House of the Blue Lights

25 years

2011-12-16T07:13:00.000-08:00

The best gift I ever gave my children was a childhood in a single home; they've lived their entire lives in the same house.

We moved in twenty-five years ago today. My son was 8 months old, my daughter still just an amorphous idea of a second child.

I've always wondered what this does to a psyche.

My children retain their keys. When they come home, they're coming home--they let themselves in; they know where things are. It is understood that they "live" here, even though they don't live here. I can't wrap my head around the sense of belonging and stability that this must give a child. For me this is the house that I chose and bought; for them it's their country. I think this house must feel to them like "theirs" in ways that I cannot fathom.

Americans are used to moving--it's practically a national pasttime. Companies think nothing of uprooting a family and sending them across the country because it's better for the business. Kids get out of college and home in on any community but home.

As a child, I lived at 7 different addresses in four states as my father worked his way up the academic heirarchy. From the age of 17, when I started college, to the age of 30, when we moved here, I lived at 8 addresses in 3 cities, including an entirely different country. I didn't even get to go "home;" between them in that period my parents also lived at 6 different addresses in 2 cities, none of them places that I had ever lived. When I visited them, it was to unfamiliar apartments furnished with unfamiliar objects.

After my son came back from his world travels, seeing dozens of American, European and Mideast cities on tour as a musician, he remarked that he'd never seen a place where he couldn't do anything that he could do at home.

Because he has one. This one.

You're welcome.

Double nickle

2011-01-22T12:13:00.000-08:00

That's right. 55. I turned 55.

My mother was never this old, in fact I actually noted the day, November 21, that I lived longer than my mother. So from here, I'm making it all up.

I went out to dinner with my old friends Holly and Chris. We always share birthdays, and have been doing this for years. They started this right out of college. I used to make it a bigger deal and invited other friends too, until Chris, bless her heart, asked if she and Holly and I could do it just among ourselves, because my other friends were either boring, arrogant, annoying, or all three.

Sadly, I realized she was right, so we started doing it with just us, and occasionally our friend Maggie.

Well, 55 was one for the record books. I decided I needed to write it down because birthday parties don't really get much worse than this. (Okay, there was the time Bill gave me a surprise party even though I begged him not to, and I spent the entire party locked in the bedroom, crying.)

First, I decided to walk to the restaurant since it wasn't very far (a little more than a mile). Five blocks short I tried to step off the sidewalk to get around this lumbering idiot who was slowly making his way along, and put my foot into a pothole, nicely breaking my ankle. Then I couldn't get a bus to stop for me, and had to walk the rest of the way.

The restaurant gave me ice, but refused to ask someone for ibuprofen, in case I sued them, so my friend had to go to the nearest store, several blocks away, to get me some. We get seated, right next to an unsealed door behind which is a very raucous wedding, playing music so loud that conversation was pretty much impossible. The waiter wouldn't move us, so we simply moved our selves, one 2-top over so there was a little more distance between us and the door.

At which point the hostess comes over and explains to us that the table we've moved to will actually need to be added to a large group scheduled to come in 45 minutes, so we're going to have to be done in 45 minutes so they can be seated. At this point I finally started to cry.

Happy Birthday. You're old, injured, and a pain in the neck.

It all worked out. The restaurant found a way to set up the needed table without ousting us; the other party didn't show up anyway. The wedding finally started dinner and turned the music off, and my friends more or less carried me home and made me tea.

No way Holly (June 4) and Chris (September 14) can top that.

Remembrance, Life, Earth, and Faith.

2010-12-28T16:16:00.001-08:00

I have a huge family. On my side, 9 aunts and uncles and 29 first cousins; on my husband’s 26 aunts and uncles and god knows how many cousins.

We know almost none of them.

Growing up, both families kept in better touch, but I lost track of all of my own relatives more than a decade ago, through neglect, poor sibling relations in the older generation, my own poor relationship with my father and a family culture that never emphasized togetherness. We’re better with my husband’s family, where we at least know everyone’s name, but as they all live out West (and by “out West” I mean anywhere from San Francisco to LA to China to Thailand), we see each other in spurts when some branch of the family vacations near another.

Or when someone dies.

My husband’s cousin June, daughter of his eldest aunt, died the day before the Solstice this year. We knew June rather well, and her children, who are my age. Therefore, this Solstice Sowing is for her; I hope to be able to plant some of them in my own garden in the spring, and get some to her family in San Francisco.

Solstice Sowing is a tradition among gardeners, to plant something for the spring on the darkest day of the year, to honor the return of the sun and the promise of next year's garden. Four types of seeds are planted.

The first set of seeds are seeds of remembrance and should be seeds of flowers that remind us of someone we knew and loved but who is now gone from our lives forever. I’ve planted Angelonia, for the Angel in the name.

The second set of seeds represent seeds of life and should be for plants that will make fruit or nectar and invite birds and butterflies to our gardens. I’ve planted sunflowers, which were a gift from Renee’s Garden.

The third set of seeds should be tree seeds. We can honor Mother Nature by growing trees that will help clean the air we breathe, reduce excess sun on the soil, and provide shade for our heads on a hot summer’s day. I took a cutting from my Magnolia; despite the cold and the date, the wood was green and pliable.

The fourth set of seeds are seeds of faith, for which I have chosen Anemone. The plant you sow for “faith” should be a zone that is beyond ours in warmth. It will help us to remember that we accept the “Leap of Faith” in our hearts and know that Mother Nature is capable of miracles. Anemone is a flower filled with meaning, both mythical, traditional and personal. They represent everlasting love in the language of flowers. These are also the flower of the god, whose blood renews the earth in the spring. As a flower of the Greek highlands, they represent my own Greek heritage.

Finally, these seeds showed up in my mailbox one day, with several others. I have never been able to determine who sent them, so perhaps they’re a gift of the goddess, who will be honored to have them planted as she welcomes June back to her heart for eternity.

If I wrote holiday greetings

2010-12-23T13:51:00.001-08:00

Here is what happened this year:

Julian left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. Nora left, and came back, and left again, and came back again. I don't think they're done. Julian's off again in March, and Nora for the summer.

Nora discovered that she's smart. Our fault I suppose--parents tell their daughters one of two things: that they are pretty or that they are smart. Then the pretty ones think they aren't smart, and the smart ones think they aren't pretty. We told Nora she was pretty; I guess we assumed she knew she was smart. It's best anyway, to learn yourself that you can be both.

Julian discovered that he's good-looking. Apparently women check him out when his hair is short. (He was the smart one. Sigh.)

We continue to make an oddly comfortable living despite our somewhat unconventional job situations. The count in April for our income taxes was seven W2 forms and nine 1099s. Are there really households that have only two? We seem to be managing to pay cash for Nora's freshman and sophomore years at the city college and have enough left to help her with housing. I am completely enamored with writing $1,400 checks instead of $14,000 checks, like we did for Julian. Hooray for community college.

My life changed (it was due-- if you care to check, you will see me reinventing myself about every 5 years). With yet another hours/pay cut from Light Opera Works (where I have made less each year that I have worked there-I think they are doing it wrong) they took themselves down to a level where I now work fewer hours and make a lower hourly wage there than at any of my other numerous gigs. So they got relegated to their relative status and I went looking for new things to do. I found clients for my mythical "Juno Consulting" business, discovered Chicago's sustainability community, and decided to go for my Master Gardener certification. Classes start in January 2011. I've made dozens of new friends who have re-energized me and reminded me that there's life beyond not-for-profit arts.

