I found an invitation to join AARP in my mailbox on the eve of my 47th birthday. The nerve.
Adding insult to injury, not only do I discover how deep the crows feet are getting around my eyes as I approach my 47th birthday, but the assholes at AARP thought it was time to reach out and invite me to join their sorry old asses.
And to them I say, “Fuck you.”
They can have me in three years.
The view from my room at the Sheraton in Chicago was not shabby. Who knew a lake could be so big? #getoutofjersey
I got back late Saturday night after three whirlwind days in Chicago where I saw none of the city, other than the fabulous view outside my hotel window, but did have a front row seat to dozens of amazing and inspiring speakers at BlogHer13. Herewith, a report of what I now know:
Breakfast with Sheryl Sandberg at BlogHer13 in Chicago. Highlight!
Leaning in at BlogHer13: What would you do if you weren’t afraid to fail?
have decided to choose the latter. I choose to be motivated by a community that cares about the best tense for writing a memoir or what makes a blog post funny (comparing your kids to hamsters, perhaps?) rather than surrender to my inner Debbie Downer. Because the overarching message of the whole lean in thing is asking yourself the question, “What would I do if I weren’t afraid to fail?” And maybe between the inspiration and all that pixie dust, I’ll become a better blogger, too.
For many years I did freelance reporting for small local newspapers. I’ve always loved covering an assignment — whether it’s a municipal meeting, community day or a wrestling match — and boiling it down to the most relevant bits and painting the picture for my reader of what transpired.
But because I worked as a freelancer, I had very little interaction with fellow journalists and for many years, I was the only reporter I ever really knew.
So when I started my current job three years ago as an editor of an online news site, it was thrilling to sit down at our first team meeting with 10 other reporters.
“I love being with journalists,” I remember one of my new co-workers and now pal declared as we sat down at a the time, and I recall feeling really intimidated by that statement because surely they must have sensed that I was a fraud.
I felt that I had done an adequate job giving the impression that I was some seasoned reporter but was convinced that the jig was about to be up.
I am having a similar sensation here again at BlogHer.
I really don’t know any bloggers in real life (other than my fabulous friend Barb at Wow, I’m a Widow Now), and yesterday I met tons of real-live-bloggers. Some I’d even read about or followed prior to this big conference. And it was kind of intimidating.
But cool, too, to once again be in the presence of like-minded people. And someone even had read my blog prior to the conference!
But maybe sometimes intimidation is what we all need. It pushes us out of that comfort zone (like being content with publishing just one post a week) and challenges us to do more. To be more.
In less than a few hours I’ll be in a room with over 4,000 bloggers and getting revved up for the next two days by none other than the mega blogger Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman.
But I’ve got a cute outfit and a new friend or two, and sometimes cute clothes and a pal are all a girl needs.
If nothing else, I get to stay in a fabulous hotel room, as evidenced by my early morning view from my window above.
Have you ever felt as though your heart was about to burst?
Like, legitimately explode?
I get that way some times watching a show on TV. Like recently I was watching the movie Juno and when she has the baby and was surrounded by her family and everyone has stepped up to be so solid for that baby and then she has to give it away in the end, I just can’t take it. I burst into tears every time.
Or the Pamper’s commercial that just shows like 20 different babies sleeping while “Silent Night” plays and they’re little mouths make tiny sucking movements and one baby gives a sudden jerky twitch and I’m reminded of all those nights I had a baby asleep in my house, sometimes curled up beside me in bed, and I wonder where that time went. Tears.
Last summer, my son went away to camp for a week and because he’s the youngest of the four kids, I wasn’t too worried about him. He’s never been given the impression that the world revolves around him so he’s pretty well-adjusted and highly adaptable. I always joke that you could drop him and kid #3 in the middle of a crowd in China and they’d be like, “Hey, hi, what’s going on?”
I felt a little tug at my heart when it was time to say good-bye and I started second guessing my decision to let a 9-year-old spend a week away at camp. Who would separate his dirty from his clean clothes? Would he remember to brush his teeth? What if he forgets to eat fruits and vegetables?
But he gave me a hug and then ran down the cabin’s porch steps and started to toss a football around with another camper.
So it came as a surprise later that week to find a postcard from him in my mailbox.
And when I read that first line, that he felt so different without me, my heart swelled. I imagined him sitting on his bunk in the cabin, carefully crafting his note home using his best penmanship. And I remembered what it was like to be 9 and live in a microcosm surrounded by parents and siblings, friends and teachers and believe that that is the whole world. And it’s familiar and comfortable and you can never imagine anything different.
When he got home, he said that he was a little homesick but “you get pretty well-known to everyone so that makes it better.”
