Getting Honest

The past month has been one of thrashing and writing has felt nearly impossible. Losing/leaving my job (and the office with my name on the door) has left me frantic about earning the next dollar. I have felt lost and, worse, like a loser. Derailed from adulthood.

What’s wrong with me? I ask myself. Why have I not arrived at some professional pinnacle? Why am I not a manager or somebody’s boss? Doesn’t the trajectory of midlife lead right into an office with a window and a desk big enough for a flowering potted plant?

But yesterday, after much soul searching, (and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott), I got honest with myself:  I have never wanted to climb the corporate ladder, to lead or have a title. Making bundles of money has never been a goal. Hokey as it may sound, all I have ever wanted to do is write.

My trajectory is my own. It’s a tough thing to accept, when my peers are rising in stature and income. But I’ve always been an upstream swimmer, and being in my 50s hasn’t changed this. If anything, it’s strengthened my resolve.

Getting sidetracked is easy. The thrill of prestige and money (especially when I have college tuition payments) easily clouds my vision, and the comforts of convention tempt me. But something stronger gnaws. Who I am has never been conventional. I have always been a writer. I have simply never believed in myself enough to claim it.

So, I have decided to attempt a memoir, or pieces of one. It is the one thing I have wanted to do–and have avoided—for a long time. There is no writing without honesty and as I try to make sense of the present, I am driven to dig into my past. I’ll do it to see where it takes me. I'll do it for myself. I’ll do it for my kids. I’ll do it because it is time to get out of my own way.

And I’ll do it here. I hope you’ll stay with me as I begin the journey.

Mortality

I walked with a sick friend yesterday. We set out before the snow began and by the time we’d finished, two hours later, it was coming down.

My friend has cancer and his doctor says this could be his last winter.

That’s something else that is happening in midlife: People in my circle of friends have started getting sick. Once you've lived for 50 years or more, people you know (and love) become ill. It’s just the way things work.

Nothing makes us feel our mortality more than losing friends who are close in age. Oddly, nothing makes us feel as young. When people my age die, I feel especially saddened at how much life they had—and I have—left to live; when people much older than I die, I feel artificially buffered by the years between us, as if age were the only cause of death.

My friend, who was diagnosed a few years ago, could very well die before his 50^th birthday. He is unbelievably calm and accepting about this. And he is committed to getting the most out of every moment.

Mostly, he walks. Those of us who know and love him join him when we can. He doesn’t mind talking about his cancer, although he seems just as happy to take a break from it.

My brother Steven, who died nine years ago at age 59, welcomed any opportunity to not talk about his cancer. Not discussing it was his way of keeping it out of the room. If he kept it out of the room, he believed he could protect himself from it, although in his last years, the disease had consumed sizable chunks of his body. Only at the end of his life, did Steven want to talk about his dying and even then, once the conversation was started, he’d redirect it.

As my friend and I walked, I wondered if I will turn my face away from the imminence of my own dying or await its arrival as one awaits the snow.

Waiting for the Snow

I hate snow. I hate driving in it. I hate how brown and yellow it gets. I hate the slush that forms when it melts. I hate slipping and falling when it turns to ice. I hate pushing piles of it off my car and chipping ice from the windshield and shoveling the driveway. I hate being housebound.

But I love that first flake.

Even more, I love the build-up before the storm.

I love the winter weather advisories that flash across the TV screen. I love the news alerts when weather advisories become storm warnings. I love the color-coded maps, indicating how many inches—in big block numbers—each town will get. I love checking the Internet and discovering that a mild storm has become a blizzard.

I love stocking up on milk and eggs and having an excuse to buy ingredients for chocolate chip cookies and planning a big pot of soup. I love hanging up a mental shingle that says “office closed due to weather” and giving myself permission to do nothing. I love seeing E. and F. stack wood in the fireplace. I love when stores close and people stay home and traffic disappears and the air turns still. I love the steel grey sky and the trace of warmth that fills the air just before the first flake falls.

Like a child waiting for Santa, I press my nose against the window and search the clouds, hunting for the first flurry. I scan the black asphalt and clean cars as they whiten and listen for the plows whose steel-jawed shovels scrape the streets like giant spatulas gathering frosting from the sides of a bowl. I look for footsteps in the early opaque film of snow cover, the trails of people headed home, where they will stay.

Surprise!