Yes, I invited people I met on line into my home. And lived to tell the tale.

Contemporary Art Workshop closed, leaving a huge gap in my life.

Bill signed on to sing in the Chicago Symphony for one more 3-year stint, possibly his last. In two years, it will be 40 since he first sang with the Symphony back in high school. Even though it wasn't a continual gig, that has to be some kind of record. He continues to be a star in Oak Park, with his church, concert series and children's choir. This last gig has major benefits, such as getting to meet Rick Bayless at an Oak Park cocktail party (and to eat the guacamole and ceviche that he made).

The recession cost Bill the regular monthly choir gig directing at Anshe Emet, but he continues to direct the High Holidays choir. Our dear friend and Bill's mentor Richard Proulx died, which I suppose in some sense moves Bill into line for the Chicago choral scene's eminence grise. How strange.

And so it goes.

Blessed be in 2011.

Gifts

2010-07-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

My mother died when I was 22.

This is the single defining fact of my life. It defines me more than my children, my profession, my home, my garden, my spouse, or my acts. As Anna Quindlan once put it, you could describe me by saying "my eyes are green, my hair is brown, and my mother died when I was 22."

I have missed her, searingly, every day since that day. I noted the date that I had known my husband longer than I had known my mother. I know the date on which I will be exactly her age the day she died. I noted the date, long past, when I had lived half my life without her.

I have had to navigate adulthood on my own. I had no model from my mother's generation. There are things I will never do because I had no mother to check with, trivial, everday things like baking a roast or a pie. Family stories lost, family stories that never happened. Because my mother died when I was 22.

So when your mother dies, when you are 45, or 50 or 62, when your mother dies after your children or grown, or after your children have children, I will understand your pain, but I will not sympathize. That is when your mother is supposed to die. You have known all your life that you grow old with your partner, but lay your parents to rest as your own hair turns gray. Don't weep in my arms, at 50, because your mother has died. You cannot even imagine the gift the universe gave you, to have had her so long.

21

2010-04-12T15:43:00.000-07:00

My daughter is 21 today.

My greatgrandmother was born in 1857 with England at war in India, and turned 21 in 1877 while her homeland of Turkey was at war with Russia.

My grandmother was born in 1897, while her homeland of Turkey was at war with Greece. The anti-Christian pogroms in the aftermath led eventually to her emigration to America. She turned 21 in 1918 at the end of the Great War, and emigrated, pregnant, to America five years later.

My mother was born in 1923 in a blessed moment of peace, but turned 21 in 1944, in uniform, working for the American war machine that purportedly saved the world.

I was born in 1956, hard on the heels of the Korean conflict, and turned 21 in 1977, 100 years and countless wars after my greatgrandmother.

My daughter was born in 1989, a few weeks before the Tienanmen massacre. She turns 21 while we are at war in two countries for reasons which escape me.

So here is my birthday prayer for my daughter: May your daughter turn 21 into a world with no war.

Decorations

2009-12-23T03:41:00.000-08:00

I think of winter as the god’s domain. The goddess and her daughter mourn or sleep, while the god tries his hand at giving life, and gets it wrong.

I went for a dawn walkabout this morning. In summer and fall it’s a ritual, but I always forget the peace and joy this brings in the cold weather as well. The light snow drifts down, just an inch or two deep.

Walking around a cold bare garden in winter, you feel the earth as stone and see the plants as dead, the garden is a grey monotone without form or function. But walking around a cold and snowy garden you see the shapes— of a low stone wall, or of the pond, yin in the water, yang in the stone edging. The plants become plants again with each twig or berry capped by a tiny drift of white.

Seeing the garden in such stark contrast recalls for me the volume and edge that define it. The eye follows the line of luminaries that mirrors the wall, and lands on the metal bird nestled between the sedum (so glad I remembered not to cut back the sedum). Even the trite statement of Italian lights becomes magic in the bluegrey dawn. You remember why a thing becomes trite— because it’s so wonderful that everyone does it.

I think I will decorate for the holidays after all, and bring some of the god’s magic inside.

You're not getting the security deposit back

2009-12-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

Having finally acknowledged that my son moved out more than five years ago, really, my daughter (who also doesn't really live here, but whatever) took over his larger room, leaving the small front room for another use.

And until there are grandchildren sleeping over, that means, for me. So I turned it into a trash-novel library and seed-starting station, since it's got the only window in the house that gets anything approaching direct sunlight.

We've made a pact that any rehab-type projects will be done right, since when we moved in decades ago we basically just slapped paint on everything and now it's all falling apart. But looking at Nora's old room now, with all her bits and pieces, photos and BFF paraphernalia stripped away, I really don't want to have to do it right. I also have a bone deep sympathy for landlords.

What A Mess. At some point, one of them wrote all over one wall with that glow-in-the-dark puffy glue. Nora liked sticking photos to the wall, and apparently at one point used glue, which left not just residue but bits of paper stuck there until, I suppose the second coming, because it would not come off with just a knife. Apparently not liking the glue, she switched to scotch tape, which has become one with the wall. I'm going to have to heat strip it. Rather than pulling unused nails out of the wall, she just banged them all the way in, sometimes leaving holes in the plaster.

I've said it before. They leave, but little pieces stay behind.

The most important thing

2009-11-01T09:23:00.000-08:00

I grew up in a household that prided itself on the emotional distance that prevailed among family members. I can recall my mother actually telling me that she was very proud of the fact that we were all so independent, she, my brother, my father and me, that we were "just four people who happen to live in the same house."

She felt this way because she had grown up in a family that used emotion as a bludgeon and family ties as a garrotte. Battered and strangled emotionally, she sought to create a family that chose to love each other. Her legacy is a family that never communicates at all, because without that common roof, we seem to have nothing in common, to the extent that it takes conscious effort to remember that I have a birth family at all, let alone cousins, and uncles and aunts.

And inadvertantly, I seem to have repeated the pattern, marrying into a family that mistrusts strong emotion. In contrast to the lack of emotional communication, myown strong emotion seems a pathology. I talk to other parents whose children have left, and they speak of phone calls their children have made-- I can count on one hand the times my son has picked up the phone to call me since he left home for college, and I believe the count is never for his having called just to talk, rather than for a birthday or to report specific news.

You cannot undervalue the importance of the people who share your memories. Losing your birth family is like losing yourself, your childhood. It is hard to recreate a family anew with each generation; you'll just be a skiff on an unknown ocean, without anchor, port, or origin.

2009-10-23T17:07:00.001-07:00

"I just want my children to be happy."

Even the most ambitious stage mother will use this line when confronted with the question of what she wants for her children. But as I move through my day, from job to job to job (yes, I have three), where my insights, suggestions and expertise all appear to exist in a vacuum where I have no credibility and must re-prove myself with each new idea (never, sure, you've looked into this, we can try that), I think what I really want is for my children to matter.

