"It's a girl"

Men get laid, but women get screwed.  ~Quentin Crisp

It is no secret I am was terrified of having a daughter. Especially having an oldest daughter. There is no end to the dangers and injustices of being a female, and my greatest fears are of her being subjected to any one of them. I was the baby in my family. The younger child, the youngest of my girlfriends. I grew up always feeling like I had an added layer of protection. I remember my brother teaching me Akido when I was 14. I remember his guy friends - my “other” brothers - popping up at the most embarrassing times and chasing off anyone paying attention to me that was of the opposite sex. I think it somewhat made me more aware of my own personal safety. People stressing about me being vulnerable made me self conscious about putting myself in those situations (lest my brother and his friends show up). Moreso when I was older and attending night classes in college in the heart of a small city. An abandoned hotel that housed a community of vagrants sat directly across the street from my building where I attended class. And the last words my (female) professor would always say as we left after 9pm were, “Stay in pairs!”  But in those growing years, I always felt protected. It makes me wonder how I can make my daughter feel the same sense of security.
I know I can't hold onto her forever. Monkey might only be six years old, but the eye rolling and frustration with me being around her all the time is already making an appearance. But how do you let them fly without worrying about them getting ensnared in a trap once they leave your sight? How do you raise her with the lesson that her voice is important, and should be heeded, when all around us, everyday, the public, the politicians, the religious leaders, are all disregarding women’s rights and demeaning women's roles or trying to pass legislation on our bodies and what we're “allowed” to do with them? When women are ridiculed as being ugly and frumpy if they're spotted in an outfit consisting of anything loose and comfortable, and even young girls who haven’t hit double digits in age are being pressurized by retailers and the media to be “sexy” and “flirty.” Or when a photo of the private parts of a female celebrity are bigger news than the movie she is promoting. Whose voice is going to be louder in her life? The few encouraging her from the nest, or the drowning cacophony from outside? I go to bed at night after tucking her in, and all I see in my head is how many examples of how to be female is to live the life of a double standard.

And now the Steubenville case has me up at night, even more anxious than before. The case in itself is a nightmare, but I think what is making me so violently ill is the reaction to the verdict. News outlets and people from all walks of life remarking on how sad it is that these smart, promising, young men will now be forever haunted by what they have done. How their once bright futures will be forever tarnished. I want to know one good reason why they shouldn't be forever affected by what they did, like their victim will be. And it would also be extremely interesting to know how such “bright,” “smart,” “promising,” young men weren't bright enough or smart enough to know that drugging someone to victimize them is wrong. That someone in a vulnerable position doesn't equal a puppet to be played with and exploited, and then photographed so the images could then be uploaded to the internet and traded like virtual playing cards of their atrocities. What kind of world is this that we have created for our children where rape culture is the celebrated standard?
The realization is that as much attention I need to be giving to developing a strong, confident daughter, I need to double up on teaching my sons to be kind and respectful. Chivalrous, even. Boys who will respect when someone tells them “no.” Who will have empathy and helpfulness towards others, and be aware of another’s feelings and how they are effecting them. I need to instill their own confidence in themselves, so they are less likely to follow a crowd for validation, and hopefully more likely to stand up for someone else, even if they are standing alone. I learned all about the bystander effect in college taking classes for my psychology minor. How insecure and scared of their peers must these teens in Steubenville have been that after the THREE parties that this girl was dragged to, not ONE person stood up, or reported, or intervened on her behalf? Peer pressure can trump conscience very easily, but my hope is to raise children who would try to be a voice of reason and restraint.

Change always seems insurmountable until precipitated by some life altering event. I really wish this wasn't so. I wish we humans would lend more credit to foresight and preparation instead of crisis management and reaction strategies. But for every daughter that is raped, there is also a son who is a rapist. I’m hoping and praying that this house has neither. But in the meantime, I'm going to do my best to teach them how to manage the ugly truth of the world. Maybe when they grow up, they can change it.

Heavy

I find myself unable to articulate well enough when people ask me about my day so they can fully comprehend what its like. I also wonder if this is just what its like for me, and not for anyone else. I feel wholly unprepared for the stress of this life I lead. Other people carry on with their lives with seemingly much more impressive challenges, and sometimes I find myself hiding in a corner by nightfall, trying to make the thoughts stop cycling inside my head, just for spending the day home alone with my children for 10 hours. I am incapable of escaping the stress mothering brings.