He’s there again this week and while I got held up during check-in, he went back to the car and dragged his suitcase and sleeping bag to his cabin and began to unpack long before I finally caught up with him.
And as much as I hope he’s having the time of his life and not even thinking about home, there is a part of me that will be looking again for a postcard in my mailbox with the tell-tale script of a boy who misses his mom.
What makes your heart burst? Have you dealt with a child’s homesickness (or your own)? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
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I am not a magician.
I know, this news comes as a surprise to my children as well.
They live in a super-excellent world where the knife and cutting board they used to make a sandwich or sticky bowl and spoon leftover from a late-night ice cream snack magically disappear from the sink or counter and then reappear in the dishwasher.
SHAZAM!
In the past month, and just in time for my summer malaise, my kids have become increasingly comfortable with letting dirty dishes pile up in the sink, tucking plastic Nestle Quick bottles between the couch cushions and just last week, leaving a pair of sneakers on the granite counter.
I shit you not.
My 19-year-old daughter is particularly miffed at my suggestion that everyone in the house clean up after themselves.
“You’re one to talk,” she told me tonight, repeating a sentiment she’s offered before.
It made me crazy.
“The difference between me leaving a coffee cup in the sink and you leaving your smoothie fixin’s all over the counter is that NO ONE CLEANS UP AFTER ME,” I not-so-calmly explained. Because the kids might sometimes clean up after themselves but heaven forbid they put an extra cup or spoon in the dishwasher.
There are no super-powers required to tidy up around the house.
Last week, I walked into our laundry/mudroom area to find a pile of my just-cleaned clothing on the floor and my 20-year-old’s clothes tumbling quietly in the dryer.
“This is not college,” I texted him at work. “Do not put my clean laundry on the floor. Think beyond yourself.”
But he knew enough to quickly respond, “Sorry.”
When the older kids were small and things were more controlled, everyone had a good sense of what was expected of them. We only ate in the kitchen. You put your dirty laundry in the dirty clothesbasket in your room. You hung towels back up in the bathroom.
But the rules seem to have gotten a little slippery as everyone’s gotten older, with my youngest becoming one of the worst offenders. It’s like he never got the memo about how things work around here.
For one thing, he’s going to be one of those husbands a wife complains can never connect his boxer shorts the two feet from where he’s left them on the floor and into the hamper. He just can’t seem to make that jump.
He’s also the worst dirty towel offender. If all of a sudden we seem to have no clean towels, I know I can go into his room and find three left scattered across his tiny bedroom floor as he rushed from the shower to quickly change into pajamas and pick up wherever his last YouTube video left off.
But he’s cute and always sorry for his shortcomings, so he’s easy to forgive.
The others are usually not so sorry and annoyed with my nagging. They legit tell me so.
They don’t want to hear about how if you stack everything on top of everything else in the dishwasher, nothing gets cleaned (read: then I’m the one hand-washing everything in the morning). There’s always a rubber spatula with dried Greek yogurt clinging to its ridges or a dinner knife streaked with peanut butter to contend with.
They could care less that their endless pairs of sneakers, cleats and flip-flops scattered across the mudroom floor belong in their own closets and not tangled up beneath my feet as I try to navigate my way to the washing machine.
And the cozy throws I keep tucked away in an ottoman for them to snuggle up in to watch the umpteenth episode of Arrested Development or partake in the mass carnage of Call of Duty never seem to make it back inside, much less folded up neatly on the couch. I usually find the blankets crumpled amongst the XBOX controllers, remotes and batteries. And why are there always batteries everywhere? At least throw the old ones away.
A LA PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES!
Two of the kids head off to camp for the week tomorrow and I wonder if I’ll see a slowdown in debris left around the house. I wonder if I’ll miss my 16-year-old’s half-finished projects piled on the wicker chair in the TV room or my little guy’s endless collection of YuGiOh! cards scattered across our kitchen counters.
One thing’s for sure, as fast as you can say ABRACADABRA, they’ll be back and littering again.
There’s no magic to that.
I didn’t go into parenting with the intention of becoming the breaker of hearts. To be the dasher of young dreams.
But it seems it’s a role I am destined to play.
Take yesterday for example: I was lying on my bed working Grey Gardens-style — with my laptop, assorted papers, reading glasses and Kindle strewn about – when I heard the kitchen phone ring.
Now, I don’t know who’s calling your landline, but for the past year or two those callers here seem to consist mainly of robocalls coming from “Unavailable” or Gap credit services to tell me my payment is late. Again. (Listen, why can’t those Old Navy people set up some type of autopay plan so I can make timely payments AND receive my $10 coupons?)