Aging doesn’t come with instructions. It is an abstraction, a distant star, a speck on the horizon, invisible, incomprehensible. It is a tunnel we all travel through, and we never know when the journey will begin.

In my 20s and 30s, I viewed aging as a spiritual experience. An evolution. An opportunity for self-improvement. In my 40s, aging turned physical. My body slowed, no matter how fast I willed it to move. Fatigue became familiar. My feet ached with the day's first steps. I needed orthotics, and a new hip.

But I was insistent. There was no pain that a daily swim or a good sweat on the elliptical trainer wouldn’t cure. Serious aging, I maintained, would announce itself when I retired, which simply wasn't on my calendar. Problem solved.

Then I turned 54.

It’s not just the second arthritic hip that has hit me from behind. It’s the small indignities, like walking in the woods and suddenly needing to pee, more urgently with every step—despite having done so just 20 minutes earlier—and praying that no curious hikers will trail blaze in the thicket where I relieve myself; it is having to ask my children the same question repeatedly, within a span of minutes; or forgetting the name of the neighbor who greets me on the street. It is recurrently enjoying the same movie for the first time.

Then there's sex. When F. and I began 20 years ago, it seemed inconceivable that my appetite would ever wane. Don’t get me wrong: My man still curls my toes. But we've slowed down. And nighttime, which once felt like the most delicious time to get steamed up under the covers has switched to weekend afternoons, before tiredness settles back into our bones and it is easier to clear the physiological hurdles that get steeper with fatigue.

Finally, there's career.

I'd expected to be nestled in a job by now, headed toward retirement; not on the loose, a dinosaur in the current job market, where social media skills, willingness to work around the clock and being (or looking) 30 or younger are what’s most valuable.

By the sound of things, you might not know that age has an up side.

Stay tuned.

Straddling

Christmas is over, and it's nice to be part of the world again.

R., who’s been home since Thursday, returns to her dorm which, thankfully, is open for the entire winter break.

It’s not that I don’t love seeing her, but a child who comes home from college for a few days is not the child who left.

She has a foot in two worlds: The world of her college/independent life, and the world of her family home. Except that even when she’s home, she isn’t. We are the peg on which she hangs her hat.

She is still warm and loving and thrilled to see us, in between text messages.

We--she and I--spent perhaps one hour alone together in the time she was home, shopping for her winter jacket. On Christmas Eve we sat by the fire with E., and listened to music from her Iphone. Conversation was minimal. To me, precious. To them, annoying.

At the end of the evening, after the dinner dishes had been cleared and the kitchen cleaned, both she and her brother retreated to their rooms to Ichat or watch their laptop screens while F. and I watched a movie, just the two of us.

I confess: I’d hoped for more: more family time, more closeness. But we’ve turned the corner on all that, at least for now. Even though E. is still at home, he has one foot out the door. 

And so, on both fronts, I am learning to take what I can get.

Shrinking

Remember growing pains? I was 7 or 8, lying in bed at night, crying and calling for my mother, and telling her that my legs hurt.

“Growing pains,” she’d say, smiling at the milestone. “You’re growing.”

Do shrinking pains exist?

At the kitchen table this morning, on my second cup of coffee, impatient for an elusive caffeine buzz, I feel tiny throbs and zings up and down my spine, across my shoulders, my legs. My left hip quit on me a week ago and is screaming to be replaced. The dull ache in my low back tells me its time is borrowed. And my shoulders and upper arms, my essential swimmer’s toolkit, are still crying from yesterday’s modest workout.

I pour a third cup of coffee. Get kinetic. Mask the pain.

Then I stand up.

Slowly.

One foot inches out, then the other. Step, step, step. My back, stiffened by pain, straightens. Up the stairs, engaging each hip flexor to lift each knee, step by step. Holding onto the bannister, hoisting myself, learning hard on my supporting arm. I can do it. I am puppeteer and marionette.

Putting on sneakers, a feat when the hips don’t want to crease. The dog can’t wait to get outside. It’s Christmas Day, but it’s sunny and warm. Global Warming: My arthritis thanks you.

Down the street, dodging puddles and mud slicks, into the woods. My steps are short, tentative. The dog gulps in sweet chilly air and licks traces of other animal scents from the wet grass. He wants to run but manages restraint.

