Anthem

Dear Little M,

You did everything I asked you to do.  You cleaned up your playroom, you brushed your teeth, you got dressed for school, you even kind of combed your hair.  We were not-that-late leaving the house, which in itself is a small miracle.  You did everything I asked of you, and then we hit too many red lights and no longer had time to make a pit stop at Dunkin Donuts.

You screamed that “life isn’t fair.”  You were right---entirely, completely and unequivocally right.

Life isn’t fair. 

Life isn’t fair and that totally sucks. 

Life isn’t fair and that totally sucks and it makes no sense whatsoever.

Life isn’t fair and that totally sucks and it makes no sense whatsoever and it only gets worse, not better, as you get older.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, I will acknowledge that I’ve thoroughly depressed both of us in the process.  The concept is easy to explain, and so hard to accept.  So very, very, very extraordinarily hard.  Brutally hard, in fact.

I suppose I was naïve and thought that this little life glitch would have worked itself out before I needed to explain it to you, but no dice.  As a parent, it’s very hard to explain a concept to your child that you yourself think is a load of complete BS.  I would much rather tell you that if you work hard, and stay disciplined and do the right thing, good things will routinely come your way.   That’s how it should work; but, if you haven’t already noticed, today’s theme is LIFE’S NOT FAIR.

I want to scoop you up, protect you from every harm and shield your precious little beautiful heart from all of the hurts and injustices that the world offers up.  More than that, though, and more importantly, I want to prepare you for the big, beautiful, flawed and (sometimes) scary world so that you can effectively function within it- and that you may function in it with dignity and with grace.

The world speaks much of power and money, and so infrequently about dignity and grace.  With all due respect to the world, I think it kinda has it backwards here.  People will resort to all sorts of crazy means to preserve their money and their power---their place in the social order, if you will—and that makes sense when you really stop and think about it.  People protect things that can be lost, taken or otherwise revoked.  Think about it.  Bullying.  Corporate politics. Racism.  Other forms of bigotry.  All of these things stem from a fear of someone else taking away what one has already claimed as “theirs”.

 But dignity?  And grace?  Dignity and grace are completely under your control, little girl---they always were, and they always will be.  How great is that?  Whether you have a dime in your pocket or $572 million, you can always choose dignity and grace, and once chosen, they’re yours to keep.  To quote the late prophet Whitney Houston (okay, to quote her pre-Bobby Brown lyricist, anyway), “no matter what they take from me, they can’t take away my dignity.”

Yup. I just used Whitney Houston as a parenting tool.  I went there.  There has to be an award for parenting of such excellence.

Life’s not fair and it never will be.  How life’s not fair will change and evolve over the course of your life:

• Right now, life isn’t fair because you did all of your chores and didn’t get the donut (there’s evidence of my good parenting again) you were promised. 

• Later down the line, you may have an awesome tryout for the soccer team or the school play, only to not get the roster spot you wanted because the coach’s/director's daughter’s best friend was promised a spot on the team, sight unseen.

• You’re a girl, so I’m guessing there’s a good shot that middle school is just going to be patently unfair, pretty much across the board.

• One day, some of your girlfriends (the ones that you’ve watched cry and suck their thumbs and play with dolls) may decide you’re not cool anymore and turn their backs on you.

• In high school or college, some vacuous moron (or even worse, your best friend) will get the affection of the person you love.

• At some point, you will pour your heart and soul into a game….and still lose at the buzzer.

• At another point, you will give your heart and soul to someone who is first reckless with it before breaking it completely.

• Some day, you will get a job and you may watch people with less work ethic, less skill and less credentials be promoted for reasons that no one can explain.

This is life.  None of these commonplace things are fair, but these heartbreaks don’t hold a candle to true injustices like having a child diagnosed with cancer, or a spouse killed on active duty or in a car accident.   Should you ever need some perspective about life’s injustices, take 5 minutes and read a caringbridge.com page of a child who didn’t live long enough to even have a chance to have their heart crushed in middle school.  Perspective.

