About That

Education and The Road Not Taken

2012-01-25T09:18:00.000-08:00

Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken is one of my all-time favorite pieces of written work. Whether I've consciously done so or not, I've often stood at that fork in the road and chosen the path less traveled and it has, indeed, made all the difference.

That's what I'm hoping will be the case with my children. I hope they'll travel far and wide and, whenever possible, mark the unworn paths. I hope their choices will be informed by a broad variety of experiences, conversations, books, adventures, curiosity, interest, excitement. I'm not sure that's what CPS is trying to accomplish.

So I'm a little at odds with my partner. And I say partner because that's what it is, a partnership. I've hired CPS, with annual property taxes near $10,000 every year for more than 10 years --that's roughly $100,000-- to partner with me in educating my children. I'm a little disappointed that what CPS has to offer me by way of innovative solutions to the declining scores on CPS students' tests is 90 minutes. 90 minutes?

Ask a child what makes it hard for them to learn in school, and you might hear:

- it's hard to focus when I'm sitting in the hallway to read and people keep walking by
- I can't talk to my teacher in class because she's too busy with other students (32 of them)
- we don't have a computer in our class anymore because it was taken to a testing room

Ask a teacher what makes it hard for them to teach and you might get:

- I know it doesn't make sense, but I have to get this in before the test
- the problem is, he's not eating at home, so I can't get him to focus
- she's working independently because she can; I have to pay attention to those who can't

So if you had these and other problems in education, would you suggest that 90 minutes would cure these difficulties? 90 more minutes of the same stuff that's failing? Why? What about taking what's great from other educational systems that are succeeding (and no one seems to agree that more time is one of those elements of success) and applying our own best practices to create a dynamic, rigorous new path for our children to travel?

The folks at CPS, even if well-intentioned, are displaying a real lack of interest in or understanding of what needs to happen. I think they need to show us why those 90 minutes matter more than other ideas to improve our educational system. At the end of the day, we don't want scores, we want educated citizens, right? We want explorers, entrepreneurs, scientists, mathemeticians, dancers, drivers, and things we haven't thought of yet! We want folks who will walk those roads not taken, to see where they'll take us all. Are the 90 minutes going to get us there? I don't think so.

Frankly, I believe the powers that be at CPS need to brush up on their poetry. I'd have them start with Frost.

Planning Your Own Surprise Party

2012-01-24T09:14:00.000-08:00

The results of our efforts are upon us, and somehow, we're managing to be shocked. This makes us about as clever as folks who plan and execute their own surprise parties.

I should probably clarify that in some circles, we're not even shocked. We're accepting of our absurdity as if we're all guests at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party (I love the parity between this and the political movement) and it's all just fine. But it isn't fine and some of us need to keep a handle on that before the whole thing falls into the sea.

Here's what brings me to the precipice:

I was flipping through channels last night and fleetingly landed on NBC. Jay Leno should not have a show. Folks should not be going on his show. Advertisers should not be advertising on his show. Jay Leno, whatever his talents, screwed Conan O'Brien out of his lifelong dream. He did so publicly, with little regard for the consequences. It wasn't the first time. He did it to Dave Letterman a few years back. The network aided and abetted this screwing of Mr. O'Brien, just as they did with Dave. Jay is a hypocrite and an ass and a backstabber. He doesn't deserve our attention, our money, our loyalty. He made his bed and then he decided he'd go lie in someone else's, leaving behind a mess of crumpled sheets and worn bedding. But there he goes glibly onward, making millions, smearing our faces in our own disregard for decency. Makes me sick.

As does Newt Gingrich's campaign, and the more than a quarter of a million Americans who have given him their precious votes. Are you kidding me? Newt Gingrich gets to claim redemption because he went to God for forgiveness and now he gets a completely clean political slate? Uh, no. God forgives and relieves you for your true repentence, loves you unconditionally, but that doesn't mean you don't pay for your sins here on earth. It doesn't mean that the hypocrisy of being a multi-million dollar consultant for paid lobbyists is forgiven because you aren't technically a lobbyist yourself. It doesn't mean that the outright disgusting-ness (is that a word?) of persecuting a public figure for their private trysts is forgiven because you finally landed on wife number three and were too old to muster up a bail to number four. Or is it just that she hasn't developed a debilitating disease yet?

When you crippled the government during your tenure as House Speaker you were not doing it for the good of the people. You were screwing the opposing party leader in the White House. Your strategy failed, and that means you exercised poor judgement. Often. Now you want to take credit for the things that did work? It doesn't go like that, friend. Or it shouldn't. You think it's petty to open up a debate with questions about your ex-wife's take on your swinging lifestyle? It is. It's petty and base and disgusting. So get off stage and stop making a spectacle of yourself and your tawdry personal life. If you wish to serve the public you may do so under quieter lights and with less media attention. I have a further unkind observation to add here about selling yourself to an audience, but I'll show restraint. You should try it some time.

As for 'values voters'? If I hear one more of you say "We all have our baggage," I'm going to mail you my barf. Are you kidding me? We all have our baggage? We all abandoned our cancer-stricken wife to marry our mistress, until our mistress contracted MS and then we abandoned her to carry on with our new mistress - not before suggesting we all just do the 'sharing is caring' version of marriage? Actually, we don't all carry those bags. But a single man cannot devote himself to a single man through marriage and raise a family together, on account of that defiles traditional marriage. Right? Fly a kite.

Seated next to Newt at the table are the legions of moronic sportswriters and fans who continue to glorify and/or demonize Joe Paterno. Joe Paterno shall be judged by He who judges. The rest of us can only make observations. Here's what I observe: the day a guy's record winning games as a coach matters more to some folks than an innocent child is the day those same folks come face to face with their own immorality. Paterno allowed a man to get away with raping a child. If you or I saw someone raping a child, or heard from a co-worker that they'd seen it, would we report it to the manager in our office and then go back to our desks? Of course not. That's insane! Would we continue to hang out with the alleged rapist and never ask him a question? Or shun him? Never ask the manager what happened? It wasn't just one little mistake. It was a lot of mistakes over a long period of time and winning football games does not relieve him of those failures.

So are they serving cake at this thing? Not likely. We're hurtling at greater and greater speeds toward an end that can't be much good and we're mangling so many of the messages it's hard to keep track of the truth. If you can, every once in a while, center yourself and get hold of it. These folks, Jay, Newt and Joe - they're all human - all worthy of forgiveness. I dig that. But let's not act like everything they did either didn't happen or didn't matter - that's just wacky.

Our futures are in the hands of those who come behind us. Our examples teach in more powerful voice than our words. So exactly what are we saying? I don't know about you, but I won't be surprised if it all comes back to bite us. We planned this party.

Bittersweet

2012-01-17T11:07:00.000-08:00

My best friend's mom has passed away. I'm usually pretty good with words, but sometimes the clouds in a stormy moment get in my way. This is just such a time. I'm grateful to have been loved. I'm glad to have loved. I'm sorry to have lost but relieved to have had so precious a time. I am renewed in faith and rejoice in its comfort. I am strong because I am needed and I am brought to peace by those who seek to bring me there. I don't want to be alone, nor do I want to leave others alone, and so I link my arms generously with those who open their arms to me - - something I learned most pointedly from this gracious and loving woman. I learn and move in her example and so I don't say good-bye. She glides away into another place just outside my reach, so that when I arrive there is a smile to greet me and a warm embrace to bring me in. She rejoins those who have gone before her and now in that moment they are, indeed, joyful.

With all that, it's not easy not to feel like there ought to be a pause in the day that recognizes the sadness at having lost this magnificent person. Why are the buses still running? Why is everyone just going about their business? Why is it snowing instead of still? I don't have the words to express this any better than W.H. Auden did... look up the Funeral Blues if you get a sec. All I can say is that as the natural progression moves me forward in waves away from my childish self to a time when I am the mature adult in the room (yes, it's happening) I can't help but wish I could cling again to the legs of my best friend's mom and beg her for a few more minutes of play before she goes. Now, instead, it is her grandchild, who clings to me with his melting eyes and asks to stay just a few moments longer so he can play with my own children. I acquiesce, as she always did, and smile. It is indeed, so bittersweet.

I Have A Shadow

2011-12-21T14:01:00.001-08:00

There's been a shadow passing over me as I've prepared for these holidays and I've wondered what it could be.

My best friend's mom has been ill; she's nearing the end of her days. I thought that might be it, but really, I've been so grateful for the extra time I've had to share some smiles with her, hold her hand, be together. So that's not it.

I thought it might be that this'll be my last Christmas with Lucy as an elementary school student. (Yes, I'm that neurotic.) But I feel lucky to have had all these Christmases with her. Any more are just icing. With sprinkles. Dipped in sugar. And bacon. (Everything is better with bacon.) So that can't be it.

It could be that, like Lucy, the twins are getting older and more mature. The other day Sam handed me a baggie with his tooth in it and said, "Tell the Tooth Fairy I could grab the dollar out of his wallet instead of making him go all the way upstairs, if he'd like." (Of course, you don't get paid if you don't believe, so the Tooth Fairy told him to forget it.) But these guys are getting to be more fun every day. That's definitely not it.

We're dealing with the usual array of maladies and melodramas, but what's new about that?

We have the added sadness this year that we're saying goodbye to some close friends who are leaving the state just as the holidays approach. I won't say that hasn't bothered me, but I feel I'm doing a spectacular job of suppressing it! And in any case, we've had some great laughs together in the last few weeks, and some good wine, and a few tears, and it's all just made me feel more and more sure that we'll be friends for a long time to come, no matter the distance.

As I've looked back on it, this year has been a most full and wonderful year with new experiences, adventures, a few scares - just to keep it exciting - and nothing but love and more love with family and friends.

So I realize, of course, there is a shadow passing over me. A kind, generous, loving, and benevolent shadow, watching over me, caring for me, attending to all my needs, especially when I'm at my most desperate and most low. I am weak and my shadow provides shelter so I may rest and regain strength. I am at fault and my shadow allows me space to grow into my better self. I am faithful and my shadow rewards me with all that I need and more than I could hope for. Indeed, there is a shadow passing over me. And I thank Him.

Growing Up A Mutt

2011-12-13T19:53:00.000-08:00

This is me and my cousin Damon. He's Italian. (Isn't he gorgeous?) I'm Italian, too. So when I'm with my Italian family, I'm loud and demonstrative and I focus a lot on food. I also argue a lot, laugh a lot and talk a lot, mostly about folks' medical conditions. It all goes swimmingly until I blurt out some phrase in Spanish. And then my Italian family and I are reminded that I'm notall Italian. I think for them it's mostly a curiosity - like an extra toe or a streak of red hair.

But to me, it is so much more.

Because for the last few weeks I've been spending an awful lot of time with my childhood best friend, Michelle. She's going to be furious that this is the best pic I could find, but Lord help me to understand this forsaken Mac computer - I can't find a darn thing!

In this photo Michelle's neurotically placing candles on her son's immaculately decorated cake, ensuring equal spacing between each candle. That's because she's Cuban and Cubans are nuts. I am also Cuban and Michelle is part of that piece of my life. T

ogether we rant about politics, fuss over every smudge on our children's faces, reassure one another that the world is a most dangerous place and the babies should never be out of our sight, and sniff arrogantly about the style failings of everyone we know. And lots of folks we don't know. Also we eat, but the food is way different.

The thing I struggle with is that because I'm not all one thing or the other, there are so many gaps in my cultural experience. There are things about me that belong to the Italian me, some are Cuban and still others are pure Chicago. But a few weeks ago a friend asked me if what a term in Spanish meant. I had no idea and he scoffed at me that it was a very common Cuban saying. And so I was completely de-Cubanized. I was at a funeral service yesterday and a common Italian saying was mentioned, to which everyone responded by nodding, repeating the saying in a murmur. I'd never heard it, and I was instantly de-Italianized. And I'm ashamed to say it, but I put ketchup on my hot dog. I love ketchup.

There are great advantages to being a multicultural person. I'm adaptable to any environment, I can talk to anyone, I make a mean plate of food - and by that I mean to tell you that I can cook anything as long as I have garlic - and I'm a really good, nurturing (some would say suffocating, but they're mean), loving mom. If there are some disadvantages - not being all a part of something, like a cousin by marriage, feeling a little lame when the hundred percenters bump elbows and smile knowingly - they are most

often far outweighed by the benefits.

I hope the kids feel the same. They're Cuban, which is awesome, they are Italian - so cool - and they are English, French, Spanish and Mexican Indian. I can't wait until they're all cooking!

I'm About To Get Controversial

2011-12-01T12:46:00.000-08:00

I'm cringing just thinking about how some may react to this, but far be it from me to walk away from a good cringe.

I don’t subscribe to a particular church, by choice. I am strong in my faith, knowledgeable in my faith, and true to my faith. I am so – usually – quietly, privately. I appreciate that some may rejoice in the community of faith that comes from church. I have no problem with that; it’s just not for me. I’m hoping the good Lord forgives as wantonly as I may need Him to, especially considering that period in the 80s when I may have tripped over some of the rules a little more frequently than others.

That said, I have a problem with how the concepts of faith, morality and church get mangled in our (global) society.

This is a link circulating right now on Facebook about a ‘church’ in Kentucky that has banned interracial marriage.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fblogs%2Fsideshow%2Fkentucky-church-bans-interracial-marriage-150009470.html&h=XAQHCnCv_

This is a link to an article about how one legislative body is wrangling with the issue of religious ceremonies for same-sex marriages.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/24/lords-debate-gay-weddings

And here’s a (disgusting) post from someone on a church forum trying to parse numbers in order to minimize the depravity of the Catholic church’s handling of abuse cases.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=441415

And then there’s the Bible. Here's Luke 20:45-47…
20:45 As all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, 20:46 “Beware of the experts in the law. They like walking around in long robes, and they love elaborate greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 20:47 They devour widows’ property, and as a show make long prayers. They will receive a more severe punishment."

And 1 Corinthians:12-14…
12 For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body – though many – are one body, so too is Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Whether Jews or Greeks or slaves or free, we were all made to drink of the one Spirit. 14 For in fact the body is not a single member, but many.

I’m afraid the folks who’re using the Lord’s name to foster fear, discriminate and injure – and do so with brag and bravado about their own holiness - really don’t get it. We best all hope for His great mercy.

Letting Go

2011-11-30T08:14:00.000-08:00

I hate it. I hate letting go. I think it's why I retain all my bad habits. It's the loss of them - of anything - that I can't stand, even if what waits for me on the other side is good. I'd rather keep the familiar, thank you very much, and pass the salt.

I am sure this is because I had an overage of letting go when I was little. I attended three elementary schools over the course of eight years. I lived at home, I lived with my grandparents, I lived with my aunt. My dad was there, my dad wasn't there. I had cousins and then I didn't. I spent so much time leaving, leaving and saying good-bye. I hated it.

And I hate it now.

So I work very hard at not leaving and not letting go. So far, this has made for a very strong marriage, some great life-long friendships and some uncomfortable pants, as I probably should let some of the ones that haven't fit me for six years go. I'm sure my hips would agree, but who's asking them anyway?

Of course, the not-letting-go thing has made parenting excruciating, since all you do as a parent is let go. My children have learned to tug and pull toward the music of their own lives quietly, so as to not interrupt my symphony of psychosis. I know that's a little nuts, but it works for us and who's asking you anyway?

So I've got this carefully constructed life with the same house, same neighborhood, same pants. Same, same same! Yay!

The thing is, not everyone is like me. Some people accept, embrace - even pursue - change. These people drive me insane, especiallywhen I love them. And despite all my labors to the contrary, some of them go. I have to say good-bye and let go.

And I want to scream at them "NO! Don't go! You're going to ruin everything! You're going to make me cry and feel lonely and lost and I don't want you to go because I need you in order to keep my sameness SAME. Don't you see that?!"

I want to run at them inelegantly flapping my arms to catch their attention and then I want to clutch them close to me and transfer my inexplicable, unreasonable fear of change to them through the heat of my body so they'll stay and never go.

I want to, but I know it's the wrong thing. I know I must love those around me enough to allow them their choices without the burden of mine weighing them down. I know others' happiness belongs to them and I owe them comfort and confidence when they're off to pursue their dreams. I know that I can't change the fact that things change and sometimes I must say good-bye and carry on. I know that.

But I hate it. I hate letting go.

Be Thankful

2011-11-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

I just went to visit my childhood best friend's mom. Today is her birthday. I spent about an hour with her, coaxing her into having a little something to eat. It's not easy anymore, as she's recently had a stroke so all her food is - in addition to being old-people gross anyway - mixed with gelatin. Yuck! I had to laugh when she managed to pull together a pretty convincing scowl, despite the paralysis in her face, so that I knew not to keep trying to push the pea-mush that was substituting for real food on her plate. It'd be easy to look at her situation and think 'This is awful, I'm so glad it's not me or my mom.'

I suppose that'd be one form of thanks, right?

But instead, I was grateful because as soon as she saw me there was no mistaking the delight in her eyes. The days since I went bounding into her house, sticky and sweaty from play have flown by in a flash. So I was relieved and glad that she took my hand and squeezed it, as best she could, to let me know she was so happy to see me. I'm grateful that she smiled at the flowers I brought and so, so overjoyed to have spent an hour with her, getting her to have even a few bites to keep up her strength and singing happy birthday to her so that she knew she was remembered and loved.

It's one thing, of course, to be loved by someone. I'm grateful, eternally, for all the love I receive from those close to me. But I have to say it's another thrill entirely to get someone else to see and appreciate the love you are giving them. It's especially meaningful when you know somone is at the end of their days, because we all know eventually the days run out.

I find this especially true today, not just because of this visit but because last night Tony stayed up late looking at old videos of our babies when they were brand, spankin' new. My beautiful Sara, rocking back and forth on those untried legs, doing everything she could to get into Lucy's 'big-girl' bed (toddler-sized, but huge to her). The ever-delicious Lucy in the background of every single video pleading, 'Can I see, Daddy?' and hamming it up for more face time. Sam, my earnest, eager Sam, bawling ferociously at the audacity of pause between placing him in the crib and handing him his bottle of milk. Those days have sprinted by, too soon. Of course, Sara is still trying everything she can to fit into Lucy's big-girl status, Lucy still chases Daddy around to dig into whatever he's doing, and Sam, embarrassingly, still bawls ferociously when we're out of milk. Some things, I'm told, never change.

And still, still, the days fly by.

So don't waste your days looking for something else. Be joyful in what you have today. You can stretch and grow and reach, but don't bemoan what is not in your grasp. Don't give time away to anger or regret better spent on thrill and song for what you already have. When it is your time to sit in that quiet chair waiting for a visit, those things won't matter. Don't place falseness or pretense in front of what is real and strong and true. You know what it is. Embrace your own flawed self with as much fervor as you do your most fantastic desires and share your truest self with those around you, even when you are weak and afraid. It is your honest love which is the most treasured by those who love you too. And be open and willing and reckless in giving your love - it is the one thing that always grows exponentially when invested. Everyone has a story to tell. Listen. Show fairness and reason and understanding. That too is rewarded and returned when shared.

And, above all, be thankful, as the days fly by.

This is What A 10-Year Old Looks Like

2011-11-11T05:48:00.000-08:00

I have two of them - well, had, until last year when they appallingly turned 11. I just hate when they do that - get a year older every year.

In an case, this is a picture of them when they were 10. We had to try the picture several times because the two of them kept goofing off. Little gigglepots with ants in their pants and a penchant for driving one another bananas. Also, it was a windy day.

I won't ever get that day back to try to retake this photo, so this is the best shot I'll ever have of that moment. That's because they'll never be 10 again and we'll never be able to reverse all the experiences they've had since in order to regain who they were on that day. See how Sara's leaning in to Sam? Being braced by him? And how Sam is standing tall, his arm around her back? He's pushing against the wind, doing his best to keep them both steady. He's protecting her. He's 10.

I don't know all the details of the mess at Penn State University. It's all a bit too sordid for me and I've got enough worry and pre-emptive pain in my head - parenting will do that to you. What I do know is that a 10-year old was abused, raped, by a grown man in a shower at the university locker room. This event was witnessed, reported, and then ignored. There's more to it, several boys, years and years of at least suspicion, if not knowledge, that this was going on. And it was ignored.

Now that some action has finally been taken, folks are being asked whether the adult men who ignored this situation should be treated with sympathy. Sympathy? A sad ending to a career? A career? Have we all gone mad?

I don't care one whit about this man's career. Does he care that these babies were violated, repeatedly, and ruined by the sick bastard he was protecting? Is anyone at Penn State marching about that?

Look at that picture of my babies. I won't ever get that day back. They'll never be 10 again and we'll never be able to reverse all the experiences they've had since in order to regain who they were on that day. See how Sara's leaning in to Sam? See Sam protecting her? He's 10.

I Have Several Things To Say

2011-11-08T10:03:00.001-08:00

The problem is, I think I've learned not to say what I want to say.

When I was younger, I not only blurted out every magnificent thing that came into my head, but I was encouraged to do so. My mother thought it was the best way to let me express my freedom as an individual. I was invited to speak my mind and my mom endlessly engaged me in thoughtful, provacative and often silly conversations on the most benign topics. This practice of exchange came back to haunt her in the 80s when I was a teenager and she was no longer keen on my freedom or my individuality and had long since tired of my provocation. Train. Station.

Later, my friends and co-workers egged me on. Friends, I think because many of them were too repressed to say what they wanted to say, thrilled at my willingness to scream the virtues of shaven hair at our prim all-girls college prep. Co-workers reveled in my multi-page memos on why I shouldn't serve coffee to clients, something I do for myself these days, so as not to be a total hypocrite.

Freed from the chains of social constraint on my teenage and twenty-something self (most of which I had ignored anyway) I embraced the full volume of my 30s wit and wisdom. I had opinions on every single thing and you heard them whether you cared to or not. I got a lot of attention that way, and if it was negative I was too busy blasting away to know it or care.

But now inching ever closer to the stands where the polyester print sweater brigade awaits my enrollment I find I'm less inclined. I find other folks who always have an air of authority seem immature and impatient to me. Was I those things? I see others who are opinionated well beyond their scope of expertise, or even exposure, and think, 'You look like a fool.' Was I so foolish? I'm eager to respond to things that I think require hastened attention, but I've found that if I sit back and wait the urgency dissipates. Was I always jumping the gun?

I've found I'm richer and more satisfied as a listener than a speaker. I find that even when the incompetence of others frustrates and slows me I can get past that and not feel afterwards that I've put on yet another lavish display of bull-in-china, the Carmen edition. I still feel that I'm better at an awful lot of stuff than other people, but I'm doing every thing I can to inform that arrogance with the experience of finding others' talents valuable and interesting and worthwile.

And I'm doing everything I can think of to keep some of my opinions to myself so that others can enjoy the sound and feel of their own.

I give it another couple of weeks.

Observations on Halloween

2011-10-31T07:20:00.000-07:00

Candy corn is gross. Really.

I was so excited when my youngest girl (11) said she wanted to be a princess bride! Then entirely deflated when she said 'a dead one'.

Did not make it to pumpkin selection in a timely fashion due to extensive automotive trauma. If you were me you'd understand that. In any case, I had to purchase less-than-exactly-orb-shaped-pie pumpkins from hapless outdoor cart at Home Depot. Kids' enthusiasm level re: decorating these with paint and markers not exactly breaking records.

Am wearing my orange sweater today in honor of the holiday and am sadly much more rotund and pumpkin-like than our pumpkins. Note to self: stop eating or watermelon season is going to be ugly.

Purchased three huge bags of Halloween candy because it was on sale and the sign urging me to buy it was so damn compelling. Realized later I won't be home so the candy will just be sitting in a bowl on my counter for the rest of the year.

Make that month.

Let's be honest, maybe it'll make a week. See pumpkin/watermelon reference above.

Still do not understand the concept of spending an evening wandering around in the dark trying to get scared or scare others as a form of entertainment when the rest of the time we are constantly faced with gruesome truths like poverty, hunger, starvation, a dying planet, deception, war and crime. Maybe y'all should just pay attention the remainder of the year. It's scary enough.

Explained the above to my children last night and got two blinks and a, "Yeah, but you get candy." Insert 'duh' eye-roll.

Well, they are my children. I better hide that candy bowl.

Ain't No Time Like The Present

2011-10-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

Some days I wish I was in that other part of my life. That part where I took the train and went to work downtown and stopped for drinks on my way home. Some days I wish I still shopped at Water Tower and wore stupidly expensive undergarments and had sachets in all my drawers. There are days when I wish I still got butterflies in my stomach because practically everything was new to me. I miss my boss and my old friends from work. I wish I still had years and years ahead of me when my body could ping back and forth from just about any test without complaint. I wish I still got haircuts that left me feeling like a pampered princess and left my pillow smelling delicious for two days afterwards. Some days I wish I could look forward to crisp weather so that I could wear thick sweaters and wool skirts with knee-length boots and look like I belonged in the season. I wish I was excited. I wish I was accepting and willing and ambitious beyond measure because - why not - the world is a magical place!

I become giddy with wishing some days.

But the wishing only lasts long enough for me to remember that when I was in that part of my life I always dreamed of this part. The part where I work near the neighborhood and my husband takes me home from work and we make dinner for our family together. The part where the kids drive me bananas with questions and announcements and demands for attention as soon as they walk in the door. There're always so many papers to look at! In earlier days I'd go to a department store and see the mom in the comfy jeans and flats and the worn-out sweater with the flushed face and the scrambling kids and I'd beg God to give me that life. Today, that's me! Before I got here I'd wonder what other expensive thing I could buy to make me feel good, because what I really wanted was to love someone with all my heart and then love my babies and then cook and set tables and read books and stare at my house with nothing but thrill inside at my arrival in a life that's too good to be true.

My hands are wrinkled now. And my jeans certainly don't fit the way they used to. I'm ambitious, but pragmatic. I still believe the world is a magical place. And I'm quite thankful to be where I am, really, truly and completely.

I'm All... Uh... Twitter

2011-10-11T10:06:00.001-07:00

So you may have noticed that I don't hang out here much on my blog page anymore. Sadly, you may not have noticed and I've just been fantasizing that you and others like you mull around waiting for some indication that my wit and wisdom has once again been set to page, er blog, so that your existence doesn't seem so mundane and purposeless. In either case, one of us is pathetic. I'll leave it to you to decide.

The sad truth is I haven't been here because I can't write anymore. I know, I know. But it's true. In the mad dash to race myself from 1987 where my hair has remained all these years to 2012 where my wild, unrequited success in business resides I've had to cast off some of my old ways. I’m obsessed with word count. Gone are the long meandering observations on the plight of a, let's say, candidate Perry, for instance, a man who's just about begged for my attention.

In my more prolific blogging days I might have had a word or two on the comical, uh, historic nature of this man's candidacy. Here's a guy who's never lost an election, and he's got the intellect of blank paper. How’s that possible? He's as bright as a bobbing boat oar. Nobody saw it? He's as clever as a box of hair. It's got to be some kind of record, right? (Don't say 'no'. It'll make me cry.)

This guy throws together big ideas like 'Ponzi scheme' and 'Social Security' like a toddler getting dressed in the dark using old Halloween costumes and the contents of a pajama drawer. "It's a Disney-Princess-Cat-Captain! Like it?!" Uh, yeah, but wouldn't elect it to the highest office in the land.

I suppose he's better than his hysterically smiling debate companion, the gal who's married to the gayest straight guy I've ever seen. How many of you have joined the office pool on when he gets outed? I'm in for $20. In the meantime I'm fascinated by the popularity of a candidate - don't be like that - 7% of the population is a good number of people if you're having them over for dinner - who dissects information to relieve it of any facts or sense before she spews it in front of cameras. It's absolutely riveting.

As is the candidate who prefaces his statements with something along the lines of 'I don't have the facts on this….' Maybe he’s worried about word count too. Doesn’t want to muddy the waters with extra info that’ll use up his characters. It's refreshing, I suppose. Kind of like your child's teacher telling you 'I can't prove it but I'm pretty sure your son is a goat with a mild cognitive disorder and a faulty digestive system. You may want to look into trade schools.' I'm supposed to overlook this candidate's blatant disregard for evidence to back up his outlandish statements because (ssshhhh) he's black. Also he knows how to make pizza. I'm not convinced on the former, but I have to say I've thrown a little extra acceptance his way on the pizza thing. I am part Italian, after all.

In place of these boorish rants are trite little mentions of articles, along with a hashtag - which between you and me is a pound sign and some typographically incoherent blather that some techno idiot made up to abbreviate an intelligible (if not intelligent) word or phrase- and a link to someone else's drivel. In my quest for a technologically current identity in business, I've foresaken my own drivel for someone else's. That's progress for you. Or ‘thts prgrss 4u’.

Worse than the choice to spend my time tweeting (why doesn't anyone else find being forced to say that the modern equivalent to shoving one's iphone-addicted self into the ill-fitting clothes of the emperor--the ones woven with the 'invisible' thread? it's ludicrous and hilarious! am i the only one getting that?) is the fact that the tweeting itself is rendering me incapable of stringing together more than 160-characters worth of sensible thought. And yes, you read that right, I said 160. Even in my revised, twitter-speak state I still manage to be verbose and require editing.

