School started last week and it's been the usual uphill push to get the ball rolling again. I signed up to room-parent both girls classrooms again (I finally relinquished one position yesterday - the overachiever needs to slow it down a bit) which makes the ramp-up to back-to-school-night slightly crazed. Meeting with teachers, both to give them my take on my children and to drill them for what they want for the year ahead room-parent-wise. Pestering fellow parents for party money and cell phone numbers for the emergency phone tree. Getting into the groove of making lunches and walking or riding the kids to and from school. Transition time. And, as we all know, transitions can be tough.
Last night, as I was headed out the door to back-to-school-night, laden with bags of salami, crackers, cheese and grapes, Lana and Mihiretu grasping my legs, begging me not to leave them (for two full hours, with their favorite babysitter, poor, poor, children) Mae handed me a carefully stapled, fastidiously colored, paper tennis shoe with strict instructions to put it in her classroom. It was an assignment she had brought home to finish but wanted on display for the big night.
I hobbled down our steep driveway in my three-inch wedge sandals (I'm going to wear them sometime, goddamn it). I shoved the bags of food into the panniers on my bike. I rode to school (quite a feat in three-inch wedges). I placed the food in artful arrays in both classrooms. I gave my room-parent speech to Lana's class. As I sat back down in the miniature seat, I realized, with a wave of nausea, that I didn't have Mae's shoe. Then, between signing up for classroom jobs, running to Mae's classroom to do the same, packing up uneaten food and making my way home with Ben in the dark, I forgot again.
This morning, as I was assembling lunches and urging children to eat their breakfasts, Mae asked about her shoe. I froze mid-jelly sandwich and admitted that it hadn't made it to school. She was immediately in tears, understandably so, saying that she would have to make another one and she had spent so much time on that one. I apologized, told her that if we couldn't find it, I'd tell her teacher what had happened and I'd help her construct another. That, of course, didn't appease her. Her eyes narrowed to slits, tears still on her cheeks, and she stared me down, drilling me with fury. This is a specialty of Mae's, one I'm not a big fan of.
I told her that as sorry as I felt and as much as I could understand her anger, sometimes, on my end, it seems like the only thing that's seen are the mistakes. I'm always in motion. The housework is one thing. Then there's the scheduling - after-school activities, play-dates, our babysitting co-op, dinners with other families, doctor's appointments, vacations. Then there's the stuff I do for school, tasks from which my children benefit but are really meant to keep this social fabric we depend on intact. On top of that, the weight of holding the emotional health of these children, doing my very best to insure that they make it through this childhood with as much self-esteem and joy as possible.
I do all these things. I do them happily. I love my job. I'm so grateful I have the opportunity to be at home with my kids. But sometimes it feels like it all goes unnoticed. Except for when I lose the paper sneaker. I don't need to be thanked all the time. If they were thanking me for everything I did, honestly, we wouldn't have time to talk about anything else. But when things do go wrong - and, to my credit, it's rare - I'd love a little more slack.
Sometimes I feel like I'm giving my family everything I have. I try to feed myself, too, but usually I feed them first. And, like mothers and wives for time immemorial, sometimes it feels like I've given everything away. Ben does his job, a job, I'm well aware, that pays our bills, but all the same, a job he loves. The kids will go on to pursue what calls them. And I wash the dishes. And make the phone trees. And get older.
I love these people so much. I can't even come near to putting it into words. If you've loved a child, you know what I'm talking about. I want to give them what I'm giving them. But sometimes I wonder where I am in all of this. Where's the actress, the intellectual, the flirt? Sometimes it feels like I'm the maid, the secretary, the nurse - all honorable jobs - but I do them most often invisibly. This is a selfless job. But when you look at that word, selfless, what does it mean? Without a self? I'm too vain, too egotistical, too flawed, to be selfless.
The job of a mother is to send children out into the world who are the best people they can be. Whole people who can go forth and maybe make a positive difference in the lives of others. I know that I am doing that. I'm doing it well. My work may be largely unseen, now and forever. Most of time that's okay with me. Today I could use a little pat on the back.
This morning, after my talk with Mae, I suggested she take a walk down the driveway and see if she couldn't find her shoe. Moments later she came back triumphant, the shoe intact and unspoiled in her hand. I hugged her and apologized again. She went to comb her hair before we left for school. And then I felt a small hand on my hip. Lana gave me a gentle and wordless embrace. She gave me a little pat on the back.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Emandal
Our family vacation this summer, beyond the handful of two or three day camping trips in Scout (the trailer has now been christened), is a week at a family camp in Mendocino County. Emandal is a working farm and has seen families come and go for over a hundred summers. The majority of the food consumed by campers is grown right there outside the farmhouse. It is some of the most delicious cuisine I’ve ever had the pleasure of sampling; organic vegetables, homemade bread, granola, yogurt and farm-roasted coffee. In my normal neo-hippy existence, I eschue wheat, dairy, and sugar. Here I have a glass of milk and at least two baked goods with every meal. I plan to gain at least five pounds.
There is no cell service here and limited internet. I haven’t had any contact with the outside world for days and won’t for days more. Cars are unloaded at the 100-year-old cabins and then parked far from view, given a week’s rest. Wallets sleep next to I-phones on the shelf. There’s nothing to buy.
Activities include milking the cow, collecting eggs, picking berries for pies, helping harvest vegetables for dinner, loafing under the apple trees and swimming in the river that snakes through the property. The kids are running free, visiting the rescue kittens up for adoption (if we make it out of here without a kitten, I will be impressed by our parental resolve), catching lizards, visiting sheep and goats and llamas and ostriches, enjoying a bit of independence in this helicopter age. Unlike other family camps, there is no tie-dying, basket-weaving or lanyard construction. Children are left to roam, to create their own fun. They’re given the chance to be bored which is where the delight really begins.
We are here with our friends Elizabeth and Ben, which, as all the other times we’ve vacationed with them, makes for fun introductions. “My name is Liz and this is my friend, Elizabeth. That guy over there with the cowboy hat is her Ben. That one, with the brown boy on his shoulders, is my Ben.” Lana and their son, Hugo, friends from the womb, several times married, have been busy shucking corn and smashing basil for pesto. Hugo’s four-year-old brother, Axel, and Mihiretu are yin and yang, Axel wearing a crown of white curls, Mihiretu with his own riotous brown halo, Axel mellow and contemplative, Mihiretu fierce and ever-moving. Mihiretu, now dubbed “Mr. Yang”, has taken up competitive farming; “Azel, I got mo’ bewies than you,” as he plops raspberries in his cup or “Azel, you no have appoes. I got lots a appoes,” as he places apple after apple in his aproned t-shirt. Mae has (thank god) discovered another nine-year-old girl. Together they spend hours petting kitties (“I like Squeak best, I think. No, maybe Maryanne. No, no, Ginger.”) and “running the rapids” down at the river, which consists of boarding an inner-tube and traveling the ten feet of slightly faster running water. I am getting out for a daily early morning run in a meager effort to counteract the mass calorie consumption, kicking up dust on the long dirt road back to modern life. Ben is riding his bike. I’m actually reading a book while my children are present, a never-before-heard-of achievement.
The kids, ever enterprising, have started a business. It’s called “The Riverside Spa” and it’s located on the shore opposite the main beach at the swimming hole. Mae is the motor of the ferry, a blow-up yellow vinyl raft. She entices clients at the beach, generally adults, lures them into the boat and swims them across. Her new friend, Ariel, sits behind the clients and massages their shoulders as they travel. Once at the spa, Lana, Mihiretu, and Axel start the treatments. The first treatment is free, a “sampler” (these kids know their marketing). Options include exfoliation, which entails gravely sand scrubbed into any available skin. There is also temple massage, which could be dangerous, were the kids better at their anatomy. The temple, according to these small masseurs, is on the cheekbone or the jawbone or, if they’re really having an off day, the elbow. Mae administered a “hot rock treatment” by dropping a sun-warmed stone in Ariel’s dad’s shorts. He had hot rocks, indeed. Hugo, meanwhile, is the manager. He collects payment in shells and secrets them away in his safe, a small opening beneath a mound of boulders, a prime spot for a rattlesnake if you ask me (he hasn’t). He has fired and rehired Lana, his assistant manager. Lana, in turn, has fired and rehired Mae. Mae, the lowly ferry-boat captain, is watching her step.