I come at this because I think that I just don't matter. What I think, whether I push for an idea or let it go, it doesn't matter. The bosses will be happier for not having to deal with me, and really I have such a small life, my changes to one minuscule corner of the world is not exactly going to solve famine in Africa.

But it makes me very unhappy, this idea that no matter how I've proved myself in the past, or how much experience I have what I say doesn't matter. No one cares what I think. I want people to care what my children think. I want them to know that people care what they think. I don't care if their lives are small, or how they or the world measures their material success, but I want them to know that they have mattered in someone's life.

Why didn't I ever think of that

2009-10-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

The best hallowe'en costume I ever heard of:'

Reverse trick-or-treat.

Could my kid do that?

2009-10-11T08:16:00.001-07:00

We saw the show High Fidelity last night. Because my son has sort of fallen into "MDing" (that's lingo, folks! "Musical Direction") for theaters, I immediately, of course, project a career for him that inevitably ends with a Tony. I have no idea if he has any amibitions in this direction. Right now I think he's just thrilled to be actually earning a living making music.

It's a hazard for parents. Everything your child tries becomes the thing that will make them famous. It's the tendency that creates Stage Mothers and other monsters of the household. One's belief in the exceptionality of one's children is so entrenched that it becomes impossible to believe when they are not the ones who get the gig, the deal, the contract, the prize.

Sunday mornings the local NPR station always ends the 9 a.m. broadcast with some young musician or actor or writer who has just "made it" on their amazing talent. Often I'll listen and think "my kid is better than that" (we will not discuss the truth of this statement. As a parent, I take it on faith). And then, equally inevitably, you discover that the kid's stepmother is Carly Simon's sister, or their summer place was next door to Norman Mailer. Not that this helped-- they did it on sheer talent. Uh huh.

Still, I believe. This will be the generation that makes it on talent, so the next generation can make it on connections. Meanwhile, back to the rolodex. Who do we know?....

Too much information?

2009-09-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

So, have I stepped over the line?

Protecting Your Child's Privacy

Not my kid

2009-08-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

When my mother was a little younger than me, she had friends, I realize now, about my age, or a little older. I never thought about it at the time, that these “adults” were so young. In fact, I had a student teacher my senior year of high school with whom I also worked. At work, she was “Dori.” At school, “Miss Starr.”

Now I seem to have collected a whole set of friends the ages of my children. And yet, in Chinese generational fashion, I associate my children’s 20something friends with their generation, and my own 20something friends with my generation, or at least, I identify them with the “adults” and not with the “kids.”

Context is so crucial to identity. Meeting a 23-year-old at work as a colleague or even subordinate, you still put them into the “adult” category. Meeting them as your son’s friend from college puts them into the “kid” category. With the “kids”, I indulge and maybe condescend (I hope not, but who knows how I come across?). With the “adults” I relate and talk about “adult” things. (How are they different? I don’t know.) I have to keep reminding myself that they are ALL adults, if still young and unformed. Some of my own young friends would get on like a house afire with my kids, but introducing them is awkward, like trying to get your daughter to date your best friend’s cousin’s son.

Remember me

2009-08-09T15:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a month for reunions. The return of my daughter from overseas, high school reunion, virtual reconnection with lost friends, and lunch with my father after 13 years very nearly sans communication. This is the stuff of memoir, the navel-gazing contemplation of past love; literature is dense with it and my trite musings probably won't add much to the conversation. What I am feeling is so profound that I do not know if I can express it-- the thoughts are deep in my reptile brain-- touch me, hold me, know me, remember me, keep me. In fact, then, perhaps this is not an occasion for essay, but one for haiku. The brief to encompass the vast.

I met you again
In the place we knew before.
Do you remember?

Dedicated to the Class of '73

Maggie

2009-08-05T11:45:00.001-07:00

There are people that exist on the periphery of your life. They enter and are important, and fade without ever leaving. They overlap; they are strands of the braid that goes in and out, a part of the tapestry woven by the Graces. Every thread makes your life and each one snipped lessens it.

Maggie is one of these. A good friend once, and a close friend to close friends. She threaded her way through my life at so many instances. Dorm mate and nearly roommate. One-time love of my own one-time love. Roommate with a friend of a close friend, who became a close friend. To think of her as peripheral does a disservice perhaps, to the person she was and the friend she could have been, but she was peripheral the way the sky is peripheral. You understand its importance, and you can always see it, and it's there when you look.

Maggie died today. I feel grief and guilt; as though the sky is falling and I might have stopped it, had I only been paying attention.

Faith

2009-08-01T16:57:00.000-07:00

What is it one acquires through faith? Righteousness? Community? Redemption? Acceptance? One needs to understand what faith will offer before you can find it. For acceptance or community, there are the ecumenical, tolerant religions like the Quakers, Unitarians, Buddhists. If it's redemption (whatever that means to you) one must bite the bullet and learn to accept the tenets of one of the redemptive faiths, Islam, fundamentalist Christianity and the like.

If it is righteousness, and the ability to live a good life, then you don't need a religion, you just need a philosophical grounding for your own life. I think that "people of faith" believe that their faith helps them, or even compels them to be righteous, by which I mean honest, moral and ethical. I believe, in fact I know, that you can have those things without an external structure; in fact while the religious often seem to think that people of "no faith" are taking the easy way out, I in fact believe the opposite-- it is much harder to be a righteous person without an external structure-- your goodness needs to come from within.

I was raised by godless communists, who basically taught me to distrust organized religion, and in fact my encounters with organized religion as a child were pretty much universally negative inasmuch as my parents' atheism was well-known in our community and at my school. (Lots of ridicule and abuse suffered at the hands of authority figures who should have known better.)

So when I grew up and more or less became a seeker, the organized religions were out for me. I could not accept either the magical thinking, the hypocrisy, the intolerance, the arbitrary strictures or the authoritarian mindset. How I have approached this, then, as I'm someone with a strong spiritual bent, is to accept the idea of a higher power, but that this power emanates from me and that it is my responsibility to live up to it. Because I have no external structure to compel me, this creates an obligation-- I have no god to forgive me my transgressions, therefore I better be really really cautious about transgressing.

The idea, pervasive in our society, that atheists, the "godless" if you will, have no understanding of morality is so personally offensive to me that I literally cannot watch mainstream media at all. I am, despite my lack of *a* faith, a person *of* faith-- someone who believes in and strives for my own inner goodness, who seeks and in fact finds that goodness in others, and who lives what a religious person might call a godly life.

Perfect Storm

2009-07-20T08:52:00.001-07:00

Funerals combine three things I hate the most:
death, sentimentality, and small talk.

What if

2009-07-16T04:22:00.000-07:00

I've written about this before-- the ease with which you can spy on people on line. I joked with my kids that I needed to be on Facebook in order to stalk them, but it's really not so far from the truth. When your loved ones are far-flung, it's a way to connect without being intrusive. How far you take it is like anything in life: on the honor system. I promise I will not abuse the access you give me (there's a lesson our government needs to learn).

But the web also has the wonderful capability of reconnection, something new in human development. Haven't seen someone for 30 years? Google them. Some members of my high school class decided to set up our entire 2009 reunion just using the web, and found hundreds of grads on the "6-degrees" principle.