My hip smarts with each step, trying to hold me back. But I breathe into the pain, visualize the sweet winter air enveloping the angry joint, cajoling it, relaxing it. Heel, toe, heel, toe. Trying to not bite my lip when the nerves in my hip and leg scream out. Heel toe heel toe. Release your shoulders from your earlobes. Breathe.

I can only walk for 30 minutes, I allow myself. But the sky is brilliant and cloudless for the first time in days and there is no wind, finally. I loosen the top of my winter jacket to let the air in. We pick up our pace. My strides extend. The hip gives.

Deep in the woods, walking at a good clip, and letting the dog chase a deer, just for fun. My body is warm, the shirt close to my skin, damp with sweat. My legs are working, stretching in front of me as they always have. My muscles are limber. The heat builds inside my coat. I stuff a glove in each pocket and begin to loop home. I’ve been walking for more than an hour and feel tempted to break into a trot alongside the pup, who’s  eager to run. But common sense returns: It’s been a good walk. Why ruin it by tripping over a rock or stray tree root?

Back home, I’m elated, my muscles, liquid. But it’s fleeting. In an hour I am stiff and hurting. My body cries, but what am I to do? Stay in one place and sink into the earth?

Unmoored

So alienating, being Jewish at Christmas. Even though I’m about as far from Being Jewish as one can be, it resonates at this time of year, when our dark house is surrounded by houses and electric reindeer wrapped in colored lights. Our menorah blazed, one candle at a time, a couple of weeks ago. Barely noticeable through our dining room window. The only one on the block, in the neighborhood. But now, our festival over, I watch and wait as the rest of the world celebrates. I am not jealous. But I can’t help wanting to feel part of something larger, or more important, to not feel excluded, an outlier.

I had my Exit Interview (over the phone, no less), so now I am officially cut loose (even though I’ll be paid through the end of the month). It is relieving and sad. I’m back where I was three years ago, a floating freelancer. I’d hoped I’d dropped my anchor for the last time, but then, as I’m still learning, nothing is certain, or unchanging, ever.

Untethered, I wander and stumble, distracted by all that I must do: hustle work, all the time, hustle, hustle. Keep my income up. There’s a college tuition to cover. And lacrosse camps. And the winter heating bill. It’s a racket of worry that drowns my inner voice and makes it impossible to create something out of the essential whisper.

So, this is what the week must be: listening for the whisper. Taking long walks in the woods with the dog. Paying attention to the inner voice. Carrying a notebook. Capturing a kernel and bringing it home to tend.

Monster

Today would have been my mother’s 92^nd birthday. I can’t say that I miss her, but I wish she had lived long enough to have seen me marry and have children. I especially wish she had had the chance to get to know my family. She would have adored them and they, her.

Life’s relativity is funny: I never wanted children and at this point in my life, as I age and ache and wonder if I’ll ever find a job, I can’t imagine my life without them.

Lately I have been dreaming of motherhood and of the kids when they were young. Several weeks ago E. appeared in my dream as an infant. And today, shortly before dawn, I dreamt that he was a little boy, perhaps 7 or 8, swimming in a lagoon and perilously close to a giant alligator. 

“It’s at 10 o’clock,” I’d said, using the image of the hour-hand to point out the beast's location to E., who then promptly dove into the water, as I watched in terror through a picture window from a room above.

The alligator was prehistorically large, like a dinosaur. It was moving  through the lagoon swiftly, headed toward E. and a buddy, who were frolicking near a boulder. I was yelling through the window, begging them  to get out of the water, but E. clamored onto the boulder and when the alligator got close enough, he sidled onto its head, where he sat for a few seconds, giggling with delight. As the alligator rose, E. tumbled into the water, and just as it was about to make a dive for my boy, I woke myself up, screaming.

No doubt, last week's  massacre in Newtown, Connecticut of  20  six–year–olds fueled this nightmare. 

But there is another--more mundane--trigger, which is my dread of my own aging and mortality, which looms especially large as the arthritis in my hip worsens, my hearing dims and I grow increasingly obsolete in a job market that is hungry for social media whizzes 20 years younger than I. These days, I can't even keep step with my  kids, who speak as fast as I did at 16, when my mother, facing her own aging, complained that I swallowed my words.

At 54, I see now that she was frustrated at how precipitously she was slowing down. I look and R. and E. and I delight in watching them gobble up life. I also worry about the increasing limitations of age gobbling me up. 

Perhaps I’m the little kid in the lagoon.

