the ones that coach kids in the fine art of treading lightly on their mothers' feelers as they take their first steps toward independence) douse them in accelerant and light them on fire.

And then there are days like these ...

When you just feel like screaming.

Disorderly conduct

I wish I was a stickler instead of just pretending to be one.

It's easy to seem fussy within the margins of a viewfinder. You shove the mess to one side and focus on the part that seems calm and serene. It's an illusion.

You can't fool yourself into thinking you are organized and disciplined, however, or that you aren't failing at the basics.

You tell yourself it doesn't matter, but you aren't convinced.

You tell yourself tomorrow will be different.

Tomorrow they will brush their teeth after breakfast.

They will eat more protein and fewer sweets.

He will change his socks and she will go to bed on time ...

Even if you have to force them.

Tomorrow you will be more of the mother they need you to be, and less of the one that you are.

Because underneath the Pick-Your-Battles parenting style you've adopted, you know you are picking all the wrong ones.

Fear of heights

By the standards of my childhood haunts, the playground at the end of our block is as safe as they come. Age-appropriate structures, parents prowling every perimeter, many helping their children down the tall slide by offering their laps as sleds.

The lone, tall monkey bars, have gone. Replaced by lower, multi-tiered play areas.

Safety factors first.



I remember taking this picture and holding my breath as Ittybit climbed the chain ladder of the play station, for that's what a was -- a collection of slides and hanging bars that defied labels or definition. A tiny jungle gym for a marshmallow landscape.

Eighteen months old, still so baby-like, and there she was climbing to the grated platform, five feet off the ground, on her way to the circular slide.

I'd overheard so many parents telling their kids to get down, that they were too young, that it wasn't safe. So many eyes in my direction wondering where I'd gotten my parenting skills, no doubt from a Five & Dime that had gone bust?

But I had to fight my inner (paranoid) parent to let her.

So it was with interest that I read this about some emerging research on the benefits of risk on development.

Some of the points I found most interesting was that "safer playgrounds" weren't actually safer for play. The logic being the perception of safety actually made risk-taking seem less risky, and, therefore, injury just as likely.

Another point was that while many parents and some researchers expected childhood falls from high places to produce later psychological effects, such as phobias, the reverse was more true: Children who had engaged in the exploration of heights and endured childhood falls had fewer instances of phobias.

I suppose the obvious question for me is this: How do we, as parents, get over our own fears of emergency room visits?

First you must float

Pools scare me.

There. I said it.


Despite the fact that my husband worked doggedly in the wind and rain and sun to renovate the pool that he ... well ... broke.

From the moment he got it gurgling to a clear, if not dark-bottomed oasis again - the first time since we moved into the house - I've been counting the days until winter.

When we can close it on up again.

I can't stop thinking about the statistics. About the people we actually know, as well as those we've read about in the news, who have lost children in pools.

I can't stop thinking about how I could have been one of those statics myself, when I was a toddler and slipped into a pool at a party and sunk to the bottom.

But we can't live in fear. We have to be practical. And proactive.

Even if I am mostly NEGATIVE.

* No kids in the pool yard without an adult. Ever.

* No beginning swimmers in the deep end without an adult who is free to swim with them one-on-one.

* Not following the directions of adults is grounds for ouster from pool area for the remainder of the day.

And one positive ... The most important positive of all pool rules:

All children must learn to float on their backs first and foremost.




After they master that, we'll work on the crawl.

Looking back

Today was the first day of summer camp. Her first day at a new camp at that.

And she was alone. Alone with more than a hundred kids.

It was so noisy and confusing. Her friend would be there ... only not until later.

Until then she'd just have to be a lone, lonely loner ... in a sea of noise, and strangers with stoic faces.

Introductions rarely go well inside chaos. They weren't going well.

She gripped my hand.

I stayed through the morning announcements, but then I had to go.

She gripped my hand tighter. Her nails in need of trimming.

"Stay," her eyes told me.

"I have to go. You will be OK. You will see. You will make lots of friends."

She walked up the hill toward the other campers and disappeared.

I stood there for a long time, waiting to catch sight of her; hoping it would be alright. That she'd find a friend. That she'd wave and smile back at me. But I couldn't find her among the crowd.

"She will be OK. She will make new friends," I tell myself again, hoping it's true.

Angry bird

We say our peace. And it starts a war.

There is no right answer. Not really. There is only a seemingly endless list of opinions, and everyone has a version of one or the other that can't be altered. No one can hear the tone of a voice and there's nothing to read between the lines.