When life isn’t fair to you, when you don’t get what you want, when you watch someone else get what you so desperately wanted or when someone unjustly hurts you, it sucks.  It hurts.  It hurts and sucks a lot.  Trust your old mom on this one.  I know what it feels like to have my heart crushed and I know what it feels like to sit back and watch my dreams shatter.  I know.  And, I reiterate, it sucks.

(**and should you choose not to believe me, I have a collection of notes from middle school and high school saved in the basement that I saved all these years which say such charming things as “do us all a favor and kill yourself” and “you’re so ugly, just kill yourself” or “you’re such a ****ing loser, no one would ever love you, just kill yourself.”  Teenage girls- such a lovely lot:)   Oh, and you might notice that I am still here—I’ve never particularly skilled at responding favorably at being told what to do. I survived and while I will never say I am thankful for it, I will say that I am better for it.  I am also convinced that I grew up to have decent boobs because the universe wanted to give me some small trinket for surviving 7-10^th grade.  So, there’s that…)

Yes, little girl, this all sucks. Sometimes, your life may get all jacked up, and you won’t have even had a vote in it.  It may just be that it simply happens to you, or around you, and the only option you’ll have is to deal with the aftermath.  

But amidst the sucking, each and every time, you are presented with an opportunity and with a choice.  You have a choice to face the disappointment by retaliating against it and everything else you view as being in your way with all your might, or you have the choice to face it with dignity and grace.  I hope you choose the latter.    You own your emotions.  Don’t let them own you.

I will warn you that choosing dignity and grace may very well test every bit of resolve that you have.  It’s not easy, nor is it automatic, to gracefully accept defeat, loss, disappointment, or flat out cruelty.  It isn’t easy to show the world and to show yourself who you really are what you are made of.   I can assure you, though- it’s worth the effort. 

Remember this—what happens to you and around you may not necessarily be your choice, but how you react to it always is.  Always.  100% of the time.

Let me give you a few examples. 

The first example is hypothetical.  Let’s say that one of your friends did something really rotten and really hurt you badly.  Do you seek to settle the score?  Get even?  Level the field?  Yell and scream?  Passively take to Twitter to make your point?  Or do you try to work it out, rationally---with dignity and with grace?

Here’s the problem with retaliation.  If someone is mean and provokes you and you react with something mean in response?  Newsflash:   You’re mean, too.  And you’re perpetuating the cycle of meanness.  There’s nothing particularly dignified or graceful about that.  What’s more, I’m guessing that after a year has passed, you will feel worse about being mean than you ever did in response to being on the receiving end of it in the first place.  That foul will be on your conscience.  That’s a pretty terrible feeling.  I may know a thing or two about that, too.

The other example comes from our real lives.  When I was pregnant with you, most of my friends were suffering through various stages of infertility hell.  I was a walking, talking (and might I add, large) reminder of their struggles.  They were all so dignified and so graceful through the entire process, and that could not have been the slightest bit easy.  One of those friends had become pregnant and miscarried while I was in labor with you.  She was also the very first person to call after your were born and was there to meet you in person almost immediately.   The only words that really fit a situation like that are grace and dignity.  It was an honor and a lesson, to be in the presence of grace quite that large and I doubt I will ever forget it.

Which example will you follow?

I’m sure there are people out there that will tell you that choosing grace is a nice concept but that it doesn’t work in real life.  That you’ll never get what you want without being aggressive.  That you’ll be a doormat.

Let me be clear, M.  I am in no way advocating that you should accept being mistreated.  I hope that you conduct yourself is a fashion that commands respect and even demands it at times.  But I am saying that you can show good sportsmanship, and you can command respect precisely because you show it…to yourself and to others.    In other words, I am basically just asking you to try to not be a jerk in your dealings…even if others act like jerks to you.  The world is not a jerk-off where the biggest jerk wins the grand prize at the end. 