Conscience

There’s something to be said for a little guilt.

All day, E. has been bending over backwards to be loving and helpful and kind. I love my son with all my heart. Deep down, he is a good, decent kid. But these days he is surly and provocative more than loving and considerate. When he is smiles warmly at me, offers to fetch something, walk the dog or give me a hug, something’s up.

Of course, I didn’t realize what was up until I smelled the essence of cinnamon-apple and later, of sandalwood incense, floating up from the basement. The basement usually smells of bad breath and mold, so the uncharacteristic fragrances stopped me: I'd smelled them a week ago, the morning after E. had had a party. He'd had a party last night too.

Bingo.

None of this dawned on me until this morning, when I descended into the basement, where two exhausted cans of Glade air freshener lay on the floor and the windows were wide open.

“Why are the windows open”? I asked, innocently.

“It got hot,” E replied, instantly. 

“The incense smells nice,” I offered.

“Yeah.” He sounded relieved.

E. has always maintained that he neither smokes pot nor drinks alcohol and I, however naive, have always chosen to believe him. He is a varsity athlete, hoping for a college scholarship. He is driven and disciplined. He works out like a fiend and has the musculature to show for it. When I told him F. and I were going out, he'd asked that we return in time, intent on following the law regarding parental supervision of underage teenage parties. He also insisted that once home, we make ourselves scarce.

Shortly after midnight, when I went to make myself tea, E. emerged from the basement, looking a little red-eyed. All was quiet and I wondered if he’d been smoking. That's when I noticed the same hint of apple-cinnamon I'd smelled the week before. A light bulb illuminated over my head and, realizing what I'd missed before (and feeling like a fool), I went to bed. 

E. was up early this morning, playing with the dog and cleaning the basement, all without my having to hound him. Later, when F. and I were both in the kitchen, he pulled us in for a three-way hug.

Letting him know that I was (finally) on to him, felt momentarily tempting, but it was a self-serving fantasy: I wanted to prove I was not only clued-in, but cool. Yet, the line between the space where E. lets me in and shuts me out is fine. Was outing him worth the risk of alienating him? Exposing him would not stop him from being a normal 16-year-old, it would just stop him from being that 16-year-old in the safety of his home, with his banished but protective parents upstairs.  

A heavy conscience probably triggered the warmth and responsibility E. showed this morning. Still, I know that he is grateful for our trust in him, however blind. I also know that this trust, coupled with our love, has instilled in him both a sense of freedom and of obligation: to be a normal, boundary-testing teen, and to honor a personal, still-evolving code of ethics that makes us proud of who he is, and he of himself.

Wanted...

What recovery?

Every hour or so I log into the only websites I know that list editorial jobs. There are no jobs.

There are no jobs for me, that is. There are jobs for all kinds of directors, managers and executives (of marketing, communications, development), and for people skilled at social media (all of them want social media), but there are no jobs for folks like me who just write and edit.

I do not want to manage. I do not want to coordinate. I do not want to direct. I do not want to be responsible for underlings or budgets or big pictures. I do not want to tweet or post things on Facebook. I just want to write and edit, preferably for an organization that is doing socially responsible work for the world.

I am a dinosaur. 

Every job posting I read yells out for employees who want to work under lots of pressure, put in marathon hours, produce with lightning speed, be flexible, passionate team players, content with little or loads of  direction: people with 20 years of experience who are 20 years old. The want ads reflect the  world. They want  speed, technological proficiency, stamina and ambition; people who are at home in cyberspace, conducting relationships in the ether. One ad, for a very famous nonprofit foundation, said candidates had to be willing to lift heavy boxes and spend time sitting in cramped spaces.

Seriously?

Quicksand

Flailing.

I always think I’ll see it coming, but I never do until I’m a full leg in.

It starts as a seduction: the luxury of empty space. Time for slowing down. No pressure to produce. 

But before I know it, I’m being sucked straight down, clinging to caffeine and sugar but getting no lift. My world depopulates. My brain folds in. 

What am I staring at? Am I contemplating or am I paralyzed?

I thought by now I had it all sewn up. A strong inner flame that resisted wind and water. But external validation is oxygen. Without it, my flame sputters. Is this pathetic or is it being human?

I live between extremes, being too busy and not busy enough. Satisfied with being a good person and parent. Feeling bankrupt without professional accomplishment.

A human ping-pong ball.