Anyway, I hear the phone ringing and even though I can also hear a number of my children’s voices coming from downstairs, I wonder if anyone is even going to lower themselves to the level of the wall phone and answer it. It’s so beneath them.
But someone does and then I hear footsteps running quickly up the stairs.
“Mom, it’s for you,” says my youngest child, slightly breathless and looking a little excited. I’m about to tell him to tell whomever it is to take us off their calling list, when he adds, “It’s Jack F’s mom.”
I had heard through the fourth grade grapevine that Jack F’s mom has a number of slimy, jumpy reptilian things to farm out before her family packs up and moves across the country this summer (boohoo), so I had a good idea why she was calling.
Apparently, our boys had already discussed this dilemma and my guy was first-in-line to take their bearded dragon off their hands.
Let’s back up right here.
At this stage of my life, I no longer wish to be tasked with keeping anything alive. Even if it’s small enough to fit inside a shoebox.
I’ve kept four kids alive for over 20 years, and I’ll have you know that all of their fingers and toes remain intact. I hate to mess with that track record.
Isn’t it enough that I got guilted into harboring a half-dead cat in when it appeared in our garage during a snowstorm a few years ago, who is now under the impression that she is second-in-line for the crown and has become clinically obese?
I am also trying to minimize the number of creatures whom I need to clean up after, and by that I specifically referring to their poop and barf.
And finally, I really haven’t bounced back since our dog Rudy, a truly glorious Golden Retriever and the finest and truest sidekick a girl could ask for, died suddenly one day last year. My heart is still sore from that loss.
I really don’t know how people can withstand the heartache of losing a pet, and just keep getting new ones. (Interestingly, I also seem to have suffered the same PTSD after losing a spouse.)
Okay, I’m pretty sure that I won’t get attached to the bearded dragon the way I did to Rudy. The thing probably won’t go for walks with me in the woods, lie under my desk while I’m working or try to trick me into petting it all the time. It might have similarly bad breath, though.
We’ve had an assortment of critters over the years: First, there were Bonnie and Buster, the hermit crabs that we brought home from the boardwalk when the kids were little and who briefly lived in a world dominated by pink sand and a beautiful purple castle. I would routinely forget about the two of them, though, between the potty training, half days at nursery school and trips to the playground, so Bonnie and Buster just kind of slowly shriveled up and eventually kerplunked out of their bedazzled shells onto the soft, pretty sand.
Then there was Huck the Frog, who lived about a week and then promptly died while he was placed under our friends’ care when we went out-of-town (He was already looking a little peaked when we dropped him off and then our pals were stuck with wrapping Huck up and keeping him in their freezer until our return. How do you say “thank you” for that sad timing?).
Then there was Chester the Guinea Pig – aka Dodo – routinely ignored by his caretakers, and then doomed when I banished him (her?) to live in the basement, where he/she quickly passed on and fossilized until I came upon the grisly scene one day. We did have a beautiful ceremony, though, commemorating Dodo’s life here on earth and he/she is now shaded for eternity by a gorgeous hydrangea bush.
Then there were the two white mice, whose names I never knew and who, I recently learned, were given the run of the girls’ dollhouse for their daily workout.
Shiver.
I don’t even remember how those two died.
Obviously, the takeaway from all of these experiences is that kids can’t take care of their own pets and I’m not much better. I should stick to killing houseplants.
So, when my oldest child, who I truly love but is maybe not the most thoughtful of people, got a bee in his bonnet last summer that he needed a lizard, I was adamant that the thing was not coming into my house. Aside from the obvious issue that I would be constantly worried that it would slither out of its tank and make its way into my bed, I just couldn’t have any more blood on my hands.
I relented when I saw how the cause united the four children.
“You never let us have pets,” they shouted in unison and then drove off and shortly returned smugly bearing a cardboard PetCo box carrying a bright yellow gekko named Gordon.
And since then, my eldest has been trying to make his lizard my problem.
By the end of last summer, he decided maybe Gordon should stay here and not head off to college with him, but I made sure that the Gekko and his tank were firmly packed in our SUV when we moved my son into his apartment off-campus in August.
My son has since discovered that keeping something alive takes work, and he has to keep hauling the thing and its accoutrements back and forth for school breaks. He has also learned that some college girls get weirded-out when they end up in some guy’s room late at night featuring a dimly-lit tank littered with frightened crickets. It’s creepy.
So I headed downstairs with my little guy hot on my heels to talk to Jack F’s mom and tell her that it was really nice but I just don’t want to take care of anything else right now.