Moments of weakness stretch out for seasons at a time.

It may start with an idea gone awry. A slapped wrist. A hurt feeling. A joke that falls flat. Ultimately the teller is the responsible party.

Introspection. Resolve. Back tracking.

Retreat.

Picture imperfect

I feel this way a lot lately.

Eyebrows trying to meet eyelids.

Hiding the frown as best as I can.

It never fools anyone.

People tell you to "smile,"

Which only makes it worse.

I haven't been interested in taking photos lately.

Which ... I'm not sure is usual.

Which is to say I'm not sure it's unusual either.

I can't tell if this feeling is the backlash of a year of daily snapping ...

Or the aging of my subjects and their apparent desire to be left alone ...

Or something else. Something within me that's had enough.

The thing I'm starting to notice, though, is an inkling of wanting to get it back.

The Climate Change in Human Nature

The words just spill out. Thought after thought after thought; going everywhere and nowhere. Solving nothing.

War. Disease. Unemployment. Crime. Climate Change. Disaster. Unrest. Political Upheaval. Hatred. Intolerance. All of it in our faces everywhere we turn.

People say they want less government intrusion, but I think what they really want is to stop footing the bill for some of the Rights we once called inalienable. Rename them entitlements, paint the face of recipients in dark eyeliner and give them a teenage sneer. Add a baby on an outthrust hip, and you, too, might be able to convince the world that access to health care and education and equal protections under the law were quaint, olden-day notions now made burdensome in a modern-day world.

Kindness costs. Keep saying how we can't afford it anymore, conveniently forgetting how caring in the beginning can save in the end. Keep spending millions in advertising to tell us "we're broke."

That's progress: Times change. Everything stays the same.

We may not be bound by wires anymore, but we're entangled in wireless. Vote. Don't vote. There's only two choices, and all they do is point fingers at each other. Online polls don't mean a thing, but we're happy to click the toggle button of our choice. It makes us feel vindicated. The results are immediate.

The more I try to make sense of it the more it seems to twist into something completely grotesque.

I'm not depressed, I tell myself. I'm just ... sad.

I know I shouldn't but I can't help but say it: "It all seems so pointless, really. The world isn't ever going to get any better."

Tears threaten to come as I think of my children, and the day they look around them and decide the world has lost its mooring. Will they be set off adrift?

Nothing is new. Not even this. Their childhood will be as carefree as mine was. Filled with happy memories of Christmases at home and summers by the sea. They will have disappointments. And they will pick themselves up and move on. There is no other choice. You pick a direction and go.

"Maybe you are depressed," she tells me with soft compassion.

"Or maybe I need to unplug. We all need to unplug."

But unplugging isn't the answer completely. Shutting out the outside world can't be done indefinitely. It would be like turning off the sun: sure, nothing would burn under its rays but in time there'd would be nothing left to burn.

That was yesterday when I was typing all of this out with a hammering intensity. I wasn't sure these words would ever see the back-lit glow of a computer monitor again as I committed it to the garbage dump of my drafts folder.

That's when I noticed a story from the San Francisco Chronicle about a neighborhood-spat over patio seating turned into a legal matter between a coffee shop owner and a resident who lived nearby.

The twist was that the resident, who'd sent icy, demanding messages to the shopkeeper, decided to go in person and apologize for being cold and overly harsh. Because of that small contrition, the two are working out their differences over coffee cups instead of in a court room. They are neighbors, after all.

It made me smile. It made me think there is hope. It made let go of some of the sadness I'd been holding.

And the feeling might have lasted for more than a moment ... had I not scrolled down to read the comments.

Just in case you were wondering ...

This is essentially the reason why photos swimming around in the flickrverse are heavy on her brother lately:



I am the official photographer of Overshot Your Welcome.

There's other stuff I haven't been talking about much.

For instance ...

THE PARENT TRAP Who's big idea was it to design a gift holiday around St. Patrick's Day? Isn't it enough to believe a boy kidnapped from England and sold into slavery grew up to drive the snakes out of Ireland? Now you hook the kids into making intricate traps to capture little green imaginary creatures, who once cornered will leave a gift?

Guess how I found out?



She made a trap. And checked it hourly.

Also ...

EGYPT * LIBYA * NEW ZEALAND * JAPAN I am sending my best agnostic prayers your way.