Moving through Space

July 13, 2012

My finger traces the outline of my chin and bumps into a single, wiry hair, long enough to twirl between my thumb and forefinger. Aghast and mirror-less, I hope against hope that it is, at least, not black.

These are the discoveries that sink me these days.

I move slowly through space. My knees are arthritic; some of my toes too. I have a hip replacement and my other hip is cranky.  I’m fit. I swim nearly two miles in less than an hour, five days a week. I walk the dog four to five miles a day. But, I'm 54. I ache more than I used to. At times, I lumber.

Since my mind is always racing, I think I’m moving fast. But I'm not. My brain commands my body to hurry, but my body marches to its own middle-aged rhythm, defiant.

In December, I tripped on a rock and fractured my shoulder. I'd been trying to keep up with the dog, who seems to get taller as I lose height. The rock was buried in the dirt, its edge poking out. In younger days I would have sailed over it. But my hips are stiff and my stride is short. Instead of running, I shuffle. The rock caught my toe (or my toe, the rock) and I went flying, unable to stop the momentum. Midair I thought, where will I land? How should I fall? I worry about falling on my hip, a ceramic contraption attached to a titanium rod that is cemented into my thighbone. Instinctively, I rotated my body so I’d fall on my other side, leading with my left arm to cushion the impact. I landed directly on my elbow and, after registering the first shock of pain, heard a snap.

I screamed. Then I cursed (it was the shoulder that had just healed from too much swimming). Then I cried. The indignity of it all. The feeling of decline.

The dog assumed his post, a tank by my side, stoic and still. My guardian.

Gingerly, I used my good arm to untangle my trembling legs, which were twisted beneath me. Like a baby who is just learning how to stand, I rolled onto one knee then the other, sticking my butt high in the air, unfurling my folded body.

My shoulder throbbed and my arm hung heavily. I steadied it with my opposite hand, around which I’d wrapped the leash.  

We inched our way home, the pooch and I. He knew better than to trot.

Waiting for My Boy

July 14, 2012

Waited an hour for E’s Amtrak train to pull in to New Rochelle.  I’d insisted on heading for the station early, just in case we got lost, or the train arrived ahead of schedule. Instead, I ended up pacing around its dilapidated parking lot, on the hottest day of summer (so far), worrying about every possible thing that could have gone wrong, trying to stay calm.

E is the second-born, younger than R. by two years. The baby: all 5’9”, 150 pounds of lacrosse-hewn muscle. I’d driven him to Brown University in Providence, RI for a four-day lacrosse camp on the previous Thursday and stayed overnight with a friend before heading home to New York. A little much-needed girl time and rest.  Besides, who wants to drive to Providence and back twice in four days? I figured it’d be easier to put him on Amtrak.

Easier on him.

I’d sweated the ticket purchase. E. will be 16 in November. Under Amtrak’s terms, he’s a minor and wasn't permitted to get off at New Rochelle, an "unmanned" station, which is closer to where we live; instead, he was supposed to get off at Penn Station. But he’s a hunky young fellow who could easily pass for 16. So I bought him an adult ticket to New Rochelle online, and that was that.

Until I started worrying that Fate would slap me for lying.

I spent the rest of the week losing sleep over the logistics of his travel: Would he be allowed to claim his ticket with his YMCA photo ID? Would an Amtrak official stop him because he looked too young? Would he be abducted and sold into sexual slavery? Would the train derail and crash?

Be glad you don’t live in my head.

I’d e-mailed, called and texted the head coach the day before E. was to travel to make sure someone would help him claim his ticket and make sure he got on the right train. When I confessed all of this to E., he rolled his eyes and said, 

“Yeah Mom, it was really complicated getting my ticket. I had to scan the bar code on the paper you gave me.”  Such a wise guy.

That was it. Nobody even looked at his face. Still, the train was an hour late and I was trying to tamp down a smoldering panic.

It finally pulled in, on the platform opposite from the one where we were stood. I begged my husband to run up the stairs and cross to the other side, lest E. think we weren’t there (even though he and I had been texting for the past hour, during which time the train had shut down, and he kept telling me not to worry). I craned my neck for any sign of his dirty blond hair and then, as the train slowly pulled away, I spied him, dragging a sports bag as big as he.  Without warning, my throat tightened, my smile quivered and tears stung my eyes like a thunderstorm that strikes from out of nowhere.