So I did something slightly forbidden-- I found an old, boyfriend?, on Facebook. He wasn't really ever my boyfriend, and our relationship in college was like slightly-too-close brother and sister, but he's definitely in the "what if" category. Not really the one that got away, but certainly one that was available for fishing if I'd put some effort into it. We danced around each other for years, and watched bemused while each hooked up (in the modern parlance) with someone else.

And there he is, the same evilly-goofy face I loved in college (sorry Mark, but there it is), and it brought such joy to see him after all these years. So where was I going with this?

Nothing. Just. I really love the web.

Cleaning day

2009-07-06T17:45:00.000-07:00

My son moved out, the real one, the official one, the not living at home for sure anymore one. But his spirit, that is to say his STUFF lives on. He took what he "needed," although I personally think he needs more than he believes he does. He doesn't want to be anchored to things; I get that. However, he doesn't seem to mind anchoring us to his things, namely the items that he left here.

When your children move out for the first time, they take their things, and leave the memories. That's one of a parent's functions, I suppose, to be the repository of memory. But so much memory is locked up in stuff. Is the hideous peanut-shaped jar junk, or is it a precious childhood artifact? If I get rid of the admittedly brilliant 6th grade spanish class poster, will someone regret it? There are reams and reams of drawings; I have no idea what to do with them.

It's not so easy moving a child on. Memories seem ephemeral, but they attach themselves. They are sticky, and their things have weight.

Mother's Day

2009-05-12T04:26:00.000-07:00

Thanks for dinner, kids. You're the best and I love you very much.

Julian and Nora are back, Jules since mid-January, Nora since late April, and you see what happens. When they are here, I don't write about them. There are comic ways of saying this-- they suck all the air out of the room; and psychological ones-- their presence consumes me; and philosophical ones-- where do I end and they begin?

But the fact is that when they are here I don't need to think about our relationship, as I am now simply living it daily. Separation from them as adults feels like it was less traumatic than connection to them as infants, although I think they will tell you differently; their perception of it is different. They are creating themselves without me. I am simply remembering who I was for the 30 years before they arrived. When they were babies they were suddenly the two most important people in the world, and yet they were the ones who knew absolutely nothing about who I was, but merely knew who they needed me to be.

I used to say that they saved my life. My periodic wrenching melancholy might have killed me if I hadn't had these helpless dependents, and I used to fear their leaving; that without their need my melancholy would win. But in reality, their need has not disappeared or diminished, it has simply changed. Right now I think we are still finding out way through this changing relationship, but it's intriguing enough that I guess I'll stick around and find out where it goes.

The family I don't have

2009-03-20T19:32:00.000-07:00

The family I do have is a wonderful family. A handsome and engaged husband, creative and active children who are fearlessly pursuing their dreams.

The family I do not have is the family of a former boss and dear friend. She and her husband are the parents I should have had; in fact they are the parents I did have, except that Jack and Lynn made choices that honored their artistic natures and unconventional attitudes. My own parents bought into the whole postwar 50s domestic nonsense, which fit them not at all.

I live my life in an unconventional way far more because of Lynn and Jack than because of my own parents. They showed me that artists could be artists, that you can raise your children according to your own rhythm and values. They let me understand that you can live a rich and even a consumerist life with no money. These are people who changed my life profoundly.

Yesterday I saw their entire family together. The grown son and daughter with their spouses and children. They are close knit, nice, welcoming and warm. I want intensely to be part of that circle. They all accept me; Lynn thinks of me nearly as a daughter. She loves me. But in fact it's an empty shibboleth. I know the stories and can say the words, but the clan is a closed one and I am not a part of it.

Around the world

2009-03-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

I managed to connect, at a remove, my daughter with a "cyber" friend, Joyce, in Singapore. Joyce went and saw Nora skate a show, and I've been trying to wrap my brain around a world where I can meet someone on line, and then connect them on line with another person, who they can then meet. At 9 p.m. last night, when Nora was skating the show that Joyce was watching, I closed my eyes and imagined them in real time.

A generation ago, heck two decades ago, there would have been nearly no point in the exercise. Even telephoning internationally was expensive from the U.S. end and absurdly complex from Europe or Asia. If your loved one was across an ocean there was no point in thinking of them in "real time."

This makes me both more and less homesick for Nora. I know that she can reach me easily, so I wait by the phone so to speak; I'm afraid not to be sitting in front of the computer in case she looks for me. It makes it hard to let go in the way that I was able to let Julian go when he was on the boat, because I knew I couldn't reach him, or now, when he's completely accessible.

The sisters

2009-02-20T07:41:00.001-08:00

I have a group of female friends-- Nancy, Sheila, Lynn, Susan, Kaikay. I call them the "sisters," they are people with whom I connected immediately and permanently. In one corner of my heart I believe that they are the lost sisters from my past lives. I never feel a need to seek approval or support from these women; it's a given. Friendship does not need to be sought, or affirmed, or renewed, or nurtured. It simply is.

And yet, despite having these strong connections, I find myself investing my emotional energy in seeking approval and affirmation from people who are never going to give it. My boss, in fact, every boss I ever had except for Susan and Lynn (who are each one of the sisters). I have a positive knack for finding bosses who are stingy with approval, or insecure about accepting input from subordinates. Or perhaps it's not that I have a knack for this, but that the sorts of people who seek administrative positions are people who thrive on this sort of petty bullshit, or who need the affirmation of the title to feel a sense of worth.

Probably this stems from some emotional need not met in my childhood. I'm constantly seeking praise from a father or mother figure, or something like that. Which makes me wonder what neuroses, what bad decisions based on misunderstood emotional needs, my kids will suffer?

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem

2009-02-17T07:39:00.000-08:00

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Homeless

2009-02-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

The seaman is back, ready to put the waves behind him forever and making noises about staying in Chicago after all. It is all I can do to sit on my hands, bite my tongue, and refrain from falling to my knees with a heartfelt "thank you jesus" that he might stay within shouting distance.

In the meantime, he's living at home, except he's not. I can count on one hand the meals he's shared with us since he got back, and the conversations lasting more than a few minutes. Gentle suggestions that he might contribute financially in tiny ways (buy every third bag of coffee?) are met with blank stares or amusement. I think back to when I was a young adult on my own for the first time, and realize that I never thought about my parents at all. I'd go "home" periodically, but when we were in Chicago I just never thought about them.

How strange, then, for my son, who is in that same life phase, where we are peripheral if not actually superfluous, and yet here he is, living in our house. He can't not think about us when we're underfoot all the time.

The traveller and the homebody

2009-01-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

From the skater: "Chengdu was probably the grossest place I've ever been. The pollution was close to intolerable and there was just filth everywhere. I saw a street cleaner once and it was hand built. Despite those sad factors, I actually had quite a good time there. Being in such a different place doesn't seem to get old."

From the seaman: "...with the end in sight the days are starting to drag even harder. I've already created countdowns on the calendar on my phone and the paper one in my room, and it helps to be able to see when I've passed certain markers— yesterday was the 20 days to go point."