I watched his face crumple a little, but when I hung up, I suggested that maybe he adopt his brother’s reptile instead. An olive branch, to be sure.
“Mom,” he cried, “This is, like, my only chance to have a bearded dragon. Do you know how cool they are?”
And frankly, I don’t. I just know there’s the word “dragon” is involved and I’m nervous.
My workaround was to try to get his father to take in the soon-to-be-homeless critter, but he wisely texted back, “No thank u.”
And now I’m wondering if I made the right call. If any one of my children is responsible, it’s this guy – even at 10. And while he won’t be able to drive to Petco to buy the crickets and mealworms or whatever disgusting thing a bearded dragon needs to stay alive, he probably would be more on top of its care than some of his siblings were of their pets.
I mean, really, doesn’t he deserve the chance to kill something like the rest of us?
I ran out to the CVS in town around dinnertime last week to pick up some graduation cards and on the way home, I drove past the middle school and immediately began to cry.
Sloping up the school’s lawn, in front of the big white gazebo and under a perfect June sky, were the familiar blue plastic folding chairs that are hauled out of storage annually to set the stage for what has become one of my favorite nights of the year.
In short time, those seats would be filled by moms, dads, siblings and grandparents of the graduating eighth grade class. They’d be flanked by teachers, friends and well-wishers standing along the sides to witness yet another generation of kids move on from our school community. This year I even noticed one couple sitting off to the side in beach chairs like they were at a soccer game, just taking it in.
I went with two of my kids to cheer on our neighbor and we stood watching the graduates slowly walk in pairs from the red brick school across the lawn where they gathered in front of the gazebo.
We clapped and hooted for younger siblings of kids my older children had graduated with and we pointed out dresses we liked or how grown up some of the boys looked, all spiffy in their jackets and ties. Between the three of us, we knew who a lot of the kids were.
In our small town, which graduates around 85 kids a year, the graduation dress code dictates that the girls wear long white or pastel dresses and the boys wear white dinner jackets.
Before any of my own children had graduated, I thought the notion of little boys wearing rented tuxedos was ludicrous, and considered starting a campaign to change the dress code to a navy jacket and khakis.
But then my own son walked across the lawn looking smart in his fancy white jacket, joining the legion of young men who had graduated from our middle school and carrying on the tradition, and I was hooked.
Before the ceremony, they gather the kids together to take a photo of the graduating class lined up in front of the school, capturing one of the last moments of their childhood. That iconic picture will soon hang in the school’s hallway, just past the main entrance, joining a long line of graduating classes dating well over 50 years. Rows and rows of young girls with their hair just so and the boys with red roses pinned to their lapels have smiled for the camera.
So far three of my children have taken part in that tradition and their pictures are among the collection lining the school’s main entrance, where they will remain, frozen in time, with thousands of other children, many of whom eventually move back to town and continue the cycle with their own children.
And I’d like to be frozen too. I want to remain in that sweet slice of time.
So when my eyes filled with tears at the sight of all those blue chairs, it wasn’t for my children that I cried.
It was for me.
I cried because I don’t ever want this tradition to end for us. I want to spend one day every June feeling utterly entrenched in a community watching a beloved tradition unfold. I want to know who the girl is giving the speech or the boy who’s playing the piano and know exactly who their parents are and what street they live on.
I’ve loved raising my children in a small town and being immersed in my community. It’s been so satisfying being a part of something so much greater than me and taking part in so many traditions.
When my parents split up the summer between sixth and seventh grades, everything I knew, any traditions we had, came to a screeching halt. I left the tiny Catholic school that I had attended since first grade and we moved to anther part of the state and my mom got remarried. It was like the rug had been pulled out from under me and it took me years to regain my footing.
So when my own marriage came undone five years ago, I didn’t want our four children to feel as untethered as I had at 12. So utterly disconnected from everything I had known.
And for the most part, we kept it together. We stayed in our house and the kids still went to the same schools with the same friends and could count on third grade violin recitals and Civil War Day in the seventh grade.
I cried a second time earlier that day last week, when I went to the elementary school in town one last time to see my youngest child “graduate” from the fourth grade in anticipation of moving over to the middle school in September.
My two teenage daughters and their dad joined me for the ceremony that morning and the girls and I linked arms and walked down the school’s hallways to the gym one last time. I started to tear up at the sight of the artwork hanging along the walls and the little backpacks lined up outside the classroom doors and thought of the thousands of times I must have walked those halls over the last 15 years on my way to conferences or to help the kids celebrate a holiday or the end of school.
At the end of the ceremony, we all moved outside the school’s entrance to “clap” the class out. Another new tradition, the fourth grade walks through the school one last time en masse while the younger grades applaud as they file by.