I never realized how much being a mother meant your body and emotions were reduced to collateral damage by the lives of your children. As much as everyone tells you, reminds you, and writes columns in every parenting magazine available about keeping calm and simplifying life to keep down stress, there are just no tips to help you when your daughter has an unscheduled half day and will be coming home on the bus 45 minutes after your son’s dentist appointment starts. Or when at that same dental appointment, your youngest suddenly has a paralyzing fear of the office and refuses to go down the hall so you can be in the room with your son while he’s getting a procedure done. By the time you do get home with only a minute to spare before the bus pulls up to drop off your daughter, you’re so stretched thin and emotionally raw you feel like an exposed live wire. And then you need to spend the rest of the day refereeing the arguments, overseeing the homework completion, redirecting the two year old so he’ll lose interest in stuffing the puzzle erasers in his mouth, and hopefully find some time to plan and prep dinner because you have parent teacher conferences to attend later in the evening. And that’s a mild day compared to some of the worst. There is so much scheduling, and reminders, and deadlines to keep track of that it never all makes it onto the same calendars. I think if I lost my phone at this point, it would set us all back at least six months, since that’s the planner that is the most handy, and therefore the most up to date.

When people insist I need to take time off for myself I want to laugh in their face, because I am never able to turn “off” completely. I don't get 5 minutes to myself in the bathroom let alone enough time to do anything meaningful like exercise or something like that. Going out anywhere involves so much preparation for childcare and bedtime routine setup, coupled with the incessant worrying the entire time I’m away from the house about the health and safety of my kids that it morphs into making me more tense than when I started. To be honest, the best alone time would just be being allowed to lie in on a Saturday morning for an extra hour without being jolted awake by the sounds my kids throwing things off the top of the bunk bed, or crashing their bodies through my bedroom door to announce they’ve pooped. Or want breakfast. Or both of those things. I have hobbies, but I’m never able to pursue more than one at a time, because there just aren’t many, if any, hours in the day I can spend just doing something that doesn’t need to be done by tomorrow morning. Because being needed all day by three little beings takes up all of my waking hours. I haven’t even been able to manage an uninterrupted cup of tea in the past two years, unless you count the one I had while on vacation in Canada when there were five other people around to distract my children for me. It’s sad, really.

And I find myself depressed by all of this. Not just the fact that I’m failing at doing a good, sane job of being a mother. I’m disappointed because this is the only chance I’m going to get of watching them at this age, the one shot I have of seeing them through these stages. And both my memories and their perceptions are going to be colored and warped by the stress that is constantly hovering and permeating our lives. Every day I promise myself I’m going to go slower, I’m going to savor my time with them, and every day that promise is broken amidst the dash to the bus stop in the morning, or the hustling to make preschool on time, or the race to make and eat lunch before pickup, and on and on. What I would give to be able to play in the laundry pile with them one morning, and maybe have time to make a hot breakfast without them having a breakdown in the meantime because they NEED to EAT! RIGHT NOW! It makes me wonder who would savor the memory of such a perfect day more? Me or them? They would probably remember most vividly the exquisiteness of such a morning, but I think it would be more sacred to me. A reaffirmation of sorts that I still exist in the remains of myself that have been splintered by motherhood. Not only that I exist, but that I can still be fulfilled by a day well lived. Restored and rejuvenated to try again to lead a life well done.

Paying for Permanence

You may lose your most valuable property through misfortune in various ways.  You may lose your house, your wife and other treasures.  But of your moko, you cannot be deprived except by death.  It will be your ornament and companion until your last day.  ~Netana Whakaari