Brrrr

2009-01-01T08:37:00.001-08:00

For the first time in nearly two years, everyone in the family is experiencing similar weather:

Chicago 36 and overcast
Shanghai 39 and rainy
Southhampton 37 and cloudy

From the skater

2009-01-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

Appropriately, a description of a boat trip:

"After our shows in Chengdu I went on a four-day boat trip down the Yangtzee (sp?) River. The whole trip was rather exciting because we never really knew where we were. There was always someone there to tell us where to go but no one ever told us where we were. Our tour guide could tell us 'ok you'll wake up at 6 to go see a temple and you should be back on the boat by 9' and she would give us our ticket for the temple and we would go look at it. Sometimes there would be a sign with English on it explaining the site but usually not. It didn't matter because everything we saw was so beautiful to look at.

"Our first day was spent mostly on a bus in the city of Chondqing. We saw a few sites including a big gold Buddha, 2 prisons, and a knife factory. We never found out what the prisons were all about but one had a torture room with some very used looking devices. The knife factory was quite an experience. Like everywhere we went, we had no idea what it was. They took us into this building and sat us in a little room with chairs set up facing a little table with veggies and a giant metal pole on it. There was also three knives of varying sizes. A lady came in and started talking a million miles a minute about God knows what for several minutes. Then, seemingly out of the blue, she walks over to the metal pole with this big butchers knife and start beating on it with all her strength. At this point we are just buckled over with laughter because we can't imagine what is going on. It is only then that this guy who speaks English leans over and explains that the building we are in used to belong to the government and now belongs to a steel factory that makes these knives out of the same steel tanks are made of and that . Our lives made much more sense then.
We finally got onto the boat that night and sailed off till morning. This boat was absolutely the most communist thing I have ever encountered. Every morning at the designated wake up time an announcement was made over the loud speakers and then music would play until we left the boat. At the same time people would walk around and knock on your door to wake you. It was very interesting. Everyone wake up now! Ok everyone go see this temple now!"

From the seaman:

2008-12-22T13:39:00.000-08:00

From the seaman (soon to be a thankful landlubber):

"I am in the home stretch here on the Queen Victoria, and with the end in sight the days are starting to drag even harder. I've already created countdowns on the calendar on my phone and the paper one in my room, and it helps to be able to see when I've passed certain markers— yesterday was the 20 days to go point.

"The past few days we have been in the Carribbean. It's been warm and relaxing, but after tomorrow we'll be gone again, back to England and more importantly, the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic crossing was surprisingly smooth, nothing compared to the Bay of Biscay—unfortunately, we will be passing through there at least one more time. We spent two days at the beginning of this cruise in the worst seas we've had in my time here, and after that nothing really affects me anymore. As I've mentioned before, I don't tend to get severely seasick, but two days of constant violent motion will get to anyone.

"I've gotten pretty good at this gig. My reading is pretty darn good now, and once I get back home and get my jazz chops back up I might be a pretty good piano player. The musical director here has come to regard me as capable and trustworthy . This is both flattering and annoying, since it means that any extra piano duties on the ship tend to fall on me. It's been interesting seeing the politics of music unfold here—for instance, the pianist in the dance band here is incredibly good. He's an amazing soloist with great ideas and chops to spare and most people say that even though he's a better piano player than me (which I agree with); but I'd have a better chance of getting a gig over him simply because I'm easier to be around. So my plan now is to continue trying to be nice and practice, practice, practice.

"I know everyone is very proud and excited, but this gig really does suck. I'm reluctant to say this, especially to Bahk (who is clearly the most jazzed about the whole thing), but after close to five months of trying my best to be positive about the whole experience I've got to say I don't like it very much. I may continue to work on ships, but I'll be looking strictly for fill-in gigs, one month long at the longest. This is a good way to make money, but it's terrible for making connections and developing creatively. I've come to realize this is the easy gig—good money, less challenging music, and everything is taken care of for you. If I prove to be an utter failure on land after a couple of decades, then maybe I'll be back, but I think I will try to avoid the sea in the future.

Have a great Christmas and New Year's, and say hello to everyone for me. I have gifts for everyone when I get back, so we'll have to schedule a nice dinner so I can pass them all out (Nora will have to wait for hers, I think). I miss the feeling and smell of Christmas in Chicago— 80 degrees and palm trees just does not feel right. I get to New York in 19 days, and I have changed my flights so I will return to Chicago on the 15th."

The skater promises a letter as well. Hers forthcoming.

Always looking for someone

2008-12-15T06:24:00.000-08:00

It's in my profile, the story of my friend whose 6 year old daughter had died. "I've got four other kids," she told me, but "I feel like I'm always looking for someone."

It's the perfect phrase to describe one's empty nest. Even now, nearly five years after the first one left, nearly two with both of them gone, I find my radar sending out signals-- where are they? Are they safe?

The art of raising babies

2008-11-22T16:45:00.000-08:00

Year ago, when my children were small, I made a choice—babies or art.

Perhaps it is easier for a writer. But for a painter the choice is clear—you cannot pick up a baby when your hands are covered in cadmium yellow. It is poison. You can switch to pastels, but then the baby is always Technicolor and anyway, who knows what’s in those as well? So you switch to charcoal, but now the baby looks like you let him crawl around on the cellar floor, which in fact you do, and oh my god what is he putting in his mouth.

So you put down the charcoal stick and take him to the park. And then you don’t pick up the stick again for 17 yea… well you never pick it up again.

I did finally get my family to understand that the portion of the cellar where I used to make my art cannot be used as a dumping ground. They cleared it out and now I have a nice unimpeded view of the unfinished portrait of my mother that I started in 1999.
Perhaps I am just weak or a willing patsy of the patriarchy or maybe I wasn’t talented enough or committed enough, but someone has to cook dinner and someone has to take the baby to get her shots and someone has to hold the “real” job that pays for the health insurance. And you get tired of having to spell out what you need when you have spent your whole life anticipating what everybody else needs and they don’t even know it.

So, what? Am I an idiot? Am I weak? A failure? Or am I missing the point? My feminist sisters say, just like the patriarchy does, that after all it’s my fault. I should just have blithely gone on painting like Jo March writing with her gaudy cap. Sign on the door—IF THE CAP IS ON THE FLOOR I AM IN ARTISTIC AGONY AND NOT TO BE DISTURBED. GET YOUR OWN DAMN DINNER. Right.

Personally I am exhausted just trying to maintain floor space in my unused studio, let alone actually paint.

The problem is not that the children are all the creativity I need to fulfill my artistic impulse, but that they are such a drain on creative energy that I have none left to give a sheet of blank paper.

Excuses

2008-11-15T06:38:00.000-08:00

It's not just lack of time, I tell myself. There's too much going on and I'm just not getting any ideas. Plus, you know, there's a lot going on. I have, probably, a broken finger, so it's too hard to type. This is such a busy time of year-- special projects at work, wrapping up house and business for the year end, weekly work seminar in Milwaukee, rehabbing the stairwell and the foyer.

I'm kidding myself, though. Mostly, it's that Nga Jee is here. I've written about this phenomenon before. When the kids are around I don't write. When they were small, the art-making slowly petered off. Even when they are living in my world as lightly as Nga Jee is this round, my creative impulse directs itself to them and away from the interior workings of my own brain and artistic needs.

The children (hardly that anymore!) are the canvas, even if at this point it's just a matter of cleaning the paint off the brushes prior to putting them away.

Who are you?