Last night there was a sing-a-long at the campfire, Ben (Elizabeth’s, not mine) on the guitar. Songs ranged from “Dinah Blow Your Horn” (which my Ben quietly changed to “Dinah Blow My Horn”) to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and finally, delightedly, to “Blister in the Sun”. Lana, after days of practice, performed a solo, her own version of “I Could Have Danced All Night.” She long ago learned the words from a songbook and has composed her own melody, which Ben graciously accompanied. It was beautiful, really. I prefer her version to Rogers and Hammerstein.
Mr. Yang is, generally speaking, a pleasure in this environment. For the most part, we are outside, Mihiretu’s preferred habitat. There is little structure, few rules to follow. He happily shadows his sisters and friends from berry bush to cow. He has become, almost without me noticing, a fairly normal four-year-old. Yes, there’s some yelling, minor tantrums, but nothing that every other four-year-old present isn’t guilty of. No longer are we the unwilling center of attention, the eye of Hurricane Mihiretu. The only semi-stressful periods are mealtimes. He insists on sitting next to me – I love his attachment, it was hard earned, but I could use a little elbow-room. He eats with his hands unless strictly guided to his fork, he uses my dress as a napkin, he chucks half-chewed mouthfuls on my plate if he doesn’t care for something. He shouts “Done!” and grabs his plate and glass and heads for the “magic window”, the portal into the kitchen, utensils dropping noisily to the floor. But then, and here is the essence of the beauty of this place, he goes outside. The kids congregate in the apple orchard, speaking their age-old kid language. They run free and we adults sit at the table and “dine” as Ben’s dad terms it. We sip our coffee and pick at our plates. We talk.
Next week we start school, we dive back into routine. I’m happy for it. Summer is delicious in so many ways; hours of swimming, picnicking at the farmer’s market, free in cotton dresses and flip-flops. It’s also intense; limited childcare, no schedule to cling to, waking each morning to “What are we doing today?” We find out on Friday who the girls have for teachers, which friends are in their classes. It’s exciting. But it’s also so delectable to have this last long week of summer vacation, these slow-paced, food-centered, dual-parented days outside, so very conscious of how lucky we are to be here in this small Eden, snuggling kitties, tucking in to yet another giant farm meal, together, all day every day.
Life here is much as it must have been in 1908, the year the farm was founded by Em and Al. This farm has seen a lot of young families, those long-ago children now parents to other children roaming the rows of corn. It points out our relative youth. The kids are little but won’t always be. Ben and I are young and strong and as beautiful as we’ll ever be. It lends a sepia tone to our time here. Yes, we, too, will age. The kids will grow more and more independent until finally they are out in the world. They need us now, sometimes desperately, but that won’t always be the case. It makes me want to take a mental picture (I’m ridiculously negligent in taking actual ones), to freeze these images, the five of us floating down the river in inner-tubes in the hot afternoon stillness, leaping from boulders into the green deep, Lana shrieking in fear of the fish.
There’s a scene in the play “Our Town” in which Emily, now dead, revisits an ordinary morning of her girlhood. Her mother hustles around the farm kitchen, readying breakfast, shouting to her children to get ready for school while Emily grasps her mother’s arms, tries to still her, desperate to connect, knowing how fleeting this time is. “Oh, Mama,” she says, “Look at me one moment as if you really saw me. Let’s really look at one another!”
There’s something about this time of year, as summer shifts towards fall, that is melancholy. The prime of the season, the bounty of the harvest, is almost behind us. Ahead of us is the dying of the year. I love the shift, I love change, I suppose, but it is tender, it is sweetly painful. We are always changing. Always losing something. Always coming into something new.
Someone else is making lunch, so I’m free to gaze at my children; Lana on a blanket under a tree working Legos with Hugo, Mae lovingly carrying a turtle she found on the trail back through the farm to the river, Mihiretu high on Ben’s shoulders grasping for apples. I can see them, truly see them, in this changing late-summer, early-autumn light.
There is no cell service here and limited internet. I haven’t had any contact with the outside world for days and won’t for days more. Cars are unloaded at the 100-year-old cabins and then parked far from view, given a week’s rest. Wallets sleep next to I-phones on the shelf. There’s nothing to buy.
Activities include milking the cow, collecting eggs, picking berries for pies, helping harvest vegetables for dinner, loafing under the apple trees and swimming in the river that snakes through the property. The kids are running free, visiting the rescue kittens up for adoption (if we make it out of here without a kitten, I will be impressed by our parental resolve), catching lizards, visiting sheep and goats and llamas and ostriches, enjoying a bit of independence in this helicopter age. Unlike other family camps, there is no tie-dying, basket-weaving or lanyard construction. Children are left to roam, to create their own fun. They’re given the chance to be bored which is where the delight really begins.
We are here with our friends Elizabeth and Ben, which, as all the other times we’ve vacationed with them, makes for fun introductions. “My name is Liz and this is my friend, Elizabeth. That guy over there with the cowboy hat is her Ben. That one, with the brown boy on his shoulders, is my Ben.” Lana and their son, Hugo, friends from the womb, several times married, have been busy shucking corn and smashing basil for pesto. Hugo’s four-year-old brother, Axel, and Mihiretu are yin and yang, Axel wearing a crown of white curls, Mihiretu with his own riotous brown halo, Axel mellow and contemplative, Mihiretu fierce and ever-moving. Mihiretu, now dubbed “Mr. Yang”, has taken up competitive farming; “Azel, I got mo’ bewies than you,” as he plops raspberries in his cup or “Azel, you no have appoes. I got lots a appoes,” as he places apple after apple in his aproned t-shirt. Mae has (thank god) discovered another nine-year-old girl. Together they spend hours petting kitties (“I like Squeak best, I think. No, maybe Maryanne. No, no, Ginger.”) and “running the rapids” down at the river, which consists of boarding an inner-tube and traveling the ten feet of slightly faster running water. I am getting out for a daily early morning run in a meager effort to counteract the mass calorie consumption, kicking up dust on the long dirt road back to modern life. Ben is riding his bike. I’m actually reading a book while my children are present, a never-before-heard-of achievement.
The kids, ever enterprising, have started a business. It’s called “The Riverside Spa” and it’s located on the shore opposite the main beach at the swimming hole. Mae is the motor of the ferry, a blow-up yellow vinyl raft. She entices clients at the beach, generally adults, lures them into the boat and swims them across. Her new friend, Ariel, sits behind the clients and massages their shoulders as they travel. Once at the spa, Lana, Mihiretu, and Axel start the treatments. The first treatment is free, a “sampler” (these kids know their marketing). Options include exfoliation, which entails gravely sand scrubbed into any available skin. There is also temple massage, which could be dangerous, were the kids better at their anatomy. The temple, according to these small masseurs, is on the cheekbone or the jawbone or, if they’re really having an off day, the elbow. Mae administered a “hot rock treatment” by dropping a sun-warmed stone in Ariel’s dad’s shorts. He had hot rocks, indeed. Hugo, meanwhile, is the manager. He collects payment in shells and secrets them away in his safe, a small opening beneath a mound of boulders, a prime spot for a rattlesnake if you ask me (he hasn’t). He has fired and rehired Lana, his assistant manager. Lana, in turn, has fired and rehired Mae. Mae, the lowly ferry-boat captain, is watching her step.
Last night there was a sing-a-long at the campfire, Ben (Elizabeth’s, not mine) on the guitar. Songs ranged from “Dinah Blow Your Horn” (which my Ben quietly changed to “Dinah Blow My Horn”) to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and finally, delightedly, to “Blister in the Sun”. Lana, after days of practice, performed a solo, her own version of “I Could Have Danced All Night.” She long ago learned the words from a songbook and has composed her own melody, which Ben graciously accompanied. It was beautiful, really. I prefer her version to Rogers and Hammerstein.
Mr. Yang is, generally speaking, a pleasure in this environment. For the most part, we are outside, Mihiretu’s preferred habitat. There is little structure, few rules to follow. He happily shadows his sisters and friends from berry bush to cow. He has become, almost without me noticing, a fairly normal four-year-old. Yes, there’s some yelling, minor tantrums, but nothing that every other four-year-old present isn’t guilty of. No longer are we the unwilling center of attention, the eye of Hurricane Mihiretu. The only semi-stressful periods are mealtimes. He insists on sitting next to me – I love his attachment, it was hard earned, but I could use a little elbow-room. He eats with his hands unless strictly guided to his fork, he uses my dress as a napkin, he chucks half-chewed mouthfuls on my plate if he doesn’t care for something. He shouts “Done!” and grabs his plate and glass and heads for the “magic window”, the portal into the kitchen, utensils dropping noisily to the floor. But then, and here is the essence of the beauty of this place, he goes outside. The kids congregate in the apple orchard, speaking their age-old kid language. They run free and we adults sit at the table and “dine” as Ben’s dad terms it. We sip our coffee and pick at our plates. We talk.