WISCONSIN? THAT'S THE CAPITAL OF MINNEAPOLIS, RIGHT? Oh, education in this country is the target of much scorn. I know we need to work harder to energize students and prepare them a world we can't even comprehend. But I can't help but wonder why millionaires are picking on school teachers. To me one group eviscerating the collective power of another isn't the answer for society. In fact, it seems a little like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

SMALLER IS BIGGER, THOUGH. Consolidating districts, sharing superintendents, administrative staff? That's OK in my book.

LAST IN, FIRST OUT I have to say this is tougher for me. Experience should count, and it should be weighed heavily. That's not to say that I think "bad" teachers should be protected. But I just don't think during a layoff is the time to be punitive. Performance-based reductions should be continuously handled through evaluation. If that was happening, last in first out would be fair. Eventually all these young teachers grow older, too.

NEW YORK TIMES' ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION ANNOUNCEMENT: Wow. Not exactly the "paywall" people had predicted. But to my limited mind it seems pretty brilliant. Although there are several ways to trick the system, the system is really set up to make sure those who have been benefiting the most from having free news to aggregate (socially speaking, anyway) will be asked to pony up. If you are really "benefiting" from the downward trend of the news business I'm guessing $15 a month isn't too much of an uphill climb.


BUT WHAT DO I KNOW? I don't have a crystal ball, either. I'm just interested to see how all this turns out in the end. And really? I'm hoping for a time in the near future when we can laugh about some of this stuff.

Including this:

I know there are signs everywhere ...

I just wish mine weren't directing me into traffic.

When a simple 'no' would suffice

I called the number on the birthday party invitation ...

fully expecting to decline the Saturday afternoon party.

The RSVP date had already passed.

I'd waited to reply for no good reason, merely forgetfulness and dread.

Saturday is filled with things to do. A mid-day party would put us over the top and over extended.

Yet, when the mom answered the phone I inexplicably accepted.

What's another couple of hours? Another present to purchase? It's not as if we COULDN'T make the time.

I should really work on saying "No."

Now we are 'Six'

The notion that everyday life should be easy is such a crock of

... super chunky peanut butter.

Getting past the everyday is the challenge.


As I was driving to work today I thought about the people living a particular street I'll call "Anywhere, USA."

You might live on this street, or you may know someone who lives on this street.

It's not particularly fancy, but most of the houses on this tree-lined drive are well maintained and the yards are wide and lush.

Homeowners include retirees and single women, families with young children and families with teens and families whose children have recently flown the coop. Most people know their neighbors by sight, if not by name.

There's a family with an incessantly barky dog in the middle of the block, and one with the roaming cat a few houses down. There's the house on the end where the lawn is unlikely to be mowed and is therefore slowly being swallowed up by the overgrowth.

I blindly stare out of my car window at the stop sign at the end of the block, wondering how they do it.

Most mornings I manage to get the kids breakfast, bribe them into getting dressed in fresh clothes, brushing hair, washing faces, lunches packed, homework ready. But there's always something missing; a smudge of peanut butter, a snarl where the pillow rests.

The spring plantings - mostly lettuce in pots on the porch - have already been eaten by brave rabbits. The trappings of life with youngsters -- sports equipment, bikes, brightly colored toys -- piles up in the carport.

Everything in life accumulates in increments.

Some you keep on top of, some topple you.

This morning, when Ittybit got dressed for the Letter of the Day - "N" for number - she was sad. She wouldn't participate today. She has no clothes with numbers on them. Numbers are on sports jerseys, she believes, and those are for boys.

I'm sure my husband was more than a little perturbed when he heard the whirr of the sewing machine as he was trying to move the morning toward its daily appointments.

But when I handed her a sweatshirt with a number crudely cut from scrap fabric and awkwardly stitched to the front, he took a deeper breath.

Of course, Ittybit wanted to know why she wasn't consulted on the number selected. Six may have been her, but did it really need to define her?

Her father set her straight.

"One day you'll look back on this and you'll see how awesome 6 really was."

You're doing it all wrong

Of course there's no Right Way to do anything because whatever you do will be wrong anyway.

I know this thing called life is all about perception, but dang it if it doesn't feel like no matter what we do it's destined to be all wrong.

Share, don't share; work, don't work; little things matter, don't sweat the small stuff. ...

It goes on and on and even if you weren't there to hear the bratty, insufferable thing your kids did or said all you have to do is wait ... someone is more than happy to tell you about it.

You take a deep breath, and you try harder to succeed or you try to stop worrying about failures.

You are what you are. You do what you do. Priorities have to have priorities.

All you can do is fail to the best of your ability.