2008-10-29T04:21:00.001-07:00

In conversation at a Chamber of Commerce meeting on Tuesday, my four companions included the 60ish grandson of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. He still spoke Yiddish, and had a different last name from the rest of his family, because his father, 9 years old at the time, spoke some English and was able to correct the spelling when the Ellis Island clerk got it wrong.

A mixed race black woman had an unusually-spelled African given name and a prosaic family name. Why? The immigration clerk didn't like the ethnic name. This woman's daughter wanted the ethnic name back. Mom's reaction? Fine, honey, but I'm not paying the legal fees. Her feeling-- I am not my name.

The hispanic bank manager to my left corrected our anglicized pronunciation of his name. He, in contrast, WAS his name, and wanted it recognized.

My children have names that reflect the mixed bag of their backgrounds-- Greek (Aspasia) and Swedish (Nelson) and Chinese (Chin, Seng-lim and Nga-jee) and Anglo (Julian and Nora). Perhaps we are not our names, but our names are our history. Everyone at the table had a story that used their names to illustrate something about themselves.

Contact

2008-10-27T19:22:00.000-07:00

Postcard from the seaman, phone call from the skater. They're far flung but thinking of us, which is the main thing. God how I miss them.

2008-10-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

My arms ache, my fingernails will never be clean again, but I’m smug and happy with the beauty I have coaxed, with all due respect to Mother Nature, out of this small plot of land. With my garden going on 20, I am continually amazed at both the new panaromas and new details that I find every day.

I’ve always thought of the garden as my canvas. Since I stopped making art for a living more than a decade ago, I have used the garden as a living work of art that is never done. Now for the first time I have both the perspective and the schedule to really treat it that way on an ongoing basis and I find myself going through very similar thoughts and actions in caring for and creating it.

Art happens in the garden much the way it happens in the studio. You have a plan and you execute it, but the result is never quite what you expect.

Kind of like rearing children.

Less room in an empty nest than you might think

2008-10-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

My 19-yr-old daughter, who's been living on a theatrical tour for more than a year, will be home for a month in November.

Last time she was home for an extended period, she drove us crazy-- messy, disengaged, expecting to be catered to (at least emotionally), and frankly kind of mean to her mother (that would be me). It's too long to be considered a houseguest, and too short to really integrate her back into systems. She can be somewhat oblivious to her effect on those around her, but is generally charming and great to be around. I just don't want to have to either pick up her shit, or remind her to do so.

So I asked an on-line forum what to do, and the consensus was lay down the rules then chill out and get out of her way.

The best of the comments:
"She's an adult, who's been living "on her own" for about a year now. Expect a lot of frustration if you try to fit her back into the teen-child mold. Let her know you know she's an adult, but also let her know that as family, not a house-guest, she is expected to be responsible. Set guidelines and boundaries up front, in clear terms, without judgments expressed or implied. In terms of expectations in regards to messiness, I'd say let her deal with her own space, but set reasonable requirements for shared spaces, like the kitchen. Try to present your requirements as you would to a potential tenant, not as to a disobedient child."

Life can be so simple sometimes.

Why I hate the web

2008-09-15T10:21:00.000-07:00

Just waiting for the roofer to show up, on hold with all of my work projects, so I start to surf. Knowing that it's a bad idea, I decide to check out the blog of the daughter of a close friend, and lo and behold, she's using it as a diary and conversation with her friends, she does not want her mother's friend looking at it, and yet now I know it is there. Now it is a scab that I can scratch. Now I know something about her that I don't want her to know that I know. I have removed the bookmark, but I still know that it is there.

The internet gives you the ability, if not outright permission, to snoop. It lets you know what an ignoble person you are, because the ability to do this is irresistible. I never had trouble not snooping in my children's rooms or among their belongings. I've cleaned their rooms without ever feeling a need to find things or pass judgment on items that pass through my hands. I have never read their diaries.

Yet the internet offers a way to look without looking. Pop over to Facebook and see who's talking to them. Drop in at MySpace and check out the page hits. Since I feel sneaky and uncomfortable when I do this, clearly I'm in a morally unpleasant area, and should stop. And yet, who will know?

Telling stories

2008-09-15T07:26:00.000-07:00

Every family has its myths and stories, they constitute the family's collective memory. It's important to families to have stories that connect you to the ancestors and to each other. Immigrant families treat story-telling in different ways-- either mythical "old country" parables that create a perfect world of tradition and beauty that has been lost, or else a void.

These last believe mostly in the new. "We left the old country and its myths behind". My mother, my grandmother, and my mother-in-law subscribed to the leave-it-be school of immigrant story-telling. We have no old-country stories from these women. All of the stories of the Nelsons and the Chins are new land tales, about what happened here in the country that they chose, rather than there in the country that they left. The only thing that really came with them was the food, so Bill and I know nothing about our immigrant heritage except how to eat.

When you don't tell stories, it's hard to get the details to agree. Everyone involved in the original incident must agree-- I said this and you said that, then these things happened in this sequence. The collective must create the stories. The grise tells the mother tells the child, who carries that story at many removes into the future: "This is who we are, because this is who we were."

Knowing people

2008-08-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

One does what one gets recognition for. This is why a job is so rewarding; even a bad job. If you do it with reasonable effort, someone notices every single day. You are around people who do the same thing, so you know that your efforts are not only appreciated, but also understood. It is also one of the things that makes internet communities so compelling-- you can find groups of people that share your passions both generally and specifically. There is no sense of the kind of patronizing "support" one gets from friends and family members (oh, Xan's making art, that's so important to her, here's a hug); you don't need hugs or specific praise to know that these people approve, support and understand what you are doing.

When we were young, we found these communities live, by creating cooperative efforts. Galleries, critique groups, activist efforts, community gardens, neighborhood associations, play groups. I wonder, given the ease of finding communities on line, and the safe barrier of anonymity, if people still do this to the same extent.

I find on line communities nearly addictive-- I know if I post a comment or make a journal entry or put up a picture here and here, someone who shares my interest in or love for this thing will see it, and maybe even tell me why they liked it. I don't need to hear from them directly; I can tell from the page views if people have looked at. An irresistible combination: love and statistics.

I think this is what motivates the near-frenzy of young people to get away from their parents. A parent's approval is suspect, and tainted. The approval and support does not spring from shared passion or understanding, but from the uncritical stance of love. It cannot help but feel belittling and condescending. Your parents' pride excludes them from your community.

The Matriarch

2008-08-16T03:29:00.000-07:00

What makes a matriarch? Is a matriarch the oldest female in the family, or the wisest, simply the one who usurps the role? We often conflate age and wisdom in our society, possibly because no one ever feels quite "wise," but it seems safe to assume that age confers wisdom. I think my own mother would have resisted the role of matriarch; it would not have appealed to her sense of the ephemeral. Julia, Liz's mother, made a classic old-world matriarch, but probably just because she was Old World right down to the accent, the home-cooked Hungarian meals, and the house dress persona. We all try to shoehorn May into the role, but she also resists it. This leaves me or Liz. Or really it just leaves Liz, because I think she covets the role. Which is maybe what makes a matriarch.