Next week we start school, we dive back into routine. I’m happy for it. Summer is delicious in so many ways; hours of swimming, picnicking at the farmer’s market, free in cotton dresses and flip-flops. It’s also intense; limited childcare, no schedule to cling to, waking each morning to “What are we doing today?” We find out on Friday who the girls have for teachers, which friends are in their classes. It’s exciting. But it’s also so delectable to have this last long week of summer vacation, these slow-paced, food-centered, dual-parented days outside, so very conscious of how lucky we are to be here in this small Eden, snuggling kitties, tucking in to yet another giant farm meal, together, all day every day.
Life here is much as it must have been in 1908, the year the farm was founded by Em and Al. This farm has seen a lot of young families, those long-ago children now parents to other children roaming the rows of corn. It points out our relative youth. The kids are little but won’t always be. Ben and I are young and strong and as beautiful as we’ll ever be. It lends a sepia tone to our time here. Yes, we, too, will age. The kids will grow more and more independent until finally they are out in the world. They need us now, sometimes desperately, but that won’t always be the case. It makes me want to take a mental picture (I’m ridiculously negligent in taking actual ones), to freeze these images, the five of us floating down the river in inner-tubes in the hot afternoon stillness, leaping from boulders into the green deep, Lana shrieking in fear of the fish.
There’s a scene in the play “Our Town” in which Emily, now dead, revisits an ordinary morning of her girlhood. Her mother hustles around the farm kitchen, readying breakfast, shouting to her children to get ready for school while Emily grasps her mother’s arms, tries to still her, desperate to connect, knowing how fleeting this time is. “Oh, Mama,” she says, “Look at me one moment as if you really saw me. Let’s really look at one another!”
There’s something about this time of year, as summer shifts towards fall, that is melancholy. The prime of the season, the bounty of the harvest, is almost behind us. Ahead of us is the dying of the year. I love the shift, I love change, I suppose, but it is tender, it is sweetly painful. We are always changing. Always losing something. Always coming into something new.
Someone else is making lunch, so I’m free to gaze at my children; Lana on a blanket under a tree working Legos with Hugo, Mae lovingly carrying a turtle she found on the trail back through the farm to the river, Mihiretu high on Ben’s shoulders grasping for apples. I can see them, truly see them, in this changing late-summer, early-autumn light.
Friday, August 5, 2011
L.A.
I went to Los Angeles for a few days, without children or husband. I stayed in a hotel on the Sunset Strip with a view of the smoldering city and a rooftop pool. I drove a rental car, which seemed impossibly adult and un-mommy-like. Ripping around in my Nissan Sentra, not a care in the world.
I came down, ostensibly, for a college reunion. Truly, the reunion was an excuse for me to have a little time to myself, the chance to see not only my college friends but some of the other people I grew to love in my twelve years in that city. I arrived a virginal eighteen and left to marry Ben when I was thirty. They were formative, those years. I fell in love for the first time (and the second time and the third and the fourth). I lost my father. I grew up.
As I drove down Sunset to Westwood Thursday night, memory layered over memory. There's the Hamburger Hamlet where Arty's dad, Big Art, told me, dishearteningly, that Arty would never get married (Big Art was in fact wrong, Arty did get married, just not to me). There's that building where that creepy manager had his office. There's that other building where that other creepy manager had his office. There's a restaurant from which I delivered food, and another one, and another one. There's the quiet Beverly Hills residential street where I'd park between deliveries and run lines for the next day's auditions. There's the turn for Benedict Canyon, where my friend, Serena, lived freshman year. We'd sit on her parent's couch and drink red wine and share cigarettes, skinny dip in the pool, throw dinner parties and invite only boys. And there, oh my god, there is UCLA, scene of so much drama (onstage and off) and delight. I turned off Sunset onto Hilgard and flashed to driving that same stretch of road, my bare arms twined around my twenty-year-old paramour, helmet-less on his motorcycle, the Santa Ana winds whipping our hair, the spring scent of jasmine, the perfume of love.
The reunion itself was informal, a bi-annual, theater department exclusive in the bar of a Mexican restaurant. Walking in the room was like stepping back in time. There were my old friends somehow all looking the same. We just picked up the conversation where we had left it twenty years ago. Yes, we talked about babies and marriages and gigs on TV shows and upcoming performances at the House of Blues but, essentially, it was the same; banter, laughter, frank intimacy. Those friendships, dormant for so long, got the cup of water they needed and promptly bloomed. The concerns I had going in - is so-and-so still mad at me, will blanky-blank even remember me, what the hell should I wear? - instantly dissolved. Jason was grinning at me fondly and saying, "Oh, Liz Lavoie", as he did almost every day of college. Brian was covertly teasing me about the men in the room I had kissed, somehow he had always been the repository for my secrets. Shanee was in the corner with Mitch, as she had been for years of parties, Colin with Cat, Ildy with Brian, Matt with Christina. It was all so lovely and familiar. I was the little sister again in this family. I was back with these people that knew me - or that young adult version of me - so well.
It's all layers of identity, right? Reunions are great for that. Here is a group of people that knew you in a precise time and place. In this case, a time when I was a student, an actor, a girl trying to figure out how to be a woman. It was so satisfying for me to see those people, to remember that self, to (could it be?) accept that naive and hopeful girl, to welcome her into the party where my kindergarten self plays, my high school self, my striving twenties self, my mommy self, me.
I spent the next three days bouncing from friend to friend, from beach to trail to restaurant, catching up, the friendships spanning the decade after college. And I spent three nights alone in my hotel room, sprawled across the king bed, reading, writing, drinking the free coffee from downstairs. I didn't turn on the TV. I don't want to waste a second of it. The longer I sat there in the delicious silence, the more free I felt and, perhaps ironically, the more grateful for those four people I have at home. We'd been talking on the phone, Mae weeping in panic over learning her lines for "The Tempest" while her acting coach (that'd be me) was out of town, Lana telling me plaintively how much she missed me but then cheerfully dropping the phone to welcome Nana at the door, Mihiretu still unclear on the concept of telephone conversation, saying "Hello? Hello? Mama?" until he either ran off shrieking or burst into tears. And a beautiful long conversation with Ben, who I hadn't seen for a week due to overlapping travel. Lying on this big white bed laughing with him, chitty-chatting, like I did so long ago on another white bed in this city, him in Northern California, when it all began. When I'm given a little space, I can choose them again. I have a bit of distance and I can see them. I feel myself, all parts of me present and accounted for, not just the current roles I play - wife, mother, suburban forty-one-year-old middle-class white lady.
This was the first trip away from the kids that I wasn't entirely ready to come home at the end of it. Usually I'm desperate to get back to them. It feels physical, like I've been underwater too long and need a deep gulp of air. But this time, along with that strong desire to see them, was a gnawing I could only identify as homesickness. I was sad to leave this place, the only other place but Marin that I've set down roots. I got in a time capsule, in this case a Southwest airplane, and visited my past, wholly informed by my generally happy, confident, present self. And now it was time to get back into that time machine and return to my beloved family, my incredible friends, the beauty that is the Bay Area. And in doing so, I was, once again, leaving my people, my L.A. people, my 1988-2000 people. But maybe, because of my time there, i was carrying a bit more of myself back with me. That girl, long hair swaying, searching, ever searching, for love, for connection, for satisfaction, twirling to "Blister in the Sun" in a crowded Westwood apartment.
I came down, ostensibly, for a college reunion. Truly, the reunion was an excuse for me to have a little time to myself, the chance to see not only my college friends but some of the other people I grew to love in my twelve years in that city. I arrived a virginal eighteen and left to marry Ben when I was thirty. They were formative, those years. I fell in love for the first time (and the second time and the third and the fourth). I lost my father. I grew up.