It strikes me that I might want to reconsider my word choice there.   Or maybe my word choice was spot-on.  Not sure which.  Actually, the world kinda is a big jerk-off sometimes.  I’m sticking with it.

You may also be told that being graceful while you’re hurt or angry will make you a fake.  A phony.  Insincere.   Remember that I’m not asking to you effuse praise and joy and to shoot rainbows out of your rear.  I’m asking you to just have some class and react simply but honorably and in a way you’ll be proud of in six months.  Also remember that the world doesn’t really care what you think (at least I sincerely hope it doesn’t), but it cares quite deeply about what you DO.  Have a few short and simple expressions at the ready.  “Congratulations”, “good luck”, and “good game” should suffice.

By the way, I’m totally screwed if we are judged by what we think.   The things I think would make sailors blush.  Pretty much every single day.   Most of that venom stays in my head.  Note that I said most.  Sometimes, some of that stuff makes its way into a journal, and sometimes some of that stuff comes out as venting to a neutral party.  

I try very, very hard to be dignified, but there are plenty of times where I just fail.  Like a capital F fail. Where I'm graceless.  Undignified.   There are plenty of times when I am a big, fat mean jerk after I’ve been provoked.  I have a sharp tongue, and there are times when I just use it.  It’s not particularly pleasant to be called “rotten to the core” or an asshole or a bitch---and it’s even less pleasant when those statements are true.  And those statements were true—all of them--Little M, or at least they were true at the moments that they were said.   Even though I try to behave with dignity, there is plenty of my own behavior that I’m ashamed of, even more that I’m not pleased with, and still more that I knew I could have handled better.

The good news is that grace gives you lots of tries.  Oodles and oodles of them, in fact.  If you mess one of those chances up, try to get it right with the next one.   Grace. Dignity.  Unlike so many things in this world, they’re available in abundance.  Let that be your anthem.

It starts and ends with you,

Twerk This!!

Dear Little M,

Apparently, your parents are the only two people in the Western Hemisphere who did not see the Miley Cyrus spectacle on the VMAs last night.  How were we supposed to know that by watching Cars 2 on DVD instead, we were depriving you (and ourselves) of several teachable moments?

We'll start with the fact that I had no clue what "twerking" was, even though my Facebook feed was completely littered with the word, thus implying that everyone else on earth knew what the hell it was.  So, I did what any reasonable person would do in such circumstances and consulted the infallible reference library that is Wikipedia... which, incidentally, was no help.   Describing twerking as "the most popular dance move since the Dougie" really did not clear matters up for me, Wikipedia.  I know exactly one dance move, which I have dubbed the "Drunken Karaoke Pantomime", and I'm sticking with it.  It's not exactly like other wedding attendees moonlight as judges on "So You Think You Can Dance", so I'm not terribly concerned.

Since Wikipedia was a dead end, I had to resort to YouTube.  YouTube scares me.  The only time I've ever used it was when you were a baby and you would stop fussing whenever you saw that Godawful McDonald's Filet o' Fish commercial that is played during Lent.   You know which one I'm talking about...heaven knows, we can both sing it left, right and sideways....

Give me back that Filet o' Fish
Give me that Fish
Give me back that Filet o' Fish
Give me that fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiish

I had exhausted my other avenues, so I researched "Miley Cyrus" and "twerking" on YouTube.   In summary, I'd like to bleach my eyes, and my brain, and quite possibly my ears.   I now understand why my own mother forbade MTV back in the olden days of the 1980s, but seriously.  Seriously.  As compared to this spectacle, 1980s Madonna looks like a futuristic cousin of a character on Little House on the Prairie.   These are words that I thought I'd never say, but I long for the wholesome times of the late 1990s when an underage Britney Spears tramped it up in a Catholic school uniform.  I shudder to think about what you will wistfully compare Miley-gate to when you have children.  Sadly, for you, these probably are the good-old days when things were relatively wholesome.  In other news, societal devolution marches on.