The concept of the matriarch, the crone, the wise old woman is very appealing. I am too young for this role, of course, and don't have enough of a satellite system, so to speak-- no young 'uns, and not much of an extended family. (Which brings up the other question of how large your tribe needs to be before it requires a matriarch.) I'm not sure people would really view me this way either. I suspect I am headed more towards Crazy Old Lady than Wise Old Lady.

The matriarch is the unanswerable Mother, the person with the final say. This is the appeal-- that someone can say- stop. Someone can say- do. That someone actually has the final answer and the right to an expectation of obedience, or at least compliance. It is this expectation that confers the power of the Matriarch, and by extension the wisdom. This is a feedback loop that reinforces the power-- if I give you power over me, I need to justify that with a belief in your wisdom, which gives you power over me.

Time

2008-08-04T12:45:00.000-07:00

Today is the 61st anniversary of my parents' marriage. I cannot say "my parent's 61st anniversary" because that seems to imply a continuing relationship. I would better say, "my parents got married 61 years ago today," which seems to put it in its proper context of an event and consequence that were and remain in the past.

I don't know the anniversary of their divorce. 1976? So my father has been not-married to my mother longer than he was married to her. What does that mean, when one life passage exceeds another, related one. I have been without my mother longer than I was with her. I have lived with Bill longer than I lived without him. I have known Bill longer than I knew my mother.

I don't know Robert and Marilyn's anniversary, but I know that they have been married 17 years. If my father lives to age 91, he has the potential for being married to Marilyn longer than to my mother; this bothers me. I want my mother to be the most important relationship in his life. Of course, I'm not really sure if that was true, even when it was on-going. So I suppose what I want is an understanding that our family was the most important relationship in his life.

It comes down to this: you should not know anyone longer than you know your mother. The family you create, with your spouse and your mutual children, should be the central one in your life. You cannot replace these relationships with new ones, because shreds of the old one linger.

Gardening

2008-07-31T07:40:00.000-07:00

I grew my garden in lockstep with my family. We moved in to a vast expanse of grass in 1986 (actually a vast expanse of snow, since it was December). For a while the garden grew with the family—add a child, add a flower bed. Five pregnancies later I had a full garden (although only two children—the goddess was kinder to the yard than to the pregnancies).

As the children grew in complexity so did the garden, adding vegetables, trees, more flowers, patios and a pond. The children are grown and gone and the garden is grown yet comes back every year, a lovely metaphor on the nature of parenting adults.

Second guesses

2008-07-25T14:05:00.000-07:00

How do you know which things were right and which things were wrong. Our kids seem great-- engaged and engaging, and moving on with their lives. But what if we'd done X instead of Y? Should I have held my temper, or demonstrated it with less sound (if not less fury)? Should Bill have loosed his?

What is the cause and effect, and how do you trace it. What is the provenance of Nora's heedlessness, or Julian's lack of drive. Was Bill underambitious or just realistic? Did I sacrifice for my family or use them as a convenient excuse for my failure? Were we born like this, or are we victims of our parents' failings?

Help

2008-07-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

What is the nature of a partnership? I see the partnership of marriage as a braid-- one piece holds the other in place. Remove one and the whole thing unravels. So each piece needs the other to function; the parts cannot create a whole without this mutual knowledge and help.

If one partner is disabled or unavailable in some way, the other ought to be able to step in without request or instruction. Your cannot require of one partner the burden of knowledge while not accepting your equal responsibility to maintain that knowledge. Correspondingly, each partner must allow the other to create functionality in their own way. This means not only letting your partner achieve an outcome on their own, but also that you cannot insist that someone tell you how to do something.

The need for your partner to "be there for you" is primal, and I think for parents born of the knowledge that you will die and leave your children. Even as the parent of an adult I fear the idea of my children's lives without me. It is very hard to live without your parents, although it is everyone's fate. If my partner is not there for me, will he be there for my children? If my children and my partner don't understand how I do things, how will they learn to do things for themselves?

Guessing games

2008-07-13T05:44:00.000-07:00

How do you know what your children will learn?

My mother wanted us to learn self-reliance. She told me once how proud she was at the lack of connection between us-my father, my brother, her and me. She felt she had achieved her purpose in making us "just four people who happen to share a house."

But I did not learn self-reliance from this. I learned to hold with all my might to my family, whether they wanted to be held or not. I learned that I wanted to teach my children that loyalty to the family comes first, and that family is the most important thing in their lives.

But I don't think my children learned this. I think they learned that family is a stranglehold to be resisted. My son fears commitment will tie him to a life he doesn't want. He doesn't seem to feel, as I do, that commitment and lifestyle do not proceed in lockstep, but that one can inform and support the other. My daughter uses commitment as a bludgeon, a weapon, to get her way. "Thwart me and I will withhold myself."

Of course, these outcomes are my worst nightmare-- one child running as fast as he can from family commitment, and another threatening the same thing in order to make my own commitment stronger. Which is, of course, a pattern in my life, of loved ones and friends using my loyalty against me, and punishing me with their absence, physical or emotional, when I demand a return in love and loyalty.

Will my children punish me with distance, or reward with me with proximity? What price will I have to pay?

Boredom

2008-07-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

Holly says I should meditate, but frankly, I'm too bored.

Being unable to move about freely; having easy daily tasks restricted day after day leads to a degree of boredom that is very nearly religious in its intensity. I have reached such a state of boredom that is not really relieved by doing something, because I know that once I finish whatever it is I will be plunged directly back into my original condition of Nothing. To. Do.

I never realized the extent to which hopping up to wash the dishes or pull weeds or dust or all the other small tasks of the day kept me going. I find that my creative abilities have diminished to the point where I cannot even initiate projects that I know I should, because I know that the small things I need to do (run up to Noyes, talk to Bridget, check a file, take a meeting) are inaccessible or undoable. The degree to which my job does not challenge me becomes apparent, because I find that I cannot initiate projects because of the degree of oversight and supervision that Bridget requires, not to mention that she hates doing anything different. It is pointless to spend time on new projects, since they won't go anywhere. Can't arrange new Retail Partners, because I can't get to a meeting. Can't write 2009 proposal template, because I don't know the season. Can't get to the mall or the library for books. By the time they get here from Amazon I'll be out of the cast, so it's pointless to spend the money. Daytime tv is a nightmare and watching tv does not solve my need to move around. Can't really "take time off" because the entire problem is that there is nothing to do.

I will be a screaming wreck after another week of this.

Life gets in the way

2008-07-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

Probably like all diarists, I started out with the best intentions-- at least an entry per week, about living with (and without) grown-up offspring. No whining allowed (I do enough of that in real life).

Well, here we are 2 1/2 months since the last entry. So the conclusion is, blogging is hard. Like any endeavor you have to commit to it. Interesting, what happened was, that life got in the way, inasmuch as "life" can be synonymous with "children." Nga Jee came home, Julian graduated from college, Nga Jee left, Julian left.

And this defines the rhythm of parenthood. When the kids are here it really is all about them. They syphon off emotional energy and actual time, sometimes without meaning to and sometimes through the sheer obliviousness of the pampered middle class child, for whom life has always centered on their needs. It is a difficult conceit to resist.

Now they are gone, and low and behold, I sit down and write.