As I drove down Sunset to Westwood Thursday night, memory layered over memory. There's the Hamburger Hamlet where Arty's dad, Big Art, told me, dishearteningly, that Arty would never get married (Big Art was in fact wrong, Arty did get married, just not to me). There's that building where that creepy manager had his office. There's that other building where that other creepy manager had his office. There's a restaurant from which I delivered food, and another one, and another one. There's the quiet Beverly Hills residential street where I'd park between deliveries and run lines for the next day's auditions. There's the turn for Benedict Canyon, where my friend, Serena, lived freshman year. We'd sit on her parent's couch and drink red wine and share cigarettes, skinny dip in the pool, throw dinner parties and invite only boys. And there, oh my god, there is UCLA, scene of so much drama (onstage and off) and delight. I turned off Sunset onto Hilgard and flashed to driving that same stretch of road, my bare arms twined around my twenty-year-old paramour, helmet-less on his motorcycle, the Santa Ana winds whipping our hair, the spring scent of jasmine, the perfume of love.
The reunion itself was informal, a bi-annual, theater department exclusive in the bar of a Mexican restaurant. Walking in the room was like stepping back in time. There were my old friends somehow all looking the same. We just picked up the conversation where we had left it twenty years ago. Yes, we talked about babies and marriages and gigs on TV shows and upcoming performances at the House of Blues but, essentially, it was the same; banter, laughter, frank intimacy. Those friendships, dormant for so long, got the cup of water they needed and promptly bloomed. The concerns I had going in - is so-and-so still mad at me, will blanky-blank even remember me, what the hell should I wear? - instantly dissolved. Jason was grinning at me fondly and saying, "Oh, Liz Lavoie", as he did almost every day of college. Brian was covertly teasing me about the men in the room I had kissed, somehow he had always been the repository for my secrets. Shanee was in the corner with Mitch, as she had been for years of parties, Colin with Cat, Ildy with Brian, Matt with Christina. It was all so lovely and familiar. I was the little sister again in this family. I was back with these people that knew me - or that young adult version of me - so well.
It's all layers of identity, right? Reunions are great for that. Here is a group of people that knew you in a precise time and place. In this case, a time when I was a student, an actor, a girl trying to figure out how to be a woman. It was so satisfying for me to see those people, to remember that self, to (could it be?) accept that naive and hopeful girl, to welcome her into the party where my kindergarten self plays, my high school self, my striving twenties self, my mommy self, me.
I spent the next three days bouncing from friend to friend, from beach to trail to restaurant, catching up, the friendships spanning the decade after college. And I spent three nights alone in my hotel room, sprawled across the king bed, reading, writing, drinking the free coffee from downstairs. I didn't turn on the TV. I don't want to waste a second of it. The longer I sat there in the delicious silence, the more free I felt and, perhaps ironically, the more grateful for those four people I have at home. We'd been talking on the phone, Mae weeping in panic over learning her lines for "The Tempest" while her acting coach (that'd be me) was out of town, Lana telling me plaintively how much she missed me but then cheerfully dropping the phone to welcome Nana at the door, Mihiretu still unclear on the concept of telephone conversation, saying "Hello? Hello? Mama?" until he either ran off shrieking or burst into tears. And a beautiful long conversation with Ben, who I hadn't seen for a week due to overlapping travel. Lying on this big white bed laughing with him, chitty-chatting, like I did so long ago on another white bed in this city, him in Northern California, when it all began. When I'm given a little space, I can choose them again. I have a bit of distance and I can see them. I feel myself, all parts of me present and accounted for, not just the current roles I play - wife, mother, suburban forty-one-year-old middle-class white lady.
This was the first trip away from the kids that I wasn't entirely ready to come home at the end of it. Usually I'm desperate to get back to them. It feels physical, like I've been underwater too long and need a deep gulp of air. But this time, along with that strong desire to see them, was a gnawing I could only identify as homesickness. I was sad to leave this place, the only other place but Marin that I've set down roots. I got in a time capsule, in this case a Southwest airplane, and visited my past, wholly informed by my generally happy, confident, present self. And now it was time to get back into that time machine and return to my beloved family, my incredible friends, the beauty that is the Bay Area. And in doing so, I was, once again, leaving my people, my L.A. people, my 1988-2000 people. But maybe, because of my time there, i was carrying a bit more of myself back with me. That girl, long hair swaying, searching, ever searching, for love, for connection, for satisfaction, twirling to "Blister in the Sun" in a crowded Westwood apartment.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Housewife
As an undergrad, I studied theater at UCLA. While UCLA was giant and somewhat anonymous, the theater department was intimate. Incestuous, you might even say. We were young, pretty, gifted and well, a little nuts. You know, actors.
My sophomore year, I rented an apartment in Westwood with a few actress girlfriends. It was on Ophir Drive (pronounced O-FEAR) and our male counterparts took to calling it the "House of Phir". We were indeed fearsome. I saw it then and I see it now. We were a whole lot of crazy beauty concentrated in one spot (emphasis on crazy or beauty depending on the day). A Shakespeare-spewing female tornado. We could suck you in and spit you out. We traded boyfriends and even occasionally girlfriends, we had screaming fights heard 'round the neighborhood, we boogied to Prince at three in the morning, tossing our yards of shiny hair. We were fun but, well, a little scary.
We had a private term used only in the house. And here I risk alienating you, Constant Reader. That term was - brace yourself - "cunt". As in, "Come on, cunt, time to go to the party." Or "Cunt, did you eat all the Top Ramen?" or "I love you. Cunt." It was an endearment. We used it as Ben and I use "honey" today. It made us laugh because it was so shocking. It was the worst word we could think of in association with ourselves. We never used this word outside of the apartment and never inside it if there was a man present. It was ours and it was not up for outside interpretation, or god forbid, misuse. It was an amulet we held against the boys club that was the Theater Department, the microcosm of the male-dominated Hollywood just outside the university walls. It was a little like gay men calling each other "Fag" or gay women lovingly addressing each other as "Dyke" or even African-Americans using the dreaded "N" word within their own community. It is owning your own slander - taking the knife out of the hand of the enemy and keeping it safely for yourself.
I so hate the term "stay-at-home mom". It's ridiculous, really. Demeaning. I'm a mom and I stay at home. That's all I do. I never go out, I never do anything that isn't related to my children. Staying at home, being a mom, that's it. Of course, I'm struggling with more than just the term. I, along with most mothers I know, struggle with personal identity beyond motherhood, balancing this most important job with the rest of who we are. I love that question "Do you work?". I always want to answer, "Aw, no, I'm just a laundress, short-order cook, dish-washer, chauffeur, maid, cruise director and personal hygienist for these three screaming people you see before you. I'm on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, I don't get coffee breaks or vacations but it's pretty awesome." For those of us who aren't "working", for those of us "in the home", there is little time, let alone energy for the rest of ourselves - our creativity, our intellectual pursuits, even just our desire to have a little cash that's our own.
So when people ask me what I do, what's the short-hand answer? I've been thinking lately about "housewife". Talk about demeaning. It almost infers other wives. Like a guy has a housewife but he also has an officewife in case he's in need of a back-rub or cup of coffee while at work, or a boatwife in case he wants a cocktail while sailing or, I don't know, a golfwife to carry his clubs. The housewife, of all these wives, probably has the worst job, always stuck at home. But, could I perhaps own the term "housewife"? Could it become my forties equivalent of "cunt"? As in, "Hey, housewife, what's going on? I love those jeans!" or "Housewife, you just gotta tell him you're not going camping again until he buys an air-mattress" or "Meet me for a glass of wine in an hour, housewife, these kids are making me insane!"
When I was in high school, I ran with the most terrific, wonderfully dorky group of girls. There were a handful of us, give or take, depending on the year. We floated in the middle of the social strata. We weren't the self-possessed, derisive girls at the top but we weren't donning renaissance garb, either. Megan, my beloved Megan, was the tallest and loudest of us all (and that's saying something, given the height and volume possessed by each and every girl) and one day one of the surfer boys - the boy that Megan and I had silently worshiped for years - shouted, "Oh, look, it's Megan and her fag crew!" This is just after he yelled at her, apropos of nothing, "You're a dyke - spell it - D-I-K-E!"
The absurdity of the title of "fag crew", given that we were girls, given that calling anyone "fag" by that time (the mid-eighties) in that place (the San Francisco Bay Area) was viewed as totally ridiculous, was, while at first humiliating, in the end, liberating. Really, dude, that's the best you can do? You, king of the surfers, blond bowl-cut Adonis? Clearly you're not as smart as we are.