I couldn’t wait to get rid of this kid four days ago and now I ached with longing to put my arms around him.

Looking Back

July 14, 2012

Physically, I am aging. I say “aging” as opposed to “older,” because I think of aging as a state of decline (although, I guess that wouldn’t apply to cheese or wine). The arthritis in my hips and knees, my deteriorating vertebral discs, wrinkles around my mouth and eyes, the gray hair that imposes itself just days after I’ve soaked it in Clairol Natural Instincts 20B (medium brown). And my brain, struggling to hold onto names and the smallest facts. Sometimes, when I’m swimming, I forget at which end of the pool I started.

This is me, aging.

But emotionally and spiritually, I am resurgent. At 54, I know who I am from the inside out. Externals do not define me. I like my own company.  I didn’t feel this way at 25 or 35 or 45. Not until I hit 50 did I realize the gift of getting older. And, I wouldn’t go back.

This is not to dismiss the longing evoked when I see my two teenagers, newly independent, a little overcome and cocky with a sudden sense of their own allure.  

R. preens before a full length mirror, wearing shorts that have more hardware than fabric, and a middrift top. She shifts her weight from one jutting hip to the other and sucks in her cheeks like a runway model, tilting her head right, then left, as she applies makeup.

E., swaggers into the kitchen, pumped from the gym and freshly showered, shamelessly checking out his reflection in every shiny surface, leaving a plume of body spray in his wake.

I watch them and I'm 16 again, a nubile southern California high-school sophomore in shorts and a halter top, driving to the beach in my mother's car with all the windows down and the Eagles blasting on the radio. I am powerful. I am free. I am near-to-bursting with excitement about life’s—or just the day’s—possibilities.

Still, I wouldn’t go back.

Fighting

July 15, 2012

Everyone assures me that my 15-year-old son and I are locking horns so much these days because he is separating from me; that it is his "job" to separate; and that it is especially scary and painful because we are so tightly bonded. So, to make it easier, he must push me away, which he does by infuriating me.

My boy must be pretty scared and pained, because he's cornered the market on impudence.

On good days, when I'm feeling light and resilient, I turn the other cheek and let his self-obsessed, obnoxious behavior blow past me. I think of him as an orb circling me and tell myself to not get sucked into his gravitational pull. On bad days, when it's all I can do to complete a sentence (let alone remember one), I am pulled into his magnetic field and instantly punctured by his rude indifference, his combative commentary, his flat stare.

At times like these, the wise mother knows not to react but to turn and leave. But at times like these I am not wise: I am horrified at the sullen, surly teenager who has inhabited the body of my once-sweet boy, and I plunge blindly into battle, determined to get him back.

It never works and, in the end, the space between us widens.

But sometimes I'm the one who picks the fight. I call him on the smallest infraction, blowing it all out of proportion. I rouse the warrior teen who's always up for a fight and, without even knowing it, I'm giving him reasons to push me away.

The fear and pain of separation go two ways.

Snapshot

July 16, 2012

E. and I are traveling a similar path, neither at the beginning nor the end but in the middle of a profound shift. We know we are changing. Sometimes we don't recognize ourselves. 

Halfway through adolescence, E. grows taller by the hour. His voice deepens every time I hear it, his muscles bulge with every bear hug.

I am shorter than I was a year ago. I tilt my head back to see E's face when he stands next to me. I am smaller too. Grayer. And although I'm muscular, my skin hangs in loose folds, like crepe. I pass a picture window and look twice, because my reflection does not match the image in my head.

E. and I share temperments. We like early mornings. We work out when we're upset. We're happiest when we're busy. We're optimists. We're impatient. We're hormonal. Our tempers are short.

Our moods seesaw and we are not in sync. We crack each other up and piss each other off. I remind him that I'm the parent and he's the child but he doesn't look like a child anymore.

Except when a cookie crumb sticks to his cheek and he keeps talking, unaware. For a moment he is not an image-conscious teen with an aging mom, but a tow-headed toddler with a milk moustache who kisses me in public and cries freely and doesn't care who sees.

Pushover Parenting

July 17, 2012

This heat is punishing for everyone, especially for anyone--like me--who owns a big dog that smells bad on the coolest, driest days.

George is a black lab-hound mix who is never fragrant. In the heat, he emits an odor that could (and sometimes does) clear a room.

