21

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

View on flickr

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

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 Nga'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.Nga  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

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.

"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

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


Reverse trick-or-treat.

Could my kid do that?

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?....