From that day forward, we were the Fag Crew. We're still close, for the most part, and at any gathering, there's always a toast yelled above blasting Eurythmics, "To the Fag Crew!" We took that name, we took that arrow thrown at us and we loved it because, almost impossibly given our age and hormonal status, we loved ourselves. We loved each other. To some we were second-class but not in our own eyes.
That's what it's all about, housewife.
My sophomore year, I rented an apartment in Westwood with a few actress girlfriends. It was on Ophir Drive (pronounced O-FEAR) and our male counterparts took to calling it the "House of Phir". We were indeed fearsome. I saw it then and I see it now. We were a whole lot of crazy beauty concentrated in one spot (emphasis on crazy or beauty depending on the day). A Shakespeare-spewing female tornado. We could suck you in and spit you out. We traded boyfriends and even occasionally girlfriends, we had screaming fights heard 'round the neighborhood, we boogied to Prince at three in the morning, tossing our yards of shiny hair. We were fun but, well, a little scary.
We had a private term used only in the house. And here I risk alienating you, Constant Reader. That term was - brace yourself - "cunt". As in, "Come on, cunt, time to go to the party." Or "Cunt, did you eat all the Top Ramen?" or "I love you. Cunt." It was an endearment. We used it as Ben and I use "honey" today. It made us laugh because it was so shocking. It was the worst word we could think of in association with ourselves. We never used this word outside of the apartment and never inside it if there was a man present. It was ours and it was not up for outside interpretation, or god forbid, misuse. It was an amulet we held against the boys club that was the Theater Department, the microcosm of the male-dominated Hollywood just outside the university walls. It was a little like gay men calling each other "Fag" or gay women lovingly addressing each other as "Dyke" or even African-Americans using the dreaded "N" word within their own community. It is owning your own slander - taking the knife out of the hand of the enemy and keeping it safely for yourself.
I so hate the term "stay-at-home mom". It's ridiculous, really. Demeaning. I'm a mom and I stay at home. That's all I do. I never go out, I never do anything that isn't related to my children. Staying at home, being a mom, that's it. Of course, I'm struggling with more than just the term. I, along with most mothers I know, struggle with personal identity beyond motherhood, balancing this most important job with the rest of who we are. I love that question "Do you work?". I always want to answer, "Aw, no, I'm just a laundress, short-order cook, dish-washer, chauffeur, maid, cruise director and personal hygienist for these three screaming people you see before you. I'm on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, I don't get coffee breaks or vacations but it's pretty awesome." For those of us who aren't "working", for those of us "in the home", there is little time, let alone energy for the rest of ourselves - our creativity, our intellectual pursuits, even just our desire to have a little cash that's our own.
So when people ask me what I do, what's the short-hand answer? I've been thinking lately about "housewife". Talk about demeaning. It almost infers other wives. Like a guy has a housewife but he also has an officewife in case he's in need of a back-rub or cup of coffee while at work, or a boatwife in case he wants a cocktail while sailing or, I don't know, a golfwife to carry his clubs. The housewife, of all these wives, probably has the worst job, always stuck at home. But, could I perhaps own the term "housewife"? Could it become my forties equivalent of "cunt"? As in, "Hey, housewife, what's going on? I love those jeans!" or "Housewife, you just gotta tell him you're not going camping again until he buys an air-mattress" or "Meet me for a glass of wine in an hour, housewife, these kids are making me insane!"
When I was in high school, I ran with the most terrific, wonderfully dorky group of girls. There were a handful of us, give or take, depending on the year. We floated in the middle of the social strata. We weren't the self-possessed, derisive girls at the top but we weren't donning renaissance garb, either. Megan, my beloved Megan, was the tallest and loudest of us all (and that's saying something, given the height and volume possessed by each and every girl) and one day one of the surfer boys - the boy that Megan and I had silently worshiped for years - shouted, "Oh, look, it's Megan and her fag crew!" This is just after he yelled at her, apropos of nothing, "You're a dyke - spell it - D-I-K-E!"
The absurdity of the title of "fag crew", given that we were girls, given that calling anyone "fag" by that time (the mid-eighties) in that place (the San Francisco Bay Area) was viewed as totally ridiculous, was, while at first humiliating, in the end, liberating. Really, dude, that's the best you can do? You, king of the surfers, blond bowl-cut Adonis? Clearly you're not as smart as we are.
From that day forward, we were the Fag Crew. We're still close, for the most part, and at any gathering, there's always a toast yelled above blasting Eurythmics, "To the Fag Crew!" We took that name, we took that arrow thrown at us and we loved it because, almost impossibly given our age and hormonal status, we loved ourselves. We loved each other. To some we were second-class but not in our own eyes.
That's what it's all about, housewife.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
White Oleander
Ben was away on and off for a couple weeks and by last Friday I was losing it. I'm generally patient - my patience muscle has been greatly toned by my smallest, most challenging child. But when Ben is gone, I can go from zero to insanity in two seconds. I'll be cruising along, herding children in and out of meals and clothing and bed, all relatively well, when one will push the wrong mommy button, maybe one iota too much sass or ingratitude or, God forbid, daring to slap a sibling while my back is turned, and suddenly I'm hyperventilating, red in the face, shrieking that they've all lost treats and TV for a week.
My friend, Chrissy, bless her, took pity on me and invited us and our friend, Elizabeth, and her kids over for a bar-b-que on Friday night. We put the hot dogs on the grill and went with the kids to search for sticks for marshmallow roasting (my children were on treat probation, the only way they could partake in the marshmallows at the end of the evening is if they didn't give me any shit up until then).
We climbed Chrissy's driveway and found lots of stick candidates. Chrissy was stacking them in her arms when Ben, Elizabeth's husband (yes, they are Elizabeth and Ben and we are Liz and Ben - makes for some confusing introductions), newly arrived, pointed out the flowered oleander above us and wondered if these sticks lying under these bushes were perhaps oleander as well.
Chrissy quickly snatched sticks out of children's hands and we headed to the backyard, where there was no oleander to be found.
The meal proceeded. I spent a total of five minutes in my seat between fetching lemonade and ketchup and non-"burnt" hot dogs for my children. Finally the ordeal of feeding them was over and they moved on to the s'mores. I filled my wine glass, squinted my eyes against the smoke from the fire-pit and recalculated the hours until Ben returned.
Halfway through my chardonnay, I was vaguely aware of Elizabeth examining a roasting stick and Chrissy charging through the patio with that same bundle of oleander. "I don't know how these got back here!" she called as she rushed by.
Soon it was near bedtime - the close to another day, thank God - and, with many thanks in Chrissy's direction, I packed my kids into the van. It was late enough for a snooze cruise, what the girls have coded an "S.C.". I angled the rear view mirror on Mihiretu's drowsy face.
We drove the length of Butterfield Road, the long street that runs the three mile distance of our valley and then, Mihiretu still awake, I turned around to drive it again. Suddenly, half way down the road, I realized that something, digestively speaking, was not at all right. I fought the hot spits for a moment but then pulled the van to the side of the road, mumbled "Gotta throw up" and ran for the weeds.
I knelt there, all three kids dangling out of car windows spectating, Mihiretu now thoroughly awake, cars passing, certainly filled with tight-jeaned, highlighted moms that I vaguely know, and heaved into the grass. Just as I was pulling myself back together, Elizabeth and Ben passed in their car, then quickly turned around and parked behind us.
"What's going on?" Elizabeth called. I shakily stood and hobbled to her car.
"Food poisoning?" I said, wiping my mouth. "I don't know. Vomit. Vomit is going on."
I felt okay to drive again. I assured her that I'd call her if the upchucking continued. I ushered children back into seat-belts and swung around towards home.
Bedtime was ugly. I was making beds - this was not, it turns out, the day to wash the sheets - ordering children into pajamas, sticking toothbrushes in unwilling mouths, while intermittently running to kneel in front of the porcelain altar. Everyone was crying, not unusual for bedtime, but certainly more loudly than the norm. Mae was mad that I had implied she was selfish for insisting on the promised ice cream before bed and was choosing this moment to tell me that I hadn't been nice at all since summer had started. Lana was sobbing in Mae's arms, confused and scared, crying for Daddy. Mihiretu was hysterical, twisting in his bed like a python on PCP while I attempted to read "Goodnight Gorilla" as fast as possible so I could return to the bathroom.