The mechanism I previously employed to carry out a thought from inception to print.. uh.. post.. involved long rambling essays, pared over time, carefully crafted to evoke emotion, imagery, finality. Draft upon draft. Rewrite, revision. Coffee. Lots of coffee.

The mechanism I use to tweet involves finding someone else's semi-relevant blurb, acting like I care about it, and then repeating it with my own three words of scintillating commentary. I'm good, but I'll confess, I'm not that good.

I get the general idea of Twitter - to pare down your thoughts to their simplest form - to express a thought quickly, succinctly and still be intelligent and relevant - to connect with others who get you. I get the idea, but I have to be honest, it ain't me. I'm a lingerer, verbally speaking. A languisher. A loller. I love 'L' words, don’t you?. And 'S' words and 'Q' words. I love them all! Isn't squishy a great word? And SCREAM! You can't scream on Twitter. You can't even intone. You can only snark and demur.

I get the whole revolution thing and the global connectivity thing, yada yada yada. Alex Baldwin is entertaining. Steve Martin, oddly, isn’t. The guy impersonating Rahm was vulgar and tedious after a while. He’s famous for being a pottie mouth on Twitter. Is that how we get famous now?

I’ll never make it. I’m doing what I need to do for work and I’m doing what I can to adjust but a part of me wants to shove 70 big fat NOs into the teenie 140-character box and find a fresh blank blog page and just WRITE A MILLION WORDS.

What’s my word count right now?

Split Seconds Count

2011-09-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

So I haven't slept much these past few nights. Keep replaying the early evening of Friday, September 23rd over and over in my head. I was on my way home from a day out with my daughter and her two friends. We'd stopped at the grocery store. I was following a path I follow several times a week - nothing out of the norm. Until a silver SUV came rushing at me from the lane to my left. And everything

from the first time I met Lucy's friend Lauren at a pre-school play group

she still has that same pretty, baby-faced expression at age 13

to the time I realized her friend Sabrina was the daughter of my high school friend Tina

and if you think Tina's gorgeous you have to see this exotic beauty of a baby she had

to the time I laid a little baby Lucy down on a blue towel and realized her eyes reflected color

I started calling her 'Blue' after that, even though her eyes are green most of the time

to the dreams I have for all three of these babies

maybe they'll be roommates in college, maybe they'll be in each other's weddings, maybe they'll visit me in their 30s and give me hugs and treat me like family because we've known each other so long and I wonder if everyone else dreams about other people's children the way I do

all of that and I think every memory or wish I've ever had came screaming into my head all at once. That and the notion that I had zero time to decide how to keep all of us, and whoever was in that SUV, safe.

As I've replayed the flash of those few seconds over and over and over I'm exhausted by the sheer number of thoughts that raced into and out of my consciousness in such a short time. I remember clearly measuring whether I had enough time and space to turn the car into a driveway on my right. I remember deciding it was too dangerous to risk driving across the sidewalk on the off chance someone might be walking by - I had no time to avert my eyes to look. I remember trying to calculate whether it was better to get hit or possibly hit a light pole if I couldn't stop in time. I remember sensing that Lucy was lifting off of her front passenger seat and containing the panic that the babies in the backseat might be lifting too and I couldn't reach them. I remember wondering whether I've done enough good in my life to balance out whatever bad thing was coming my way. And I remember thinking - however irrationally - as I plunged my foot into the brake with all my might that if that fire hydrant didn't stop me dead center it might crush Lucy's feet and she wouldn't be able to dance at her prom.

The hydrant did stop us and all the babies, bumped and shaken, walked away just fine. The young girl - maybe 16 or 17 years old - who'd been driving the SUV was fine too. Now the dull of insurance forms and liability claims plays in parallel to my going through the motions of regular life, interrupted by brief bouts of uncontrollable tears or moments of total numb. I feel I'm actually getting worse, not better, as the days pass. I'm trying every bit I can to be 'normal' while I feel anything but. (No wisecracks please; I still have my sense of humor, however beaten.)

If I regret a million things, and I do, among them it's that I didn't tell Sabrina and Lauren that I love them, adore them, dream for them - even in the tightest of time spaces - I didn't clutch them and apologize fiercely for scaring them or putting them in danger, even though I know it really wasn't my fault. The truth is, that's what's keeping me awake. For all my worrying and fussing and attempts to protect, there I was at the heart of a dangerous situation with these babies in my hands and I had no way to keep them from it. I could only neutralize the danger, as best I could, and hope for the best. And pray for the best. And really, really, know that we weren't in my hands, but in God's.

Knowing that you believe in God and having your beliefs tested are two very different things, in case you didn't know.

Earlier in our day, a woman in the mall parking lot had called my attention - pointing at me and at her eye - indicating I should watch where I was going. I was watching, but she kept doing it even though I acknowledged her, and after she kept at it, I gave her a few choice words to let her know I'd seen her. Nonetheless, for the rest of the day I was somehow heightened in my awareness.

Split seconds I shared with that woman and her admonition. Split seconds I had to veer to the right, slam on the brakes, center the car and call to God to help me save those babies. And man, do those split seconds count.

It's a Special-With-An-E Kinda Thing

2011-09-18T05:11:00.000-07:00

I have my mom's family picnic today. The Speciale Family. That's actually our name. Special, with an 'e'.

We don't see each other enough any more for reasons too many to share here, and most of them completely innocent at this point. (That's right, I said innocent. They never proved anything.) So once a year we pull ourselves together for a little picnic and enjoy the closeness that you just don't get anywhere else but with your family, no matter how often you do or don't see one another. I particularly enjoy it because it's the one day out of the year when I'm still considered young enough to be a whippersnapper!

It's also predictable. Too much food, lots of trips to the bathroom. And talking. We'll be talking about three things, invariably: how big all the kids have gotten, the Bears and the weather. Since you won't be there and I have to tell someone - allow me to share a little of what I expect on just one of these topics.

It's my luck that it's going to rain on the one day a year we have a family picnic. As such, at least 5 paunchy Italians will be spending the afternoon having this conversation: 'Well, Jo, remember when we were kids it never rained like this here?' 'Oh I know. We never had this rain. We had rain. But not like this.' 'Yeah - Russ - you remember that time it rained at Vicki-boy's party? That was a good rain.' 'No, I don't remember.' 'Yes, you do. You were there. Aunt Gray was wearing an orange blouse.' 'I don't remember.' Yes you do, Russ. You were there. You were five. Or was it Charlene?' ((Char)) 'It wasn't me.' The conversation will loop from there and will include at least 20 minutes on how modern rain is a pox on society and is probably owed to television or the crap we eat.

It'll go along swimmingly unless someone from one of the generations beneath them complains about the rain. Then the conversation will take on an entirely different tone. 'You're complaining about the rain? Hah! In our day, this woulda been nothin'!' 'Yeah. In our day we had picnics in the snow!' 'We didn't care about a little rain. Ma coulda baked a cake in the rain. Without an oven! And we'da had a great time!' 'Yeah, Char, you remember that time we made mud pies and Dad got mad that we tracked mud in the house?' 'No, I don't remember.' 'Yes you do, you were there.' 'No, I don't think so.' 'Of course you do. We made mud pies. Then Dad got mad. You remember?' 'No.' 'You had lost a tooth! If ma hadn't a come out Dad was gonna give it to us... or was it Connie?' 'It wasn't Connie.' This part of the conversation will loop incessantly around Connie, her brother Henry, and how children today are so flimsy even the slightest breeze could knock them over.

I can't wait.

More Than I Bargained For

2011-08-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

So Sam and Sara are 11 today and on reflection all I can think is that this is not what I signed up for. I signed up for one baby, first of all. That the Lord saw fit to give me two could be viewed as a blessing.

Could.

Could not.

In this case, most assuredly a blessing of epic proportions.

I'm just saying.

Also, I was kind of hoping one of my kids would be a quiet one, kinda balance out the overage of volume at the parental level. Not the case, so far, and I'm no longer brave enough to test the averages. Look what happened last time!

The family I designed in my head had less of me in it, and these two simply did not get that memo. They repeat my temper, my tantrums and my willingness to speak my mind at the most inopportune moments. If the payoff here is that they also repeat some of my talents, it's diluted for me by the fact that they're way more talented than I am and they have some of their dad's talents, plus their own! It's a bit gauche to be so multi-talented, don't you think?

And now, they're so gorgeous? Really? We couldn't dial it down a notch by having some one or the other be a bit plain? No? Everyone's got to be fabulous in every department? In Sam's case, so far, this has only proven to be mildly annoying as little girls are becoming reticent at this age to demonstrate their admiration. Boys, on the other hand, have no trouble making every possible move a 10- or 11-year old can make to get Sara's attention. Gladly, one of her talents is oblivion. But when that turns... lookout!

So they're lively, articulate, interesting, good-looking and talented, charming.... Uh. So where are the cameras? I'm on, right? Hmmm?

Fine, I'll play along. But when the show's over I get to keep them right? I'm a little attached.

In the meantime, these two little peanuts who fit in one basket when I brought them home, who sat side by side in matching high chairs and wore coordinating overalls when they were toddlers, and learned to dance to daddy's incessant playing of 'Can't Touch This' by MC Hammer, who nearly killed me during the potty training decade (it FELT like a decade), and finish each other's sentences, and are fine to be in separate classrooms--so long as they can see one another on demand--still, who once fit together in a dresser drawer for purposes of hide 'n go seek--that is until the dresser caved in and nearly killed me (I've nearly died several times while parenting; kids are fine), who bicker and berate one another constantly but can't get comfort from anyone the way they can from each other, these two who have no idea really how unique they are in the world, my babies who will always be my babies no matter how big they get, and who love me double as twins are wont to do, and who I love, adore and treasure more than I can say, Sam and Sara are making the double digits look good. I can only hope for more and more, especially the hugs and kisses and snuggles and love, love love. Although, to be fair, I will say it's all been way more than I bargained for.

On What It Is To Be A Winner

2011-07-22T05:02:00.001-07:00

Last night my son's little league baseball team played its heart out and lost. It was a heartbreaker and our guys were in it until the very end. When the game was over, just beyond the din of the winning team's cheers, our little boys couldn't hold back the emotion. Some wept, some stood still trying to absorb the reality, all were lost for a few moments. And then something funny happened. These boys- well on their way to showing all of us what it is to be men - comforted one another. Moms and dads in soothing stance were joined by a few bumped shoulders, some hair ruffling- some acknowledgement that a teammate was there. Still there.

Tears to sniffles to half-smiles. And if that didn't get them, a few boys doused the coach. If you didn't know it already, a soaking wet coach can urge the belly-laugh out of even the most morose little boy.

So on a night when the season's spent wishes could have easily turned brothers away from one another we savored just a few more minutes together. We lingered over ice cream at a nearby shop, laughing, telling stories, and in the favorite words of my good friend Charlie Sheen, winning. Because yes, there are winners and losers in every contest, and our boys lost that baseball game.

But there are bigger things than baseball. (Very, very few, but there are.) And in every respect when it comes to some of those bigger things - honor, brotherhood, fairness, loyalty - our boys are remarkable champions.

The Gal Who's Got Everything

2011-07-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

What to get for the gal who's got everything? My Aunt Josie, this is her with my grandmother in a photo from '95, is celebrating her 70th birthday today. For weeks, I've been wondering what I could get for a person who'd probably had their fill of scented soaps and costume jewelry years ago. And it came to me - I love her, of course - and the one thing I've never given my aunt is the one thing she ought to have and only I can give her. So here it is:

I Love My Aunt Josie by Carmen Rodriguez

I love my aunt because she's so bright and cheery. As an adult, I've grown to know when the smile is a little forced and the laugh is a little weary. But I've also grown to admire, greatly, how often she's willing to set aside whatever ails her so she can be happy. What a gift!

I love my aunt because she married and stayed married even though being married is not the easiest thing in the world. When I was little, and long before I was married, I thought maybe she was just married to someone who drove her nuts. Now, as a married person myself, I realize all people who are married drive each other nuts and the trick is to love each other anyway. She and my uncle have weathered a million storms together and should be proud and joyful that they've arrived at this place together.

I love my aunt because she was a devoted mother to my three cousins, Michael, Debbie and Jeff, and because no matter what the three of them cooked up - and there were some doozies over the years - she handled all of it with good grace and humor and strength. She has been an even better grandmother and, now, great-grandmother.

There's a certain positivity about her, a phenomenal resiliance, which I try hard to emulate but can never quite match.

When people talk about a person who is a force to be reckoned with, I reckon they're talking about my aunt. Wary the soul who faces her when she is irate and weary the traveler who treads where she forbids trespass. In our family there's much dither about whether or not we're Italian or Sicilian. When my aunt is on a path, there's no question.

She has been a caretaker to all our family since she was born, and long since an old soul. She has been counselor, aide, nurse, kitchen consultant and gardener-in-chief for all of us and has willingly carried each of us when we were falling, at whatever hour, no matter what else she had in her arms. And she never let you feel you were being carried, you just knew you were being held.

It may be my greatest sin that when my aunt was gravely ill some years ago I did not hold her. I barely called. When the worst of it had passed, I tried to apologize but it was lame and I didn't say then what I'll intimate now. I couldn't go. I was afraid. Bone-deep, I was afraid. My aunt had never been weak a day in my life. I couldn't even wrap my mind around the idea that she might be sick or pale or frail. So I stayed away like a child scrunching eyes shut hoping that if I couldn't see the hurt it couldn't see me either.

Ultimately, my aunt prevailed. Silly sickness. It had no idea what it was up against. I'm certain it was her own will, her own positive soul blessed by a good and forgiving God, that brought her through all of that. She never said a word about how I wasn't there to comfort her, never missed a beat in showing good cheer and great faith during the whole thing and now. I love her for that, too.

She continues to be a force, a go-getter and a rummage sale fanatic. She is always a great help to me at 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning when I forget what I need to do with the turkey and she is a tireless dance partner at family weddings. She's always looking for a laugh and ready to share a story. She's fun and smart and makes me feel good even when I don't mean to.

She really has got everything and so all I can add is this: Humbled by my own lacking in your shadow, I am always grateful to have you in my life. I think you're a phenomenal woman, genuine and deserving and good. I think you're a great cook, which matters, because your soul speaks through your food and it is awesome. I think you're beautiful inside and out and I hope you know it. I love your garden, soft and alive and secreting scent and color. It reminds me of you. You have been a good mom, it's not easy, and your love for your children and grand children shows every day, all the time. Your dogged pursuit of good cheer and the smile in every situation is a life lesson I've carried with me all of my days, and it's served me well, so I thank you.

I love you, Aunt Jo, and I wish you every happiness on your birthday and always.

He's a Little Nuts

2011-06-19T09:53:00.000-07:00

And Other Attributes of a Great Dad

For many years, this was a weird holiday for me. I felt compelled to celebrate with my mom, who did the work of my dad, albeit dressed in flowery housecoats and wearing soft perfume. I also felt the need to thank and recognize the men in my life who filled in the gaps where a well-intentioned mom really couldn't. I was as warm as I could be with this conglomerate of men - uncles, friends, neighbors - the village that Hillary was talking about - who raised me. But the truth was they were busy with their 'real' families on this day and I was an add-on. The older I got - although it was always true - this day made me so uncomfortable, at odds with my own self, because I really didn't want to celebrate with my mom and my uncles and friends' husbands. I wanted a dad. And I didn't have one of those.

So in my young life, I began to design the ideal dad, who would some day appear in my life and make everything good again. This man was tall and strong and had calloused hands because he worked hard to take care of me and my mom. He smelled faintly of soap but most often he was sporting eau de motor oil and bore the scent of work and a long day. He had a bright smile which was quick to flash around me - I was the light of his life. My dad was smart, but quiet about it - he didn't need to show off his intellect, it was just understood. He was intuitive and warm and a little clumsy in his affection because he had to trip over his manliness to get to his softer side. He was charming and funny and had a way of drawing a crowd even when he didn't mean to. He kept us comfortable and safe and even if we didn't have the best of everything it felt like it because he made us feel so grateful to be together that everything else was cake. My dad was a little nuts, he'd have to be to get along with me, but it was a funny sort of nutty and we laughed together about our quirks and oddities. Sometimes he was hard, mad and unreasonable, but that just made him human and real and all the more mine - I can be a little unreasonable too! Above all my dad loved me, loved me, loved me and never left me. Never would. Couldn't live without me anymore than I could without him. He was constant and good and sincere and I could count on him.

I waited for this dad for many, many years and - oddly - never lost hope.

On August 5 1995 I married the man of my dreams.

And on April 28, 1998 (and again on August 17 2000) he became the dad of my dreams. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

The World Has Gone Mad and other observations

2011-06-02T07:56:00.001-07:00

I was preparing lunch this morning and went to vaporize my 'healthy' lean pockets and was the victim of an involuntary snort/guffaw when the nuke-pack exhorted me to "FIND US ON FACEBOOK!!" Find 'us'. Lean Pockets. On Facebook. In what alternate universe would I be finding myself 'friending' a microwaveable sandwich?

I'll tell you which one.

The one in which I've been educated in a public school system that is shockingly, SHOCKINGLY, distressed, dysfunctional and de-funded. What in God's name (or anyone else's) do we think we gain by cutting funding for education? Cut the God-blessed electricity so the kids can get off the damn idiot box and read a book for crissakes. Cut the bloated budgets that allow my state senator's assistant to receive a pretty decent wage while she sits around a room with three other state senators' assistants chewing the fat when I come in to the office. Cut the moronic free lunches that force our kids to waste time playing Star Wars with cheese sticks instead of learning. Cut breaks for irresponsible businesses, cut interest deductions, cut waste and for crissakes, cut the CRAP. That is, if you care.

If you don't care about our future, keep cutting eduction. Keep dumbing down the society and pretty soon you'll find history books that write-up complete morons as geniuses because by the standards we're creating, they will be!

And speaking of standards, we might still have some if we stopped making every idiot's idiotic move news. Men are cheating on their wives and/or sending lewd photos of themselves in an attempt to lure some hapless gal into an affair? Folks, that's not news. It's not new, either. I don't care what Arnold does with his free time, what I care about is what he does with MY time. I don't care how Anthony handles his wiener, I care how he handles MY... uh, wait.

The point is this: stop pandering to the lowest common denominator. I'm out here! I'm starving for some class, some dignity, some decorum - even if that means you have to hide half of society from me. I prefer it! I like the fact that we don't have tawdry photos of JFK getting it on with Marilyn Monroe. I prefer the notion that he flirted with Marilyn but he was true to his wife. I know it's not real, but not knowing what I know is better than knowing what I know about what Clinton does with his cigars. It's better.

Also, stop pretending you care that politicians are playing politics with our lives. Newsflash: they are P O L I T I C I A N S. That's what they do. Baseball players play - you guessed it! Baseball. (Although I have my sad days when this is not entirely true... sigh... #cubsfanforlife) Politicians play politics. If you wanted people to stop playing games you'd hire more serious, intelligent, responsible people. Then, when we hire serious intelligent people, ElizabethWarrenSayWhat?, we'd give them the tools and support they need to get done the serious job that needs to get done. But we don't. We don't even do half of that. So it's our fault they're playing and we've nothing to do but take the hits.

Also, stop being a sore loser. Obama wins. He wins because he got BinLaden and nobody else did. Suck it. Obama may be too cerebral in many situations. He may be frustrating the crap out of Boehner, turning him more an orangey-red than his normal tangerine. He may be interested in social justice (GASP!) more than some would like. He may be a lot of things but he made the call, he got BinLaden and that's it. He wins. If you keep blustering about how it wasn't him you're really only making yourself look like a sniveling, sore loser. Stop it. Have some dignity.

And while we're on the subject of dignity, Time magazine should apologize to me for not having any. Because if they had any self-respect they'd be embarrassed about the virtual cigarette they smoked as they lay under crumpled sheets after writing that, now that I know, absurd review of Jonathan Franzen's latest book, Freedom. I read the review and was compelled to read the book and feel entirely cheated. I intuited then but can now definitively tell you that using "Chardonnay splotch" as a description of a character's complexion is hardly the literary feat that was ascribed to it in Time's review. Franzen is a 'Great American Novelist?' Ok. But if he's the standard for what a great American novelist can do, I really ought to get my butt out there and write that book. The Franzen book is all ramble, self-indulgence and righteousness lost in the uninteresting pocket lint of damaged characters. If that's greatness I fear all is lost.

Write a book about a good marriage, healthy children and a happy family. Make that the "wide shot, the all-embracing, way-we-live-now novel". Because contrary to Time's declaration that Franzen's writing "has an unshowy, almost egoless perfection" I don't think "Chardonnay splotch" is all that unshowy and in any case I don't think it's all that hard to write about unsympathetic characters with dysfunctional upbringings and lust for younger women or hottie wannabe rock stars. That's not real. That's bull.

What's real is loving your spouse and caring for your children and trying every day, slowly, methodically, to do good in the world. Write that piece so that it's not boring. Make it insightful and rich with the scent and savor of your own life but the mystique of someone else's.

I've got more but I'm sure I've exhausted your patience, as I have my own, obviously. More on a day when the sun is not shining and I don't have some excuse to break away from this dastardly machine and live a little. I'm off to enjoy my FREEDOM and lunch with my husband, whom I love and am happily married to. We're having lean pockets.

The First.

2011-05-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

My newphew, Ramsis, graduates from 8th grade today setting off a chain reaction of graduations, quincenearas, travels, adventures, jobs and - sooner than we think - marriages and babies. As of today, I'm practically a great-grandmother. (If you've ever heard me rant this to my children, it all begins with kindergarten.)

Ramsis is the oldest child of my husband's younger brother, the first grandchild, my very first nephew. He's always been the first and always will be(much to Lucy's chagrin). We are a close family as extended ones go. Ram wears his first-ness with incredible good grace, although to hear his twelve younger rivals (three sisters and nine cousins) tell it he's just this side of Darth Vadar. It comes with the territory and if there's any reward in taking on this great burden it is that for as much as they fuss and bother, all twelve of these little ones - and their attendant parents - adore Ram and admire how well he takes the beatings that come with being first.

Ramsis is smart - sometimes too much for his own good - and that smartness comes out in ways that both humor and haunt the adults in the family. That, too, has served to dilute the effect of later iterations of Rodriguezes, who learn from his mistakes when and how to keep one's little trap shut or one's little bottom in a chair. When they don't remember, Ram is often the first to correct, gently, firmly, just like a first should.

He is warm and kind and thoughtful, sometimes channeling one uncle with his understated, subtle presence and other times giving over to the other in his puppy-like enthusiasm and silliness. I'll let Joe and Alex duke it out over who's who.

You can, and always could, have a conversation with Ram. I love that about him, especially.

He's got a terrible temper. That's his mother's fault. And his father's. And mine. And assorted aunts, uncles, grandparents, a few pets. It's a family trait; let's leave it at that.

My nephew is a charmer and a genuinely good boy, and is growing into a fine young man. He sets a terrific example for all the boys in our family. If he's made his mistakes or taken long to learn some lessons he has always been the first to try harder to get it right. He never gives up. It has served as an even better path for the boys in the family to follow - you don't start out perfect, you'll never be perfect, but you keep trying to be better.

He serves as everyone's big brother and has grown into the big shoes he's had to fill with more honesty than I think any of us could have anticipated. Lucy is a second-tier parent in our household and Ram is in his. They share a bit in the heaviness of this responsibility, but also in the reward that comes from being respected. That respect, Ram, comes not from your place but from your honor in maintaining that place, through good and bad weather.

It hasn't always been easy. Our family like all others suffers its dysfunctions. But Ram is the first to know that whatever the worry, love is the number one disposition, the first priority of everyone in our family. He was the first of the babies to be loved, he's been loved the longest and won't be allowed to forget that he is loved, with warm, too-long hugs and smoochie, wet kisses before, during and well after the desperate attempt to be cool lost vigor.

I treasure my nephew. I love him more than he knows, wish the best for him, dream big dreams for him, have high hopes for him. I am proud of him and respect him and know that this day is just a beginning, a first. Because Ram is graduating today and he is the first. He always will be.

Concert Night

2011-05-13T11:48:00.001-07:00

Tonight, my child's elementary school will put on its annual spring performance. (There are still tix available so if you want a night of really remarkable music for a measly 2 bucks, let me know.) My husband will be on stage for one of the performances, because the band conductor has invited parents to join the full intermediate and concert bands, along with some former students now in high school, to do a smashing grand finale. He's excited - the kids are - everyone's excited. It's exciting!

And here's why, as my husband so eloquently put it to me this morning when he got back from his last rehearsal:

The full performance is complex, rousing, impressive. When the audience hears it, they hear this full sound, this resonance and depth and intricacy. And they attribute all of that to each one of us on the stage. But really, each one of us is just doing one little part. We're concentrating on getting our one little part right and then when it's all put together it sounds so amazing! The end result is a real thrill! He was so flushed when he told me I just had to smile.

One little part. Everyone together. Thrilling. Think about that.

You Scared Me

2011-05-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

I lost my temper with my babies last night, over something that seemed terribly important at the time. It wasn't, of course. I tried to make amends, apologized, tucked them in. When I leaned over to kiss Sara, she whispered 'you scared me' and my heart broke. This morning, I awoke to this-

i'm silent, your deep brown eyes are in my devil-like ones.

you yell and scream, i keep moving on, writing you notes, apologizing, saying i love you, but you never budge.

you don't hold a grudge

but this is different.

we are children. what can i say? we laugh, and play and work all day.

i love you, you should love me.

don't you?

i can't feel our love, it's faded away.

you have no fear, i like it that way.

but when it gets in your hand, like a quarter or dime

you control it and make us all fall into ashes,

turn us to rashes

that never wear off.

i still look in your eyes and see the roles that you play.

the key to life, right in your eyes,

the problem and the salvation.

i love you mommy.

And I am humbled.

Inconceivable

2011-04-28T06:05:00.000-07:00

When I first laid eyes on my first baby all I could think was

"Inconceivable."

Other thoughts raced through my mind, of course. She had her mouth set like my grandmother, Lena. She was so fair - I was expecting a baby with a mop of black hair and dark skin like her daddy. She was breathing - thank God - so sweetly, and gave off some kind of newness perfume I'd never experienced before. (Later, the perfume turned on me in a vicious, ugly way... who knew diaper contents could be so toxic?) She was tiny, precious, delicious. I had none of the post-partum distance that others have experienced - I absolutely adored her immediately and wanted always to be touching her, holding her, taking her in.

I haven't lost any of that after thirteen years. In all my thoughts and deeds throughout every day my heart aches to be with her, see her, laugh with her and love her as much as I possibly can. So as to discourage you from any thoughts that I might be a complete loon, I should say that these feelings have learned to comfortably co-exist with thoughts of complete exhaustion, impatience, fury, disbelief and fret as my little treasure inches closer and closer to having my mouth and temperament. Who ordered that? Also, she's now got a killer figure that has not escaped the notice of most neighborhood boys, thereby rendering her father a sputtering curmudgeon and placing me in the precarious position of buffering contact between them, especially on the subject of the park and a certain young man with intentions Tony can smell from a mile away. I digress.

Since the moment I laid eyes on my Lucy, through all her trials (I DON'T YIKE PEEZ - in full 3-year-old-tantrum) and joys (I got 112 on that math test!! [[yick]]) the prevailing thought in my mind has been

"Inconceivable."

Because it's not possible that I could have such a beauty as a child, that I might have earned the privilege of parenting someone who makes me look so good when really, truly, I'm a mess and totally undeserving. It's not possible that she might be so healthy, in every way bright, sociable, warm, funny, creative - that kind of amazing belongs to other people who know what they're doing. It couldn't be true that the clumsy, uncalculated path I took to becoming an adult led me to become the lifelong mentor to this magical person - what could I possibly offer that she doesn't already possess naturally in spades? She's so smart. She's so charming. So gorgeous. It's just inconceivable, isn't it?

(Are you repeating the line in your head from The Princess Bride about that word not meaning what I think it means?)

And yet, if ever a prayer has been answered, mine was. If ever a dream came true, mine did. If ever the impossible has happened, she is. As inconceivable as she might be, my lovely Lucy reminds me every day that, with God, all things indeed are possible and even the least worthy among us is treated with treasure and precious love. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

On The Eve

2010-12-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

I stand on the precipice of Christmas, and I can't help feeling this next step is a tumble and a trip rather than a forward leap. My faith teaches me to march forward, down a certain path, towards an end that awaits me with open arms. That path was first walked by Jesus, the living son of God, whose birth we mark with this holiday. I know my path, just like His on Earth, is not always clear, the march not always easy, and the end not always in sight. I'm with all that - dig it - I can handle that part.

My real worry is this: I'm not entirely convinced that I've headed down the right path - and now I'm now dragging my children along on this path. What if I mangled the whole path thing and now I'm skidding off to some forsaken end with no open arms and no chocolate? Ack!

If my faith is correct, this is just a test. I put my head down, fortify my soul with a good dose of prayer, and barrel on. On the other hand, if my faith is correct this could be a sign! And if I miss it I'm like the guy in the joke - the one where he's standing on his roof waiting for God to save him from a flood so he turns down an offer from a boat passing by, a helicopter rescue, and so on. When he gets to heaven he demands to know why God did not save him and God tells him -
'Wha'd you want me to do? I sent a boat, a helicopter, and you wouldn't allow yourself to be saved!' (In all my interpretations, God's a real comedian - I just have to believe that.)