We rescued George six years ago, after listening to the pleas of our then five-year-old son, who insisted that he would perish without a puppy. So, we promised him a conversation about getting a dog when he turned 10. 

For the next five years, he waged a masterful, unrelenting campaign for a dog. It began with casual inquiries: “Do you think we’ll ever get a dog?” It became more precise: “What would you say my chances are, in percentages, of getting a dog?” It featured a heartfelt vow to do every speck of dog-care, and a large white board on which he listed: Make bed, do homework, walk imaginary dog, do all chores or else you won’t have a conversation about getting a dog when you’re 10. It included a humanitarian plea: “I just want to save a life!” It even included feigned resignation: “I know I’m never getting a dog” and, when I called him cute, the response, “I’d be cuter with a dog.”

I don't know what it is about mothers and sons, but I caved in and persuaded my husband that our little boy needed a dog.

True to his word, E. cared for the pup, for about a week.

Fast forward six years: George, who was only 40 pounds when we adopted him, is now the size of a newborn calf. I know that because I walk him through fields where dairy cows graze and he and the calves match up, inch for inch.

He's a good dog and impossibly attached to me, which is sort of nice, now that the kids aren't home much. We have our routine: a four or five mile hike through the woods every day, a stop near the river where he wades and drinks.

When I was a young mom, most of my friends were parents I knew from the playground or swim lessons at the YMCA. Many of these parents are still my friends, but our kids have moved on and away from each other. We don't see each other much anymore.

I spend a lot of time with George. We both like to powerwalk. We make a good team. Now I identify people not by their kids, but by their pooches. And I don't have to make playdates.

Safekeeping

July 21, 2012

Standing outside R’s door, early on a Saturday morning, I listen for the sound of her ceiling fan. R needs the whir and breeze of the fan to sleep; if it’s on, I know she came home the night before.

R. is two months away from 18, and weeks away from leaving for college. Tethering her to a curfew, no matter how liberal, is meaningless at this point. As she informed me recently: “In a few months I’ll be at school and living on my own in the city and staying out till all hours. What’s the point?”

It’s a nightly gamble during these summer months, with no deadline or commitments forcing her to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Although she has some part-time work, she’d rather go through the next day bleary-eyed than sacrifice a night of fun.

I suppose I could continue to insist that she be home at least by 2. But the truth is, I can’t stay awake that late and, unlike parents I know, I refuse to sleep with my cell phone turned on and under my pillow so I can receive texts from her during the wee hours assuring me she’s alive. Instead, I kiss her goodnight as she heads into the evening, tell (beg) her to be safe and make sure she has her key. Before F. and I go to sleep, I close up the house and make sure the porch light is on; I leave  front door unlocked, because she often forgets her key, and thank G-d, in advance, for her safekeeping. But I’m never completely at ease.

Recently, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the porch light burning and her bedroom door open, the room quiet and dark. The fan was off and I knew she hadn’t come home yet. Instantly, I panicked. It was after 2 and I couldn’t imagine what useful thing she was doing at that hour. I turned on my phone and texted her. She answered right away, explaining that she was with friends nearby at one of their homes. The text calmed me, but not enough to help me sleep. Not until she was home, close to 4, did I doze off.

As her dorm move-in date nears, we both grow nervous: R., about leaving home, and I, about the prospect of not being able to count on the whir of her fan and the glow of her nightlight to tell me she’s safe.

Launching

July 12, 2012

In two months, my first-born leaves for college. Who would’ve thought, when I began trolling through college catalogues, registering her for the SATs, reading her essays and scouting the mail for envelopes (acceptances in manilas, rejections and wait-lists in business-size) one year ago—that my journey in the time capsule would begin?

No one told me that having a baby would hurl me back through my  childhood; that it would bring me face to face with my best and worst memories. And no one told me that my baby's entry into young adulthood would return me to my own.

In particular, I never anticipated R's last year at home to stir up the complete and utter lack of guidance I got when it came to navigating the dizzying process of deciding where to go to college.

No one took me on college tours. No one helped me pour over class lists. I made a decision randomly, like pinning the tail on the donkey. And I have spent more hours in the past year than I'd like to admit, mourning the years I wasted, being in the wrong place.

But R. knows where she belongs. And it fills me with joy and relief to see her preparing to launch, excited and confident about the path she has chosen.

Parenting is such fraught business. I'd like to think I had a hand in helping to steer R. in the right direction.