Finally, finally, the children were stowed in their beds. I lay in my own and got on the phone with Ben on the East Coast to try to put together a rescue plan. I briefed him and he hung up to call Elizabeth to coordinate some form of assistance for the next day. I lay back, mixing bowl at my side, breathing in slowly through my nose to combat the nausea.
Moments later the phone rang. It was Ben, now quite concerned.
"Elizabeth told me about the oleander," he said.
I, in my pit of discomfort, had completely forgotten about it.
"I googled it," he said, talking quickly, "and then I called Poison Control."
I took another deep breath, trying to concentrate on his words but now aware of another wave of icky coming on.
"So, it's going to be okay, but the Poison Control guy said that anyone who might have had a marshmallow off an oleander stick should go to the emergency room." He cleared his throat apologetically. "Immediately."
I quickly calculated which of my children were in danger. Mihiretu, thank God, hates marshmallows. Lana probably had one or two. Mae had about fifteen.
As I was trying to envision waking the kids, getting them into the car and enduring the wait at the ER, all while comforting frightened and possibly poisoned children and, of course, vomiting, Ben said, "Wait, I've got another call coming in. I think it's Elizabeth, I'll patch her in."
The caller was indeed not Elizabeth but a doctor from the Poison Center, a salty old monologuer, thirty years on the job.
"You ever hear the story about the boy scout troop being poisoned because they roasted their hot dogs on oleander?" he demanded.
I burped as softly as possible and assured him I hadn't.
"They had FOOD poisoning! Bad weiners!" he chortled. "Urban myth debunked!"
"You know how they killed Socrates?" he quizzed.
I breathed in through my nose, willing my stomach to settle.
"Hemlock?" Ben guessed.
"Oleander!" he trumpeted. "You kids don't know your history. Those Greeks had to boil down buckets of oleander. One lady in Marin tried to kill herself by eating an oleander leaf sandwich. She didn't even get nauseous. Mrs. Capron," he announced, "you have food poisoning."
We finally got off the phone with the doctor. Ben called Elizabeth and I called Chrissy to spread the word that we weren't all dying. Chrissy had me talk to her daughter, Lindsay, who was weeping because she was sure her brother wouldn't ever wake up.
Oleander concern put to bed, so to speak, I finally turned off the light. It was now eleven-thirty and if the good doctor was right, I had at least eight more hours of misery before the tide turned. I slept fitfully, reaching for my bowl in a panic every hour on the hour.
Somewhere around two, Mihiretu woke up. I stumbled into his room, half bent over. The bed was wet, unfortunately, so we made our way to the bathroom to clean him up. I tried to convince him that instead of the usual routine of showering off under the tap of the bathtub, that tonight a wet washcloth would do the trick. No go. He clambered into the tub and I turned the knobs. The entire faucet head popped off and water shot upwards in a three-foot geyser.
The cleaning lady had made her monthly visit the day before and, in her thoroughness, she had loosened the tap. All I could do, between containing my nausea and attacking the spray with a towel, was laugh.
The next morning, Ben's dad and step-mom appeared like a mirage. They scooted the kids out the door and I swerved back into bed. I lay watching the clouds drift by through the skylight, a moment of silence and peace. I caught myself thinking: if the last twelve hours is what it took to earn the right to be in bed in an empty house on a Saturday morning, maybe it was worth it. It was madness, of course. My illness notwithstanding, the momentary belief that my children were poisoned is not something I'd ever, under any circumstances, voluntarily submit to. This stillness, the clouds above, were so eloquent because of what had come before. Sort of like waking up after a migraine, the absence of pain a joy in and of itself. I closed my eyes and didn't open them again for hours.
My friend, Chrissy, bless her, took pity on me and invited us and our friend, Elizabeth, and her kids over for a bar-b-que on Friday night. We put the hot dogs on the grill and went with the kids to search for sticks for marshmallow roasting (my children were on treat probation, the only way they could partake in the marshmallows at the end of the evening is if they didn't give me any shit up until then).
We climbed Chrissy's driveway and found lots of stick candidates. Chrissy was stacking them in her arms when Ben, Elizabeth's husband (yes, they are Elizabeth and Ben and we are Liz and Ben - makes for some confusing introductions), newly arrived, pointed out the flowered oleander above us and wondered if these sticks lying under these bushes were perhaps oleander as well.
Chrissy quickly snatched sticks out of children's hands and we headed to the backyard, where there was no oleander to be found.
The meal proceeded. I spent a total of five minutes in my seat between fetching lemonade and ketchup and non-"burnt" hot dogs for my children. Finally the ordeal of feeding them was over and they moved on to the s'mores. I filled my wine glass, squinted my eyes against the smoke from the fire-pit and recalculated the hours until Ben returned.
Halfway through my chardonnay, I was vaguely aware of Elizabeth examining a roasting stick and Chrissy charging through the patio with that same bundle of oleander. "I don't know how these got back here!" she called as she rushed by.
Soon it was near bedtime - the close to another day, thank God - and, with many thanks in Chrissy's direction, I packed my kids into the van. It was late enough for a snooze cruise, what the girls have coded an "S.C.". I angled the rear view mirror on Mihiretu's drowsy face.
We drove the length of Butterfield Road, the long street that runs the three mile distance of our valley and then, Mihiretu still awake, I turned around to drive it again. Suddenly, half way down the road, I realized that something, digestively speaking, was not at all right. I fought the hot spits for a moment but then pulled the van to the side of the road, mumbled "Gotta throw up" and ran for the weeds.
I knelt there, all three kids dangling out of car windows spectating, Mihiretu now thoroughly awake, cars passing, certainly filled with tight-jeaned, highlighted moms that I vaguely know, and heaved into the grass. Just as I was pulling myself back together, Elizabeth and Ben passed in their car, then quickly turned around and parked behind us.
"What's going on?" Elizabeth called. I shakily stood and hobbled to her car.
"Food poisoning?" I said, wiping my mouth. "I don't know. Vomit. Vomit is going on."
I felt okay to drive again. I assured her that I'd call her if the upchucking continued. I ushered children back into seat-belts and swung around towards home.
Bedtime was ugly. I was making beds - this was not, it turns out, the day to wash the sheets - ordering children into pajamas, sticking toothbrushes in unwilling mouths, while intermittently running to kneel in front of the porcelain altar. Everyone was crying, not unusual for bedtime, but certainly more loudly than the norm. Mae was mad that I had implied she was selfish for insisting on the promised ice cream before bed and was choosing this moment to tell me that I hadn't been nice at all since summer had started. Lana was sobbing in Mae's arms, confused and scared, crying for Daddy. Mihiretu was hysterical, twisting in his bed like a python on PCP while I attempted to read "Goodnight Gorilla" as fast as possible so I could return to the bathroom.
Finally, finally, the children were stowed in their beds. I lay in my own and got on the phone with Ben on the East Coast to try to put together a rescue plan. I briefed him and he hung up to call Elizabeth to coordinate some form of assistance for the next day. I lay back, mixing bowl at my side, breathing in slowly through my nose to combat the nausea.
Moments later the phone rang. It was Ben, now quite concerned.
"Elizabeth told me about the oleander," he said.
I, in my pit of discomfort, had completely forgotten about it.
"I googled it," he said, talking quickly, "and then I called Poison Control."
I took another deep breath, trying to concentrate on his words but now aware of another wave of icky coming on.
"So, it's going to be okay, but the Poison Control guy said that anyone who might have had a marshmallow off an oleander stick should go to the emergency room." He cleared his throat apologetically. "Immediately."
I quickly calculated which of my children were in danger. Mihiretu, thank God, hates marshmallows. Lana probably had one or two. Mae had about fifteen.
As I was trying to envision waking the kids, getting them into the car and enduring the wait at the ER, all while comforting frightened and possibly poisoned children and, of course, vomiting, Ben said, "Wait, I've got another call coming in. I think it's Elizabeth, I'll patch her in."
The caller was indeed not Elizabeth but a doctor from the Poison Center, a salty old monologuer, thirty years on the job.
"You ever hear the story about the boy scout troop being poisoned because they roasted their hot dogs on oleander?" he demanded.
I burped as softly as possible and assured him I hadn't.