What to think, what to do? Continue this life of mediocre 'success', building a little bit of goodness at a time, finding value and purpose in the few lives I touch, shrinking away from chances to do more on the possibility I might fail?

Or stop in my tracks? Find a need in the world and fill it? Really follow Jesus' path and risk every single thing in order to do some greater good? I'm chicken. I'm a total coward. I'm not sure I have the strength of character to do things like tell my kids we won't have gifts on holidays like these because we're off to Salvador to feed starving children and the real gifts for us are already here - good health, good humor, time together - so precious because we never really know when it all ends. But I'm chicken. And I like getting new slippers! Does that make me a total stinker?

I suppose it does when I know for sure that $48 could buy a desk for a child in an African school. I just saw that on the news last night.

So I'm literally lolling back and forth like a weeble wobble and I can't seem to reconcile and center myself.

But as I'm writing this I'm thinking that the whole thing is really much simpler than all this. A step back - maybe a few - and I can see that what Christmas offers me - what Jesus' life teaches me - is not the answer, but the possibility. And what I offer Christmas - what I offer God - is the genuine desire to take that chance to do more, be more, follow more closely in His steps down whatever path until I reach my rightful end - whatever that may be.

I may not get the whole thing figured out right now and that's o.k., because tomorrow I am reminded that the birth - the beginning - allows me a new beginning as well. And maybe each beginning brings me closer to the right place for me, the place where my abilities and my faith and my life all meet and matter.

So I stand on the precipice of this Christmas and I can't help feeling that my tumble forward is no accident, and not a pre-ordained step, but a choice. I choose this life and this path, flawed as it may be, with all my doubts and worries progressing along with me, firm in my belief that a faithful soul will find its way home, and so thankful for Christ's birth, because it offers me a chance, a hope for renewal and redemption and life beyond life.

Merry Christmas to you, and may God bless you and keep you always.

I Hate That

2010-12-21T20:25:00.000-08:00

As a public service and in case the post's title didn't clue you in, this is not one of my happy, warm 'n fuzzies. You are warned.

My holiday cards stunk this year. I've had a couple of good years back-to-back so the pressure was really on this year and I just epic-failed, like a slow-mow-bike-over-curb with kid-flying-over-handle-bar action thrown in to boot. I'm hoping most people won't realize it sucked because I put some extra distracting pictures of the kids on the front of the card, but chances are those who really know me will know. And I know. I hate that.

Produce shopping during the holidays should be video-taped and aired on late night t.v. as a blood sport. In the meantime, as far as I'm concerned if you're so old that you need to be bused to the store to shop with an attendant, you should be too old to ram me - intentionally - with your cart. So don't look surprised when I take your 4'2" self right to the holey-rubber mat with my own cart, sister. Two can play at that game and only one of us can win. You might want to gear up.

Speaking of - I've said it before and I'll say it again: dollar store sales clerks should receive combat pay for working the end-of-year holidays. These poor souls are so abused and hellishly overworked, they trade food breaks for cigarettes and Mountain Dew out of sheer necessity, and at mine in particular, they put up with me so many times a week I feel I should be paying rent. Of course, if I could afford that, I'd not be shopping at a dollar store, now would I?

So, as a giveaway, you'll note that I've been shopping. Ooooohhhh... spending? Garishly? Wantonly? Yes, for Pete's sake, yes! The 'holidays are too commercial nowadays' comment as a way of looking down one's nose at someone who's clearly in the throes has become so damn tired it should be comatose. I hate it! Buying gifts for people you love is not commercial, it's just nice. I've done all the modesty-adjustments I can, some re-worked things, home-made things, inexpensive things. But I'm still getting some stuff and that's it. I view it as an extension of kindness, a thoughtfulness, a gesture of acceptance and appreciation that - to me - is entirely in the spirit of the season. I'm not apologizing for it and I'm not feeling bad about it. Mostly.

Except in weak moments when I reflect on an acquaintance who has chucked his whole American life and moved to Haiti to teach children. So he is constantly blogging about the political unrest, violent weather, and other horrific circumstances that make it nearly impossible for him to get his kids to school much less teach them anything. All he asks for is prayers. GAAAACK! As I plod along the aisles at the dollar store looking for things that don't look cheap so that I can give someone some useless plastic thing as an indication of my love, I'm reminded that my acquaintance really gets it and I'm a complete clod. I hope he never reads this and realizes that I measure my own inadequacy by stacking it up against his greatness. Scratch that. I think I'll send it to him so he knows how amazing he is.

My husband's got a similar take on the whole thing - doesn't understand how coloring books and dolls and games mean we love Jesus - which intellectually I totally understand. But when he says it it sounds very scrooge-y and I hate it.

Moreover, I hate having to analyze my desire to celebrate holidays with some fanfare, some fuss and some material - shallow as it may be - pleasures.

Hating having to analyze it makes me hate the whole thing, which I really hate.

I always tell my kids not to 'hate' because it reflects poorly on them, rather than on the person or thing they dislike.

I hate when I can't or don't do what I tell my kids to do.

Speaking of which, are your kids ever quiet? Because my kids, no matter how often I tell them that movie-watching is not an interactive experience, can't contain themselves. At all. Ever. These kids talk non-stop. I've discovered this on day four of winter break. Truth be told, I discover it every time there are even three seconds of waking quiet in my house. Just thought I'd tell you. No idea where they get this gabbiness from.

So I'm feeling like this whole post is a bit of a downer. Perhaps some Nog'll fix me up.

Blech. Discount store Egg Nog is revolting!

I hate that.

A Thankful Thief

2010-11-24T08:29:00.000-08:00

This isn't the house I dreamed I'd have when I was a small child. Still, my home is truly a dream-come-true. My husband isn't the man I fantasized about. But he is the man of my dreams. My children don't look anything like I thought they would. They are more beautiful, more magical than anything I could have drawn in my head. This isn't the life, not the job nor the body or the economy I had wished for. Instead, it is a real life, a challenging job, an accomplished body, and an economy filled with opportunity for better days ahead. None of my dreams have come true exactly as I imagined them. But I am immersed in, consumed with humility, blessed inside and out for the great fortune that has befallen me. I know I don't deserve it. I am a thief by default, taking what I know must not be rightfully mine because I am just little, undeserving me. Who am I to have such a terrific group of kind, generous, funny and interesting friends? What do I give that in return I receive such acceptance and love, such devotion and patience from my family? How is it that God with all of his pressing and more important duties finds time to devote Himself to me, to my petty little prayers about things that bear no consequence, really? It can only be that I am a usurper, living a life of grace that I surely must be stealing from some other more deserving soul. If I am to be redeemed at all for such an egregious sin I hope it will come from my expression of a most deep and abiding gratitude. I am thankful for the warm reception with which each day greets me. I am thankful for the teachers who devote themselves to me and my children with so much honesty and integrity, for the neighbors I don't know and those, especially, that I do, for the waste collectors who take away my refuse and look for my son to say a kind word or share a smile, for the parents - sometimes grandparents! - of my children's friends, who befriend me with open hearts and homes. I am thankful for my mom who leads in every way by example, no matter how weary she may be. I am thankful for the goodness that surrounds me, no matter how hampered it may be by the noise and futility with which it is confronted. I am thankful for the dignity that comes with being able to share a meal with my family. I am thankful that I can share these words with you and I am thankful. Simply, plainly, truly, today and every day I am thankful.

A Dash of This, A Pinch of That

2010-11-10T09:46:00.000-08:00

The fall season is upon us, although you'd never know it from the near-70 degree temps outside. Nonetheless, my internal baking clock is ticking and soon the house will be held captive by the pungent perfume of cinammon and spices and whatever I've burned to an unrecognizable crisp each day. Mmmmm.... delish. While we wait for the smoke alarm to go off, let's discuss the issues of the day, shall we?

My husband raised an interesting point this morning. (He does that a lot, I just choose not to give him credit as it disturbs the careful balance I've cultivated in our relationship, where I'm really awesome and he does everything wrong.) His point was that some people do not wish to pay for others' health care because it's not fair and poor people don't deserve benefits they haven't earned. (Inherent in this argument is the notion that poor people might game the very system that benefits them, this system that would be funded by good, hardworking and honest folks.) Oddly, the same people who do not wish to pay to heal the poor do not mind if we pay for the wealthiest folks in our country to keep more money in their infinitely deep pockets. Instead, they insist we extend tax benefits that the rich do not need (and in many cases do not want).

Interesting, isn't it? I wonder if any wealthy folks game any of our government programs - or any of our citizens - in their pursuit of those deep-pocketed pants? I wonder why some feel good about paying the wealthy, but bad about caring for the poor. I wonder, but I do not judge.

So casting aside any partisan rancor the mid-term election may have installed in my ideological camp, I've decided to stand with our president and move forward with further emphasis on compromise. To that end I suggest we agree with our limited government friends and reduce the government's work in January. Remove the extension of the tax cut item from the congressional 'to-do' list. Seems like a win-win. No?

More seriously (not by much) I have this question: are we serious? In my house, the economic shift of the past several years has moved us from Jewel to Aldi, from Marshall Fields (whimper) to Village Discount and from 'Don't worry about it' to 'We can't afford that this week.' Where is the parallel shift in my government? After all the resources expended to craft a health care bill that's been generations in the making (not months - not months - it's been decades!) who among us will tolerate spending additional millions in repealing it and replacing it with something else? Any effort in that regard ought to be met with the full, if dormant, revolutionary ire and indignant repulsion of the entire tax-paying population of this country. (Tea Partiers take note - I consider you an abomination and will not give you the dignity of even suggesting you represent the true revolutionary spirit of our early citizens.) We can ill-afford to re-build the house when we can hardly make our existing mortgage payments.

So we need relevant, pragmatic and intelligent leadership to solve these problems right? Then let's get something clear: red suits and glossy lipstick and a great flip do not make you any more qualified to serve in the U.S. Senate than do polyester pants, chapped lips and a bad bob. You don't get to change the 'historical trajectory' of anything in governance just because you have perfectly even white teeth. Snap out of it for crissakes! There are only 100 U.S. Senators in the world. The folks who hold those jobs should be among the top 100 most intelligent, well-read, educated, informed, and thoughtful people in the world. Ever. If a candidate does not meet that criteria - party and gender completely irrelevant- then you should laugh that candidate off the political stage. If she's a woman and you're a woman you should laugh louder than men. THAT would be a real step towards taking women seriously.

Just as women should be taken seriously on their merits so too should gay people of all ages, sizes, creeds and what-have-you. If our government, through its policies, actions, speech and representations models treatment of gays as second-class citizens, immoral citizens, unworthy citizens then it should be no surprise that the rest of our citizens would follow suit. And there should be no shock associated with the raging current that washes children from their intuitive acceptance of everyone and everything across the rational divide to a morality-barren shore where they will beat - literally or figuratively - the life out of another child. Those who do not tell - urge - compel - their representatives to ensure the law must protect us all equally are equally to blame for the degradation of our fellow citizens' civil liberties. Worse - we turn away from children who are in pain, afraid, lonely and tell them they deserve our indifference. We need to stop that.

On a lighter note, we must also stop this national obsession with the God forsaken McRib. That is not real meat, people! Real food does not simulate bone-in shape. You should be afraid of it, not dreaming about it and certainly not licking it off your fingers on the bus. It's gross. Really. Stop it.

Speaking of stopping - what is that incessant beeping noise? Mmmmm... and what is that smell? Maybe I should check the oven.

2010-11-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

"I just hate that the kids' education is largely carried out by a failing agenda, a crumbling infrastructure and a legendary lack of intelligent leadership. I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm just going to hate it.

"I'm worried sick about the economic situation in Illinois and across the country. Everything from production of material goods to distribution of credit to long-term fiscal planning is a mess and seemingly getting worse every day. I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm just going to worry.

"My profession is becoming extinct as an income-producing member of the job species. There are no proper rules in place to guide the new wave of real estate sales that's dominating the market, so the object of the game is a moving - sometimes invisible - target. I'm working harder and harder but accomplishing less and less. I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm just going to watch it happen.

"I'm alternately panicked and indignant about our national security and the assault on our civil liberties. I don't feel like anyone's carefully balancing one against the other to make sure that the basic tenets of our democracy are protected as fiercely as our border or our airports. Cargo doesn't fall into a separate category, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm just going to be panicked and indignant.

"It seems that radicals are taking over the public discourse, making me feel like if I'm liberal I'm a socialist and if I'm conservative I'm a bigot. I'm none of those things entirely, nor is anyone I know. The media, our politicians and public servants seem to be portraying a false reality. And some people are making very important decisions based on this false truth. I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm just noticing.

"Problems abound, I feel sinking in the pit of my stomach as I watch vast national resources - ours and others' - tortured. My own hard work seems to be lost in the fray and my voice is hoarse from talking about all the things I think ought to be changed. My children are entering a world that I cannot compel to abide by some common system of morality, humanity, sanity.

"I'm not going to do anything about it. I'm just going to allow circumstances to bat me around like a ball on a tether. I won't protest, won't balk a bit. I'm going to stand stock still and watch the whole thing unravel before me, hands in my pockets, a faint shrug in my shoulders. I'm going to watch you, my neighbor, my country, my ancestors' work and all that has gone before me flail, flounder and flush because I can't be bothered."

Is that what you're going to do?

Not me. I'm going to vote.

The Boss Blog

2010-10-12T10:44:00.000-07:00

A sultry night on the city's river-front played softly behind the shimmer of an intimate wedding service this past Sunday, while a small group of close friends and family wondered in the power and magic - the endurance - of love. It was a most monumental occasion in the lives of those who know the story and a long time coming.

My old boss is a complicated man. He's an immigrant to the U.S., the youngest of two sons of Jewish parents, separated by 10 years from his older brother. A fair helping of triumphs and tragedies took him from humble beginnings in Chicago all the way to a big-shot job with a fancy law firm in the city when I met him some (mumble, cough, 23) years ago. At the time, I was an obnoxious, big-haired, smoking 19-year-old with a nice sized chip on my shoulder. (No wisecracks please.)

We clicked right away. And when I say clicked I mean he could not believe he hired me and I couldn't figure out how to argue with him enough. At a point, and I'm pretty sure just to make me mad, he made my 'desk' the same table as the one that held the photocopier. I would answer phones and take messages while my notebook shifted slowly left and then clicked right with the motion of the copier pad. I never said a word, which I think irritated him to no end and eventually I got my own desk. Years later, I got a coveted window office when we moved to new space. We were both worried that other employees might be a bit miffed that I was getting such a prized space, so I agreed to take the larger office with the huge post in the middle as a compromise. Having had a photocopier table as a desk makes a person really appreciate any stable workspace. An important lesson, well learned.

(In a fun little twist of fate, I managed to sit myself behind a huge post at his wedding, so I had a broad smile on my face with more than one meaning as I enjoyed the event!)

During the years that we worked together, we learned quite a bit from and about one another. I'm not sure either of us has or ever will acknowledge how much. I was with him during so many long days and nights when he worked himself to exhaustion only to bear the unbearable degradation of ungrateful and merciless corporate clients. I was with him when no matter what numbers he produced, the numbers were never enough to feel some rest, never enough to feel finished with chasing numbers. I was with him when he juggled his obligations to work, children, wife, mother, brother and - with very little room left - himself. Often, that juggling act left too many important players unattended, or at least feeling so - though rarely work, and never, ever if he could help it, children. I was with him when he learned - grudgingly - that he would have to trust others in order to take himself beyond what he could touch, to what he could influence. That was a terribly difficult step and he required quite a bit of reassurance. For whatever reason, on many the occasion, I believe I was the needed steadying presence.

Just as I was there for him, he was there for me. He was there, to gently - some times very harshly - but always with the intention of teaching - correct me. He was there to give me a chance, when it was absolutely ludicrous to do so, because he believed in me. He was there when I met my husband, to give him the once-over before he gave his seal of approval. And he was there to tell me with full sincerity that he was glad when I announced that I was having twins and would have to leave the office.

If all that - all the memories, lunches, trips, crossword puzzles, and conference calls in between are not enough - there is also this. My boss taught me (and along the way himself) one of life's greatest lessons: why work matters.

I had always had a good work ethic; he and I share the same value system about this from our respective immigrant roots. But while I worked very hard, long hours, I always knew that the work and the money didn't mean much to me if I didn't have my family, my loves, my time at peace with myself. I think he didn't have this all figured out when he started. He was consumed for a time with the competitive nature of his work, with the ticking in his head of a clock he was racing, and to what end I'm not sure he quite knew all along. And he was terribly lonely, though he would never tell you that openly, and I think he felt bad for it given that he was married and had a warm, loving family and small group of friends.

We worked together for over thirteen years. Watching him grow in this sadness, watching him allow so much of his young life to crumble away while he worked himself so desperately was not an easy thing. And it made me ever so much more impatient for my life to be different. Of course, I wasn't quiet about it. I pushed him, nudged and nagged him, ordered him at times, to go 'get a life'! It was a long time coming, but with many signs and blessings along the way, he did.

So while many of the things that helped him achieve his success did not survive the trip, thankfully he did, and his children did - quite beautifully - and so did our friendship. He works now, but on his own terms, doing something he enjoys and far away from the hectic and hurry of the days we shared. He shares time with his lovely, talented girls and recently added a son-in-law to his family with much joy and celebration. I do hope that in some part, I was an influence in making this happen, but really, so much of it belongs to his new wife. On Sunday, I saw him wed his companion of the past ten years, a woman who simply radiates goodness and love for him. Their courtship has been a slow bloom, tentative at first, sweet, so down-to-earth and real. They are as natural together as sun and sky. That she has opened him up and made him really feel life - experience it with all the senses, even when its uncomfortable - is clear, and a joy to see. That he has given her the security, the steadiness and strength of a person who really gets it now is an equal pleasure. It was a long time coming, and not a straight-line path, but my boss found his way, and I'm so glad. Nothing but love could have made it happen.

And so it came to be that a sultry night on the city's river-front played softly behind the shimmer of an intimate wedding service this past Sunday, while a small group of close friends and family wondered in the power and magic - the endurance - of love.

It's About That Time

2010-10-06T08:02:00.000-07:00

Been away from this for far too long and realize the pent-up verbosity is starting to impact my ability to remain twitch-free during waking hours. So. Here goes.

My mother is driving me insane. She is unlicensed and has never owned a car, so that just tells you how the ride has been.

I'm driving my children insane. And so the legacy lives on.

Speaking of legacies an inside-operating, old-school-politicking, power-playing Chicagoan is vying for the top job in the city now that the beloved and beleaguered mayor is stepping aside. I know intellectually that I should be inclined to support a less Daley-esque figure for this position, but I frickin' love Rahm. And when I say 'frickin' I mean the finger-in-your-bare-chest-you-muther-effer version of the word.

Which leads me to Delaware. Obviously. There's nothing like a perky, cute, high-heel-wearing, tight-skirt-sporting, vernacular-using gal from some remote state running for a national office to fill up every conceivable bit of blank space in the world. It's got to make the Hillaries of the world just want to vomit. Call me Hillary from now on.

Now that I'm Hillary, allow me to look disgustedly at all my fellow progressives and lecture: Act your ages (hands on hips) and stop pouting right now, dammit! Don't let me come up there and see that look on your face again. Do you hear me? We don't always get everything we want; have you seen my life for crissakes? But that doesn't mean good things aren't happening. Democracy does not operate on 4G speed you spoiled, over-caffeinated, self-indulgent brats. Yes, you. Now march back to your position on the historic arc we've created to reclaim our nation's progressive identity and you tow that blessed line before I spank your bottom and send you to bed with NO healthcare.

On the off chance you opt to go to your room and fume silently, save for the grumbles of your un-fed, spoily-cat tummy, I've got something for you to ponder up there. Why is this country so bipolar?

We routinely expose ourselves as homophobes by not openly and matter-of-factly accepting homosexuals in our armies, our churches, our public offices. Then we wonder why our children are so driven to despair when they lurch into a reality that pits their identity against their basic safety. We all know gay people. So there's no question they exist. And there's no question we know it. The only question is: when are we going to stop killing them, either by commission or omission, whether in spirit or in deed? When?

We wonder why people are so disconnected that they wouldn't recognize the danger in exposing someone's intimate habits on the world-wide-web. Then we sit with our family members in a car or an audience or a waiting room and each click away at our individual electronic devices rather than bear idle conversation. I know the newspaper's dying, but just like there's something uniquely human about the tactile experience of touching that paper and hearing that crinkle and smelling that ink, there's something uniquely inhumane about experiencing everything in a virtual sense instead of a real sense. And that inhumanity is infecting our children.

We tout our devotion to equality, diversity, education in every venue with every version of a mic we can find. Then we vote for morons in lip gloss, grossly and shamelessly question the nationality of our president because of his color, and systematically decimate the systems, tools and resources we have for teaching our children anything but how to be the first to buy HALO for the best price. I talk about losing weight all the time. Not exactly committed to it in real life. The proof is in the pudding. (Are you eating that?)

Now that I think about it, I don't need you to think about it. In fact, scratch the question. We're not bipolar. We're just incredibly stupid.

And as a final thought? I offer this: Rick Sanchez may or may not have been right. Judge for yourself based on the entirety of the conversation. http://www.thewrap.com/media/article/transcript-cnns-rick-sanchez-meltdown-sirius-radio-21386?page=0,0

But his termination was absurd, and as a Cuban-American myself, I'm quite comfortable accepting that he could view Jon Stewart or CNN or any other establishment in the U.S. as being bigoted (or prejudicial, as he later corrected himself - which did not make the news). I accept this because I blend quite nicely with Anglos and Jews on the surface and still when people discover my ethnicity they feel comfortable calling me 'amiga' or a 'hot-blooded Latin mama' or asking me to do a Charro imitation. (Granted, the latter of these was in the late 70s, but man it stung and I'm still carrying it with me.) I've been asked more times than I can count if I have a good recipe for salsa. I never ask my Polish friends for pierogi recipes, do you?

In the most academic circles people will greet me with 'hola chica' and I've had more than one person ask me if my fair-skinned children actually 'belong' to my dark, olive-skinned husband. Bigotry is quite alive and healthy in this country, certainly in media where even Univision's lead anchors are fair and have blue or green eyes. So if Rick is a little raw from a lifetime of dealing with that and has had it up to 'aqui' with Jon Stewart's nickering and teasing, I'll allow him a little leeway. Just like we allow Keith Olberman and Chris Matthews and Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh some room. Lots of room.

Oh that's right.

They're white.

A Lesson on the Eve of 9/11

2010-09-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

We are all the same.

Have you ever had a day when you felt the warmth of another person sitting next to you and wondered about them? Did you wonder whether they were feeling your warmth? Did you wonder whether or not they loved their moms? Liked the color red? Thrilled at the first steamed windows of a cold-weather day? I have.

Have you ever walked the streets of your town and, in the course of whatever business you were carrying out, caught the eye of a stranger and smiled? Have you seen the same person in a crowded place more than once and wondered whether they noticed you as many times as you noticed them? I have.

Have you ever had moments, in any qualifiable way no different than the moment before or after, when you felt as blessed as a body could be? Or had same moments with the opposite flavor? When all seemed to fail and flounder? I have.

I've had days of heat and ardor, days of pure cool. I've spent time thoroughly spent and felt time fly away from me before I could grasp its intent. I've loved and hated. More the former, and most often I've regretted the latter. I've grown tired and worn and I've been uplifted.

I've made my mother proud and disappointed her deeply. Hopefully more of the first and less the other. I have worked so, so hard only to see something fall apart and I've barely tried and been successful beyond my wildest imagination. (Ongoing apologies to my high school mates who most suffered at this in my sophomore econ class.)

I've lived a full and rich life and I've not yet lived at all in some respects.

We are all the same.

Those who lost their lives on 9/11, and in the terrorist acts that preceded it, and in the life-wasting exercises since were just like me. They wore jeans that were too tight, squelched nervous stomachs on the first day of school, drank an icy cold glass of water on a hot day. Those who carried out those acts and all others also had days of soaking in sun, or hurt feet in too-tight shoes. We've all loved someone, lost someone, screwed something up.

We are all the same.

As we threaten to hurt one another, carry out acts of antagonization, or otherwise march toward the demise of our commonality we must return to this concept with great purpose and seriousness. We are all the same. When I injure you, I serve only my own chronic pain. When I heal you, I enrich my own peace and bring myself closer not just to you but to my true self. I am a real, breathing, living being, so much like you no matter my different choices.

Those lost on a path that meanders - sometimes races- away from this truth toward ugliness, fear and despair must not direct us away from our righteous end.

Find in me, as I find in you, all that we share and I know you will see. We are all the same.

The Danger of Democracy

2010-08-14T04:16:00.001-07:00

There's a lot of talk right now about our democracy. I suppose that's not new. Americans have and inspire quite a bit of conversation on that topic. There's a lot of talk about racism and equality. That's not new either. It may never be new, I'm sorry to report. Despite the sensitivity of the subjects, these conversations are not inherently bad or inappropriate. They're uncomfortable, but not dangerous.

The impetus for the current discourse swirls in and around two topics: 1. the proposed Islamic center near the ruins of the 9/11 disaster in New York and 2. the proposed revocation or alteration of 14th amendment rights. Pundits and ponderers are batting the questions back and forth across cable news channels, over AM radio airwaves and throughout the paltry print that remains in any way relevant. No matter how elementary, these bluster-machines pretend their questions are massive, resounding elephants of truth tramping through the forest: 'Should the mosque be built there? In the shadows of the towers where Islamic extremists terrorized our country?' 'Should tourists be allowed to bring their pregnant women into the U.S.? Should Mexicans be allowed to do that?' No matter how unsavory or surreal the questions, our free society permits them - encourages them. There's no danger in the questions.

And as we've undressed the issues, we've had bad diagrams drawn and boring scholars expound and unfortunate theories traded. For a visual representation of the mess, picture the last day of a nominating convention when confetti makes its way maniacally up and around a vast arena, with no real direction, no purpose except to excite and distort. It's beautiful and chaotic and overdone. But not dangerous. Right?

Right. We're agreed until we get past the topic, beyond the questions and over the media-induced frenzy. Then we may part company. Because when I see injustice it's not just my moral self that reacts, it is my American self.

As an American I believe it is shameful and embarrassing that nine years after the fact we are still not properly caring for relief workers who rained down upon the disaster site in New York like angels from heaven. I am even more betrayed by the fact that we have not erected any meaningful replacement for the towers, the gape in the landscape serving as daily congratulations to the terrorists who created it. My American sensibility winces with real pain at the failure to remember our unity in the days that followed that disaster so that we could use that unity for strength against any challenge.

But nothing ruins me more as an American than the thought that we might prevent Muslims from building a place of worship and congregation near the site of the 9/11 attacks, simply because terrorists wearing masks of Islam participated in those attacks. Nothing could serve as a more polished symbol of ignorance about our own fundamental ideology than doing that. Except maybe revoking the birth-right citizenship of persons born in the U.S. without regard to parentage.

Traveling so far from our well-reasoned principles to a place where fear and extreme reaction control our policies would be a terrific step backward in the evolution of the American democracy. How? Please take a moment to think about what it means to tell a Muslim, a New Yorker, and a natural-born citizen of the U.S. that his place of worship is offensive or impermissible. Replace Muslim with Jewish. Tell a Jew, born and raised in New York, that his proposed temple near a German-American museum insults the nation. Replace Jewish with black. You get the idea.

And while you're at it tell my grandparents, who entered through Ellis Island and on make-shift boats from Cuba with nothing but hope in their pockets , that their U.S. citizen children, U.S.-born grandchildren and God knows how many American great grandchildren might not deserve citizenship here. Need to check their brownness... er their patriotism... uh, I mean... we'll get back to you on that. In the meantime, just tell your fellow Americans that American ideals work for us but not for them. There's equality under the law for me but not for you. No danger there, right? Wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

There is frightful danger. The power of democracy is its truth - it's freedom and justice - it's acknowledgement of the self-evident. The danger is the lie - the contraint and corruption - the suppression of the inherent right.

It is a lie that an Islamic cultural center near the 9/11 site insults the nation. The truth is it upholds and uplifts the fundamental ideals of the nation because in the United States who you are is as wanted and respected as who I am. It is a lie that those born here do not deserve the right of citizenship. The truth is, the coming together of my Italian-American mother and my Cuban father to create me here in this unique place on earth is what inherently makes me American. If my dad didn't have his papers in order would I be any less so? No.

I understand the fear that others might perceive us as foolish and weak. We must overcome that fear. Our very existence is proof that, once experienced, freedom, justice and truth have no competition. Terror cannot replace them. Bigotry cannot deny their potency. Fear is no match. The danger of our democracy is not that we might make ourselves vulnerable by offering too much liberty or fairness. The danger is that we may not use the power of our majority to ensure that the truth speaks louder than the lie.

The Anniversary Post

2010-08-02T06:48:00.001-07:00

It's not my anniversary today. Thursday. Thursday, August 5th, 2010 will mark 15 years since I fluttered nervously at the back of that church, eyes blurry, waiting to step across the threshold of my individual self in order to enter the domain of my shared self. Those who know me may think that moment was a challenging one for me. It was not.