Well, anyway, I think I now know what twerking is.  I'm still not entirely sure how the lewd integration of both teddy bears and foam fingers factors into the art of twerking; however, I am entirely certain that I definitely don't ever, ever, ever want to know that piece.

In response to that spectacle, I could spew venom...more or less ad nauseum...about the over-sexualization of young girls, about how young girls exploit themselves, and make Miley Cyrus a representative example of all the things wrong with the world, but I won't.  Not because better minds than mine already have, but because Miley Cyrus is someone's daughter.  She is someone's little girl just like you are my little girl... and I would knock the ever-living lights out of someone who verbally assaulted my little girl, no matter how poor her decisions were.

Think about this, though, sweet Little M...not only is Miley Cyrus someone's little girl, there is a really good chance that someday she will be someone's mother.  Teachable moment #1--before you do something particularly outrageous or graphic, think about your future children watching it someday. Forget about your parents watching it.  Think of your children.  Could you imagine any circumstance where you found a video of me prancing around in vinyl underwear and shaking my ass in the air and not being completely horrified????

The real teachable moment, though, is so much bigger than the VMAs.  It's seen pretty much every single day in every single person's life.

I want you to think about what you're trying to say and what you are trying to actually accomplish after  you get someone's attention.

Yes.  I want you to be thoughtful in your actions so that you achieve what you intend to achieve.

You are 5 years old.  This probably makes no sense to you and that's okay.  This concept doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to most people at 30, or 40, or 50 either.

As a culture, we've devolved to the point that we spend so much of our precious time trying to get the attention of others---only the problem is that most of us stop trying once we actually get that attention.  Think about this for a second, and think about it like a 5 year old.  When you are in school, you raise your hand when you want to get your teacher's attention...and when you do, you are expected to actually SAY or DO something.  You are expected to accomplish something.  THAT'S how this is supposed to work.  

So few of us, particularly the adults, actually remember this.  Attention is the conduit.  It isn't intended to be the final destination.   Somehow, as a culture, we have forgotten this.  We attempt to outdo each other and we outdo ourselves trying to get attention in increasingly outrageous ways.  We scream louder and louder when a whisper would suffice.  We bang on tables, and call each other names, and throw magnificent tantrums...each one louder than the last...so that we're "heard".  It's gotten so far that we often ignore, or simply don't hear, those people who still attempt to behave and conduct themselves reasonably in a world gone mad.  We call those people "boring" with a level of contempt and disdain normally reserved for people who commit violent crimes.  We'd rather be showboating assholes (albeit, colorful showboating assholes, but assholes nonetheless) than boring.  Who would ever want to be boring?

I like boring.  Boring rocks.  Boring is cool. Guess what?

I want you to like boring, too.

Boring is knowing what you're trying to accomplish and acting in a civilized way to achieve that goal.  It's asking the question "is my behavior bringing me closer to what I actually want, or is it bringing me further away?"

Let's use the VMAs as an example.  Miley Cyrus got certainly got the world's attention last night, but what do you think she was trying to achieve?  Was it to be considered a creative, innovative artist?  Was it to be a respected public figure?  Was it to remain in the limelight just a little bit longer?  Instead, she has the world talking, and very little of that talk is good and even less of it is kind.  I can't imagine that's what she wanted.

And let's look at some real world examples.   When some people are hurt, instead of telling the offending party that their feelings are hurt, they will yell and scream and name call.  When some people receive the wrong order in a restaurant, they will bash the wait staff, the kitchen and the management of the restaurant.  They will put the offending party "in their place."

Here's the problem- putting offending people "in their place" in the form of a spectacle may certainly get attention, but more often than not, the original problem still remains after the fact.   You can call someone an asshole, or an incompetent asshole, or an inconsiderate asshole all you want, but that won't get you the right dinner order, and that won't prevent someone from hurting you again.