Happy Birthday

2008-04-13T06:26:00.000-07:00

So, my darling daughter. You are all grown up. Eighteen years old is the last legitimate year of childhood-- there are after all, 18 year olds in highschool. Nineteen is the start of adulthood, and you have leaped into it with both feet, postponing the usual middle class waystation of college. It is interesting how you and Julian have switched tactics-- always as a child, Julian was ready for the next stage, sometimes before I was, while you were more cautious, or at least more willing to delay the next stage of maturity until it couldn't be avoided.

Now Julian, at the threshold of independence, is more unsure and less independent than he has ever been, while you have embraced the unknown with a joy and maturity that make me very proud. I have often felt that I coddled and protected you, while letting Julian stretch his wings. But it is Julian who has tried to stay safe, and you who have jumped off the cliff, trusting the wind drafts to keep you aloft.

Keep flying. If the wind fails, I am here to catch you.

Evidence

2008-03-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

There is a small stone slipped into the lock in the upstairs bathroom door. When I spotted it I had an immediate image of some small child realizing that the tiny rock in her or his hand was just the right size to slip into the hole. Except that I couldn't imagine which child it was, she or he must have been small -3 or 4 or 5? and I can see that moment of revelation-- hole equals rock; and empowerment-- I can put the rock in the hole;and then realization of the new problem-- the rock went in the hole and now it won't come out. Is this bad? Solution? Don't tell mom.

I found it yesterday. It has probably been there for 12 or 15 years. They leave, but their ghosts linger.

Being in two places at once

2008-03-02T18:05:00.000-08:00

For a parent, being in two places at once is an acquired skill. When the child is small, you don't need it, because she's always with you. But sprouts have a funny way of flowering and asserting their independence and separateness, and pretty soon you need to be the spirit companion of the 8-year old going to the corner store, and then of the 11-year old on a sleep over and then the 13-year old on a class trip out of state. And then the 16-year old driver. And then they really leave.

The trick to dual locality is to learn what the offspring are doing without seeming to imply that you either have a right to know or that you're trying to control the activity. Cautious questioning, occasional visits, and expert between-the-lines reading are required, coupled with a healthy ability to visualize. It's hard to visualize Julian, because mostly what I seem to conjure is him unconscious well past noon. Perhaps because he is in a "safe" environment--small college town--and what he is doing is "normal" I haven't felt the need to lock onto him. I don't need to visualize what I already understand.

Nga Jee on the other hand is tricky-- I mostly visualize her sailing off some western cliff in a hideous bus crash; not conducive to trust in your grown child, or for that matter to a good night's sleep. Four days tracking her on a daily basis in situ as it were has helped hugely. I understand what she's doing and who she's doing it with. I am awed by her ability to function in this demanding world. I think that for Julian, college has delayed this for me. Next year I will need to learn to visualize him from scant clues, as he starts in on a life on his own, in a way that college doesn't offer.

What have you been up to?

2008-02-24T09:44:00.000-08:00

After a week in which I desperately wanted to quit my job, I've been thinking about how tempting it is online to air your complaints, to send a voice into the wilderness begging for understanding: "It's not my fault, surely someone out there will confirm this for me!" This is the source of all those tomes on AskMetafilter, where posters go on and on to demonstrate why they are right. But you have only their word for it that they are accurately representing the opposing viewpoint, if they are bothering to give it at all.

So in a blog about myself, written for my children, how much do I just let it hang out, and how much do I simply report? Is it boring to read what I've been doing all week, or is interesting? If not interesting, is it at least comforting-- to know from afar what your mother is doing? How much is a child aware of what their parent is doing even when they are living together. I think maybe this works only in one direction. As a parent of an infant, you are intensely aware of every second of that child's day, and it is the most difficult thing to give up when the children are adults-- this intimate knowledge of everything the child is doing. It's not about controlling the activity, or directing it, or even about approving or disapproving. It's about knowing what the child is doing. It's comforting to me to be able to visualize exactly where my kids are. I don't think they believe it, but it really isn't about what they are doing, it's simply for me to know what they are doing.

So here's what I've been doing: On Monday, Schuyler missed her lesson, so I skated and worked out. I made some housekeeping phone calls for the bank and hospital bills, and then finished the Light Opera Works 2007 sampler DVD. Took it in to LOW and then went to Winnetka to teach. Christian helped me out with my PSA test. Home for dinner. The subsequent day follow much the same pattern-- teach, skate, Light Opera Works either there or at home, teach, home (truth be told, home and hang out on MetaFilter). Thursday I had an infamous meeting with Bridget, with my ongoing attempt to get her to let me have some input, and her refusal and insistence that she is the top dog and I should get used to it. (Like I give a shit about being top dog.) Deposited 2007 IRA on Friday, went to the Mayor's annual luncheon, taught.

Saturday I went with Bill to his Children's Choir benefit. I schmoozed more this week than I want to in a year. Yuck. I really hate strangers. And now I'm telling you.

Do you care?

Everyday life

2008-02-17T07:56:00.000-08:00

This is a blog about what life is like. Just what I do every day. The kids call (or not!) and ask what I've been doing. Well, nothing. What does anyone do? You live your life. It's not a novel, there is no plot, although there is a pattern and a rhythm. So this is what I do.

I like to lie in bed in the early morning and listen to NPR. Sometimes I drift back to sleep and my dreams wrap themselves around whatever story my conscious mind is listening to. When I hear the story later on the rebroadcast I'll understand why I dreamed that.

Yesterday I woke up very early (5:40) so I could go observe the synchro rehearsal. I watch Christine and the older girls because I just can't race around after Kristen and the younger ones, too stressful (plus she spends all her time yelling, which I really dislike). What is it about synchro that attracts the nice girls? The mean girls never do synchro-- maybe they're too egotistical to submit to the group's needs.

After Synchro I went up to Light Opera Works and picked up my check, then went to the bank, then home. Back to the rink to teach Adorina at 12:30, and spent some time talking to Chris H. At home I finished our 2007 taxes, opened some especially obnoxious mail (a late notice for a bill that I know I paid, incomprehensible hospital bills, and an insurance statement averring that 2 cents of my claim was disallowed. They spent 41c to let me know that.) Spent the rest of the day on Metafilter, watched Star Trek, made dinner and watched a movie on tv with Bill.

Today I don't need to go anywhere, which is really good because it's 40 degrees outside and pouring rain. The worst kind of winter day. I listened to npr and read metafilter, and now I'm writing this. I need to do my laundry and I think I'll make cheese crackers and read some more of the Laurie King novel I bought. I have to make the final selections for Light Opera Works' 2007 sample DVD and organize my desk for tomorrow. Probably I should get all the LOW "little shit" out of the way. It's so strange having these long days with no outside jobs, gosh I guess they call them "weekends." Just like normal people.

I lead such an interesting life.

So should this "diary" be about the mundane details of my day? How much were the kids aware of that even while they were here? Should I philosophize? Should I bare my soul or reveal my inner dialog? I don't even like my inner dialog; if I revealed it to other people they'd put me on strong medication.

Dipping my toes in

2008-02-08T19:00:00.001-08:00

Just testing this for now. I need a blog for when the kids settle god knows where so that there's an easy, accessible stream of information. I've been deprived of their easy company for four years for Julian, and who knows what Nga Jee will do. So, since I can't get them to blog, I guess I'll do it.