I walked down that aisle with great confidence and my heart as completely full as it could be, on the arm of the man who raised me - to the extent that any man did - to reach the man who lifted me up. He still does. As I approached him I was beyond words - well past describable emotion and so alive in the moment of my dreams I could barely contain myself. He was too, although he'll swear until we're sharing the story in heaven that he did not cry. He did.

Our families were there, the friends who had brought us to that moment were there, God was there - no doubt - and outside, cheering crowds were there. Nothing like having your wedding at a lakefront church on the first day of the Air and Water Show to add a little background noise to your ceremony! It had been grey and dreary in the days leading up to our wedding day. We exchanged our vows with the gold and green of ancient stained glass played along the walls as the sun emerged full and throaty. I took some credit for that, as I had prayed most fiercely that God would welcome my marriage with a little sunshine. Early evidence in my adult life that with all His more important tasks, God hears every prayer. It was lovely, sweet, perfect - then and in my memory.

Despite its glow, the day was not without it's fits and starts, nor were the preparations, and certainly the days after have held their challenges. I'll greet my anniversary with fifteen years of experience, some of it magical, some of it most desperate. Days of dull, dishes and dirty socks together with moments of incredible splendor, discovery and communion have filled a life together that for me is always new and worthwhile and ready. I am not love without my husband. I submit because I choose (not often, but I do...). I am strong because he needs me. I am a mother because of His grace, but also his grace. I go forward because he holds my hand and I don't have to be alone, or fearful. He protects me and my children and makes us safe, no matter the danger. He is my best friend, my only champion, my truth, even when it hurts. My heart still flutters when I see him, and for whatever length of time we are apart - even now in this tiny little moment - I long for him.

I knew all of that would be true fifteen years ago when I took his hand on that day with that promise before God and familly. I knew it. I know it now. And if I can love him for all eternity, it may not be enough. Now, as then, when we sang softly (and completely off-key) to one another we show each other the world, shining, shimmering, splendid, taking each other wonder by wonder, over, sideways and under, on a magic carpet ride.

Keeping It Real? Uh. No.

2010-07-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

Been having tantrums in my head for the past several weeks. "It's not fair!" I've stormed petulantly in my head. "I don't waaannnna," I've whined. "How come it's always meeee?" I mourn. Now, it could just be that I'm channeling the thoughts expressed around me all day long, as I juggle my not-in-camp-for-the-summer children, along with (Thank God!) enough work to keep us busy and the usual melange of stuff.

But it's not that. If I'm being really honest with myself it's not mimic tantruming. It's original. I own it.

Of course, if I were being really honest with you I'd say it's not that easy to be really honest with myself. It's easier to assert that I've scraped off enough levels of the protective ice coating (inside joke with myself - have you ever seen the move "Mother" with Debbie Reynolds? hysterical) to say that I'm being really honest. But that's bull. Real honesty is painful and leaves you raw and too open to attack.

Real honesty would include admitting that I'm addicted to things that are bad for me - take it easy slugger, I'm talking about food and coffee and things that come over the counter - because somewhere in there I don't think I deserve all the good things I have in my life. I'm afraid someone will tap me on the shoulder and tell me I've been standing in the wrong line and need to get my unqualified butt into the longer line with the misfit toys from that horrible Christmas cartoon. So I damage myself as punishment for my perceived crime. That's some crazy business, isn't it?

Real honesty would be saying that I write what I feel because no matter how vocal I am in real life, the fact is I hold back. I'm too chicken to fully express my less rehearsed self in 3-D. And I don't think people should listen to me because maybe I don't know what the heck I'm saying. So I put it on paper (even virtual paper) so it can be expressed but quietly so it can be ignored. Except I don't want to be ignored. I want to be noticed. But not really. And that's crazy too, isn't it?

Real honesty would be to finally cast my line, even if I don't catch my dream, just because telling my kids to do it isn't enough, I have to show them. I have to be fearless and confident so they can see that the pursuit is just as valuable as the catch. I have to do that but I don't. I am afraid, so I don't.

Yeah. So. That real honest thing? I'm not there yet.

So let's say, even at the qasi-honest level I know the tantrums are my own. The mom in me is also on a loop reprimanding me for my poor behavior, making the whole thing a sitcom in my head. It's no wonder my hair is curly. The follicles must be running in circles looking for an exit.

I can't say what I'm tantrumming about because part of my mission going forward on this subject is to show some restraint. I'm not off to a terrific start, but I am a strong believer in the pick yourself up, dust yourself off, etc. method of making progress. So I won't blather on and on about what it is. Suffice to say I'm so dang tired of the subject I've long run out of patience and diplomacy and willingness to have meaningful dialogue. I'd like everyone to just do what I say and agree that everything I think is totally perfect and great. In fact, I'd like everyone to just move over and let me handle it. I know I can't move things like global economies and governments at the wave of a hand, but I'd really like to. A lot. And my immobility and incapacity for making others move out of their obstructionist stances is making me dang cranky!

And I don't want to wait!

And I don't want to act my age!

I want what I want right NOW!

Maybe, if I'm being really honest, what I need is a nap. Does anyone have a blanky?

Da Daddada Dadda Dadda Da

2010-06-04T07:15:00.001-07:00

That title's my ode to the Blackhawks. I've no idea how to spell that little ditty, but I'm hoping the best for them as some Chicago team has got to win something some time, as per that law of averages I've heard about. I wouldn't know for sure, because as a Cubs fan, the averages never seem to turn out the way I think they will. I've said before, I stink at math.

So I feel I've been away from this page for too long and, Chicago sports fan-dom aside, my ire has built up beyond capacity. Where to begin? A tasting menu, should do it:

For those who are concerned with privacy and Facebook, I have this: you are idiots. Facebook is on the internet. The internet is a global publishing device. It's a place where you've agreed to be public, not private. If you are trying to be private, don't blast your inane interests and fuzzy photos and unnecessary diatribes disguised as blogs all over your FB page. Stop whining and get on with your glitter charms or farm animals or whatever else it is you're doing instead of being private. On second thought, maybe you should be hiding some of that stuff. Yeesh.

For the CEO of FB: you're a twit. Your successful business model, which has made you into a lauded boy-genius and a mega-millionaire, failed to include one small detail - payment. I don't know how that one got past you, but if advertisers on your site don't make money from being there, they will leave. The way to keep them there is not to make your users, their audience, leave. That's one of those if A=B and B=C then don't mess with A or B or C because they'll get together and kick your behind. Maybe you should have thought it through a bit more.

On the issue of BP and the oil spill: America, wake up, we are to blame. BP is a sideshow to our epic performance of GREED RULES. If we weren't so desperate to guzzle oil and make tons of money and have more crap than a body should know what to do with, all sold at some remote Wal-Mart that we have to constantly drive to and from, none of this would be happening. We are spend-a-holic, drive-a-holic, future-mortgaging, instant-gratification junkies. It is our fault. Our fault. Own it first, then you can fix it.

On the issue of BP and the oil spill plus Fox News: (and here I'm borrowing from my good friend Jon Stewart) GO F&*K yourself! Are you out of your cotton-picking minds? The oil spill is the result of environmentalists efforts to improve safety in drilling practices? That's funny. I thought it was a consequence of the systemic deregulation of drilling practices and the oversight carte-blanche the industry was given to monitor itself during the Bush-Cheney administration. To be clear, you employ someone as a consultant who not only espouses the 'environmentalists are to blame' theory, but also says BP is not to be trusted because it is a foreign company. Uh, seriously folks, you need to check your microphones because I think you have the perverse cousin of autotune messing with your sound - autoidiot. Microphone check? Check.

A bit further into the wild: Israel and Palestine are at it again. There's a shocker. To my Israeli friends, when you are wrong, you defeat your own cause by insisting you are right. To my Palestinian friends, seriously? You know you're standing in a puddle of gasoline - why light a cigarette? You are both looking like volitile, unstable ex-boyfriends who need to be properly diagnosed and put on a med regimen. I believe this is why we broke up in the first place.

For my beloved Barack Obama, President of the United States: not as easy as it looks, huh? Don't let that break you. You're a smart man with a good team of people behind you and a willing citizenry to support you. Now gitcher considerable butt in gear and get to that spill. I know you've been doing a lot of great stuff, and I love you for it, but being President is like being a parent, except with more diapers. You can't rest for a minute because if you do the smell will take over the house and while you're trying to clean that up your next door neighbor will start a fight over the height of the hedge between his house and Fred's next to him. You need to keep on it. Sleeping is for sissies. (By the way, the grey makes you look even sexier and I dig that you and your wife are still making time for one another and your children. Keeps you relatable.) Now get back to work!

I have more, but apparently, the bottom has not dropped out of the buying market and I have work to do. Sing it with me: Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelu oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh jah!

So Hot

2010-05-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, if you get the Mother's Day thing right, you are the hottest man on the planet. On the other hand, juggling the possibilities - and not just for your wife but for your mother-in-law and your own mother - can feel like a real-life version of hot potato. Chances of getting burned? Pretty high.

It starts about a week out. You start assessing the options. Take them out one at a time and give them your full attention. Yes. Wait, no. Then you have to leave two of them alone while you take the other one out - bad idea. Hot potato.

Take them all out at once! Yes! NO-Jeez, what were you thinking?? Hot potato.

Have them all over to the house. You can set the whole thing up. It'll be cheaper and they'll appreciate the personal attention. Wait - wha? Who let a tornado through this house? Do we usually keep a stock of legos in the bathroom? Uh, never mind, nothing here. Hot potato.

AHA! (Light bulb!) Ask them what they want to do and then do that! Wait, no. No, no, no. Fallen into this trap before. Then they think you can't think of anything and can't plan anything for them the way they ALWAYS plan EVERYTHING. Definitely not asking them a damn thing. Hot potato.

Mental pacing back and forth, back and forth. What to do. What to do. What to do.

In the meantime, it's gotten to be Saturday. Kids have prepared loving homemade gifts and original pieces of art, wife has assembled series of small gifts for friends and family, neighbors have dropped off little somethings that make your wife tear up, your mom has dropped hints the weight of the average anvil, your mother-in-law is flushed and excited about the 'big day'. Everyone's ready except you.

'For the love of GAAAAAHD,' you think to yourself, 'why do they invent these torturous holidays?!?'

In a mad dash you pack the kids into the car, mumble something about AutoZone to make sure your wife tunes out (not realizing that your wife knows damn well you're not going to AutoZone with three kids dressed for a party) and rush to the nearest department store in a full sweat and increasing panic. You bluster from predictable display to predictable display, not wanting to be that guy who buys his wife the green apple bath set because he doesn't know what to get. The kids pant behind you as you rush up and down escalators, across lobbies, through carpeted odes to tack and glam. Then it happens! You remember your wife said something about socks yesterday and there before you, rising out of the 2nd floor atheltic wear department like a Vegas-style water display, is the glorious socks-on-sale pyramid. God loves you! It'll be thoughtful, it'll be practical (how many times has she said, 'But I don't even need a wrench set'?) and it's on SALE! Wooo hoooo!

You are done, brother. Forget the mother-in-law, your wife has that covered. Forget your own mom - she loves you anyway. You have scored the big TD. Add some flowers and a card to this puppy and you've just rung the bell, son. You may very well get some personal attention of your own later if this all goes according to plan. Home you go, barely able to contain the grin. You prance around the house all Saturday night feeling just so good about yourself. Of course she's getting excited too. Anticipation is key, as our friends at the Heinz company well know.

Sunday arrives - the big moment is here - she opens the lovely card - sniffs the lovely flowers - and then gently peels back pastel tissue paper from a floral gift bag to reveal.... socks! Yesssss. You're smiling ear-to-ear. But wait, she's got a face - not the right face - the completely wrong face. God Bless Moses, you got it wrong. You got it all wrong. It's the wrong face. She's trying not to make the kids feel bad so she smiles and giggles and says 'thank you' but it's wrong, wrong wrong. You have not been favored with the tear-and-pressed-gift-to-chest. Instead, you have been relegated to the set-aside-gift-bag-and-return-to-kids'-cards. Loser. Again.

The rest of the day goes on with a fog over it. You check to see if maybe you misjudged - hand on the small of the back as you walk through the door - extra long laugh when she laughs at a child's joke - but you're getting no eye contact, no hand snuck under yours to squeeze. You know the face, there was no misjudging. You blew it, blew it blew it. And the next chance you get to do this again, you'll be starting with the deficit of this disaster. The sky is black.

But guess what. You didn't blow it at all. If your wife is brand-spanking new at this whole married thing, then maybe she doesn't see it that way. But us gals who've been at it for a while see the whole thing and love you for it. Love you for the fretting and wanting to get it right, love you for the strain of going outside your area of expertise to do something you'd otherwise avoid like poison ivy, love you for giving us a reason to celebrate this most glorious of holidays. We love you and appreciate you and are glad for you every day and especially this day.

As for me personally? I awoke to the scent of a delicious cup of coffee - bedside - the Sunday paper (my fave), fresh roses, and the sound of my husband vacuuming. I made a brunch at home with my daughters and my mom while my husband and son tended the garden and planted all our flowers. I went shopping a bit in the afternoon, came home to a gorgeous yard and clean house, freshened up and went to my mother-in-law's house for a dinner of delicious homemade tamales. It was lovely and wonderful and my husband made it happen.

And that was so hot.

Status Line Blinking

2010-05-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

What's on my mind? What's on my mind is that our state is failing to fund education because it's trying to plug its budget deficit with my kids' future. Of course, what the what the well-paid club members in Springfield don't realize or don't care about is that public schools anchor neighborhoods and directly affect property values. Property values control economic stability and serve as the stream of tax revenue we need to cure our financial ails.

Further, consistently strong property values create stable neighborhoods. Stable neighorhoods translate to healthy local economies and boost consumer confidence. Consumer confidence drives consumption. Consumption equals more tax revenue. Therefore, in the short term, damaging schools is a direct hit to our revenue, something we clearly cannot afford.

In the long term, an uneducated generation of children, followed by another and yet another is not likely to create the type of local or broader economic health and stability that we need to sustain our preferred way of life. Uneducated people become dependents and subordinates, not independent thinkers and leaders. Is school the only place to become educated? No, I'm living proof of that. But is it necessary to give our children a collective kick in the shin on that lifelong race to success? No.

And if I were a kid and I were at all paying attention, I might think that all the pompous grown-ups going around telling me how to behave were a bunch of hypocrites and liars. 'School is very important,' we all tell our children. 'I'm the education fill-in-the-political-office-blank,' we hear candidates intone over and over again. When the truth is, we not only don't put our money where our big fat mouths are, we don't even get off the damn couch to complain in person when given the opportunity. If it's more than a click that's requried from us, we're just too damn lazy to care.

That's fine for us. We're as smart as we're going to get. I'm just wondering how we feel about our kids bumping into walls for the rest of their lives because we couldn't be bothered with giving them a sense of direction. I suppose we care as much about that as we care that a state in our country is racially discriminating against people in order to comply with a law or as much as we care that there is an entire industry - with it's own street in New York, no less - robbing us blind every day. The fact is we don't care. We don't care and that's why we're in the mess we're in. Maybe we're the ones that need to go back to school.

Too bad we can't afford that.

A Dozen Already?

2010-04-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

Usually when I ask that question it relates to donuts - as in, 'I ate a dozen already?' But today, it relates to the number of years since I experienced the most powerful moment in my life. That moment was on April 28th, 1998, when I delivered our first child. (Oddly, the second most powerful moment I ever experienced was on the same day, a few moments later when my father-in-law walked in the room before everything was.. er.. done.) The day was so remarkable for the obvious reasons, but also because my daughter's birth let so much truth into my life, truth that has given me much peace.

The first truth I experienced on that day was that, in fact, there is a God. He may not be what we imagine Him to be, or what we write Him to be. He may not be at all what we want Him to be. But He exists and my daughter quelled any doubt I might have had. In my view there can be no holier moment than sharing the birth of your newborn child with your parents and partner, expressing in vivid color and raw emotion the continuity of life, the flawless intent of nature, and the perfection with which a power much greater than ours executes the most complex of tasks. In every way Lucy was born into love and acceptance and joy and she has radiated that beauty all of her life. That comes from God. I know it.

Further to the continuity of life thing, on the day of my daughter's birth I was, myself, born into the knowledge that my life is a bond between those who came before and those who come after. As I held my baby girl and looked into her brand new face, I saw my grandmother as plain as if I were looking at her directly. I saw my father, whom I'd only seen once and cannot remember, but I know I saw him (see him) in her face. I saw my husband and me and I could feel my aunt's heart beating in my baby's chest, warm and excited and loving. I heard my mother-in-law's voice, felt my brother-in-law's spirit. I found my child's newness as if it were a story I'd heard a million times and loved for it's familiarity and comfort. She was meant to be because she'd been planned by the coincidence of our shared history and she would carry forward the life of our ancestors just as we all have.

As such, it became true for me that my purpose in life was to bring forward this little life. Nothing greater waited for me because this was great beyond comprehension. As I held her in my arms on our way to the recovery room I was consumed with fulfillment, more than I thought I could contain. I was humbled, realizing that at such a young age my life's purpose had been realized - and with a splendor and magnitude the likes of which I could not have aspired to much less achieved had I really been trying. Still, it was no accident that my unworthy self created this precious creature, it was instead what gave me worth and meaning, even before I knew it.

With this meaning I could see clearly for the first time. Which is why on the day my baby was born I loved my body for the truth it spoke to me in a language I had not heard since I was a baby myself. For most of my adult life I had loathed at least some part of my body, if not all of it, for its misshapen qualities or lack of some feature, or abundance of others. But on the day Lucy was born my body was beautiful. It was perfect and flawless and lovely. And what joy that gave me, what song in my soul. (Of course, that song has had a few choruses mumbled between then and now, but I know the words and I can belt it out if I need to.)

Lucy gave me truth and truth is peace and because of her and my Sam and my Sara I am a complete person.

That said, and in the interest of fairness, I feel it's important to share with you a few other truths that have become evident to me since Lucy was born. I think you'll agree every see has its saw.

there is no greater fear in life than having a child. if you mess this one up there's no going back. for this reason all children should remain plastic-coated and carefully bubble-wrapped until the age of majority
children object to being plastic-coated and bubble-wrapped, some quite vehemently
apparently if you feed children they grow, a lot, so pace yourself
the toddler shoe manufacturing business is designed to make shoes that are either too small or too big, but none that fit, forcing you to constantly buy toddler shoes to see if you can catch your kid's foot at the precise moment when the shoe will fit
it never does
pining for the day when your child learns to speak your name is no match for ruing the day your child ever learned to speak your name
at about year six you learn to pine for the day when your child forgets to call your name for at least thirty seconds a day
at some point you will once again pine for the day when your child calls out your name
that point won't be when she's stomping off in a huff declaring that you 'don't understand ANYTHING'
your child knows everything
this becomes especially true the closer she gets to teenage years; if you doubt, ask her
this rule does not apply when you ask 'God bless it - who left this here in the middle of the damn floor?'; at this point your child knows nothing
your child will repeat herself a lot
your child will repeat you a lot too
the latter hurts more
your child will grow and learn and mature at a rate that is alarming, at best
her friends will grow too, learn other things, and mature at an even faster pace
the latter hurts more
your child will tend away from you in order to become herself as she gets older
fight it, but not too hard
eventually, she'll win that fight
that's what you want
even if you don't

I hope this assessment of the last dozen year's knowledge is helpful to you. It's certainly been knowledge that's been hard-learned for me, but well worth the expense of the education. The time has flown and, really, it doesn't feel like it's been twelve years since I held that warm, soft, breathing baby in my arms and felt that heat against my body and knew the truth of love in as intimate and personal a way as possible. I was overwhelmed then, as I am now, with the enormity of the task in front of me as much as I was with the sense that everything was right and all my life made sense. It seems really like it was just moments ago and yet seasons have danced by, days of smiles, rains and play, years of sorrow and joy and work. It's been so long and seems so quick. The definition of bittersweet, isn't it? And so if I'm left with one prevailing thought, it comes from a little ditty my son was singing to Lucy for her birthday. Set to a cheerful, bouncy tune, it goes

This is the birthday song.

It isn't very long.

I quite agree.

What?

2010-04-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnnie Depp as Willie Wonka? It's a little odd, but then the original is odd too and both are equally enjoyable. One of my favorite bits in the movie is Wonka's response to a certain child's persistent inquires - many of which are logical, but terribly annoying. Depp's virtuoso "What? You're mumbling. I can't hear you!" is at once juvenile and genius. I love it for it's complete disregard for what's right and proper. So I'm using it all the time now.

The furnace is leaking again.

"What?" (straining)

Mommy, a boy asked me 'out'.

"You're mumbling." (absent minded look)

I've lost 8 lbs. How about you?

"Huh? I can't hear you!" (loudly, confused)

We need more volunteers.

"WHAT??" (hand cupped behind ear)

It might be the onset of menopause.

"STOP MUMBLING! I CAN'T UNDERSTAND A WORD YOU'RE SAYING." (exasperated, but completely rational and NOT behaving like an olympic gold medalist in the bipolar competition)

See? It's an all-purpose answer. Now you try.

I'm Just Not That Into It

2010-04-07T10:17:00.001-07:00

I'm breaking up with my news media. Seriously. I can't stand it anymore.

We used to get along fine, but somewhere along the line, my relationship with the "news" soured. I think it started with OJ. Remember that maelstrom and how it shifted the paradigm for determining newsworthiness? Fast forward and arrive at Tiger Woods. What do these two stories have in common? The obvious, yes, but after that? Neither one has one damn thing to do with me, that's what. I don't care about men with juice for names any more than I care about people with first names that double as upholstory prints. Football is an excuse to have parties where you eat fattening snack foods in front of witnesses and golf is an excuse to change the damn channel. I don't care. DON'T CARE.

The latest in the brigade of unnecessary stories marching into our living rooms is the one about Justice Stevens. He might quit. He might not. Some of us think he will. Some of us don't. Some stuff might happen after that. Other stuff might not. As reported today by NPR - when he leaves, if he leaves, there may not be any Protestants on the Supreme Court. Whoa - run for the hills folks, Armageddon must be next! Oh wait - that was last week - when the stalked non-story du jour was the passage of healthcare reform. (Passage of the reform was a story. The orange-faced arse who claimed it would invoke Armageddon was not.)

Sot that's it. I can't stand it anymore! Get a life, media, and let me get on with mine! It is over between us. You may think Stevens and Woods are in different categories, but they're not. There's nothing substantive being reported on Stevens, any moreso than there was on the Woods story. Both events, after their initial introduction, have become eye-tearingly boring and a galactic waste of my time. I can't listen to you blather on any longer, nor can I go over to your folks' home and listen to them repeat everything you just said, but louder and in more biased fashion, wearing hopeless plaids and worse hair.

You need to move on and forget about me. Some day, maybe we can be friends again, but for now, I want you to lose my number. Just assume I'm shampooing my hair and can't answer your recorded messages. I'm sorry.

I'm just not that into you.

The Vote and The Painted Soccer Ball

2010-03-19T07:59:00.001-07:00

Still going in circles over the Democratic leadership's efforts to garner enough votes to pass the health care reform bill? By hook or by crook? Oh yeah. We all are.

The assessment in today's New York Times is that there will be enough votes to pass the bill. What's troubling to me about this is that the conversation appears to have turned. We are no longer collecting the most votes we can get based on the merits of the bill, just the bare minimum. The reasoning? Democrats are determining which members of Congress can be absolved of the responsibility to vote for the bill since it's expected to be the kiss of death during mid-term campaigns. Really?

So during the era-defining legislative battle of their lifetimes, our congressmen and women are standing firm and tall, carrying the mantle of justice forward with dignity and a sense of historical perspective, propelling the democracy into a new period of greater health (pun in tended) and sustainability, right? Uh, no. They're slouching and shuffling their feet, flailing, grinning creepily in front of microphones, and edging away from what they consider to be political quicksand. 'Honor and duty be damned. If you can get it done without me, please do, so I can keep my job.' Classy.

So I'm walking the kids to school today and my son sees an old soccer ball along the side of a building.

"Oooh! Soccer ball!! Can I go get it?"
"No," I tell him.
"Why not?" with puppy eyes.
"It's not yours,"
"But Maaaaamiiiii. You can tell nobody wants it," he pleads.
"Forget it. Not yours. Plus we're running late," I reply in standard Mom 'quit it' voice.
"But Maaaaaammmm. I'll go quick!" the volley.
"No," I say. "And why would you want it? You already have soccer balls," I remind him.
Slowing down, digging in, "It's a good one."
"No, Sam. And it's filthy."
"I can wash it," he offers cheerily.
"We're not washing it. And it's pink for crissakes. Why would you want a pink ball?" I march on.
"I could paint it!"

I smiled at my boy. Every obstacle had a path around, over or under. There was no deterring. He wanted that ball and he was going to challenge and overcome every objection. He is nine, after all.

Now, you and I both know that painting a soccer ball is ridiculous. It wouldn't work, first of all, and even if it did, it wouldn't last. I could have told my son that and he would have either been completely defeated or he would have kept up with a barrage of new arguments for his position.

This scene plays out on a much larger scale when it comes to health care. Some of us think its a great idea. Others, not so much. Our history tells of other occasions when this has been the case.

Famously, a few starving, ill-equipped farmers thought they could beat back the British army to take over a whole country. Sounds - what's the word - familiar? No, the word I'm looking for is ridiculous. It sounds ridiculous. Except it turns out they could and they did. However improbable, some of the most unlikely things in history turned out to be some of the greatest things that ever happened. Funny thing is, cowardice did not play a helpful role in this little battle for justice. It didn't help at all.

So having reached the tipping point in the arguments for and against this major reform of health care in the United States, some are arguing against and some persist forward. I'm tired of hearing how one political party is simply using tactics and maneuvers to get things done - all of which the other side has done plenty of times. I'm equally tired of this party or that serving not as real representatives of the people, but as sycophants, retreating or allowing others to retreat from truth and fairness in order to save individual asses. It's all shameful and embarrassing.

Our representatives need to give voice to the truth, however they see it, and then suck up the consequences no matter what they may be. And they need to hear you telling them to do so. Call your congressional representatives and tell them to do good for good's sake, and reassure them that we're willing to stand together to take the hit on the off chance we're doing something phenomenal. Tell them to have a sense of morality so that keeping their own jobs is secondary - at least - to protecting the people. Tell them to be Americans in the action sense of that word. For the love of Pete, tell them to stop being such cowards!

And for the record, I'm taking that darn ball home and painting it a flaming bright blue, just to show faith in the notion that we can instead of that we can't. I may be ridiculous, but I'm no coward.

It's Complicated. Or is it?

2010-03-03T08:02:00.000-08:00

Opened up the big, family-sized can of worms this week asking an open question about the Holocaust and some rumor that Muslims were protesting its inclusion in curricula in Europe. Apparently there have been some pretty well-known Muslim leaders who've proclaimed that it never happened. The Holocaust, that is. Never happened. Right then. Fries with your crazy?

So when I got this note about Muslims being 'offended' by the inclusion of false historical data in classrooms and their attempts to have references to the Holocaust removed from school books, I kind of figured it wasn't true. Even so, I was intrigued. It was the total lack of sense in the message that made me think it might be real. I put a question out to some friends to see what people knew about it. And, boy, did I get answers. I am a Cubs fan and I've been to some of the cross-town games so I know a heated exchange when I'm the instigator... er... when I'm in the middle of one. Now, as in those instances, the particulars of the argument didn't matter as much as the tone, the energy, the conviction, the aerodynamics of a Bud Light... no... wait...

I'll admit I'm not super invested in the Middle East thing. I've read some books, had some pretty interesting conversations, kept abreast of basics - but I'm no expert. The truth is if you asked me to pare it down to its simplest terms (and those of you who know me have already heard this from me), I'd say there was enough crazy to go around. There is no greater good coming from the existing policies, nor has any come from policies prior. Clearly, still, there is no peace.

That said, Muslims are not re-writing history for European schools to eliminate the Holocaust. Also, the Holocaust happened. Those are the simple truths.

The more complicated ones sound a little like this, to me at least: Jews are still in pain over what happened. The entire world betrayed them, whether by act or omission, for a long period, and they are still suffering the effects. They do not trust. With reason, they do not trust.

Their Muslim brothers have become the 'evil-doers' du jour. The violence of some against others has been broadcast on every channel, in every language, in high definition, for years now. This loud, brazen campaign dressed in the colors of faith, has forced peaceful people to defend their manner of intimacy with God, as if it were perverse rather than pure. The world allows it, in some cases rises and applauds it. One could argue the world is once again betraying a people and creating - nay - soliciting, begging mistrust.

Both sides - and all who defend in their names - seek answers.

Who among them is the evil one? Who is the more holy, the more deserving of God's grace? Neither. They all sin. And they are all blessed. Knowing this could give each the peace they so desperately desire. Instead, they are distracted from truth, driven by their pain instead of healed by their faiths.