Be boring, Little M.  Know what you're trying to accomplish and make that your focus.  And always remember, you already know the proper order of things:  the important part happens AFTER you raise your hand and AFTER you get called on.

It's getting cool in here...

Dear Little M,

Today, I received an invitation for your new student social to meet the other kids in your Kindergarten class.  Kindergarten!!!  Somehow, this snuck up on me, which is kind of baffling considering that I already sent in the tuition check, but what can I say?   Sometimes, I need to be slapped in the face with the obvious. 

(**For the record, this is not an open invitation to slap me, no matter how dense I may be.)

I’m mostly excited about your next chapter.  You’re going to learn so much and have so much fun….and I can’t wait to be along for the ride.  I know you noticed that I qualified the statement and used the word “mostly”.  Since I am incapable of shutting up, I will explain.

I’m nervous. 

You’re going to walk into that Kindergarten classroom as a sweet, kind and gentle kid…whose primary (if not sole) influences are your parents.  Those aren’t perfect influences, but at least we know what we (and you) are dealing with.

With each passing year, though, your sphere of influence is going to increasingly broaden.   Mostly, that’s a good thing.  Mostly. 

There I go with that “mostly” word again.

New experiences and knowledge and wisdom often follow new influence.  That’s the good part.  That’s what I want for you.  I want your life to be extraordinary and your experiences to far exceed mine.  I think that’s what every parent wants for their child.

The problem is that your influences will largely be your peers, and not all of those influences will be good.   I know you haven’t seen it yet, but kids can be mean, and girl kids can be meaner.  Most kids, at one point or another, will become highly concerned with the concept of being “cool”.

That last part worries me the most…largely because I don’t know one damned thing about being cool.  Nada.  You live with me.  You know this.  I spend virtually 100% of my time with me, and I know that cool doesn’t live here.   My own father affectionately calls me “Captain of the Nerd Herd”, for crying out loud.

Yes, I just said “for crying out loud”.  If that’s not evidence that I have no idea about cool, you also have an issue with identifying the obvious.  It’s not your fault.  It’s hereditary.

Since I am inadequately prepared for teaching you the nuances of cool, I’m going to employ some major-league parental license.  I’m old, so I’m allowed.  I’m playing Webster and I’m redefining cool…so when the day comes where you are concerned with it, you are at least chasing a slightly enhanced definition.

So, here’s the deal.  You were put on this earth for a purpose….to do something and to leave a mark.  Cool is figuring out what that purpose is and working hard to accomplish that purpose.  Cool is being inclusive and being kind and being honorable.  Cool is helping others and leaving the world in better condition than how you found it.  Cool is finding inspiration in others….to be good and do good…and inspiring others to do the same. 

You might notice that “cool” doesn’t have a damned thing to do with being pretty, or having lots of money or cool clutter, or being a good athlete, or getting good grades (which I know sounds funny since I am basically the academic police and school was the only thing I was ever really good at).   Pretty and speed and money—these things can all be taken from you, either through the aging process (trust me on this one), or just, you know, because.  The things in life that are truly cool are those things that you do.  The good thing about attributes like kindness and hard work is that the supply never truly depletes and no one can take them from you.

Cool is honoring the gifts that you were given while remaining humble.  It’s not squandering what you’re given, and it’s not exploiting what you were given to overpower other people.  Everyone else has their own unique purpose, too.

An interesting thing about life is that everyone (and I mean everyone) wants to feel important.   Another interesting thing is that everyone actually is important.   What matters, and what defines you as a person, is how you choose to actually be important.   There are some people who believe that the best way to be important is to deliberately exclude other people, or to make fun of them, or to make them feel as if others are somehow less and they are somehow more.  There are some people who believe that if they are prettier/faster/richer than you, they are somehow more important and will choose to let that be known. 