My mother's Grace Kelly photo

As an adult myself, most of my regrets about my mother are about never knowing her as a grownup. I was right on that cusp of learning all about her past and fleshing her out as a 3 dimensional human being when she passed, so all I'm stuck with is my childhood perception of a woman whose favorite color was orange, loved to teach and to sing, and hated anything that tasted like raspberries.
I might be biased, but I think it makes an impact on your self image when you really have no archetype to guide yourself by growing up besides the airbrushed models in a magazine. Getting older now is even harder.Choosing clothing becomes an exercise in toeing the line between kosher and Cougartown. Its not like high school when you knew what not to wear. Over one hundred fellow classmates created quite the learning standard. Nowadays I just follow the rule of keeping as covered as possible while I try to keep up the New Year's resolution of exercising and eating better. And most days I wish I had my mother to talk to, because I know she would empathize with me. I imagine her growing older more gracefully than my blind man's stumble I've got going on. She had already mastered Weight Watchers, and Mary Kay, and how to apply Loving Care by the time she was my age. And thinking about this reminded me of a happy discovery many years back.
For her 43rd birthday, she got Glamour Shots done for herself as a gift. I remember this distinctly, because she was very dissatisfied with her looks and her weight. And she left for her appointment grumbling that she didn't think they'd be able to make her look any younger. I thought she looked like a movie star, and fell in love with one of the proofs that she didn't have printed. As a surprise, she had the proof copied for me and presented it to me in a frame. After she died I wanted to re-frame it and was surprised to discover an inscription on the back.

Just recently, while being dissatisfied with my own self image, I remembered about the whole thing; the pictures, her grumblings, and the gift with the surprise message on the back. I realized this would be a perfect memory to keep in my face day to day. Not only my mother's love, but her whole perception about love and beauty. Maybe I was the influence for her that made her decide that middle age wasn't as bad as she thought. Perhaps her eleven year old daughter's adoration over her looking like Grace Kelly made her feel better about herself. I'd like to hope so. And I'd like to remind myself that, every day. So, I concluded it was time to do something for myself that would make me feel beautiful, and decided to get her words inked on my arm as a tattoo. A permanent message to serve as my reminder that not only am I loved from above, but that my own daughter is watching me, and seeing, too. If anything I need to keep my eyes open and upward for her. To try and remember to see myself through her eyes. Hopefully it will help me be kinder to myself as well.
Missing my mother is an evolving beast. I've gotten over it in some areas, substituted in most, and still wallow in a personal pity party in one deep, buried, corner of my emotional closet.  Its also hard not having many tangible things to remember her by. My sentimentality about objects didn't kick in until after she was gone, so I never kept birthday cards or the little notes in my lunchbox she used to leave me. But this I can carry with me. Not just in my heart, or my memories, but as a part of me. Solid, beautiful, and permanent.

Blue Christmas

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

I still pick out a Christmas gift for my mother every year, even though I haven’t shared the holiday with her in 16 years. I don’t actually buy it or wrap it, but usually in my shopping travels I see something that she would have liked, or just simply experience something that I know she would enjoy. It makes me wonder about what her preferences and likes would have been in this technologically advanced age. I like to imagine her with a smartphone and a Kindle, tagging me in numerous Pinterest posts and commenting on my progress on Goodreads. Its all very much a fantasy, though.

To be honest, I think she would be disappointed with me this year. Try as I might, the events over the last few days, weeks, and months have weighed me down this season, and I just haven’t been able to muster up much Christmas spirit. The tree and the house lights were put up, the cards were sent, but the other customs and staples of the year; the baking, the nativity figurines, the thrill of giving, were glaringly absent. From the outside looking in, I’m sure it seemed like a happy Christmas, but I’m still lacking that renewal of spirit I associate with celebrating the anniversary of a certain child’s birth. I find myself just unable to find the joy in wrapping gifts when I think about those parents and families in Connecticut who won’t have the joy of watching their kids opening their presents Christmas morning. Or make cookies with my own sons and daughter when theirs will never be able to sneak one again, or just simply enjoy licking the spoons. To watch my six year old Monkey catching snowflakes on her tongue in a magical Christmas Eve snow without remembering 20 five and six year olds that will never experience another snowflake. I can’t savor snuggling into bed at night with my husband when neighbors in my town - in my state - have no beds and no homes to gather into. The disparity of so many people banding together to try and make it a wonderful holiday for some, and others setting out to unleash their evil on the civil servants who selflessly sacrifice to help and protect us make it impossible for me to see the hope and goodness in our country. Maybe even in our world. There is so much arguing and blame going on right now. Everyone wants a solution, but nobody wants to work together to really get to the right answer.