As a Christian, I have been taught that the call to respond to sin does not require one to respond in kind. Instead, a call to the devil is an invitation to turn to God and find His strength to carry on His work. I believe this is true for all people, across all faiths. I believe it is not so necessary to force another to submit to my truth as it is to live my own life of faith.

And what of evil? What of my enemy? My enemy is not my brother. Whether his faith is not my own is irrelevant. My enemy is the devil that calls me to hurt my brother in the name of my God. I keep a respectful distance from this devil, knowing he is there, but choosing to allow him his business as I tend to mine. And when I am called to defend my faith, my right to exist in my faith, the history of my people, I do not do so with armaments, but with arms - extended, reaching.

I cannot touch you with my truth if I do not reach out, after all, can I?

Tales From The Dark Side

2010-02-22T12:20:00.001-08:00

During my grey, I'm pleased to find I still have my wit (if not my wits) about me. A few observations, if you'll indulge me:

Apparently, homeowner's insurance does not cover business losses incurred at home. That makes sense. Business insurance does not cover business losses effected in one's own personal residence. OK, I get that. I have substantial homeowner's insurance and pay hefty premiums for business insurance - twice, since both my husband and I are in the same profession. None of my losses were covered when I was robbed. Makes me think - if A=B and B=C then... and here's where I get lost... D= screw you we're just taking your money and running. This must be why I was never good at math.

The Department of Motor Vehicles must install body spray machines or some sort of emergency sprinkler system that will deodorize folks who've been sitting there so long they're beginning to petrify. Really, people, ethnic rules allowed - you must bathe in the quarter-year before you go to the DMV.

The gal at the DMV who said "I'm assuming you're changing your height and weight on here, right?" probably should have taken a look at the expression on my face after hour three of waiting to get in line with her. I looked like my photo. That was not a good sign.

The White gangbanger and mini-Puerto-Rican gangbangerette couple who entertained us all with their constant prancing, phone calling, tatoo revealing and related absurd and inappropriate behavior are to be thanked. It was kind of like watching an MTV show, but live. Unfortunately, I can only take about three minutes of those MTV shows before I want to club someone with a lamp. Lucky for us the DMV has no lamps.

I ordered all new credit cards for myself and have been enjoying the irony of having an empty wallet while card after card shows up at our house with my husband's name on it. In case I wasn't feeling non grata enough, thank you very much.

In the week or so since this all happened, we've had a good bit of fun trying to regularize ourselves. And when I say fun, picture raking your face with a broken fork. However, a few moments of really hysterical laughter provide tons of hope for the future. Latest incident?

"Sara, why are you wearing two different socks?" (Mommy stance, hands on hips.)

"I don't know. I can't find the pairs..." (Light bulb, big eyes, curlyness in full effect.) "Maybe the guy took them!!"

This has become household a favorite.

Found myself hesitating when entering the house a couple of times. Worked myself up into a good lather before I keyed the door. Marched in all "AHAAA!" only to find myself alone in my foyer with my children behind me, eye-rolling at breakneak speed. My dorkness, apparently, knows no bounds.

Also, gave up cursing for Lent. Talk about stupid. I wish I could describe how dumb that was in more colorful detail given the current state of affairs but I'd have to break my vow to do it. Expect technicolor in 35 days.

Have yet to buy a wallet. If you knew how much trouble I have with wallets, you'd know how particularly cruel it is that I lost this article. I'm as fussy as a gal can be on the subject. Has to be the right size, width, have a certain number of folds - no more, no less - have to be able to fit all my stuff in a certain order (according to use, importance, sentimental value, etc.). So instead, I have everything clumped up in baggie, tucked into a spot that's very hard to get to in my purse - for security reasons! Hah! So, to be clear, I haven't bought a wallet because I have to get one that's perfect. So instead, I have a baggie and am miserable. Must find the sense in that...

Maybe the guy took it.

A Thank You To My Thief

2010-02-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

Last week our house was robbed. I'd like to thank whoever did it. You may think that's an odd reaction. I agree. It is odd. But it is one of the things I've been feeling very strongly since this happened.

I won't say this has been a good experience. It's been awful. I'm still somewhat sleepless and restless. I do not feel safe, despite my husband's and brother-in-law's valiant efforts to fortify the house against all evils, foreign and domestic. But then those toils, with hammers and ladders and Home Depot receipts galore - along with my brother-in-law's most generous gesture to help us pay for some of the expenses when he himself is in less than favorable conomic conditions - remind me how truly lucky I am to have such strong, loving, capable men to care for me and my children. I couldn't design them any better if I tried.

The kids have been putting on brave faces, with small exceptions made for tummy aches of unknown origins and quiet moments when the weirdness of it all seems to sink in. The dull and steady throb of guilt over how this has hurt my children is soothed, if at all, by the fact that snuggles and hugs have been plentiful - even moreso than usual - and mommy does seem to make things better, even though she's no idea how. I remember, in ways I hadn't for a bit, how delicious it is to sleep all in a bed, hot, tangled, touching and together.

I've mentioned this only to a handful of friends, really preferring not to answer and then re-answer all the 'how are you' type questions that are perfectly normal in these types of situations. The truth is I'm sick and petrified and wary and worn and I want to run, run, run away from all these screaming, railing, shrill problems that seem magnetically drawn to me of late. I want quiet and softness and vastness of solitude. I want the sun to soak into my face and the breezes of a wave in motion to rock me to sleep for a long, long time. I want away and over and none of this. That said, who among us could ask for better friends than those who rush over with smiles and gifts to distract from the gloom? What more could one want than just an understanding hug, and then a linger in the hug to make sure the reassurance was real enough to be felt after the embrace had ended? No more. Not for me. That was more than I could hope for.

Still, I am so sad and unsure. It has never been in my nature to dwell; I've always had a natural bouyancy so this period of mull and malaise is new to me. I have no practice in lifting myself up, only in lifting others. I'm afraid I just need some time this time. With that, I know I will find my new place, one experience richer and still hopeful. (cue organ music?)

My thief has provided an opportunity to re-learn, to re-discover, to renew. I am taking that in with some gratitude for the respite it provides from choosing not to see what is right in front of me. For that, and for granting me great confidence in my center - reminding me of something I have always known - that my greatest treasures are those that breathe softly and giggle profusely and sleep soundly (some whilst snoring quite loudly) in my bed - for all that he took that meant nothing and the great abundance he left behind that means everything, I thank him.

She Asked For It

2010-02-09T11:52:00.000-08:00

And asked for it and asked for it. And now I must respond. I've tried to demur. I've tried to tune out. But no matter my efforts, she keeps asking for it. She asks by her manner, her deeds, her presence. And she asks by her persistent insult to my intelligence, my patriotism and my honor. So here goes.

Sarah Palin is treasonous, vacant and a harmful enemy of the state. She threatens to destroy more than just a political party, she is an infection that without treatment will sicken the entire democracy. She is vitriol dressed in tight skirts and snark in high heels. Lipstick, indeed. Gentlemen, turn off those engines before you run over your country.

And before you serve the standard volley, allow me the following: I've nothing against beautiful women; I am one myself. I've nothing against conservative women; I am in many respects more conservative than she. I've nothing against powerful women; ask around - I'm a pretty powerful gal. Further, I will do well, and you would too, to keep God out of the conversation. His judgement shall be entered regardless of our pouts and pants on the subject so I shall leave that part of it in His good hands.

Instead, I shall focus on the areas where she continues to call me out - in matters of state, love of country, love of self. In each of these areas she has tortured me for far too long without my retaliation. The latest in the injuries has come as part of her participation in the 'Tea-Baggers Convention' of last week. And before I go into detail, please forgive the smirk I wear, when I refer to these self-titled "tea-baggers". It's just that I can't help wondering if the Palins and Bachmans of the world know they are representing a group that in most circles outside their protective bubble refers to men who will dangle, dip and place their bare testicles into the open mouth of a waiting lover - usually also a male. That is what tea-bagging is you backassward, no-nothing, foaming idiots! It's a homosexual love-making act! You are running around wearing t-shirts and silly hats and 2-dollar-silver-inlaid pins proclaiming your inclusion in the testicle-dipping convention! And you're all about bringing like-minded people together to change the tide in Washington, right?

But enough about gay marriage.

This week, Sarah Palin has been getting all kinds of press about her closing remarks during the Tea-Baggers Convention (smirk). The liberal media (also known as 'the news') has been going on ad infinitum about the nonsensical nature of her discourse, the irony in her sarcasm about the president's use of a teleprompter when she herself had written some notes on her bare hand, and the frustration of many that she continues to have a voice in the national political arena.

I honestly don't care about any of that. There are wacky conventions all over the place and people I don't agree with talk at them all the time. It's a wonder to me that no member of the Star-Trek convention has ever thought to run for elected office. He or she could run against the housewares convention chair. There're a ton of those 'trekkies' and the City of Chicago makes a ton of money off of those housewares guys when they're here. I bet that'd be a race to watch if it ever happened.

So if the tea-baggers (smirk) want to get together and wave flags and flap around about the issues that matter to them, so be it. God bless 'em. That's an exercise of the freedom we all pay so dearly for in this country.

The problem is when the qualities of this one particular speaker are elevated to become qualities to which I or my daughters should aspire. The problem is when this one speaker is held out to be an icon for women in this country to admire and for men to take seriously. The problem arises when this one speaker dons the aparatus of a hero when she is, in fact, a coward and a traitor. Then, we have a problem.

Sarah Palin is not the keeper of any quality that I wish to possess. She is neither refined nor intelligent - she has proven this again and again. She is not dignified or careful or diligent. She works in spurts, ineffectively, and then quits before investigations can reveal her inadequacy. She has held herself out as a model mother, wife, social servant, but in each of these areas when the truth peeks through, she is found to be lacking. It's fine to having failings in your life, that's natural, human. It is not fine to yourself promote, or allow others to promote on your behalf, the idea that others' failings or differences make them socialists while yours make you a beer-drinkin' good 'ol hockey mom. It is not o.k. for you to tell the President to 'listen' to you when you won't shut your mouth long enough to hear what anyone else has to say. It is not o.k. for you to wink at me, as if we're in on some secret together when, in fact, we're not even in the same hemisphere of thought. It is not o.k. for you to take your small-town self-promotion plan from village to state to the global stage purporting to care about your country when really it means you are putting my country in jeopardy. When foreigners see my country and see you and think you represent me - even in a tiny way - they hate you and they hate me because of you and then they blow up buildings here because of you. And people die.

See how ridiculous it is? If you read that quickly enough, it all seemed to flow nicely and make sense, didn't it? But of course it does not. No one is going to die because Sarah Palin is an idiot. At least I hope not. Unfortunately, the same irresponsible, slanted, stupid logic I used to get myself from "Sarah spoke at the Tea Bag Convention" (smirk) to "People Die" is the same reasoning she uses, if you want to call it that, when she says that the President of the United States is not caring wisely for our country. He wants change. He preaches hope.Therefore he is a socialist. 1-2-3.

To be clear, Ms. Palin does not believe that 'hope' and 'change' are good for our country, unless they are terms she spews along with a few 'betcha's and 'em's. I'm not that stupid, Sarah. In fact, none of us are. If some of us like your spunk and your willingness to take some punches in order to be famous, its for the same reason we buy People magazine with Heidi Montag on the cover. (I don't, but I know some folks do.) Just don't kid yourself, and don't think you're kidding me. You're a national joke. International, even. The political Paris Hilton. You're getting alot of attention now because you're the flavor of the month. We've had these before. Remember when Colin Powell was the 'it' man in your party? Black, military, conservative - flippin trifecta!!! Guess what? Colin voted for Obama. And he had one thing you don't - an intellect.

So I hope you're enjoying your time on the stage. I hope you're getting plenty of mileage out of that lipstick line because pretty soon, the lights will dim, the crowds will fade, and what will be left is you. Empty, accomplishment-less, contribution-less, value-less, and fame-less you. I hope its worth it. You can't say you didn't know it was coming. In fact, you asked for it.

What Did You Come For?

2010-02-03T07:41:00.000-08:00

Tales from the ground, looking up at an election.

First, the media was long-ago comprised of educated and trained journalists informing the public in a manner that both enlighted and protected, not against opposite points of view, but against the overuse or abuse of government power. The media is now comprised of vapid, attention-deprived gossips with no interest in enlightenment or protection of the public, except as it relates to their own interests. They've become utterly useless in the public's preparation for an election.

Next, the election process is flawed, cumbersome, a bit tedious. Most candidates are either overly coiffed and look like they smell of cheap aftershave and Folgers or they are frumpy and rumpled and look like they smell like their last sandwich and Chai tea. Their qualifications are 'too entrenched', 'not entrenched but greasy-looking' or 'will get run-over by a mack truck on the first day in office'. They represent a system that appears to be intrinsically ignorant of the needy people, steered by the greedy people, and working only for the seedy people. Not what the forefathers had in mind, exactly.

Given all this, it may seem pointless to vote. Apathy may appeal, almost as a form of protest. In any case, one voice above the din of rampant malfeasence cannot be heard. This is how we talk ourselves into it, isn't it? I certainly have my doubts at 4 a.m. on election morning when I'm dragging myself to a polling place to set up for a long day as an election judge.

And then as the day gets underway in comes 91-year-old Ziskind, hobbling, cane in one hand, kleenex in the other, 50-something son trailing behind. He announces himself loudly and proudly, reminds me I never know how to pronounce his name (I do) takes hold of his ballot with the kleenex hand, stands at the booth, sometimes leaning precariously to one side or the other, and casts his ballot. Every single election. No matter the season, no matter the candidates. No matter. He is there every election. When he leaves he waves his kleenex good-bye, reminds me to remember him (I do) and scuttles off, good son trailing behind.

He never smiles at me.

I think he's still mad at me.

One year, I asked him how he managed to get to us in such terrible weather. Innocent enough, I thought - just making idle chat - remarking on his good health, I thought - a compliment, of sorts. That's why I was so taken aback when he answered me so sharply, as if I were some flaming idiot with sparks of stupidity flying off me and singing him, "Not to vote? Not vote? For what did I come? For my vote!" The 't' in that word had a 3-dimensional quality.

Why? Inherent in that clipped, deeply accented answer was the real one, a longer one, more painful. It said, without saying, that when a man had sacrificed as much as he had to achieve the privilege of voting, the notion of treating it like a tentative coffee date to be cast off due to inclement weather was so insulting he couldn't help himself but to punctuate with spittle.

So my question, a uniquely American one in its pomp and ridiculousness, was a rather elegant display of my in-bred ignorance. Because for those whose vote does not come by way of birthright, there is a question, but a different one altogether. On election day the question is - if a concentration camp doesn't stop you, and death-inducing poverty and famine don't stop you, if the takeover of your country by a military coup doesn't stop you, if oceans and barbed wire and sewers as gateways don't stop you - if you cannot be stopped no matter what pain you must endure to arrive in this country -will the cold or the snow stop you? What did you come for? Not to vote?

Not me. I remember Ziskind. And in so doing, I also remember the personal sacrifice made by others so that I could vote.

My father came to this country more than fifty years ago to escape a dictatorship in his home country where, to this day, the dictator's party still holds all executive, legislative and judicial power at all federal, provinicial and municipal levels. All the power. One party. No change. Why? Because the vote is pointless there and the people vote simply to please the dictator. Fifty years, no change in power. No vote.

My father left his home as young man and never went back. He could have stayed, kept his head down, worked, lived. He could have given up, been apathetic. Instead, he chose a different path. He came here. It was hard for him, scary, and included more than one confrontation with imminent death. He swam past all that, literally, to get here, to marry here, to have a daughter. Here.

I haven't seen my father in many years for reasons too long to tell. When last I saw him he was tall, strong, handsome, a real man's man. Now, because time is a rigid collector, I know he is older, greyer, perhaps stooped. Maybe he walks with a cane. Whatever else may be, my father has my heart for many reasons and not the least of them is this - he gave me a life and a chance to vote.

I take neither for granted.

And I vote.

Do you?

What did you come for?

The Many, The Ridiculous, The Random

2010-01-28T08:17:00.001-08:00

I may have said this to you already because I find myself repeating it often, but my daughter recently suggested I check out the 'for dummies' section at the book store. She meant it so sincerely I couldn't even effuse outrage.

The absurdity of an anti-choice ad airing during the Super Bowl, a game where grown men go around simulating war by throwing around a stuffed dead pig and beating the crap out of each other in tight pants and shoulder pads, being labled a 'celebration of life' is apparently not apparent. Really?

On that same subject, I wonder if they'll air those ads for the men and women in uniform watching the game from foreign countries where they are employed killing other people by the hundreds, sometimes thousands, in the name of freedom and justice. Woo hoo. Celebration of life!

CBS is comprised of several tiers of executive morons.

Speaking of morons, is anyone else becoming extremely tired of opposite-party congressmen and women flatly refusing to positively acknowledge the President of the United States when he (or she... someday) says something that everyone agrees is reasonable? It's ignorant, rude, childish, and undignified and that's true whether or not I'm ideologically aligned with the party sitting on its collective rump. I just don't like it, period.

Further, I think clapping like a trained seal after every other sentence the President utters is equally stupid and unnecessary. Is this your most evolved way of expressing support and agreement? Because I'm thinking you could show up to work a few more days out of the year. Maybe be there when some of these issues are being debated and not making the nightly news clip. I hired you to work, not to nod enthusiastically when your head cheerleader shows up. You're embarrassing me. Stop it.

On the issue of embarrassing, am I the only one also embarrased by our national impatience - the fervor of which has begun to mimic the expression of a three year old stomping her feet, sticky fingers clenched, curls matted to a red-faced pout, insisting she wants her snack RIGHT NOW? I say again, and will repeat many times, read a 5th grade social studies book! Read about how long it took for us to establish our freedom, how hard we worked, what we sacrificed, and how we held together - even when we were falling apart. For the love of apple pie, please give everyone a chance to be better and while you're waiting, you be better too. We can solve some of these difficulties, we can use ideas from all points on the circle, and we can agree to disagree without disavowing the other person's patriotism. Grow up, show some patience, and if you can't go sit on your time-out chair and be quiet.

If you ask me how the market's doing you'll get a variety of answers depending on how brain-freezingly-rabid I'm feeling that day. While I'm still rational, I'll tell you the market is really fine. It's just expanded to include a wider array of not-so-traditional sales and transfers. Kind of like how McDonald's now serves burgers and burritos and you can ask for Louisiana hot sauce on the side. You can look at it like it's a problem, or you can have a burrito with some hot sauce and enjoy that for what it is.

Speaking of McDonald's - poignant kid moment: my babies at the counter with their little Christmas gift certificates in their hands looking at the menu in a whole new light - 'what can I afford?' When all was said and done, everybody walked away with an assortment of bad fried food, certificates still in their booklets and big smiles on their faces. If only we could all handle the big decisions that way.

I want everyone to know that I'm making progress, albeit slogging, slow, interrupted progress towards achievement of my resolved goals. This is a vast improvement over years past when I just gave up and ate whatever I wanted and stopped reading, writing or making phone calls in the second week of January. I give it about another 3-5 days. Being awesome is exhausting.

This gal I hardly knew in high school is one of my favorite FB reads because she's got an incredible wit, a warm spirit and a sardonic sense of humor I can totally relate to. A life lesson - get to know as many people as you can - you just never know what you're missing.

Did you say missing? TIME magazine urged me for weeks to renew my subscription and I held off and held off thinking I could renew via my children's school fundraiser (which is how I originated my subscription). Turns out the fundraising catalog didn't have TIME magazine anymore so I finally gave in to the publisher's relentless (and somewhat pining) campaign to make me renew. That was in November. Guess what's missing. So I've been thinking...they should get the 'renew your subscription' team to work on the 'filling your subscription' part. They should pummel me with magazines the way they did with 'CHECK THIS BOX AND GET A DUFFLE BAG!!' offers. I should get a heartfelt letter about how the attached magazine is how I stay connected with the world. And the editor should come hug me and kiss me when he gives me my magazine personally because by the way he was doting on me when he was trying to get me to renew I think we're dating and the separation is killing me.

I've had a bottle of champagne and two gift certificates to a swanky downtown restaurant in my office since Christmastime. A colleague gave them to me as a holiday gift. I just can't seem to think of any reason why I'd take my butt all the way downtown in the freezing cold with bad to poor parking choices and limited menu options (because I can't afford anything there that wouldn't be covered by the gift certificates) as a form of pleasure. This and the twelve million gray hairs in my bangs are the final nails in the coffin where my urban and edgy youth rests quietly. Now if I could just pry those nails open so I could sneak in there and get a nap where no one could find me...

I heard my mother the other day in a way I haven't heard her in a while, not because she hasn't been there, but because I haven't been listening. It was a really sweet moment for me and I'm not sure she got it, but I'm glad I had it. Because two minutes later she had me wanting to run screaming through the streets. Oddly, that feeling was comforting too, in a 'comfy socks' kind of way.

Hope you feel that way when you visit here. It's my great aspiration in life to be someone's comfy sock.

What Should It Be?

2010-01-11T09:11:00.000-08:00

In keeping with my Number 1 New Year's resolution, I've begun writing my book. Here's what it's about:

Parenting. I'm an expert on this subject as I've both been parented and parented myself. Except the more I stop to think about this subject the more I realize I don't know doodle about parenting and my mother is nuts. The kids are always arguing with one another, except when they're crying or subdued in front of the t.v. My mother is alternately driving me bananas or not speaking to me. And me? I'm so overwhelmed with the urge to run screaming into the streets that I've literally begun to map out a route where the fewest people I know will see me as I flap madly from the house and away my roles as parent and daughter. Maybe this is the wrong topic.

Maybe marriage. Marriage is good. I know alot about marriage having observed many and been part of one for more than 10 years now. I have plenty to say on this subject, in fact. Marriage is meaningful, spiritual; it serves as a model upon which larger mergers can be based. On some days, it even serves a broader purpose, explaining things like the lack of peace between Israel and Palestine. Because the truth is no matter how much you love someone they can only chew plastic in your ear so many times before you are driven completely mad. So how can we expect countries that already don't get along to sit next to each other on the world's couch and watch t.v. in peace?? We can't. They each need their own space and their own tv's. Except there's no cable in the bedroom! So you see, peace is impossible! On second thought, maybe marriage isn't the subject for me after all.

However, it's given me the idea that maybe global politics is the right thing. I've toyed with this thought before but have always assumed there were people way smarter than me expounding on the topic and I'd have a hard time competing. The last fifteen of my adult years have driven me to the other end of the thought spectrum on this subject. Now I believe only morons are involved in the global political scene, otherwise we would've knocked out a few more deliverables by now. We've shifted pollution from venue to venue without solution, we've allowed millions and millions of people to starve or be sick to death without batting a global lash and we still can't get potable water to the whole world when something like 80% of the world is water? Yeah. Some real sharpies in charge of the ship. What a mess! I swear some days the only way to handle the thing would be to send everyone to their collective rooms and clean the whole damn world by myself. But then they'd just mess it all back up again and make me even more furious. (I've seen this play out before, smaller scale.) I'm getting heated just thinking about it. Can you title a book 'All of You are Idiots'? Mabye not.

I have to think about something that makes me happy so the book can be cheerful and uplifting. Something catchy. With a beat. So you can dance to it.

I know! The book'll be about being a Chicagoan. No, I'm mad at Chicago now because of the Olympics. So I'll write about patriotism. I'm a patriot! No, I'm mad at patriots because the good ones are either dead or too quiet and the false ones are idiots getting paid to be on Fox News. I'll write about dieting. If there's one thing I can make light of it's dieting! Except I'm on one now so that'd make me a hypocrite. And if there's one thing I can't stand it's a hypocrite. Uhhh, cooking? No. That'll make me hungry. What the heck do people write books about? Maybe I'm not meant to write after all. I don't have a damn good thing to say about anything. I'm the author-equivalent to eggplant for crissakes! I just lay there like an oddly-shaped purple mass and don't say a damn thing. How am I supposed to do something I've resolved to do when starting it is so mind-numbingly impossible?

You see, this is the problem. I write all the time. I just don't write about anything. I'm the Seinfeld premise in written form. I write about nothing.

And there it is. I'm going to write a book about nothing.

Wish me luck.

On this day 65 years ago

2010-01-08T11:27:00.000-08:00

Ever seen the movie 'Amistad'? There's a scene in that movie where a man headed into a trial before the supreme court explains to another character why he isn't nervous, despite all odds being well stacked against him. He reassures his own attorney, in fact, telling him not to worry because he, the defendant, is 'invoking [his] ancestors'. It's a powerful scene, wherein one man's cultural and spiritual beliefs come face to face with the intellect of the other to teach both men a lesson about what is really valuable in a life.

I'm telling you all that because today is my mother's 65th birthday. And while those two bits of information don't seem connected, they are, inexorably. My mom, you see, is the one person I know who has her culture, her spirit and her intellect very well measured and in tact. I admire that very much and aspire to her long-achieved place in this enlightened stance.

It hasn't always been easy, the travel to this place. But you'll never know another person with a greater patience than my mother. I try, terribly hard to be a compassionate person and hope that my overage in that department makes up for my near complete lack of patience. I often mistake my mother's patience with slowness; I think many people do. Instead, it's more likely true that my mother knows in a bone-deep place that a well-traveled path must be savored and sensed rather than simply traversed briskly with cell phone in one hand and spilling coffee in the other. I still need to learn that.

Where I follow her example as closely I can is in the living of a life where the spirit guides. My mother's spirit is present in all things she does and all she touches. Her spirit is intensely, deeply warm, connected to God on an intuitive level that neither religion nor lack thereof can sour. Her hands are always soft and when they touch you you can feel her humanity and tenderness, but also her strength and self-possession. You can only get that sense from someone whose spirit is sound and hers is and always has been.

With that patient sensibility and solid spiritual center my mother has weathered storms of immeasurable proportion with trips and falls that might have landed another person down for the count. Not she, Victoria the brave. She has climbed mountains of every kind, scaled ignorances, overcome prejudices, triumphed over mediocrity and low expectations. She has learned a foreign language as an adult, often being mistaken for a native speaker. She has received two university degrees - the first in her generation to receive even one. She raised a child on her own and employed two 'villages' to help - among them those who wished to compete rather than cooperate. By her sheer will, they were linked, joined forces and I am the result (a fine one wouldn't you say?). She is a staunch believer in the 'pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again' method of survival. It has served her well, not just for survival but for success in all things she has endeavored to do. She makes me proud and more proud every day.

I'm a terrible, terrible daughter more often than I'd like to admit. I won't give details here lest you think even less of me by the particulars than you might already by the admission. But I hope I compensate for my tantrums and tirades with an abiding, profound and unimpeachable love and devotion to this amazing person who I define in less than adequate terms this way:

- learner and lover of learning for self and for others, so that sins may be forgiven, because truly it is through knowledge that we learn we are all sinners and must all lend in order to receive forgiveness

- keeper of the Italian tradition for all those who came before (the invocation of ancestors not limited in scope), stayer of the Cuban tradition for those who did not remain, and explorer of the traditions that bring joy and excitement to every life around the world

- adventurer insofar as reality is always an adventure for a dreamer, an idealist, a romantic

- traveler, in every sense, a lifelong exerciser away from the ill-exposed beginnings from whence she came

- teacher, whose most valuable lesson to me and to others is that acceptance is possible for everyone and the world is indeed a very big place; all of us have gifts to share

- woman, who some may never understand and others have resolved never to try again (some things are simply better left mysterious)

- mother, who in the simplest of matters is expert (or so she says) and in the most complex, wise; a nurturer born of good nurture herself, whether she knows it or not, and whose completion occurs when the cycle repeats, a mantle I carry most seriously upon my shoulders.

In simplest terms I love my mother because she is the latest in a line of those whose purpose and mission in life was to bring me forward. That, until I brought forward my own children, who now live only because those before her lived and because she gave me life. With no other evidence of her magic and beauty I could say quite honestly there's never been and will never be anyone more important to me than her. I hope she knows. And that on this day and all that follow she is loved not just by me but by all who know her, openly, generously and with great conviction, as she loves.

This is the One

2009-12-25T08:32:00.000-08:00

This is the one wish for you I have on Christmas.

I wish you could see my Sam, the faithful, the fierce, so noble and good. I wish you could see him in his brand-new jammies, eager and excited, waiting patiently to be given the 'ok to open' signal. The imposition of restraint on Christmas morning, a tried and true parental inside joke, is wasted on this boy. He is possessed, with good measure and even better sentiment, of a rightness that makes his center impossible to challenge. He is what prevails when goodness is tested. In fact, he is the enduring goodness that awaits us all. I wish you could feel that. I'm sure it would give you the confidence it gives me that all is right with the world, no matter the troubles of the day.

I wish you could see my Sara tripping down the stairs, bounding through the halls, then tiptoeing into our bedroom, long before the sun comes up, to reassure her densely sleeping parents that Santa, indeed, did come. Had only we known... My Sara, so alive and giggly and noticeable; so shy, intimidated - so like me - she reflects the most hidden pieces of me. I wish those pieces were as beautiful, as graceful and delicate in me as they are in her. I wish you could know her, as I do, to be the magic that speaks only in the shimmer of stars and the twinkle of lights lost in a horizon. She is the vibe in the room, the excitement in the crowd, the ear-to-ear grin that erupts for no good reason at all. I wish you could see that. I'm sure it would give you the joy that must be the meaning and purpose of all life.