It helps me sleep at night.

Balancing

July 28, 2012

Marriage is a roller-coaster ride. It is a slow climb, a sharp curve, a lull and a heart-stopping fall. Nearly 20 years into it, I’m happy most days. I’m lucky: F. is one of my best friends. I say “one of,” because my best friends, generally, are women. There’s just no competing with that.

And yet, every now and then, F. and I hit a pothole. We look at each other, and talk to each other, but there’s a disconnect.  “Who are you?” I wonder.  “Are you the man I once adored?” It’s terrifying: when the man to whom I’ve committed myself is a stranger; or when we are suddenly, unexpectedly, embattled.

We had one of those days recently. I could feel it coming, like a thunderstorm. An uneasiness hovered between us. An invisible wire stretched taught across a hidden path. We didn’t name it. We danced around it, each of us knowing something was amiss: a pea under the mattress. The day was hot, the air thick, suffocating. I didn’t take much. A spark on tinder, and we ignited.

Most of the time our skirmishes flare because one of us needs something and does not, cannot ask. Sometimes it’s support; sometimes, intimacy or solitude.  When we don’t recognize the need, it may chafe, swell and erupt. The trick is knowing when to call it out and when to let it go.

We snarled at each other for a while and then retreated to our corners, finding solace in the space each of us had needed all along, without knowing.

Live someplace long enough and change happens. Children grow up and leave home. Stores come and go. Couples that once seemed perfect dissolve. We watch each other, wondering who will be next.

It took the first 10 years of marriage for me know that F. and I were solid. Finishing our second decade together, we still are. But I take nothing for granted. We are still learning how to take care of each other while taking care of ourselves. Sometimes it’s a tightrope walk: balancing the need for closeness with the need for distance; knowing when to brace ourselves, and when to float.

Rending

August 1, 2012

R. and I have sailed smoothly for the past few years; what a respite, after the tumult of middle school. But for the past few weeks our terrain has been rocky: she is irritable, surly, distant; no topic is safe, no person immune. Excusing her from the dinner table so she can hibernate in her room has become standard operating procedure.

We chalk it up to her nervousness about her imminent departure for college. As fate would have it, however, I am thrashing around in my own sea of uncertainty and fear about my professional life. The mix is volatile: a teenage girl, worried about leaving home, and a post-menopausal mother, worried about her future.

This was the backdrop for our most recent clash. R. was heading out for the evening, when I spied her in the kitchen. Her perfume choked me. Then, her outfit: shorts that had about as much yardage as a table napkin, and a camisole that cinched her torso and practically put a bull’s eye on her breasts and cleavage. Her hair was curled and fell loose on her shoulders. The smile on her face was happy, self-assured and defiant.

I trailed her, speechless.

“Thanks for that,” she said.

“For what?” I replied, scrambling for some potent, parental reaction.

“I saw the look, Mom. I saw you judging me.”

She was right. I was judging her. I thought she looked sleazy. I felt embarrassed and disappointed. I felt like a failure. I felt like my mother.

When I was 16, I bought a dress for a school dance—a body-hugging black sheath with spaghetti straps—and a pair of platform sandals. In that dress, I tasted for the first time, my own allure. I felt beautiful, confident and powerful. But when I modeled it for my mother she ordered me to return it. “You’re not wearing that,” she said.

“Yes I am,” I retaliated. And so we battled.

My mother was beside herself, not just because I won, but because my victory signaled the beginning of my separation from home and from her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Kids leave home. They’re supposed to. Ideally, it means that we as parents have done a good job. So, why does everything leading up to R’s departure feel like broken glass slicing my heart?

I have a friend whose son left for college a year ago. She cried constantly during the weeks before he left. He had become cold and detached. “I feel like he’s running away from home,” she said one day, through sobs.

In a way, he was.

I suppose teenagers (and I’m speaking strictly of those who leave home under optimal circumstances, either to go to school or embark on some other productive journey), especially those who are tightly knitted to family and home, have to make a break for it, or else the reality of their leaving would hurt too much: witness these last few weeks before R. moves out.

That night in the kitchen, with my judgmental scowl, I picked a fight, saying things about her appearance that I knew would sting but that momentarily distracted me from my impending sense of loss. Yet, once I spoke, R. pushed passed me and flew out the door, crying, and my heart sank to the pit of my stomach.

We are pieces of the same cloth, rending.