This isn’t the world I had in mind to bring my children into. A country that is more invested in their individual right to bear arms, than in seeking to heal the people as a whole through proper health and mental care is not where I want them to grow up. Legislators who are determined to undermine and cut the pay and benefits of educators - the people who have the job of shaping the people who will lead our future - are not the people I want in power over my kids’ learning opportunities. And thinking about those teachers that died, who did the same things that they award medals to soldiers for when in combat, it seems like the biggest insult that they are not supported more by the public, or by our own government. Finally, I can't get those poor parents out of my mind. How many holidays will they spend like me, seeing gift opportunities for someone they can no longer buy for?

The future just looks bleak and unpromising to me. If ever a child’s birth could deliver us from evil, I believe it would need to be now. Searching for that feeling of Christmas while donning a lead mantle of depression is an exhausting and bitter enterprise. And yet.... and yet, even as I go to bed this Christmas night with a heavy heart I keep digging inside myself. For as in the words of Anne Lamott, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.”

Surely the miracle of the season has planted a seed of hope inside me somewhere. Inside all of us. Somewhere dormant and ready to bloom in the light of the morning.

Haven

"Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." -  Matthew 19:14

The news today is tragic, and heartbreaking, and I just don’t want to believe it. What is this world coming to when any and every public place is becoming an open arena for others’ twisted sense of justice and judgement? Workplaces, highways, malls, movie theatres, and schools. Kids even killing one another for their bicycles. Nothing is safe anymore. I feel there is no sense of security anywhere in the entire United States.

And all those little children. I just cannot understand what any little child has ever done to a grown adult to deserve the bloody and violent end they met in Sandy Hook Elementary today. Being a mother, knowing so many mothers, so many who have fought for and cried for each one of their own children, my heart cannot comprehend the loss of so many. For something so senseless.

When did we usher in this era of people seeing death as an only resort? Taking their own lives because of stress at home or at school. Taking others with them for no other reason than the fact that they are there at the time. Or releasing their frustration on innocent bystanders because of some trivial disappointment and then turning the guns on themselves. How did death and murder become such a logical option for these people? Why does the decision to kill, and to kill so many, even come up when contemplating seemingly insurmountable problems? When did this currency of annihilation become so abundantly used by our youth?

There is something inherently wrong in society if more and more young people are turning to death for the answer. We are severely failing our children in teaching them coping methods and problem solving skills if shooting their frustration out of a gun or ending their life is the only option they can see when faced with difficulties. This has to change. This has to stop. We need to stop medicating, stop labeling, and get to the issue of WHY all these children are so depressed and desperate to begin with.

And tonight - a night I should be going to bed happy and inspired by my own son’s birthday - I will spend crying myself to sleep. Praying with all my heart for all those families who will never have another birthday with their loved one, or with their child. Who will be spending the remainder of the holiday season planning funerals instead of celebrating. I will be praying for an answer to end this senseless cycle of violence. And the ability to teach my children better. For the betterment of all the world.

Two

Having a two-year-old is like having a blender that you don't have the top for. ~Jerry Seinfeld

Tomorrow you’ll be all grown up, and no longer a baby. Even though you’re already walking and talking, and spouting your preferences and denials in full sentences that could no way be attributed to an infant. You continually blow my mind with all you say and do and understand. I see your whole world opening up before your eyes, and it is bittersweet for me. This is the last time I’ll be traveling this road with my own child. The last time I’ll be amused by mangled expressions and pronunciations, or charmed by innocent looks and smiles. I see you growing up and away from me every second. It makes me sad because I miss the sweet baby you were. It makes me proud to see glimpses of who you will grow up to be. You stretched every last minute of my patience with your arrival two years ago, a habit you still continue to this day. But you are worth every second of the wait. Happy Birthday my Little Bear.