"They had FOOD poisoning! Bad weiners!" he chortled. "Urban myth debunked!"
"You know how they killed Socrates?" he quizzed.
I breathed in through my nose, willing my stomach to settle.
"Hemlock?" Ben guessed.
"Oleander!" he trumpeted. "You kids don't know your history. Those Greeks had to boil down buckets of oleander. One lady in Marin tried to kill herself by eating an oleander leaf sandwich. She didn't even get nauseous. Mrs. Capron," he announced, "you have food poisoning."
We finally got off the phone with the doctor. Ben called Elizabeth and I called Chrissy to spread the word that we weren't all dying. Chrissy had me talk to her daughter, Lindsay, who was weeping because she was sure her brother wouldn't ever wake up.
Oleander concern put to bed, so to speak, I finally turned off the light. It was now eleven-thirty and if the good doctor was right, I had at least eight more hours of misery before the tide turned. I slept fitfully, reaching for my bowl in a panic every hour on the hour.
Somewhere around two, Mihiretu woke up. I stumbled into his room, half bent over. The bed was wet, unfortunately, so we made our way to the bathroom to clean him up. I tried to convince him that instead of the usual routine of showering off under the tap of the bathtub, that tonight a wet washcloth would do the trick. No go. He clambered into the tub and I turned the knobs. The entire faucet head popped off and water shot upwards in a three-foot geyser.
The cleaning lady had made her monthly visit the day before and, in her thoroughness, she had loosened the tap. All I could do, between containing my nausea and attacking the spray with a towel, was laugh.
The next morning, Ben's dad and step-mom appeared like a mirage. They scooted the kids out the door and I swerved back into bed. I lay watching the clouds drift by through the skylight, a moment of silence and peace. I caught myself thinking: if the last twelve hours is what it took to earn the right to be in bed in an empty house on a Saturday morning, maybe it was worth it. It was madness, of course. My illness notwithstanding, the momentary belief that my children were poisoned is not something I'd ever, under any circumstances, voluntarily submit to. This stillness, the clouds above, were so eloquent because of what had come before. Sort of like waking up after a migraine, the absence of pain a joy in and of itself. I closed my eyes and didn't open them again for hours.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
The Pool
The weather turned warm today after a couple days of rain. Why it's pouring at the end of June is a disturbing question. Our poor, confused Mother Earth.
Ben's out of town and the girls aren't in camp (Mihiretu's in half-day camps all summer - I'm not a total masochist). While they're mostly a pleasure, the constant picking of fights and pleading for treats is starting to get me down. We've hit that point in the summer where the delicious sense of freedom has worn off and the whining begins. For them and for me. I've been feeling starved for adult interaction - inundated by children - so I sent out an email early this afternoon rallying some of my favorite pals to meet at the community pool.
We hit the pool when it opened at one. Hour after hour went by and no friends appeared. Mae was irate, threatening, between mouthfuls of nori, to walk the mile home. Lana, too, decided that she was bored. For girls that don't want to go to camp, their boredom threshold is awfully low. I told them we had to stay until four, then we could throw in the towel, so to speak. I can't ever remember being bored with the pool when I was a kid but then again my mother's entire day wasn't centered around me so hours of swimming was unheard of.
At four o'clock, on cue, our friends began trickling in. The girls were already in the shower and though I tried to tempt them back to the pool, ticking off beloved names on my fingers, they weren't into it. We worked out a deal. They would walk home together and I'd drive with Mihiretu later and meet them there.
Mihiretu was in the shallow end, splashing happily with Ephraim (the other Ethiopian adoptee in these parts, you'd be impressed how much they're mistaken for each other). I seated myself pool-side, so happily chatting (okay, bitching) with my friends, Elizabeth and Chrissy. My extrovert tank was slowly refilling.
Then Elizabeth turned to me and said, "Mihiretu just threw up in the pool."
I looked past her and, indeed, Mihiretu was standing knee deep in water on the pool step, surveying a spreading blob of vomit.
I dropped my sarong and leaped in after him, madly scooping nori-ish puke onto the pool deck. Chrissy and Elizabeth were laughing, searching for some kind of scooping mechanism, warning kids to back away from the stairs.
A teenage lifeguard approached cautiously.
"My kid puked in the pool," I said, skimming bile off the surface of the water.
"Oh," he said, stumped, picking at a pimple on his chin. "I'll have to talk to my supervisor about that." He skittered away.
I managed to lift Mihiretu from the pool. I was reaching for a towel when Elizabeth sidled up to me.
"They're closing the pool," she said, stifling giggles. Sure enough, a whistle sounded and forty-some people swam for the ladders.
I wrapped Mihiretu in his towel and led him to the showers, passing clumps of dripping teenagers, moms, and kids murmuring that some kid puked in the pool.
I apologized to the lifeguard, explaining that Mihiretu isn't sick, he just has a hair-trigger gag reflex. He said sweetly, "It's no problem. Don't be embarrassed."
The funny thing was, I wasn't really embarrassed. I'm so used to standing out at this point, as the mother of this child, that puke in the pool seemed like no biggie. He hadn't screamed "Fucka-my-butt" or thrown a spectacular tantrum. He hadn't growled menacingly at another kid or firmly told a lady that he wasn't sorry he had slapped her on the bottom. This was just run-of-the-mill, it could happen to anyone.
Except. There's something about Mihiretu, beyond his tragic beginnings and his transplantation from rural Ethiopia to ultra-wealthy Marin County, beyond the fact that his skin is a different color than his family's, that's unique. He is a kid who lives large. He screeches unreachable high notes, he performs rapid, joyous karate on any near victim, he rides his bike out of the saddle all the way to school, faster than I ever could, like it was the last stage of the Tour de France, he cheerfully wrestles me to the blanket at the farmer's market and manages to pin me, a person who is three times his body weight. He pukes in the pool and he just keeps trucking.
We edged into the communal shower with the crowd and then quickly dressed. I said nothing to these relative strangers that the reason for the disruption of our hot afternoon pleasure was this little naked boy now playing delightedly with his penis. I did pass my friend, Nicole, on the way out, however, and we quietly laughed that I had invited her to join me at the pool only to have my son promptly shut it down.
As we were getting in the car to go home, Chrissy asked if Mihiretu could come to their house for dinner. He enthusiastically nodded his head and unbuckled his seat-belt. I gave him a kiss and gratefully watched him walk away with Chrissy, hand in hand. If I had puked in the pool, I probably wouldn't be accepting dinner invitations, either out of shame or sickness. But Mihiretu is Mihiretu, a force to be reckoned with. Especially if you swim too close.
Ben's out of town and the girls aren't in camp (Mihiretu's in half-day camps all summer - I'm not a total masochist). While they're mostly a pleasure, the constant picking of fights and pleading for treats is starting to get me down. We've hit that point in the summer where the delicious sense of freedom has worn off and the whining begins. For them and for me. I've been feeling starved for adult interaction - inundated by children - so I sent out an email early this afternoon rallying some of my favorite pals to meet at the community pool.
We hit the pool when it opened at one. Hour after hour went by and no friends appeared. Mae was irate, threatening, between mouthfuls of nori, to walk the mile home. Lana, too, decided that she was bored. For girls that don't want to go to camp, their boredom threshold is awfully low. I told them we had to stay until four, then we could throw in the towel, so to speak. I can't ever remember being bored with the pool when I was a kid but then again my mother's entire day wasn't centered around me so hours of swimming was unheard of.
At four o'clock, on cue, our friends began trickling in. The girls were already in the shower and though I tried to tempt them back to the pool, ticking off beloved names on my fingers, they weren't into it. We worked out a deal. They would walk home together and I'd drive with Mihiretu later and meet them there.
Mihiretu was in the shallow end, splashing happily with Ephraim (the other Ethiopian adoptee in these parts, you'd be impressed how much they're mistaken for each other). I seated myself pool-side, so happily chatting (okay, bitching) with my friends, Elizabeth and Chrissy. My extrovert tank was slowly refilling.
Then Elizabeth turned to me and said, "Mihiretu just threw up in the pool."
I looked past her and, indeed, Mihiretu was standing knee deep in water on the pool step, surveying a spreading blob of vomit.
I dropped my sarong and leaped in after him, madly scooping nori-ish puke onto the pool deck. Chrissy and Elizabeth were laughing, searching for some kind of scooping mechanism, warning kids to back away from the stairs.