I wish you could experience the spirit and joy of my Lucy, so much the young lady, squealing with delight when she receives the long-awaited gift on Christmas morn', from Santa, of course. Would it be a shame to take pleasure in whatever baby-like qualities remain? No matter, I do. Though even as they fade, there is a bloom about her that is unflolding, softly, sweetly, not without thorns but lovely in anticipation. She reaches out to receive a life where the hint of who she is will be revealed in finest splendor for all the world to enjoy. This, under the gaze of a generous and doting sun, washed by the wishes of those who love her - adore her - and rooted in the strength of character she's possessed long before this change could stall or stray her. I wish you could be with me to see it all, and I wish it would give you the fullness of heart it gives me.

So this is the one wish: I wish you the confidence to dream and dream big, it is a beautiful world; the joy to live, really live, with a broad smile about the whole thing; and the reason, whatever it may be, to open your heart and fill it with all that is here, and all that will come. And may God bless you and keep you now and always. Merry Christmas.

The Holiday Random Post

2009-12-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

Who knows when I'll get back to this, so all the random holiday thoughts I can muster are here to ornament your memories of the season.

I totally love red christmas balls. Can't say that around my son without infecting the house with giggles and snickers. Ah, the nine year old boy's sense of humor...

I wish I could be a million sparkles shining down on everyone I love during this season. Instead, I'm a million wishes in a dollar store gift bag.

People who work at the dollar store during a down economy should be given TARP money for all they suffer at the hands of overwrought customers trying to tie together a million-dollar look for under three bucks. God bless them one and all.

Cleaning house day for the holidays ought to be a federal holiday. A gal can't work and do that at the same time.

My hot chocolate is always either too sweet or too bland or too hot to drink until it's too cold. Is it too much to ask for the ability to make a dang good cup of hot chocolate?

On that note, mini marshmellows simply don't do it for me. I prefer one big fluffy marshmellow melting all across the top of the cup. Which never happens for me because I can never get the temperature right.

I let my husband pick out the Christmas tree this year and he, of course, picked the least expensive tree in a variety of pine that I loathe. Sadly, the tree is gorgeous and now I'm forced to tell him that all the time.

Lucky for me, he won't remember it three days after it's down and I'll make sure to remind him next year that I hated it.

Why is it that no matter how much I try not to meet new people or make new friends my Christmas list becomes exponentially larger every year? I suppose it doesn't help that my extended family keeps having babies in twos.

As an added bonus during the craze, my body apparently experiencing global warming. I'm freezing all the time. Except when I'm boiling hot. This could explain the hot chocolate debacle. Or be a sign of things to come. Yeesh.

That said, at my ripe old age I still have no idea what to get for my mother. It's the bane of my holiday season. Aside from the temperature problem, that is.

My babies still believe in Santa. Or pretend to for my benefit. Either way, I love it. Gives me hope that innocence still has a place in the world. It's upstairs tucked into bed.

When it's all said and done the tire, the mire and high-wire act one must perform to participate in the celebrations of the season should leave one spent and flushed but thoroughly pleased. If that works out for you, let me know?

Funny how my homemade gifts still require the use of technology that to generations before mine would have seemed alien in concept, much less application. So, by 1920s standards, I'm as cutting edge as a space shuttle vacation on Mars!

Also, is it me, or has anyone else noticed that just about everything on Star Trek is now normal, every day stuff? That's just wackadoodle.

The nearer we draw to the end of the year, the more I'm compelled to reflect and remark upon the sheer thrill of surviving it all, not just me, but everyone I know. I'm also compelled to wonder how in creation we'll keep it up. But then, that's the fun of it, isn't it?

The smile being the best accessory to any outfit, I'm wondering if my jeans could get on board and just suck in my hips for me when I grin from ear to ear. Their lack of cooperation making for less-than-favorable reaction from the full-length mirror. While I wait, the waist-high wall mirror will have to suffice.

I love, love, love the smell of Christmas candles in every variety. Except that gawd-awful spiced cake thing I got a couple of years ago at an outlet store. Smells like spiced foot. I swear I've thrown it out eleven times and every year it resurfaces.

I blame my mother.

It's got nothing to do with her. It's just simpler to keep all the blame in one column. Sorry Mami.

And while we're on the subject of sorry, let me insert a blanket 'sorry' here for all the folks I'd love to love more often, especially during holidays, with more attention and more time, but simply can't. I'm starting to think that guilt manifests itself in me physically as hair, which is why I look like a female version of that hairy character in the Harry Potter movies. Something to think about come resolution time. Must get a guilt-cut.

As for resolutions, I'll have more to say (natch) but for now, this: I resolve to keep at it. To keep trying, to keep my head up, to keep smiling, to keep expecting the best and bracing for whatever comes with the best cheer I can gather and the most strength I can find, offering the best care and most love I can give, until I'm thoroughly spent, flushed, and pleased. When that happens, I'll order a nice cup of hot chocolate from someone who knows what they're doing, and rest.

Insert Title Here (I can't think of one)

2009-12-13T06:12:00.000-08:00

First, in case I never get back to it, Happy Holidays to everyone!

I'm sure my uber-Christian brothers and sisters at Fox cringe when they hear that, even from this distance. (They are far, right?) It's only because their little X-Mas Elf ears affect their hearing. Not news to the rest of us but apparently, over at Fox News, they haven't heard yet that the world - nay even our country - is not entirely made up of people who believe Christ is the son of God... GASP! Avert your eyes Sean, Bill, Glenn. It's ugly.

I will say in defense of the 'Save Christmas Patrol' on FNC, I have the same reaction when I find out some people are not Cubs fans. That boggles.

Next, I've so so so much work in front of me in every direction, just thinking about it makes me tired. Do you feel that way? I used to look at tons of work and purposely ignore it and go have fun. The youthful me was such an optimist. "I'll have time later." The current me knows there is no time later that isn't filled with something.

Also, along those lines is it me or is 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen' offensive? Men need a song now to tell them to relax during the holidays? Please.

On another 'is it me?' front - British accents are usually very pleasant. Except during holiday season (attack of the flying tea bags!) when they seem snooty to me. Right?

Went to the office holiday party (is that Greta Van Susteren coming at me?) and all the babes in the office were hanging all over my husband. Husband soaked it up with a big smile most of the night. Mock jealous rage ensued. Couldn't help a smug smile on the way out with my party-hit of a man.

Went to my kids' holiday concert (watch for flying 'no-spin' gear) and was completely renewed in my faith that no matter the troubles anywhere, all is right with the world. Beautiful children, with hopeful voices, learning to overcome nervousness and worry with hard work and dedication; learning that no matter how different they all are when they come together it is beautiful; finding ways to share each other through a universal language; millions of ways to enjoy that evening and the lilt of loveliness in the air was only one of them.

Went to a friends' holiday celebration (look out! they've launched the Rove!!) last night. She had been having lavish holiday parties for years and then started taking each year's down a notch on the extravagance scale as the economic faint of the last few years took hold. Finally, last night, she did a pot-luck. I think she was a little worried about how it would turn out. It was fantastic! The luxury of old was replaced by an abundance of beautiful dishes carefully crafted by those wanting to impress with their offerings - they all did, generous amounts of wine, the good, the mediocre and the 'who cares, it's wine', and people, all different kinds, shapes and struggles, just happy to be together. It was beyond delicious all the 'way round and I was so pleased for her that it truly was an evening of celebration.
Last, just curious. Why is it that when we see people wear elf outfits for holiday events (did you see that Hannity mug fly by?) we think it's cute and it makes us smile - but when I go out in my little elf hat and shoes, everyone steers clear of me? Is that fair? Or balanced? Don't answer that.

No, I can't.

2009-11-30T13:04:00.000-08:00

Y'know that old adage "I think I can, I think I can"? And is there some song that goes with it about a rubber tree plant? (Why I'm compelled to think of Lavergne and Shirley when I remember that is beyond me. If you know, do tell.) Am I rambling already? Yes. Forget that part. I'm on something else. I'm on "I think I can".

"I think I can." Really. Really? You can? How do you work a full-time job, keep a tidy home, love and pay attention to your children, be a devoted spouse, provide support and care for your aging parents, spend time with your friends and extended family, and keep a trim, healthy figure, stay fresh on current events and make appropriate facial expressions during group conversations? You know how? No you don't. You don't because I don't and I call bull! It's really impossible.

I'll admit, it has never been easy, but there've been times in my life where I had most of my stuff together. Then, like the plate spinning fool of old television, I added more and more spinning articles to my repetoire. I added a spouse. He came with in-laws. (Should have read the manual on that purchase!) We bought a car. Then a building. Then had a baby.

I was fat, but that wasn't new. And all the other plates were happily spinning along, so we had another baby. Oh. Uh. Yeah. About that. Make that two. Ok. No worries. We can handle it. Bought a house. Kept the building. Got another car. (I'm saying car, but what I mean is disgusting green minivan. But show some kindness and let's just say car, o.k.?)

Spinning, spinning, spinning.

Anyone who watched those shows knows that the more plates that spin, the more poles you need in the air to hold the plates. And the more plates you put up, the faster each must spin, in order to give you time to get back to the first plate.

Family needs me - SPIN. Mother needs me - SPIN. School needs me - SPIN SPIN SPIN. Friends neglected - SPIN! Kids need me - SPIN and need me more - SPIN SPIN. Family spin teetering on the brink of collapse - RUSH SPIN SPIN SPIN. Wait! Clients need me. SPINNNNN!

And then, despite all the frantic racing back and forth, all the late-nite spins, the early morning spins, the coughing and tired but still spinning spins - despite all that effort a plate crashes to the floor. Loud, embarrassing, and halting. If you stop to stare at the smashed china you'll not have time to get back to the other plates wobbling and flailing on their respective poles. So you give a brief eulogy in your head for the innocent plant that turned into a potted ode to death in your dining room and get back.

Adding to your grief, someone who's equally busy - or maybe moreso - seems perfectly calm and mania free and advises you to stopy worrying. And if you're me, she's probably thinner than you! Where's the justice I ask?

The sad and pathetic truth is, if all this plate spinning had me model-thin I'd probably not give a hoot. But I'm one of those people who does not get slimmer with stress. I get facial rashes. So, I'm tired, have bags under my eyes, I'm fat and have a 3-D multi-colored rash on my forehead.

I don't know how I got into the plate-spinning business, but I will tell you this: I hate rubber tree plants.

As for "I think I can". Actually, no. I can't.

Why This One?

2009-11-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving should be the most important holiday ever. Why? (I just knew you'd ask.) Because this holiday is the very essence of what a holiday should be. A holiday is a respite from the ordinary, a vacation - even if for only a few hours - from the every day. So the table is set a little more beautifully, the meal is prepared a little more carefully, and the occasion of being together with ones you love is felt a little more deeply. Isn't that lovely? In theory, it is. And that's what I want you to focus on.

Because the actual setting of the table, when your back hurts and your feet ache and your family is helping about as much as a collection of lawn gnomes might isn't always pleasurable. And the frantic resetting of the table when the cat knocks over your fancy glasswear and pulls down the tablecloth two seconds before people arrive isn't any better.

Meal preparation in the magazines and t.v. shows doesn't look anything like it does at my house. Here, the kitchen generously donates itself not only to the task of boiling, baking and burning (let's be honest here) the most important meal of the year, but also bends to receive the automotive project du jour, the incessant display of whatever "mommy LOOK" item is being paraded by a child, and the hotel switchboard-like ringing of the manic house phone.

As for holding the occasion of bringing loved ones together more closely? This is probably the most complex brush stroke on the painting, isn't it? 'Some of these folks,' you're thinking, 'I wouldn't admit to knowing on other days of the year.' Or am I the only one that thinks that? No matter. It's so hard not to be grumpy about the repeated loudness of some, or the chronic lateness of others. In fact, the same things that bug you on other days can seem magnified instead of lessened on holidays when you are stressed and excited and tired.

I know. But when that happens to you tomorrow, try something new. Close your eyes for a minute and think to yourself - 'This moment, this person is a gift to me that I could not have received on any other day but today.' And then, allow yourself to be glad for it. Give thanks that your mother, so slow, so annoying, so picky, is here to share this day with you. Smile broadly at your baby who, despite every instruction to stop bugging you, has come into the room to show you yet another stick-figure picture. God willing, that baby will grow up to celebrate with his own small family some day, and you'll not be there to smile. Wrap your arms around your husband, partner or companion, and thank him for working on that messy project in the middle of the kitchen. He's spending his holiday working to solve a problem so you don't have to. For that matter, gentlemen, remember to warmly thank your wife or sweetheart for the care she devotes to you on this and every other day. She loves to hear it, and doesn't mind at all when you repeat it.

This holiday, this brief journey away from days of drudge and drear, is a day to give - and give generously - of something you don't need to budget, save or shop for. Just thanks, in copious amounts if you're doing it right. Spend freely, without limit, and enjoy the bliss of reckless abandon that we've all come to avoid in other, more traditional expenditures. Tomorrow take a break and open your heart deep and wide and give thanks, as I do to you for sharing this moment in your day. And in keeping with my own advice - here's an extra for the road - Thank You!

The Last Word

2009-11-19T10:51:00.000-08:00

The American system of justice in all its glory is nothing to be feared, avoided or circumvented. It is the envy of all justice systems. It is the reason we are so great. A display of our fair, impartial and corruption-free system of justice as it carries out the proper consequence for the greatest terrorist act against our country is entirely the right thing to do, and should go far to restore the world's confidence in our moral justification for global leadership. Now if you're afraid that our system is not fair, impartial and corruption-free, or you believe we are not great, or that we have no moral justification for global leadership - if that's what you're afraid of, then you've an entirely different problem. I am not afraid. I have faith in our system. I believe, in the parlance of some on my ideological right, that "these colors do not run", nor do we whine when we don't get our way, nor do we fight one against the other. Our enemy is not our brother. Instead, our enemy, after too long a wait, will be brought to justice as he should be, in the place where he can smell the unity of our cause and feel the palpable truth in our one step. In this country he will be tried. In the country he tried to sink but failed. In the country where justice is blind but not stupid and our pursuit of it is righteous but not arrogant.

The Long and Winding Road

2009-11-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

When Tony and I bought our first property, I was pregnant with Lucy. It was a time of great hope, dream and joy for us, despite the attendant drama that goes with such a big move. We bought a modest building in a comfortable working-class neighborhood and settled in for the work of updating, upkeeping and making home.

Next door, a couple with their two children served as ambassadors for the neighborhood. He knew everyone and everything and if he didn't he bragged on as if he did anyway. She was sweet and mild and easy to laugh. Their children, both beautiful, were lively and precocious. We became fast friends.

And through them, we became friends with everyone on the block. There was a couple down the street with two young boys, a family of five with kids of every age, and a single guy living with his elderly parents. There was an unmarried gal living in their place and a couple with two older children to the north. Everybody knew my neighbors and so we got to know all of them.

We were unlikely matches, all of us, crossing economic, language, cultural and religious barriers to enjoy a backyard barbecue or hang out in front while the kids played. But we were comfortable with each other, like warm sweaters, and we all enjoyed the time we spent together. When I became pregnant with the twins just a year and a half after I had Lucy, the whole block joined me in being excited and nervous. It was a wonderful time.

Time marches on, as they say, and of course, things change. We'd had a longer term plan in mind when we bought the building, but the twins altered our math a little and we soon found ourselves bursting at the seams. Mostly by accident, we found a house nearby and were the first to leave the block. We kept the building as an investment (hah!) which kept our ties to the neighborhood strong and our friendships continued even after we moved.

Sadly, the young man who lived with his parents had to say goodbye to his father, who passed away after a brief illness. Tony sold the building and helped the mother find a nearby apartment. The young man moved off to a far away suburb to escape his sadness. (It didn't much work, from what I can tell.)

Another family - faced with the prospect of having to place their sons in less-than-desireable public high schools, decided to move closer to a private school. Tony sold their building and helped them buy another place. The neighborhood got markedly quieter after that.

The large family that had been renting several doors down decided it was time for them, too, to go. The older children to the north of me went off to high school and then college. Their parents, who always kept to themselves anyway, retreated further.

And so the only ones left were our original next door neighbors. Steady, dependable, always willing to lend a hand, this family had always been there to openly receive newcomers and to wave goodbye as family after family left.

And now it is their turn. The father, our friend, has become ill with, mostly, self-inflicted ails. It's terribly sad. The son, now college-age, returned after a year away at school to help out at home. The daughter, a few years older than my Lucy, is just now coming into her own, but it's a slow walk. And the mother, our quick-to-smile friend, is carrying on despite the hardness of the situation. Tony's selling the building and we're going to help them find a new place, hopefully close by.

The thing is - this is not the way I thought all these lives would carry out - with death and loss and injury. I can look at it all and find the incredible good - the two gorgeous boys who moved away with their parents are every bit of wonderful and good and smart; the widow who moved into her own place has found new life with friends and family members and a granddaughter who lights her life; we have gone on to live a magic-induced dream of a life with beautiful babies, and a warm home and lots to celebrate. And I know my friend will find peace and happiness in her new life with the children, away from this place where I think many sad memories reside.

So I can look at all that and be happy for what has and will come.

But I have a sentimental desire to return to those September eves when we'd all be out in front, kids laughing, moms chatting, dads mowing - when none of us had lost a parent or watched a loved one wither. I always think, if I could just go back and hug those moments of my life a little tighter, it would make me feel better.

But I can't. I know. And I wonder what lies ahead, given what has gone. It is, indeed, a long and winding road.

Can't Be Completely Original Every Day

2009-11-13T08:53:00.000-08:00

Some days, it is better to borrow someone else's words, isn't it? This, from the lovely Miss Sara:

As I Go To My Mother

As I go across the

Valley of blossoms

I see the nature of leaves

Coming to me

I feel the cold and chilly

Breeze of fall

And how I wish

I had some nice crispy pumpkin pie

I jitter my fingers upon my toes

So soothing

I could feel my mother

Call me

So Softly

As I could feel her in my heart

As I sit upon a sturdy branch

Waiting for my mother

Running to get me

I feel the soothing dreams

I scooped out all of my

Nightmares

And run to my

Beloved mother

From Sara to Mommy

Not to leave a good weep unpaid, I will reply to my treasure with the following.

I Go Because

I run to you

Because I'm lost

When you are away

I am brash and foolish

When I don't

Remember

You are my reason and center

My soul

The cool breeze carries my wishes

To soothe you, surround you

Sweeten your sit

Upon the sturdy branch

Until I can come

And draw you into me

Gentle, Soft, Kind

Mine

I Go Because You Are

My Baby

The Church Wants My Money

2009-11-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

I had an interesting moment yesterday when I got home and picked up the mail. I got a letter from my church. They want money.

I suppose I should clarify. When I say 'my church' I mean the church in my parish. I am a registered parishioner, and I have been to the church on a few occasions. So, loosely, this is 'my church'. In fact, however, the church and all its attendant accoutrements are largely absent in my life.

Not surprisingly, the pastor remains blissfully unaware and so wrote to me that the parish is 'struggling to meet [its] fiscal responsibilities', requiring '$48,000 to operate monthly'. Wow. That's a big number. That's more than half a million dollars a year. The money, according to the letter goes to 18 teachers, 5 pastoral staff members, and 7 support staff members. That's 30 people. Okay.. ummm... carry the 3 and... that's less than $20k per person. Oh. That's a small number. Like the fine Catholic I am under this fast-talkin' veneer, I immediately began to feel guilty.

But wait - I've always presumed the church was getting a boatload of money all the time. I paid for my wedding mass, my children's christenings, have contributed to every funeral mass I've attended, and have provided regular donations to Catholic Charities ever since I was an adult. They ask for crazy money to enroll my children in their schools. If I can't afford that they ask for mortgage-worthy money to have the kids participate in catechism classes. They ask for money every week at mass, for St. Pete's sake! They've got money, haven't they? So they need more money?

I tried to talk myself out of feeling guilty but I'm a damn good Catholic at heart, and the guilt riddled me as I continued my bipolar grumble through the rest of the mail. I couldn't dispel the anvil of obligation weighing on my shoulders. So to ease my mind - and occupy the three minutes the babies were elsewhere entertained with Daddy - I sat down to skim through my latest edition of Time magazine.

And there it was. Page 34. The highlighted excerpt caught my eye.

Right-wing Catholics lobbied the

Boston archdiocese

to refuse the Kennedy family

a church funeral.

Read that twice.

Archbishop Raymond Burke, according to the article, claimed that Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who presided over Ted Kennedy's funeral, was 'under the influence of Satan, "the father of lies"'. I read on, mindful of my rising temperature and its implications for the health and well-being of the innocent magazine becoming more and more fiercely clutched in my grasp. Details followed about the on-going debate among Catholics regarding politicians - or any flock members I suppose - who believe that a person's stance on abortion defines the entirety of his rights to the Catholic church, its services or its support.

I'm sorry, what?

Yes. According to some, if you are a pro-choice person, regardless of your otherwise stellar Catholic comportment, you deserve no funeral mass. You don't have to have an abortion. Your attitude sucks the worthiness right out of you. Believing in another person's right to make their own choice makes you such a grave embarrassment and disappointment to the church, that even in death, you cannot be redeemed sufficiently to allow your loved ones to grieve in the house of the Lord.

I've been horrified by the church before, but this one really made the bile rise.

Forget Kennedy and forget this Archbishop or that Cardinal. Just like voters who have no grasp on the constitution, Catholics who have no understanding of the simple tenets of the religion ought keep their opinions silent.

From the Gospel, According to St. John, Chapter 12, 44-50, King James Version

Jesus cried and said, he that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.

Where does it say there that some imbecile from the Vatican gets to decide that I'm not Catholic enough because I believe people should make their own choices? May the good Lord help me to understand those who judge the world when not even His own son would do so. How dare these pastoral phonies presume to speak for the Lord, in whose name the Son forgave Judas, saved Mary Magdalene, and gave His life for all sinners? How impudent can they be to suggest that Satan resides in the heart of a man who humbly presides over a ceremony to respectfully dispatch a soul, seeking God's acceptance? It is not the right of the presider to decide whether the soul is admitted into His heavenly home. This is the purview of the Lord Himself. So if the celebrant usurps the Lord's authority, is he not more guilty than the supposed lost soul in the coffin? Blasphemy is the crime of assuming to oneself the rights or qualities of God.

Quotes, definitions and interpretations aside, is not the Lord's teaching one centered on compassion and forgiveness? The filth and vitriol integral to the modern Western political process is finding false roots in our religion and I for one will not abide by it. The right of choice may be a debatable one. The choice to allow others to choose does not a sinner make. And the judgement of sin is best left in the capable hands of He who has not sinned.

I silently affirmed this to myself as I held my Time magazine in one hand and the letter from my pastor in the other. In essence, my pastor must know that the reason his church is failing to meet its fundraising goals is because my Time magazine tells me that my church won't bear - at least not without argument - my funeral. The journey of every Christian's life is one through Christ to God. I shall let Him decide whether I deserve to be received in His home and it is there that I shall pay - with all the life I have spent - my contributions to the church.

Cannot Escape The Random

2009-11-09T11:08:00.001-08:00

More unrelated thoughts/questions that need to be expressed. My inability to focus seems to play well with the masses.

Will the gentle people from the United States yield for a question? If a little-known rep from a non-headline-making state wants to get into the history books for all his descendants to see, what should he do?

If that rep joins his opposing party in passing a reform bill that has been at least a century overdue, in a country that calls itself 'the richest country on Earth' and turns a blind eye to the 1 in 8 of its citizens who struggle with hunger, he deserves his 10 minutes. Hunger, in case you didn't know it, affects your health.

Amen.

My daughter said to me "I think you'll be sunshine." 'What?' from me. "When you die, and you come back to visit me, the way David visits Daddy as a bird. I think you will be sunshine." Unrequited joy.

"Wouldn't it be cool if Daddy was moonlight?" Yes.

There's only one tree on my block with leaves on it. It's in front of my house. It drops a seemingly never-ending shower of leaves on the lawn that my husband so painstakingly cares for all year long. Raking is futile. I shouldn't find that funny, right?

I'm having an incredibly hard time releasing my daughter into the world, even just a smidge, so she can have a little freedom. I've become a storied clown fish on this issue. Funny.

The tepid temperatures, while gorgeous and silky and sumptuous, are enjoyed with a modecam of modesty. Either they are a generous gift from God, a benevolent, unexpected respite to distract from all the other woes and worries - OR - they are a sign of the end of days. Tough one.

I've regressed from my earlier statement about staying home on Thanksgiving to wear comfy pants and eat pie. Having family and friends in the house on holidays is part of the whole thing. Somebody talk me off that ledge, please!

At what point do you call it quits and realize that no amount of cleaning will ever render your house clean? I believe I'm nearing the finish line and I just want to know so I can do a little 'woot woot' dance.

Saw a little fuzzy puppy this morning. I want one! I can talk myself down from that one, but thanks for offering.

Totally plan on writing a book. Any second now. As soon as I can collect three or four thoughts that go together and make sense. Might not be any second now.

Turns out CSPAN in high def is just as borning as CSPAN on the regular channel. In case you were wondering.

Come On, Get Happy!

2009-11-05T10:23:00.000-08:00

I can't think of a single thing to write about. Lucky for you, that means we're having 'random day' again!

I tried telling my husband yesterday how much I love him and he didn't get it and made a joke. If you care for him at all, I'd suggest you warn him to have a food taster for the next few days. I love him, but I am part Sicilian.

My children did presentations in school today, one dressed as P.T. Barnum and the other as Barbaro (the famous racehorse). It was delish. I wish my mom could have gone to some of my in-school activities, but I'm even happier that I can do it now for my babies.

That reminds me that my father is a total nerd for missing out on all of my growing up, and he's a double nerd for missing out on all my kids' growing up. Nerd.

Speaking of which, I found out that my oldest daughter is considered a 'nerd' in school. When I was growing up, she would have fallen entirely into the 'popular' category with her green eyes and slender figure and perfect white teeth in a row. I've said many times I probably would not have been friends with her in school. Turns out, it's not because she would have been popular, but because she would have been a nerd! Go figure.

On the subject of crazy, I have this: Glenn Beck is isolation-cell-worthy crazy. He should be quarantined. Or at the very least his mouth should be.

Before you go there: I of course recognize his right to free speech. I therefore further recognize my right to speak my mind about how completely absurd his speech is. It's ridiculous. It's "My shoe has an ear and he'll have pie before the bus comes!"-type crazy. Crazy.

Am I wrong to think that Bob Marley is seasonally inappropriate for office background music now? Somebody needs to cue the DJ.

If I've learned one thing as an adult so far its that all the people I thought were way smarter than me may not be, and alot of the people I devalued may be way smarter than I gave them credit for.

That said, I'm still terribly impatient with people who are not as smart as me. If I've been impatient with you, please disregard that remark.

Forgiveness is a talent learned by example. You first.

I've become one of those people who obsessively puts on hand creams and lotions. Finally, Estee Lauder is going to get her money's worth after all the free samples I've taken from her counters and gift bags over the years. I've been feeling guilty about that.

I wonder if she feels guilty charging me $25 for a stinkin' hand cream.

It is one of life's great mysteries how I always happen to be in a quiet room with my family while all of them crunch, munch, and slurp some food or drink. I've come to believe that it is entirely on purpose and that they're all trying desperately to drive me mad. Joke's on them. I'm already nuts!

I want to see everyone in my family for Thanksgiving and give them all warm hugs and kisses and tell them how much I love them. Alternatively, I'd like to stay home in my snuggly pants and eat pie in front of the t.v. The pants are currently winning that contest.

I've decided that if I keep comparing my figure now with my 17-year-old figure my current figure is always going to suck. I'm therefore going to start comparing myself to a 17-year-old elephant. Amazing how gorgeous I become with just that little shift in thinking!

When other people grow their hair out, does it actually grow OUT, as in across instead of down? Because I think my hair is confused about how this thing is supposed to be going. Figures. I'm terrible with directions.

People who do not understand the concept of reformed healthcare because the government can't successfully run any programs should forego the use or benefit of any federal programs, departments or agencies, including: the legislative, executive or judicial branches of the government and all the services they provide, the military, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the VA, Medicare, Medicaid, the postal service, FEMA, the treasury, the EPA, the FCC, the State Department and so on. They should refuse to read any books kept in libraries that are subsidized by the federal government, withdraw from the use of any federally subsidized highways or bridges, refrain from attending any national parks, and for that matter, keep far and clear of the election process - a federally run initiative. They should reject any federal monies in their schools, especially if the government is holds the schools to any standards as a tie-in to receiving the money. They should blow whistles whenever they see federal workers inspecting packages as people enter federal buildings. They should, in fact, never enter a federal building because, let's face it, the government can't do anything right. The building might collapse while they're in there? And then who'd take care of them? Not us. We don't have healthcare coverage.

If you could only give thanks to one person in your life, who would it be and why? I can't answer that question so I'm hoping you give a good one and then it'll inspire me to find my answer. (Do not pick God. That's cheating.)

Where do you leave your cares when you're told to 'leave your cares behind?' Because I think I've been doing it wrong all these years, which is why my behind is so dang large. But not as large as a 17-year-old elephant!