My 16-year-old and I stood with the crowd waiting outside for the class to emerge and stared up at the school. We agreed it had been a great place for singing in countless concerts, dressing up like pilgrims or counting pumpkin seeds and making homemade applesauce, and she put her head on my shoulder and we cried that it was over.
“We had a good run,” I said and she nodded and we looked up to see the kids come out the front door and the crowd began to clap.
This morning, while sitting locked in my room atop my bed on a work conference call, I overheard the following shouted in the hallway: “Can you PLEASE stop shaving your armpits in the bathroom sink?”
Ah, summer.
Armpit hairs do not belong in the same place that we gargle and brush our teeth.
Today was my final drop off at the elementary school my four children have attended since 1998 and the era ended just as I imagined, with me shouting at my 10-year-old right before he exited the vehicle.
Awesome.
He was just trying to be festive on this second-to-last-day-of-school, plugging a cord into my iPhone to play his go-to song, Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” And he wanted it loud. Really loud.
So the whole five-minute ride to school we went back-and-forth, turning the music up and then down, but as we approached a guard crossing a little girl running alongside her bike in front of our car, I snapped.
“Turn it down!” I barked, and he did, but I saw his face redden and eyes get glassy when he shot me a what-is-your-prolem kind of look.
We drove the last quarter-mile to school in uncomfortable silence, our two young neighbors sitting quietly in the back, and when they got out of the car, no one said anything.
Usually we joke as they all scramble out, dragging bulky backpacks and instruments over the seats, and I always say “Good-bye” and wish them a good day.
Not today. Today they got out quickly and quietly, my son giving me one last glare before he slammed the passenger door and started walking towards the school.
So what haven’t I learned in all these years living with young children? That they can be slow and get easily distracted? That staying on schedule is not a priority? That sometimes they just want to open the windows and play the music really loud?
You’d think, given the number of children I have and the amount of time I’ve spent with them, that I’d be more chill by now. That I’d recognize a kid just being a kid when he’s sitting right next to me.
I am reminded that being a mom never gets easier. You never get to the point where you know how to behave in any given situation with your kid and screw ups can occur when you least expect them.
I only hope that I avoid being a diva on their graduation and wedding days. That seems like a reasonable goal.
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I am a reader. It’s just always something that I’ve done to stay busy ever since my mom handed me Babar to get me out of her hair when I was a kid.
Over the years, the amount I’ve read has ebbed and flowed – I don’t think I finished one book between like 1992-1998 when my older kids were small – but it’s always something I’ve come back to. By the time I had my fourth child in 2002, I spent late nights nursing him while reading Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours. Cheery.
And while I cut my teeth on Sidney Sheldon, Danielle Steele and The Thornbirds (oh, Father Ralph), I have gotten a little choosier as I’ve aged about what I spend my time reading.
Not that I’m all Don DeLillo and Proust now, but I recently tried to get into the new Dan Brown and found myself annoyed that the hero, Robert Langdon, was immediately – and obviously – paired with some gorgeous, yet brilliant, young doctor. Haven’t we already gone down that road? It just seemed formulaic.
Any time you open a book, you’re gambling with your time. Even though Entertainment Weekly, Oprah or someone in your book club raved about it, you might have thought Possession was unbearable. I know I did, and I’d like those hours I spent trying to slog through all those poems back.
I choose a lot of what I read based on reviews in maybe People or The New York Times. I see four stars and think, “That’s for me.” That’s how I found The Lovely Bones and Gone Girl and more recently, The Good House (my mom had sent me an article about the author and I felt an affinity for the picture of her lying on her bed with her laptop).
So imagine my disappointment when I realized the current book I’m reading, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, which garnered a wonderful review in the Times by Michiko Kakutani, is cleverly cloaked soft porn involving teenagers. Like, keep your hands to yourself, kids.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m all about porn — and frisky teenagers, for that matter. I devoured the Twilight series and Fifty Shades of Gray in days. Those trilogies were the equivalent of, say, plowing through a fresh box of Cheez-Its and quickly finding yourself scraping the salty bits off the bottom of the bag. Delicious.
Call me a prude, but there is way too much back arching, throbbing and moaning between teenagers than I could handle. And, really, if I want to read something about first love, I’d prefer to snuggle up with The Fault in Our Stars or Eleanor & Park. Even Judy Blume’s Forever, from what I recall, seemed more tame (but how many times did I reference page 86 back-in-the-day?)
So, I’m on the hunt for better. I want to find my next Gone Girl or This Is How You Lose Her to kick off beach season.
So tell me, what are you reading this summer? My Kindle is charged and ready for downloading.