A teenage lifeguard approached cautiously.
"My kid puked in the pool," I said, skimming bile off the surface of the water.
"Oh," he said, stumped, picking at a pimple on his chin. "I'll have to talk to my supervisor about that." He skittered away.
I managed to lift Mihiretu from the pool. I was reaching for a towel when Elizabeth sidled up to me.
"They're closing the pool," she said, stifling giggles. Sure enough, a whistle sounded and forty-some people swam for the ladders.
I wrapped Mihiretu in his towel and led him to the showers, passing clumps of dripping teenagers, moms, and kids murmuring that some kid puked in the pool.
I apologized to the lifeguard, explaining that Mihiretu isn't sick, he just has a hair-trigger gag reflex. He said sweetly, "It's no problem. Don't be embarrassed."
The funny thing was, I wasn't really embarrassed. I'm so used to standing out at this point, as the mother of this child, that puke in the pool seemed like no biggie. He hadn't screamed "Fucka-my-butt" or thrown a spectacular tantrum. He hadn't growled menacingly at another kid or firmly told a lady that he wasn't sorry he had slapped her on the bottom. This was just run-of-the-mill, it could happen to anyone.
Except. There's something about Mihiretu, beyond his tragic beginnings and his transplantation from rural Ethiopia to ultra-wealthy Marin County, beyond the fact that his skin is a different color than his family's, that's unique. He is a kid who lives large. He screeches unreachable high notes, he performs rapid, joyous karate on any near victim, he rides his bike out of the saddle all the way to school, faster than I ever could, like it was the last stage of the Tour de France, he cheerfully wrestles me to the blanket at the farmer's market and manages to pin me, a person who is three times his body weight. He pukes in the pool and he just keeps trucking.
We edged into the communal shower with the crowd and then quickly dressed. I said nothing to these relative strangers that the reason for the disruption of our hot afternoon pleasure was this little naked boy now playing delightedly with his penis. I did pass my friend, Nicole, on the way out, however, and we quietly laughed that I had invited her to join me at the pool only to have my son promptly shut it down.
As we were getting in the car to go home, Chrissy asked if Mihiretu could come to their house for dinner. He enthusiastically nodded his head and unbuckled his seat-belt. I gave him a kiss and gratefully watched him walk away with Chrissy, hand in hand. If I had puked in the pool, I probably wouldn't be accepting dinner invitations, either out of shame or sickness. But Mihiretu is Mihiretu, a force to be reckoned with. Especially if you swim too close.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
The Bridge
We went camping last weekend with a bunch of friends. It was cold and foggy but perfection all the same. Communal meals over a campfire, kids running as a pack for all their waking hours, parents sitting around sipping coffee or wine, depending on the clock, chatting, reading magazines. When do I get a chance to read a magazine?
After dark on Saturday night, the guitars came out. I would dearly love to have the ability to play the guitar and/or have a confident singing voice. Tragically, I have neither. But I'll happily hum along in the background while others take center stage.
Our friends, June and RJ, are musicians. It seems like I've known them for decades, they're that kind of people. In fact, I met them at a costume fundraiser for the elementary school a couple years ago. I recommend starting a friendship in costume, it lends a certain intimacy and light-heartedness. The theme was "British Invasion". Ben and RJ had matching Beatle wigs. June and I had some serious mod going. In real, non-fundraiser life, RJ shaves his head. Whenever I see him, in some back corner of my brain I wonder where that mop of hair went. That cheap wig was my first impression of him and it seems like it should always be there. Dude, where's your hamster-colored plastic hair?
RJ and June have proved to be full A-Team. They are funny, they are wise, they are more positive than I could ever hope to be. They are so cool they have a band together. At the campfire, they sang some of their songs. The music was beautiful, their sons would jump in on harmonies, it was plenty impressive.
At one point, they played a song called "The Bridge". It went a little something like this:
"Just drove over the bridge
Thank god I can't see
The city from my rear view mirror
Just the car in front of me
I'm going to miss you
I'm going to say your name a lot
Every day"
When we moved to San Jose two years ago, the kids and I drove across the Golden Gate. I had Julie Andrews belting "I Have Confidence" (because I had little), the kids were killing each other in the back seat of the Prius, I was reaching behind me to pull Mae's nails out of Lana's arm, Mihiretu was shrieking. As I crossed the Marin-San Francisco border, right in the middle of the bridge, I white-knuckled the wheel and stared ahead intently. I couldn't look behind me, I couldn't think about what I was losing. I was driving out of my life, into oblivion, but at that point, all I could do was go forward and hope for the best.
My friend, Jan, had said that sirens would go off when we crossed that border, it was so against nature for us to leave Marin. Our beloved, weathered, yellow happy face antenna ball jumped ship at some point on that journey. I have an image of him saying, "Screw you guys, I'm outta here," and leaping to his death off the bridge, a fading "Good luck with thaaaaaaat" as he fell.
I spent a year saying my friends names a lot, my wonderful collection of people, handpicked over years - curated, really - for their grace, their depth, their humor. I'm sure my few, hard-won San Jose friends were tired of hearing about these people they'd never met. And then, one year ago Monday, we drove back across that bridge. Every single day of this past year, I've had at least one moment of pure joy, so so happy to be here, among my people, in my place.
That thing about how you can't go home again is bullshit, I'm here to say. I've crossed that bridge, over that dangerous water, into a foreign land and been able to cross back again. And home is all the sweeter for it. Gazing around the campfire last weekend, the golden glow lighting the faces of the sleepy kids, many of whom I've known since the pregnancy test, the grinning adults, I knew exactly how good I have it.
After dark on Saturday night, the guitars came out. I would dearly love to have the ability to play the guitar and/or have a confident singing voice. Tragically, I have neither. But I'll happily hum along in the background while others take center stage.
Our friends, June and RJ, are musicians. It seems like I've known them for decades, they're that kind of people. In fact, I met them at a costume fundraiser for the elementary school a couple years ago. I recommend starting a friendship in costume, it lends a certain intimacy and light-heartedness. The theme was "British Invasion". Ben and RJ had matching Beatle wigs. June and I had some serious mod going. In real, non-fundraiser life, RJ shaves his head. Whenever I see him, in some back corner of my brain I wonder where that mop of hair went. That cheap wig was my first impression of him and it seems like it should always be there. Dude, where's your hamster-colored plastic hair?
RJ and June have proved to be full A-Team. They are funny, they are wise, they are more positive than I could ever hope to be. They are so cool they have a band together. At the campfire, they sang some of their songs. The music was beautiful, their sons would jump in on harmonies, it was plenty impressive.
At one point, they played a song called "The Bridge". It went a little something like this:
"Just drove over the bridge
Thank god I can't see
The city from my rear view mirror
Just the car in front of me
I'm going to miss you
I'm going to say your name a lot
Every day"
When we moved to San Jose two years ago, the kids and I drove across the Golden Gate. I had Julie Andrews belting "I Have Confidence" (because I had little), the kids were killing each other in the back seat of the Prius, I was reaching behind me to pull Mae's nails out of Lana's arm, Mihiretu was shrieking. As I crossed the Marin-San Francisco border, right in the middle of the bridge, I white-knuckled the wheel and stared ahead intently. I couldn't look behind me, I couldn't think about what I was losing. I was driving out of my life, into oblivion, but at that point, all I could do was go forward and hope for the best.
My friend, Jan, had said that sirens would go off when we crossed that border, it was so against nature for us to leave Marin. Our beloved, weathered, yellow happy face antenna ball jumped ship at some point on that journey. I have an image of him saying, "Screw you guys, I'm outta here," and leaping to his death off the bridge, a fading "Good luck with thaaaaaaat" as he fell.
I spent a year saying my friends names a lot, my wonderful collection of people, handpicked over years - curated, really - for their grace, their depth, their humor. I'm sure my few, hard-won San Jose friends were tired of hearing about these people they'd never met. And then, one year ago Monday, we drove back across that bridge. Every single day of this past year, I've had at least one moment of pure joy, so so happy to be here, among my people, in my place.
That thing about how you can't go home again is bullshit, I'm here to say. I've crossed that bridge, over that dangerous water, into a foreign land and been able to cross back again. And home is all the sweeter for it. Gazing around the campfire last weekend, the golden glow lighting the faces of the sleepy kids, many of whom I've known since the pregnancy test, the grinning adults, I knew exactly how good I have it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