Which leaves us with "Forget your troubles. Come on get happy. You better chase all your cares away. Shout hallelujah. Come on get happy...." If you're about my age, you'll hum it but may not know all the words. YouTube the video for Judy Garland's version - it's sure to make you smile - as I hope the few moments you spent here did.

Pay Attention, Mensos - Here's the Manual

2009-11-03T10:22:00.000-08:00

I've heard people say that parenting ought to come with a manual. I agree. And since no one else seems to have a good one and Spock is dead and was not aware of the phenomena that is in-class texting, I'm going to lay down some simple rules. If you're a bad parent, pay extra close attention:

Rule Number 1. PAY ATTENTION. Pay attention to your kids. Listen to what they say. If they're annoying you, turn, tell them to wait until you can pay attention - then follow-thru and pay attention. Go back to them after you're done doing the dishes and say, 'OK honey, show me the picture.' If you don't pay attention to your kids, they will certainly not pay attention to you. That's a hard one, but an easy one to understand.

Rule Number 2. YES. You do have to give up a good portion of your own life in order to participate in what's going on with theirs. Yes, you do have to review school work, even if they (or you) don't like it. You have to read the homework, calculate the math, at least flip through the books they're reading. Suck it up. You have to turn off the show you want to watch and talk to them. You have to have their friends over even if you'd like a peaceful evening to yourself. You have to say 'no' to the dinner out with friends so you can be with your kids. Yes. You do.

Rule Number 3. RESPECT IS EARNED. And that street travels in both directions. Your child deserves your respect if he/she is behaving the best they can. And you only deserve respect when you act like a respectable person. Work. Keep a watchful eye over your babies - at every age. Be valuable and value your children. Speak intelligently. Maintain healthy relationships. Read a dang book once in a while. You are the model they follow. Even when they stray at certain points in their development, they will always return to you if you deserve it.

Rule Number 4. LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH. Love is critical, no doubt. Without it, the whole thing collapses. But love does not compensate for inattention, laziness, abdication of responsibility. You can't only love from a distance. The school educates, babysitter picks up, the grandparents watch on weekends, the best friends' mom has the sleepovers. And you go to soccer games and show up for holiday pictures. Gee thanks. That doesn't cut it. You need to be present. Don't leave them behind when you go to the store. Take them with and talk. Don't make them play outside or downstairs all the time. Let them play right where you are, and you play too sometimes. Don't just hand them a prepared meal. Let them make a salad or toast some bread while you work on the main course. These things matter. They are, in essence, the expressions of love that make up the fabric of a life. Rule Number 1 followers take heed - your children's little hearts depend on it.

Rule Number 5. HARD WORK MATTERS. Of course its easier to do the laundry yourself - or better yet - have hired help. But what is your child learning to help themselves do laundry? Bust your butt a little. Drag them down to the laundry room and teach them how to do it. Then follow them on several trips to do the same thing until you feel they've got it right. And then, this is tricky, insist they do it on some regular basis. Get up off the couch. If you're following Rule Number 1 this gets easier. Just know that everything you teach your child makes him smarter, more capable, more confident. The more you fail to teach the more likely your child is to fail.

Rule Number 6. BEING WEAK IS OK. There are days when you're really going to flop. That's fine. It doesn't mean you don't have a leg to stand on. It means your children have to see you as human - gasp! So you didn't do the dishes yesterday? That doesn't mean you can't demand they be done today. You weren't on time for pickup Monday? Tell them you're sorry you were late. Then be on time Tuesday. When you're sick, let your kids see you be sick and teach them how to show kindness and care for you. Their expressions of compassion will enlighten you both.

Rule Number 7. PANIC OFTEN. I think the whole calm parenting thing is a crock of doodle. For crissakes - you've got a little life in your hands! That's a miracle - magic the likes of which we cannot completely understand. Is there anything in your entire life that you'll ever have that'll be more important? (My husband might quibble about the relative value of his iphone and his plasma screen t.v. but for those of us still rational to think clearly, the question stands.) Of course you should worry where they are after school! You should worry that they're sleeping o.k. - and make damn sure of it! You should freak out if they're not taking school seriously and find out why right away! You should have your heart in your throat if you think they've been hurt! That is your baby, you idiot! See Rule Number 1.

Rule Number 8. DON'T ACT LIKE YOU'RE PANICKING. Rule Number 7 does not give you carte blanche to act like a raving lunatic. It just means you can't take the whole thing with a glass of chardonnay and a long 'welllll' approach. You need to get heated and excited and thrilled and furious and protective. Love is an ACTION word. Your child needs to know that you are having genuine and meaningful reactions to the things that happen in their lives. This is their measurement of whether or not you are paying attention. See Rule Number 1.

Rule Number 9. BE GOOD. We tell children all the time to 'be good'. But are we? Are we kind to others, faithful, fair-minded, unbiased and compassionate? Don't just drop your kids off at school and assume that everybody in the building was brought forward to this moment in time to educate your child. Walk in the darn building and find out. Talk to teachers and volunteer when you can. Don't just use the swings at the park and then go home, leaving behind your trash and your spent energies. Show up on clean-up day. Talk to the kinds whose parents aren't there and show them a little smile or share a laugh. These are children in your community and they need you, along with all the other adults in their lives to notice them. (Pesky Rule Number 1.) If you care about your church or your politics or your environment, participate and take your kids with you to participate. They will do good, be good when they follow your example.

Rule Number 10. LOVE IS EVERYTHING. Despite the tone of Rule Number 4, it is to be understood that love is all we live for, as children, as parents, as humans. Love is expressed in a million different ways, as above, and more. For me, love spills out and covers everything. It touches and holds and smiles. Love is warm and sometimes fierce and fiery. Love is whispery and gentle and delicate. My love for my children is constant and permeates all of me, every move, every action. It is in my voice, even when I am angry, and it is in my food and my furnishings. My children may walk away from their childhoods knowing full well that as crazy as I am, I have loved them as completely and thorougly as a body could be loved. And that truly is everything.

The 10 items above are the rules that came naturally to me as I started out on this little adventure. I've other, less critical bits of advice in my head like:

- don't let them put captain crunch in their noses (don't judge me!)

- if you believe in Christmas, a real Christmas tree is environmentally irresponsible but entirely necessary to a successful childhood

- walking the kids to school is the right thing to do, but if you're too lazy, it's better to drive with them than let them walk alone

- after your first child has had three doctor visits about coughs you needn't ever call a doctor again about a cough; they always say the same thing

- dress your kids like you care how they look; appearances matter, whether we like it or not. also your kid looking like he just dropped his rumpled butt out of bed does not help him with the ladies, either

- candy, in moderation, is good for all of us; candy, in exaggeration, makes your kid a lunatic and prevents me from inviting her over after school. your call.

- if you reprimand my kid in front of me and you're right, we're all good; if you reprimand my kid in front of me and you're wrong, apologize or prepare to be decimated.

- children should be respectful of all adults, but obey only the ones they trust. this is an important one.

- children are a joy and should be treated as such, unless they are being annoying, in which case they should be called on it so they know how to identify annoyingness in the future - its a public service

- kisses, hugs and snuggling are always o.k. except when mommy has cramps. this is especially true when your son weighs over a hundred pounds but still likes to jump in your lap.

- potty training is the devil's work. hire a professional.

- gardening with children inevitably leads to lots of mud, mangled flowers and a frightening array of toys in your garden. it's great. you should try it.

- PB&J on a suede couch is a bad idea. just trust me on this one.

- cats prefer not to be petted when the petter has superglue on his or her tiny little hands.

-capes are dangerous when worn over the face. in case this wasn't obvious. as it wasn't in my household. (again with the judging?)

- if you have children in your life, you are blessed by God and should be thankful every day. maybe that should be rule number 1.

It Is True

2009-10-26T09:26:00.001-07:00

It is true that in death, there is life and renewal.

My cousin, Michael, is gone. But in the week that he lingered, during which those of us still living said our good-byes, each in our own way, a little seed was planted.

A woman, so often embittered by her conflicted relationship with her daughter-in-law, found common space to occupy, as both women sorrowed and suffered together. They had both lost a love.

A daughter of sorts became a daughter without question as she came forth to trade doubt for adoration, dismissal for devotion. When there is time to grieve, the time for distance expires.

A sister brought to learn the tapestry of a life woven despite her absence recognized threads bearing the scent and color of her early days. So, too, she was connected.

A family disregarded wandered instinctively toward its members, reaching out to touch and hold and share, finding that no matter the differences, the sameness matters more.

Michael, despite his unique, awkward and charmless life, left behind a treasure of grace and gentility which if nurtured and tended may bloom long after these days of pain and grey. In fact, his departure ushers in the bright light of a new day filled with possibilities and potential. There is life. There is hope.

So then, it is true.

Random is as Random Does

2009-10-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

A few random thoughts of the less vitriolic kind than previously expressed:

When everyone else in my generation hears the word 'ditty' do they start instantly humming "A little ditty. About Jack and Diaaaaane. Two American kids growin' up. In the heartland."?

If I wasn't fat when I was younger, because I see pictures and can objectively say now that there's no way I was fat then even though I thought I was fat, then am I actually fat now or am I just as thin and think I'm fat like I did before? (Clearly, yes, I am fat now, but it's fun to fantasize!)

Why do you have to ask for water at nice restaurants? I get it at McDonald's. But at a $30-an-entree gig? No. If the point is to not waste, give me a small glass of water and buzz off. I hate having to ask for water.

Along those lines, does everyone who goes into a restaurant critique everything from the pattern on the rug to the flavor of butter in the dessert? Or is it just me? (Is this blogging thing supposed to be interactive?)

Ever notice how you never notice a certain kind of car until you know someone who has that car and then every car that's even remotely like that car catches your eye? That does happen to other people, right?

Guys should not wear glossy lip balms, straight or not.

Am I the only one contemplating cashing in all my chips (worth approximately dog drool) and moving to some po-dunk town in a rural community to just S L O W D O W N? I probably couldn't stand it for more than a month, but I wonder how good that month'd be.

Are pocket-coin jangly people aware that they are incredibly annoying? Gaaaahd.

Our company colors are blue and white. Our office is decorated in 80s pine green and fancy-lady-pants' beige. I'm going to go ahead and own the fact that I'm the only one who finds this annoying. But it is and others should be annoyed.

I want to suggest that my kids' school add 'musical productions' to their music-instruction program. I was playing Hangman with a group of kids and none of them had heard of 'Oklahoma!' or 'West Side Story' although one of them wanted to know if Zac Efron was in that last one. You don't know 'surrey with the fringe on top'? Is it just me? I should probably stop asking that question.

I love apple-baked things, don't you? Mmmmmm.

When my mom says, "whippersnaappers" is she putting me on? Or is she serious?

At what point do I have to stop proving to people that I am -blank- enough? Smart enough? Cuban enough? Mom-ish enough? I'm so tired of being tested on that crap. I get some answers wrong, I don't know every Cuban saying and sometimes I'm a terrible mom. Satisfied?

I can never decide when its too late in the season to stop wearing socks. I think it's too late now, but I couldn't find any socks to wear. Behind on laundry. See terrible mom reference above.

That guy David Schuester on MSNBC is having a good laugh at all our expenses given that he hasn't been laughed off the airwaves for using the 'mock journalist voice' as his everyday voice. Nobody really talks like that, or jutts out his chin and sucks in his lips like that. It's a put-on and I'm ON TO YOU David Schuester!

My kids are on this track right now where they ask me 'what's the -blank- you ever -blank?' So, things like 'the worst day you ever had?' or 'the best joke you ever heard?' I've found these questions near-impossible to answer. I wonder why I don't know my absolutes.

Ever since Tony got a ticket for turning before coming to a complete stop my kids yell 'ROLLING STOP!' every time I come to a stop sign. Makes me want to jump out of the car and scream 'ROLLING (something else)!!' Again, just me?

Also, the 'punch buggy' thing bugs me because I just don't have the hand-eye-mouth coordination necessary to compete effectively. Survival of the fittest is totally fixed against me.

I don't mind the Christmas decos in the stores this year -even though I think they started in June. The colors are festive, makes the stores look alive - unlike Halloween decos which are, I'm sorry, yicky. Seeing the stores look so upbeat makes me think 'somebody must be happy'. Someone else being happy makes me happy. And that makes me happy.

BTW, look at the carpet in nice restaurants and tell me they don't all use Christmas colors in their patterns. They do! They do it to make you happy! It's an industry-wide practice. (So does this work on non-Christians? Put that on your tree and light it!) And now that you're thinking about that, you'll check the carpets all the time and I won't seem like such a nut when I do it. Hah!

I thought about ending on that silly little item and then this occurred to me: 'If that gal doesn't stop laughing I'm going to stab her.'

It is me talking, after all.

Michael, I Hope

2009-10-19T09:09:00.000-07:00

My cousin, Michael, is dying. It's not a huge surprise. He's had a series of ailments over the past several years, been in and out of hospitals, and has been so ravaged that he has become virtually unrecognizable. Illness, however, is really the least of his hurt. Over the course of his adult life, Mike has been on-again, off-again estranged from his parents, at last call his brother and sister have no contact with him at all, and most of us in the wider family circle haven't seen him for ten years or more. His wife is odd with him, at best. They never had children. He did help his wife raise her nieces after a terrible accident left the girls orphaned. The girls don't speak to him now. Michael, as you may have gathered, is alone. He has always been. He is the kind of person who could be in a crowd of thousands and still be alone. A single drop of water, lost in the sea.
Michael is the oldest of my cousins. He was a beautiful baby with a perfect round head, smooth, pale skin, a swoop of brown hair across his forehead and clear, sweet eyes. In a different time, perhaps, he would have been a golden child, showered with love, affection, pride, joy and the delight of all the adults in his life. The baby pictures I've seen of Mike make him look like the kind of child who's pictures evoke automatic 'awwwwws' - they certainly do in me. And in the very earliest of these pictures, he smiles.

Later, smile-less photo after smile-less photo serves to remind those of us who were there that Michael was not the adored child he should have been, and those soft, sweet eyes have been hardened and unhappy for most of his days. I will not pass judgement on my aunt or my uncle, whose choices would not be my choices, but both of whom I believe did the best they could. I will say, however, that their choices did not land well with Michael and he suffered greatly and quite obviously when we were all children.
By the time I was a young girl, Michael had developed an incapacity for looking people in the eye. He always shuffled his feet and wore an almost physical fret and stutter. He spoke in a soft monotone followed by bursts of nervous laughter attached to some joke played on a loop in his own mind. Mostly, though, he spent his life retreating into himself and never delivering himself into any conversation or any relationship. He was clumsy, prone to becoming red-in-the-face, and slight - the very definition of socially awkward.
When Mike got married, there was a near-audible sigh of relief across the familial countenance. No one particularly liked the woman he was marrying, but the act of getting married was so uncharacteristically normal that everyone hoped it was the start of some new chapter in his life. But just like the hope that existed from the very time he was born, this path didn't take Michael where he might have gone - where we might have hoped.
Instead, his marriage was marked by culture clash, depression, isolation, despondence, anger and disconnect. His wife has been alternately cold and overly possessive. Over the years, Mike has done his part to fill his life with darkness and murk. He has had terrible bouts of temper, both the warranted and the unbeckoned. He has lurched between drinking and food binges that were worn painfully, uncomfortably, but no less so than anything else. And most hard for his parents to watch, he's neglected his health -and then his deteriorating health - to this point of no return. If I had to draw a picture, I'd say Mike is the living definition of the word 'wince'.
For this, and many other reasons, I stopped long ago having any communication with him. Mostly having it and not having it have resulted in virtually the same level of closeness - none.
That said, I have longed more times than I can count, to call Mike and tell him that I love him. I love him for carrying all his burdens so awkardly and still trying to stand - there is great valor in that. I love him for being in so much pain when we were little and surviving for as long as he did - there is a lesson to be learned. I love him because he is owed something that he has never received and he hasn't known how to collect... or how to let go. I think we all do that to some degree.
I love my cousin Mike because he is my family. He is one of the men - whether he knows it or not - who this fatherless young girl looked up to as a child. And when she did, she saw a boy whose eyes were a faultless, flawless blue with a world of promise in them. Today, in her mind's eye, they remain the same. And in her dreams - in my dreams - Michael will not die but be renewed. He will shake away this clouded world and emerge a new man, strong, healthy, tall and full of life. He will hold on his shoulders where pain once rested the hopes and good wishes of those who believe in him. He will not be 'maybe' he will just 'be'. And as such, his promise will be fulfilled and his eyes will shine with the love and joy of a good life. So, Michael, I hope.

Let It Snowe Let It Snowe Let It Snowe

2009-10-13T12:23:00.001-07:00

Fresh and refreshing, the first snow of the season is always greeted with some grumbles in Chicago, but also with great wonder at what natural beauty the sky can render. So, too, Olympia Snowe brings a refreshing, if ire-inducing to some, newness to the political season. It has been widely reported today that Senator Snowe will vote to approve the Senate Finance Committee's bill on health care reform. And while the great majority of politicians only mimic the folkloric right of a woman to change her mind, Snowe has the rare distinction of actually being a woman, and so retained the right to enter a different vote if circumstances change.It is, of course, not entirely shocking that she is willing to vote with the committee. Most of the summer was spent covering Snowe and her looming decision on this subject. The conventional wisdom had it that she'd be the only Republican to vote affirmatively. The hair-sprayed, blue-suited, talking manikins on cable news spent a good long time discussing it, the possibility of it, the likelihood of it and the consequences if she did or didn't vote as they had prescribed. Now that she's made a decision, there's something new to be reported upon and discussed.If she does, indeed vote to approve the bill, it will be a huge step in a gigantically new direction for the United States. We could debate endlessly about whether or not this bill is the right bill. I'm not interested in that conversation any longer. What I am interested in is making a decision and moving forward. What's more, if Snowe's decision causes others to pause and re-evaluate their motives then she serves an even more valuable role in the process than simply offering a vote. She'll serve to lead the way, just as others in moments of historical import have done.Others like John Hancock. I recently had a conversation with my children about one of the world's most famous signatures, explaining the term "Give me your John Hancock." I pulled up a copy of the Declaration to show them how Hancock fearlessly wrote his name in big bold letters across the document that gave us some of that freedom we so petulantly bicker over today. I imagine his signature meant 'I don't care what others think. I believe in this. And I am not afraid to do what I believe is right.' In so doing, Hancock attributed his brave signature to these fine words which open the Declaration of Independence: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.In the context of the discussion on health care reform, I wonder if anyone other than Olympia Snowe has thought about the less severe, but no less necessary, need for a dissolution of political bands to assume a station that the laws of nature and God entitle them to assume - a station with fair and accessible healthcare, a station where the compassion of one's fellow citizen is not viewed as encroachment on liberty but rather as birthright and certainty. I applaud Olympia Snowe for dispensing with the irrelevant political ties to which she could have felt obligated in order to draw a stronger bond between herself and her constituents. She places her convictions above bias, declaring as cause for her separation from her party "when history calls, history calls".I'll have another conversation with my children tonight, about the importance of acting on your beliefs. I shall remind them never to be quiet signers. I will impolore them to sign boldly, stand firmly, and declare themselves with the strength of their beliefs behind them. And I'll make sure to tell them that Senator Olympia Snowe is doing just that.

Trust Me, Avert Your Eyes

2009-10-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

A look inside my head, reveals a short stream of thoughts so far today. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

People make me so mad.

At least today they do.

Who am I kidding?

People make me mad all the time.

I'm mad, mad, mad.

Crabby, crabby, crabby.

Grumpy.

Snippy.

Grouchy.

I hope that damn phone doesn't ring.

BRRRRING

Oh great.

Never mind, someone I like.

Done. That was nice.

Oh great.

Now I have to work.

Ugh.

Totally behind schedule.

I'm so damn ugly today.

Blech.

I'm hungry but I don't want to eat.

Why shouldn't I eat, again?

Because I'm fat, obviously!

Yeesh.

.........

Oh My Lord That Gal Was a Total B*&$#

Not me.

I'm very reasonable.

Boooorrrriiiinnnggg. This desk is so boooorrriiinnnggg.

Ooooh. That's not a good number.

Maybe I'll ask him.

Never mind.

He annoys.

I'm so damn crabby!

Time for chocolate.

I don't want M&Ms.

It's so cold in here.

I want to go home and go meemees in my snuggly cama!

Frickin bedroom at home is a mess.

Is that rabid phone ringing again??

Gawd.

Even blogging sucks today.

Potpurri of Emotions

2009-10-07T08:03:00.001-07:00

Early this morning, on my way into the kitchen to start breakfast, I found a series of post-its tucked behind a vase. These were notes written by the same author who penned (really markered) yesterday’s inspirational message. Eagerly, I set out to devour them - smiling before I started - expecting nothing but joy. Here’s what the notes say, verbatim, in what I think is the right order:

Hi, my name is Sara. You may know me, but may not. So if you do please listen and the others should listen too. I am here to talk about gang people. You shouldn’t turn into them. I am only nine but you don’t know what many nine or ten year olds can do. I feel like I can change things when it comes up to gangs. I will always be people’s friends. Unless it is someone I hate. Then, some day we might be friends. It seems that people who seem popular that really aren’t want to be, but they just can’t. They try to but all that happens is they have to dress pretty and pretty much act all cool until they think you are. And popular people seem like they don’t have to do any home work. They think they will pass the third or the fourth grade. But, most likely not gonna happen. I am Sara. Thank you.

Not exactly Yates, I know. But for some reason this series of notes didn’t elicit a simple, or even singular, response. Instead I was flooded with a potpourri of emotions. I was overcome first with an oversized apple of pride. She is empowered and confident! That’s good. Then, the moment became bittersweet. She is strong, yes. But she longs to be accepted and feels left out. This made me sad, melon-choly is it? (I thought about blue-berries, but that was more predictable, no?) I wondered if I’d been there all the times she wanted to talk with someone who would show compassion instead of impatience, or interest instead of distraction. As I contemplated my anger inward, a fire-red fruit, I imagined my vengeance against those who had hurt my baby.

All the while, I held those soft, crumpled notes in my hands, running my fingers across the letters and feeling, in my own mind, the tender heartbeat of my baby against her chest as she wrote the words, smelling the perfume of her sweet, sweet soul. The more I held onto those notes the more wistful I became. How I longed to go back to myself at that age and tell myself I was doing everything right, because some day I was going to have a daughter as magical as this one.

And as I stood in the kitchen with those remnants of a day gone by in my hands, a new day spread across the room and washed slowly over me, temporarily bleaching the words from the page until it seemed I was holding nothing at all. In truth, I was – I am – holding every single bit of it tightly and closely. Through the swirl and sway of emotions one stepped through and took command of the room, blinding me, overwhelming me.

Love.

Love, love, love. In every single possible way, I love this child with all my might. And the full, rich, satiating scent of this love stays with me all the days I endure.

In Her Own Words

2009-10-05T07:15:00.000-07:00

I have this posted on my office wall; a little note from the lovely Miss Sara, left behind after a day of doodling at Mommy's desk. It fills me up every time I look at it. Hope it gives you a little something too.

Dear Mommy

You Make My Heart Beat.

I'd Never Be Here

If You

Were Not Married

With Daddy.

I'd Rather Be Here

Than Not Being Here

I'd Hug You

When I See You

And Jumping Up And Down

I Go!

The Color of Gun Control

2009-10-02T09:43:00.000-07:00

So we're watching the news the other night, my honey and I, and he flipped to Fox News as he often does during his tour of the evening news. A real comedian, my husband. I like to think of Fox News as the Jerry Springer Show of cable news, whereas your 360 with Anderson Cooper is more your early-Phil Donohue. (Later he became a total warm glass of milk, but early Phil was a rich, chocolaty, berry-filled cab. Look it up.) We usually end up with Jon Stewart, who is the modern-day Walter Cronkite. It is what it is. Stewart takes the news about as seriously as he should, given the content, but like Cronkite he actually informs his audience with depth, thought, and a perverse sense of respect for the truth.
Anyway, I ramble and trail.

We were watching Fox News when they started blaring some infomercial for the NRA... I mean a 'news story' about gun control laws being revisited by the U.S. Supreme Court. Daley's ban on hand guns in Chicago was mentioned and as the reporter droned on indignantly about the loss of civil liberties, a video played of lawful, red-blooded Americans doing fun things with guns. In the background, boot-wearing dads helped their blonde little sons aim at cans in the backyard, they walked with their freeze-dried-haired wives through gun shows, and stood up against their faded red trucks holding rifles and spitting tobacco as they lamented the attack on their gun-toting ways. Very apple pie-ish.

As I'm watching all this I'm thinking the same thing I always think: "They're just so rural. They're not bad people. They don't understand city concerns about guns because they live in rural places where guns are as normal and doorknobs." I'm nothing if not devoted to seeing the other guy's point of view. It usually doesn't change my mind about a damn thing, but I'm willing to see his point.

But then Tony turned to me and said, "Can you imagine what a reversal you'd see from these people if those pictures were all of black men with their little black boys aiming guns at cans? Or Mexican men with their wives at gun shows? The whole conversation would be turned on its ear. It'd become 'They're taking over our country, threatening our womenfolk and our boys with guns everywhere!'"

I snickered back, "You're right! That would change the conversation, wouldn't it?"

And he said, "You want to effect gun control in this country? Have Acorn start registering poor, uneducated blacks and Hispanics for gun licenses. That'd do it."

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought he was right! The image we all have of people defending their gun rights is a Charleton Heston type, wearing flannel and sporting bad hair or a worse trucker cap. We don't think of a young black man in jeans and a Sean John tshirt. We certainly don't picture Julio and his son Paco toting guns through the mall on the weekends.

Maybe what it comes down to is that we figure Trey and Jorge aren't going to read the constitution. Because - have you read it? The 2nd Amendment states that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Militia. Context schmontext, right? The origins of this amendment may be in dispute by some, and the current interpretation even moreso. But I'm sure we can agree that the right to bear arms was not intended to preempt the right of school-age children to travel to and from school without being in fear for their lives.

That's what's happening in Chicago, though, and our pathetic laws and even more pathetic enforcement devices are complicit in the murders of our children. Funny, though, that most of the children we are killing don't look like the kids in the gun rights videos. They're not blonde or freckled. They are black. They are poor and black and live in the city. And their mothers weep inconsolably, as would I if I lost my son. And their younger siblings grow up in fear, as would mine, if their big sister were shot down in the street near our home. Their communities suffer the loss of them, as would mine if my child were not able to grow up, work and re-invest in my neighborhood.
Its almost as if minority children are under attack by a persistent and dangerous threat that the army and the police cannot seem to control. Its a good thing, then, that we have rights under the 2nd amendment to protect our families - set up a well-regulated militia, if needed - and that right cannot be infringed. Now, all we have to do is make a video.

On Picking Up Chicks

2009-09-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

Sam: 'Hey mommy, guess what I heard on the radio today.'

Me: 'What's that Sam?'

Sam: 'Like six different ways to pick up chicks!'

Me: 'Really?'

Sam: 'Yeah. Like at the supermarket - that's one place.'

Me: 'Oh yeah?' Totally not listening.

Sam: 'Yeah. And at a tupperware party!'

Me: 'Tupperware?' Paying some attention now.

Sam: 'Yeah. Tupperware parties are hot places to find chicks.'

Me: 'Hmmm. Never thought of that. You want cream cheese on this?'

Sam: 'Yeah. And you can even pick up chicks in - get this - its so funny - Church!!'

Me: 'Sam, you are not picking up chicks in church. Tie your shoe.'

Sam: 'Oh yes I am. It was on the radio!'

Me: 'Sam, you are not going to be picking up chicks anywhere. Tie your shoe.'

Sam: 'I am. I am going to pick up hot babes.'

Me: 'Sam, what are you going to pick them up for?' Looking directly at him now.

Sam: Long pause. 'I don't know,' slowly. 'They didn't say. What do hot chicks do?'

Me: 'Sam. Tie your shoe.'

Sam: 'OK. By the way, what is tupperware?'

Silence As Virtue?

2009-09-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

My mom always said that to me when I was little. "Silence, baby," she would say, "is a virtue." That was my cue to pack up my noise and ship it elsewhere. In hindsight, I could have answered with 'patience is a virtue', but that likely would have resulted in collecting a righteous return on my bottom so it's probably better I just clammed up.

When I was very small I didn't even know what a 'verchoo' was. I had a faint idea that it had something to do with the Mary statue in church, but that theory was disproven when I learned to spell. Turned out, she was not the 'verchoon mother' I once thought she was. When I realized my mistake, I didn't want to publicize the gap in my knowledge by asking what a virtue was, especially since I'd, many times, nodded in agreement when I was told about this virtue or that. So onward I went, stoicly carrying a desire to have these oft-talked-about virtues even though I didn't know what they were. (This was oddly similar to my desire, later in life, to have 'vander-built' jeans, even though I didn't know why it mattered who built them.)

I was in a fourth grade class when I finally learned what a virtue was, from a nun who clearly hadn't acquired the 'patience' one. She gave a lecture on the seven virtues: chastity, temperence, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. Finally satisfied! I knew what a virtue was. In essence, this was a fancy word with many meanings that could be expressed in its simplest form as 'good'. Patience is good, kindness is good, etc. etc. etc. Grown ups, I said to myself not for the first or last time, make things so complicated. I didn't think more about it for a very long time.