You Can’t Go Home Again

 When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.  ~Author Unknown

The Sands Beach Club, next door to the venue we held our wedding reception. photo credit: A.Mills

I’ve been trying to write this post for days. Unsuccessfully. Revisiting the task was like revisiting the well of emotion I have reserved for what happened. I could only tiptoe around the edge lest I fall in and drown. But I feel that its somewhat disrespectful if I don’t. A disservice to gloss over it. So many things have been lost, so many families have had their homes, their jobs, their possessions, their LIVES destroyed. All we lost was power for eight days and a 10 foot long section of siding on the house. There is just no comparison.
But it still is hard. The storm is not over. Although the wind and the rains have ceased, the tide of emotions is still rising and falling. Its hard to embrace the comfort of thankfulness when I’m overridden with feelings of guilt and helplessness in the face of those people not 2 miles away, who carted the entire contents of their house to the curb. Hard not to cry every time I click on a link to read another story about how people still don’t have power when its been below freezing temperatures at night, and has been for weeks. Hard to not give into the murderous rage I feel when the news reports come in of people stealing generators from their neighbors, siphoning fuel from the emergency response vehicles, and attacking the out-of-state linemen who are thousands of miles from home trying to restore utilities to all of us who were affected by the storm. And then the good tide rolls in. Election Day brought a brief surge of pride for my neighbors as people lined up in our powerless little voting station, generators humming to supply electricity to the polling booths and floodlights. Residents filling out forms by flashlight, and standing in line to vote with smiles and hellos, even though the none of us had any heat or lights or conveniences at home to speak of. The news covering government officials actually working together for once to aid the people they were elected to lead. And the stories of the donations and relief efforts make my eyes well up with gratitude. Of common men doing uncommon goodness for strangers. And for the mighty coming together in efforts to provide benefit concerts and events to help those devastated by the storm. Yet, there is only so much donating money and food and baby clothing, can do to ease the feelings of impotence.

People in my own town emptying their flooded homes after the storm waters receded. photo credit: M.Sullivan

Before Hurricane Sandy hit my state, I already had that horrible premonition feeling in my stomach. The initial reports of flooding and extraordinary wave size that were rolling in even before the storm made landfall were just confirmation to me. I went to bed on October 29th fearing the morning, not really able to sleep, and occasionally dozing off only to have horrific nightmares. Spending the next morning powerless on my cell phone checking the news and Facebook as people posted photos of the devastation was like still being locked in one of my dreams. I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing. I still don’t want to believe it. Places that shape entire chunks of my memories, that define rituals of the seasons, that were the landmarks of pivotal moments in my life have been wiped away. 

Dock from the river washed up on the front lawn of a home in the next town.

Home. To me, its that feeling you get. Not always a defined place on a map with a fixed latitude and longitude, but most often, the place where the rhythms and cycles of the flow of life are familiar and resonate within you. I am a creature of nostalgia, most likely because I haven't had much stability with people, and I find that returning to familiar whereabouts gives me the most comfort. These past weeks I find myself adrift and rudderless in the wrecked remains of this expanse, without my familiar touchstones and reassurances. This storm has ravaged the property of my memories. It has destroyed the areas I've celebrated at, ripped apart where relationships began, where friendships were renewed, and where I've sought solace and remembrance. In short, it has demolished my home, my haven, my sense of security. And the sad part is that its that way for everyone who lives here.

The very beach  my husband proposed, missing most of the boardwalk and sand. photo credit: C.LaPlaca

For almost four months of the year, the small strip of sand that marks the threshold to the ocean is adopted by everyone in the state. Even by people from states away. This is a loss that will be felt hardest by its residents, the people who live and work amid the devastation, but it is a loss that is shared by us all. I can’t see how anyone in this great state made it out unscathed. No matter where our permanent homes are, every one of us has a part of ourselves invested in those magical miles by the sea.

Me and Little Bear at our yearly August beach retreat earlier this year. Notice the houses upper left.

The same houses shown in my beach photo from August. photo credit:A.Mills

The same beach we sat on only two months before, viewed from the walkway between the houses. photo credit: A.Mills

Everything in Sandy’s path has been touched and reshaped. Landscapes have been rearranged. Landmarks have been expunged. And most of all, the people have been irrevocably altered. We will recover. We will rebuild. In a year or two, we will look back with pride at what we have overcome. But I don’t think we will ever be able to forget.

As so wonderfully suggested by a NOLA writer, who has lived through this type of devastation amid the aftermath of Katrina and lived to tell about it, are the words from Ulysses;

“Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Stay strong.

These people are doing amazing things for the people needing help along the Jersey Shore. Please think of donating. Project Rebuild Recover and Waves for Water.