In high school, the lecture on virtues was repeated, this time by a most unassuming, soft-spoken nun who I've come to believe had acquired all of the Christian virtues. Her name was Sister Humiliata, naturally. She talked about how the process of acquiring virtues was not to be viewed as a triumph of the individual but as a gift of spirit to others. Very interesting. Unfortunately, I was sixteen and couldn't dwell on the importance of that message for too long. My hair required much more devotion than my spirit.

The lesson lingered though and recently the concept of virtue has come back to me, along with my mother's wry take on the most important of these to her - silence. I've mulled the healthcare debate, the economic crisis, the war strategies - everything - with this idea of the virtues.

And what I've come to is this: there are many different collections of virtues based on religion, culture and philosphies. They are all worthy of some study. But more importantly, they are all worthy of action. The virtues, the ones that work best for each of us, should serve as the standards by which we approach the big problems facing our country and our world.

In my case, I imagine the good that would come from a little 'Patience' in foreign relations. Add some 'Kindness' to that. Many civilizations believe 'Mercy' to be a virtue. Certainly in health care it must be so. And blessed be the Romans who added 'Humor' to the list. You couldn't watch one session of congressional debate without it. Learn from our Hindu friends that 'Reverence for Earth' is most definitely a virtue.

And what of silence? Is it a virtue? You could argue that it is not. You could hold that silence - in the face of deafening world hunger, poverty, suffering -is the cruelest of all the sins. Silence sent us to war. Silence can mean pain when what is called for is a loud cry. I wouldn't argue against that. But then, silence also offers something else - opportunity. When you stop speaking, you can listen. When you turn down the noise, you can think. Silence offers respite, serenity. And from that place you can wonder more honestly, perhaps more innocently. See a people filled with respect, honesty, wisdom - all virtues - and work toward a world community centered on justice and peace. Serve with honor, speak with restraint and work diligently. Offer a humble soul. Silence is a virtue, I agree. And in my quiet, this is the world I see.

Will It Ever End?

2009-09-28T09:08:00.001-07:00

Remember when I said I wanted the seasons to realign correctly so I could get on with my 'fall' activities? I changed my mind. It's cold. I didn't wear socks today. And it's Monday. An ode follows, reminding me why I never became a poet.

The clouds rumble, tumble, plump.

A grey grey day all around all around.

A dull ache at the temple

looms but never lands.

Sidewalk.

Sweater.

Sipping.

Not fresh but dank.

Not crisp but cold.

Jeans.

Brown.

Must. Close. Eyes.

A snuggle-good book waits, waits, waits.

A mug yearns to be cradled importantly.

Feeling hollow.

Feeling too full.

The delicious density of an abbreviated slumber

rests on the lashes.

Flourescent lights.

A copier hums.

The day

Today

Monday

Will It Ever End?

I close my eyes and wait.

Sometimes Its Simple

2009-09-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law is beautiful, isn't she? Yes. She is. Simple as that.

A New Take On Seasonal Depression

2009-09-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

My shoes are depressed. It's September. Its cloudy. School has started. Evenings are abbreviated and mornings are darker. It should be fall. But the day-to-day temperatures, like talk-show hosts on AM radio, refuse to agree with the prevailing logic. It should be fall, but it feels like summer. And I need someone to do something about it.

I need my seasons to stay in proper working order. This whole blending of seasons and cross-wind crap is not working for me. I need all four seasons, distinct, beautiful, and finite. Its why, despite - and over the loud objections of - my caribbean genetics, I live in Chicago. Four seasons. This year, however, the balm in the air will not cooperate. Late to arrive at the party, and late to leave, the summer air is wreaking havoc with my clock. My whole wardrobe selection process is suffering from dyslexia. I can't wear turquoise during this part of the year because, even though 81 degrees calls for the turquoise linen capris, September is a 'brown' month. Turquoise is August. But all my brown clothes are too warm for 81 degrees. Health care shmealth care, I can't get dressed for Pete's sake!

My meal-time choices are equally distressed. I'd like to start the grill, but not for hot dogs and corn-on-the-cob. No. It should be time for thick burgers or steaks. September is a hearty-meal-on-the-grill month, not a picnic-food month.

So, despite the pleasure with which my skin soaks in the delicious warm humid air, I have a very serious problem: I'm naked and I'm hungry. And it gets worse from there.

Not only do I have my clothes seasonally sorted and my menus mentally cataloged for seasonal rotation of meats, fruits and veggies, but I have my house decor boxed for the seasons and holidays (halloween/thanksgiving for fall, christmas for winter, easter for spring, and 4th of july for summer). Each of these categories requires approximately three months to run its course. After that, I'm all out. I need to shift to the next season or I start maniacally repeating stuff in random order. Watermelon and winter squash for dinner! AAAAAH. I can't do it!

What's more? It's disrupting the harmony among inatimates inside my home. You know that fall wreath is just whimpering away in that storage box, waiting for her turn to be pulled out, dusted off and given the place of honor on our front door. And that pink and green number I have out there now is so smug - practically purring with pleasure as she reigns over the front landscape. She knows she's getting extra time and she's loving every minute of it. Its not fair, I tell you. And I dread what will happen when those two cross paths in the transfer from storage to placement. It's not going to be pretty.

Now, I'm willing to negotiate. I'm not advocating for sleet and hail. Just a little weather shift in the seasonally appropriate direction. Make it low 70s during the day and low 60s at night. I'm fine with that. I can wear jeans, serve pot roast, have orange flowers in the dining room and it all works. As it stands, I'm fretting in front of my closet each morning with the brown shoe-boots pining away on a too-high-to-reach-for-every-day shelf, waiting to be called to work. They're depressed, I can tell. But the high today is going to be 78 and I'm wearing open-toes. Maybe next week.

I live in my promise

2009-09-11T08:32:00.001-07:00

On September 11th, 2001, when all the world was burning down around me - or so it seemed - I was stunned into silence. Anyone who knows me knows how meaningful that is.

On September 12th, 2001, when all the world was stunned into silence around me - or I couldn't hear them - I was numbed to the point of inaction. Again, not my norm.

On September 13th, 2001, when all the world was grappling with what to do next - really, it was - I walked into my new home for the first time.

My husband was working from home. He wandered aimlessly from office to kitchen to nursery, where little ones breathed in and out, blissfully unaware that the world had been forever changed.

After a while, he returned to his desk and continued to numb his day away. As I watched, he began mindlessly flipping through neighobrhood listings, something real estate agents do all the time, just to waste time but still look busy and important. The phones were not ringing and, for once, we were thankful.

I had spent nearly the entire 'nap time' washing dishes, wiping, drying and then rewashing because of some invented flaw in the original cycle. Usually I tried to rest when the babies rested, but on that day, and for many days after, resting when so many others were restless with terror and tears seemed awful and unfeeling. I couldn't rest, so I just washed dishes.

As the babies were waking, my husband came to me with false enthusiasm, brimming with it rather garishly given the circumstances, and insisted we go see a house. He'd come across an oddball listing nearby and decided we needed to see it right away. We'd talked a little bit about buying a house after the twins were born, but we'd settled into a routine, albeit a chaotic one, and the issue had been back-burnered. Now, all of a sudden, it was the most important thing on my husband's agenda. He persisted. And I was too beaten down to refuse.

So we spent some time packing up the kids (when you have twins, age 1 and a 'big girl' age 3, getting to the front door requires packing) and made our way to the property just a few blocks away.

I think, my husband's initial idea was just to get out, to revive the family, wake us up and give us some sense of purpose, even if only for a few hours. But stepping out onto the sidewalk, being in the dead air of those silent days following the burning of our arrogance, was no comfort. Speaking, to fill the air with noise and nonsense, seemed irreverent. So we walked in silence.

When we got to the front of the house, we all looked up, as if called to the roof's peak by some herald, placed there to await our arrival. I won't blather on about the creepiness of the upside down cross that trims the front of the house, ending in the crux of the roof. But it was creepy. Years later, when we had the roof and trim re-done on the house, the 'capper' asked us if we wanted it removed. We both looked at each other and shook our heads 'no'. It belongs to the house, and to us, and to that moment when we first looked up.

We stepped in and breathed in the aura of someone else's home. It was plain, worn, a little odd in places, and old. For some reason, being inside seemed to captivate all of us. The twins - really my little girl, but the boy followed her everywhere - did everything they could to climb the stairs despite each step being about waist-high on their tiny, 13-month-old bodies. Lucy did what all little girls do in huge old houses - she pretended princess and bowed delicately to her imagined prince, before she escaped into a one-sided ballroom dance in the middle of the living room. I hemmed and fussed over the kitchen and Tony went straight to all the mechanicals. It really wasn't much of a house, all whitewashed and creaky.

When I looked out the dining room windows and noticed a faded red patio set and bushes practically encroaching on the spot where I stood inside, I called to my husband.

"Look," I told him, "you could probably make the house workable, but I don't want to be on top of my neighbors like that. I want space. We talked about this. I want a yard."

He smiled at me, a genuine smile. It took us both a second to enjoy it, because we were well into day three of having no ability whatsoever to express happiness.

"Come with me," he said gently. "You don't understand."

And he led me through the dining room, into the kitchen and out the back door.

"That is your yard," he motioned across the expanse I'd just frowned upon. "And so is this," and he swept his arm across the other side. "It's just what you've always wanted. I found it."
And I was overcome. The babies spilled out behind me and went about the business of claiming territory. There were roses and vines and trees and flowering plants and all sorts of pines and firs. This yard, this little secret space on this pained planet, was so full of love and life and beauty. I was overcome again.

Did you ever read 'The Secret Garden'? This was it, but somehow with an air of Gatsby too. It was serene and splendid, but alive and tingling. You could hear the tinkle of glasses from parties past and you could discern, barely, a perfume in the air, as if the remainder of a courtship still lingered among the flowers. You could feel the life in the garden and for the first time in days I - we all - felt alive again.

Needless to say, we were sold. It probably wouldn't have mattered what we had to do, we had to get it. If the garden hadn't done it (and it totally did) the fact that the small finial on the staircase leading up to the bedrooms came off in my hand - ala 'It's a Wonderful Life' - would have completely sealed the deal for me.

We went home awake, talking, jabbering really, because the rush of language that had been pent up for so many days came tripping out of each of us in gush and gab. Even the babies, I'm sure feeding off of our excitement, particpated in filling the walk home with the music of happiness and hope.

While my husband went about the business of completing forms and signing documents, I tended to the spiritual element of the home purchasing process. I closed my eyes, clasped my hands together, and promised. I promised God, of course, more out of practice than anything else, but with an element of urgency usually reserved for medical crises. But more importantly, I promised all those babies who lost their parents two days before, all the parents who lost their babies, all the weepers who posted futile notices and waited in vain, and the sweepers who tended the debris left behind by blameless and suited souls. I promised probably as deeply as I am able.

I promised I would live out loud, for all those whose lives had been muted. I would make that house a place where every day, the love we have for one another would be remembered and acknowledged, and spent generously, in case the day's events halted the next day's chance to do it again. I promised we would open that house to as many as would come, with all we could give, for as long as we could. I promised my babies would grow up in that house and, when they left it, it would be to change the world, even if only in the smallest ways, with their sunshine and shimmer. I promised I would tend that garden to the best of my ability to make sure that its secrets were kept and its magic was kept alive. I promised that if God saw fit to give me that house, that gift would be repayed in every way I could, with every breath I have, until I could pay no more.

Ironically, the day when I can pay no more may be coming sooner than I'd hoped. But for now, for as long as I can, I live in my promise.

Here's why we need a change in healthcare

2009-09-03T15:14:00.000-07:00

We need a change in our healthcare system. That is not a debatable point. Everyone agrees. So let's set that out there from the get - we need a change. Next, let's look at the different components to the existing system so we can figure out what to change. On second thought, scratch that. We can't. There are too many and I'm not that smart.

So instead let's look at the ones I can think of and have something to say about. I'm nothing if not honest. I know this is a BIG topic and there are alot of strong opinions, emotions, and - yes - some facts that come into play. I'm setting out the stuff that matters most to me and hoping it strikes a chord with some. For others, other issues may be of concern.

That's the nice thing about our country. Lots of us. Lots of opinions. All heard. None shouted down. None diminished in importance because of lack of popularity or AM radio time. It's one of the things that distinguishes us from a socialist society.

Here's what I care about:

This is an economic issue. We have to have a healthy, striving and sustainable economy in order to produce everything we need and enjoy - including healthcare. The problem is the U.S. is competing in a global market on an uneven playing field. Our corporations and our workers are carrying undue burdens related to healthcare costs and inefficiencies.

The United States spends twice as much on health care per capita ($7,129) than any other country . . . and spending continues to increase. In 2005, the national health care expenditures totaled $2 trillion. Source: National Center for Health Statistics (Pesky little facts.)

These problems amount to kicking us in the shin with the blade of an ice skate as we try to run in that global rat race.

In 2006, the percentage of Americans without health insurance was 15.8%, or approximately 47 million uninsured people. Source: US Census Bureau. (That's a fact.) That's more than the last registered population of the entire country of Spain. (That's an estimate, since the numbers I saw ranged from 43 to 45 million.) Can you imagine kicking everyone in Spain in the shin every morning as they got up for work? Big job. Very expensive. Bad for the Spaniards. And after a few days, you'd better believe, some of those folks would be less effective at work.

This is a general welfare issue. Swine flu is going to kill how many people this year? Yet my children's school can only afford to bring a nurse in on a part-time basis. (That is a fact.) Nearly a thousand people incubating in a building with scary-movie-type levels of hand touching, sniffle wiping, cough spreading and related germ spreading activities going on all day. Don't you think that if we had a healthcare system that provided reasonable, accessible care more parents might take their children in for preventive care - or immediate care during the early stages of an illness or injury? (That is an open question.)

Instead, because a large majority of the students in my children's school qualify for free or reduced lunch, one can infer that many of those same families do not have healthcare coverage. We infer this because free or reduced lunches are linked to poverty. Poverty is often linked to under- or un-employment. Private healthcare costs would make it highly unlikely that a person who meets the free or reduced lunch poverty requirements would have sufficient income to cover private healthcare costs.

In fact, the primary reason given for lack of health insurance coverage in 2005 was cost (more than 50%), lost job or a change in employment (24%), Medicaid benefits stopped (10%), ineligibility for family insurance coverage due to age or leaving school (8%). Source: National Center for Health Statistics.

Sadly, this doesn't even account for the families that don't (or won't claim to) qualify for assistance. How do I know? My family is one. I am an educated, articulate, professional person, with a job and a mortgage. I have a reasonably clean home (don't check today, but if you call first...). I speak English. Pretty well. I am a natural-born citizen. But my job does not include healthcare coverage and the costs of buying private insurance would render us incapable of owning a home, despite being a two-working-parent household. So we go without. Say what you want to say about Blago but his healthcare program for children has saved our family.

Frankly, I'm shocked it's taken this long. After all, I'm entitled to general welfare in the constitution. In fact, my non-socialist country is supposed to PROMOTE general welfare. To me, that means encourage, support, provide resources for and allow the welfare to flourish. That's why my government provides for education, fire and police protection, a legal system, public libraries, postal service and so forth. My government, through and by the people, provides for my welfare in all of these ways. How is it that my health is not related to my welfare?

Moreover, we've long overlooked the question of morality as it relates to national healthcare. The United States as a world power and leader in the world falls woefully short in this regard. We still, as tarnished as we are, provide a beacon of light for others to follow.

But from 2000 to 2006, overall inflation in the U.S. increased 3.5%, wages increased 3.8%, and health care premiums increased 87%. Source: Kaiser Family Foundation (Statistics/Facts.)

That is unconscionable. The powers-that-be are well aware that as costs increase in such grotesque disproportion to wages, families fall away from the system. The end result is that we fail to protect more and more people from simple things like common illness, injuries and chronic (but treatable) diseases. Horrid.

Further, our stellar system results in our ranking as 43rd in lowest infant mortality rate, down from 12th in 1960 and 21st in 1990. We're getting worse and not better? Given our improvements in education and technology, that's not very American or very moral, is it? It means we're using our know-how and tools, but not to protect even the tiniest of American lives? What kind of example does that set? What does that teach the children who make it past that first year?

Some of the other 42 nations that have a lower infant mortality rate than the US include Hong Kong, Slovenia, and Cuba. Source: CIA Factbook (2008) So, Slovenia, huh? They can teach us a thing or two, I guess. (That is sarcasm.)

What's more? For as many people who come here seeking our oustanding care, there are people who leave the United States not because the healthcare is not good, but because it is inaccessible. A friend from work travels to Colombia every year, leaving her job and husband behind for a month, to take her developmentally disabled daughter to an intensive therapy camp that would be available to her here, but is too expensive for her parents to afford and isn't covered by their plan. It's free in Colombia because the woman holds dual citizenship.

I have another friend whose son is autistic. She's been fighting with her local school district for help covering astronomical (tens of thousands of dollars) costs for a therapy that's helping her son to talk and communicate, because the school can't provide it and won't help her pay for it. If she can't get her son the help he needs, he'll be always dependent on his little brother. Both lives, as well as those of the parents, forever tormented. Is that moral? Is it necessary in the richest country on earth?

My own mother is reduced to living quietly the most modest of lives because she is tied to her employer's disability plan which stipulates that she can't be found doing anything remotely identifiable as 'liesure' because that would mean she wasn't disabled. We've begged her to go on the tiniest vacations with us - even to Wisconsin for a day - but she won't because she's terrified of losing her coverage and having to depend on us to help with her expenses. After all the life she's lived, she deserves better, and I am heartbroken every day that I can't provide it for her. It is immoral to allow her to live out her remaining days in this state, at the hands of a country that she has always loved, served and cared for so diligently. It is immoral because we can do better.

Taking care of our citizenry, however, is not a step toward socialism. Ever heard of Medicare? Seen a VA Hospital? In fact, a revamp of our healthcare policies will be a life-saving step toward reviving the capitalist system, allowing us to shake off the burdens of an overly expensive and ineffective system that does not keep our people in good health and precludes us from greater success in the world. Plus - look what the debate has already done to reinvigorate the democratic process!

As for the woes of the private sector as it contemplates the prospect of competing against the government, puhleeze. The government competes with private sector all the time. You can't have it both ways - either the quality will be awesome which will force the private sector to up its game, or the quality will be lacking and it will give the private sector everything it needs to succeed. There are examples of this everywhere in our every day lives. Have you ever used FedEx instead of the post office? Have you ever gone to Border's instead of the library? Ever seen a security guard at a mall instead of local police officer? Ever gone into a public school instead of hiring a private tutor? Gotten on a bus or train instead of in your private car? The government can provide an alternative and you can choose it or choose something else. That's the definition of friggin capitalism, NOT socialism.

A healthcare system that would have private, corporate and government options and would include competitive prices, a broader marketplace and a wider distribution of services is NOT socialist. We are not going to start wearing fatigues and combat boots if we can go to a local healthcare provider the same as we'd go to our local police station or our local library or our local state rep's office. Stop acting like the President of the United States is in cahoots with some radical underground socialist movement trying to make us all die slow deaths in line for treatment at some dingy clinic where the doctors all have hippie beards and smoke weed while they stroke our chests with feathers. It's ridiculous and beneath us as intelligent people discussing a critical issue in our country.

The fact is (ok, ok, my opinion is) the President and all self-aware and self-preserving policy makers are responding to a desperate need in our country that, when addressed, will lift an anvil off our shoulders and free us to be more competitive, healthier, more globally responsible, moral, capitalist pigs.

Amen and applie pie to that, my friends.

It was the potty training

2009-08-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard my reason for not having more children? It was the potty training. Specifically, it was potty training the twins. They turned nine yesterday. And I'm still traumatized from the experience. It's been seven years. I shudder as I recount it for you here.

We'd been living in the house for about a year or so. I was feeding all three children lunch and, as part of my potty training regimen, was preparing to take the twins to sit on their potties after they'd finished eating. This was the same routine I had with their older sister years before and it had worked pretty well.

I would sit with them, encouraging them to use the potty and reading our potty book. Sam was catching on, but Sara was too prudish to cooperate. Still, she was compliant with the sitting and I figured at some point she'd give in.

On the particular day in question, as I led them to the bathroom, my son informed me that his cousin had instructed him to have 'pie vet see' in the bathroom. 'Boys need pie vet sees in potties,' he said, 'Meme said.'

'Wha? I don't care what he told you. You cannot eat in the bathroom!'

'No, no,' he protested, 'Pievet. See'. He was speaking to me slowly. Irony dripping.

I'm a doe in headlights. Blink. Blink.

'Privacy,' Lucy translated, with the heavy sigh she's perfected over the years.

'Aaaah!'

I told him that he and Sara always went together, thinking he was trying to rid himself of her company since she wasn't much of a pottier. No. He informed me that she was no intrusion on his privacy, but I was. Fine. Not the first nor the last time I was going to get shoved off by one of my darlings.

I got them both situated, left the door slightly ajar and went back to the kitchen to clean up.

A few minutes into my cleanup, the radar went off. Too quiet. Got that crinkly feeling on the back of my neck. Figured, at worst, they were sitting on the sofa with no diapers getting ready to introduce my bought-it-when-I-was-childless-fabulous couch to strained carrots and boiled chicken, the impolite way. I figured that'd be the worst because I hadn't yet seen the worst.

I approached the bathroom and heard them gibbering in there. Good sign. Couch safe! I stood in the hallway between the dining room and bathroom, peering in to check without disturbing the privacy I'd been instructed to respect.

There were my two adorable babies... they were naked from the waste down... staring down at their respective potties.... bellies full, hands on hips... but... what was that?

"No, Sam," I heard Sara say sternly. "That's not enough. Put mas [the Spanish word for 'more'] in there."

Whereby Sam dutifully stuck his hands in one potty, and scooped his waste from it into the other potty.

"Is that good?"

I came into focus. The horror swept over me in waves.
"I think so," Sara mused.

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHH," I barged in, saying the only intelligent thing I could think of.

The rest of the scene becomes a blur again.

"Look, mommy!" Sara beamed, "I made caca in the potty!"

"No, Sara. No you did not!" I screamed, "that is Sam's caca. You put your caca in her potty?!" I demanded of him. Whereafter my beautiful boy took his hands out from behind his back where he'd tucked them when I stormed in, smeared them all over my freshly painted peach walls, held them up, full of poop he'd forgotten about and looked at me with those eyes. "No, mommy, I didn't. I swear."

"AAAAAAAAHHHHHH," I screamed again. Not the first nor the last time words have failed me in the process of parenting.

I grabbed them both by the waist, hoisted one under each arm, Sara giggling, Sam starting to whimper, marched them up the stairs to the full bath, bathed them thoroughly, redressed each and put them to bed. By this time, they'd all sensed the situation had become dangerous enough where Lucy actually put herself down to nap and the twins said nary a word as I barged back down the stairs to clean the scene of the disaster. I was well into it when I heard the front door. I can only imagine what I looked like when my husband walked in. Smelling of pine sol, feces and furor I approached him.

"The babies are upstairs," I said through clenched teeth. "It is my Christian upbringing that has kept them alive this day. I am going out now. You're in charge." I paced slowly past him. He just stood there, nervously, not saying a word. "Oh. And there's poop on the walls in the bathroom." And I walked out.

I honestly can't say where I went. I don't remember. I do remember rinsing myself off with the hose outside and I remember coming back to a pretty clean and stable house. We never spoke of it that night, nor in the days after. It took me a long while to recompose myself. But there are still scars. I have dreams. I can't walk down the plastic potty aisle at Target without shivering. And, of course, I can never potty train again. Never. AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH.

Searching For the Right Word

2009-08-12T04:41:00.001-07:00

I attended the funeral services of our neighbor yesterday, the woman who taught my children how to say sunshine in Polish. It sounds like 'swonechka'. (I just know I'm mangling the spelling.) She taught it to them because that's what she called them. "Hello sunshine!" she'd call to the babies as they came spilling out of the house. She'd dig in her pockets for lollipops and pass them out like, well, candy. They loved her.

If the day was nice, we'd stand on the sidewalk for a bit and watch the kids sugar up. While we did, we'd chat about this or that. She'd fret about the condition of her grass, I'd sympathize. She'd gossip about neighbors, I'd gossip back. And now and then she'd tell me little bits and pieces of her life story. Before she came to live across the street from the house I'm now raising my family in, she'd lost her family in a war. She suffered time in concentration camps (including Auschwitz), faced the prospect of death more than once, served in the army, participated in an uprising, and survived. She lived in Poland, in Italy and then England. She married a suave young man, a singer, and started a family.

She arrived in the U.S. in the late 1940s and went about the business of being normal, whatever that means. She raised a son and a daughter here, worked hard, tended her garden, cared for her husband until the day he died, loved her grandchildren dearly, and through it all, maintained close bonds with all the Polish friends who joined her in the states. She kept faith with her church, got her hair done every Saturday, and never left the house without makeup. She was powder-scented, soft-cheeked and fine, with restrained elegance and a ready laugh.

I know I'm not getting it right - the picture of her that you must have in order to know who she was - resiliant, beautiful, steady, weak sometimes but always trying, lovely and full of life. She was a surprise and happy greeting, she was what lifted you when you were down, she was strong and constant and good. So then, perhaps the only way to describe her is by using a word she might use herself. Teresa was 'swonechka'... sunshine. And, oh, how I'll miss her.

No Fish, A Wish, and Delish

2009-08-04T07:07:00.000-07:00

We've discussed here before how important it is to make someone happy. I'm sure we've also touched on how darn hard that can be. And then, some times, it all lines up just right and it seems so simple. We have had several difficult weeks at work and the constant pitter patter of doomsday's feet coming down the hall at us has taken its toll. I spent the last week posting morose daily ditties on facebook about how each day of the week was as agonizingly bad as the one before. But a gal can be miserable for only so long.

So I spent all day yesterday wondering how I'd turn the page, so to speak. Before I left for work I promised the kids we'd have a little treat when we got home. As I sat at my desk, I reviewed my options and settled on the idea of some late afternoon fishing at the harbor. I pictured us all lined up on the wall, feet dangling, poles in the water, lakefront scenes providing a backdrop to a happy summer evening for our family. Perfect! Then I pictured all the schlepping of equipment and chairs and snacks and the rest. I pictured my husband swearing under his breath as child after child dropped his/her worm into the water and asked for a new one. And I pictured trekking back and forth to the port-a -potty where child after child would insisit he/she could 'hold it instead'. Not the picture I was looking for. So I decided.

No fish.

After I felt like I'd scanned all the other possibilities and discounted them for one reason or another, I was starting to feel a little helpless. My Facebook status update blinked at me expectantly. My husband's moping became near-neanderthal in appearance as bad news reached epidemic levels in the office. Kids called, sounding so full of fun as they awaited our arrival for the big family night I had yet to plan. Seriously a "Calgon, take me awayyyyy" moment. But we don't have a tub at the office and it'd been a little weird for me to disrobe and put flowers in my hair for a bubble bath anyway.

So, I made a wish.

'Lord, please let me find a way to make this happen.' No bushes set aflame, although in fairness we don't have those in the office either, so I figured it was no luck but worth a shot. I continued to perform the manic task of mentally evaluating all options and then ticking them off the list as quickly as they appeared. It was frantic and exhausting. As we got in the car to go home, I had nothing.

Then, a few blocks from home, I blurted out to my husband, "We're going to Millenium Park!" Don't ask me where that came from; I've no idea. Oddly, he asked "Why? What's at Millenium Park?" Ack! I hadn't thought of that. Why would he want to know that?

If you ever hear me complain about my new cell phone (which sucks, but I'm not going there right now) remind me of this. In mere seconds I had pulled up the schedule for the park and discovered they were having an open-air performance at the pavilion. Score! We went home, packed a few things to eat and a cooler, got the kids ready and off we went. Parking was pretty easy and we found a spot close to the stage. We all sat down, bits of music tinkling in the air, the city starting to twinkle as dusk set in, all the colors and flavors represented. Then it started.

Have you ever seen Handel's Acis and Galatea? I began to panic. The mangificence of the venue aside, I've probably experienced more delight in the performance of wet socks cycling through a laundromat dryer than I did at that show. A few minutes into it I thought I was going to cry. The kids were entirely focused on eating, my husband was growing irate with their constant crinkling of packages and bouncing out of seats, and I was mortified that my lovely evening was going up in flames. And then it happened. The Lord took time away from his busy schedule to cast his favor upon me - upon all of us - and it happened.

As the orchestra played, my husband turned to me and whispered gravely, "Be vewwwwy quiet. I'm hunting wwwahhhbbit." I almost lost my full bladder. What a night! We stayed for the whole thing, the kids alternately listening and then giggling to themselves, my husband and I sitting a row behind them, arm in arm, taking in the air and sound and sparkle. After, we all went for a walk through the park, exploring exhibits, stopping to gaze and amaze, joking, laughing, holding hands. We ended with a splash-walk through the Crown fountain and back to the car, where losing our parking ticket was no match for the night we had.

Quite simply, delish.