Before you come down too harshly on them (and heaven knows that I have, repeatedly and with some level of creative venom), remember that they’ve not been shown that there are better ways.  You have been shown, and that means that you carry an additional responsibility.  This isn’t a bad thing.  It gives you a special superpower.   You know that making someone else inferior isn’t going to make you feel any better about yourself in the long run, and instead you will know that the best way to feel good about yourself is to do and inspire good.    That’s powerful.

(***and let it be known that if you ever come home and say you were invited to a party where “everyone who’s everyone” got an invite, I’m going to first knock you into next Tuesday, and then I’m not going to permit you to go.  That’s not how we roll here.)

There’s a difference between being “exclusive” and being “unique”.  There is a difference between being in a clique and being in good company.  No one is ever going to bend over backwards to impress me, but I can honestly say that I’ve always been in good, cool company.  My friend A has collected over 10,000 pounds of food for the food bank, and is always volunteering (in a freezing cold meat locker, in pantries, packing boxes) to make sure that others have enough to eat.  My friend M provides a safe haven and a sounding board for kids who are gay.  My other friend M has never met a good cause she doesn’t like, and is constantly saving animals, collecting for food cupboards and women’s shelters, and supporting local businesses.  She also has basically turned her home into a perennial open house where everyone feels welcome.  My friends A and T have served our country in the military.  My friends C and T were dealt a hand that was so patently sad and unfair, and not only are the most faithful people I know, they are also doing everything in their power to make sure that other families aren’t dealt the same hand.  I could go through a list of all my friends and tell you about the wonderful things they do to help others.  It would take all day.

This means that I am lucky.  This means that I am in good company….and that’s cool.

Little M, be good company and be in good company.  This is what I challenge you to do.  Be kind, be purposeful, be patient with people and be forgiving.  Give people who aren’t initially kind to you a second chance, and then a third (maybe not a fourth, though)…by being kind yourself.  By being an example.  By giving them a chance to see the amazing person you are and reminding them, through your example, that they are amazing, too.  Trust me.  This will make you feel sustainably good.

Now, Little Miss, have at it.  Go be extraordinary.

Love, 

Mama Nerd

Cinco de M

Dear Little M,

You are 5 years old.

Holy shit!  You are 5 years old.  How did this happen????

As a parent, you hear the expression "you blink and they grow up" about a million times.  Cliche as it is, this statement is undoubtedly true.  Don't get me wrong---the first year of your life seemed to take for-freaking-ever as I learned what the hell I was doing on limited amounts of sleep and changed about a kazillion diapers and doubted myself at a rate of once every 2.4 seconds---but the four years that followed seemed to go by in a flash.  Mind if we slow this process down a bit?

Here's the funny thing about being a parent.  Everyone tells you about how much work parenthood is---and it's true, or at least it's not untrue--but no one really mentions how much fun it is.  That's right.  FUN.  It is FUN to be your mom.  It is FUN to see things through your eyes.  It is FUN to hear the completely outrageous things you say and it is FUN to see the chaos that you are capable of creating.  I wouldn't say it was necessarily fun to clean up the poop birthday cake you made for me when you were two years old, but it was hilarious to hear your logic and to hear you tell the story with such passion.   It wasn't necessarily fun to scour the entire downstairs and to scrub the sofa after you painted your entire body (including your hair) in greek yogurt because you wanted to see how it felt to look like a ghost, but....wait.  That was actually fun.  You're creative.  You're entitled to make a few messes. What's more- life is messy.  Laugh at it, clean it up, tell the story and move on.   Being a killjoy doesn't make you more credible.  Remember that part.  It's pretty important.

It is quite possible that I'm having more fun than you are and I'm definitely enjoying my second chance at childhood more than I enjoyed my first.  I have no complaints about my first crack at it, either.  It's a do-over with the wisdom of experience--plus, no one can ground me anymore and I'm allowed to use curse words without consequence.  WIN!

I catch some flak from time to time about my "questionable judgment", outright "poor judgment" and "irreverence"when it comes to raising you, particularly when we are having fun or when I choose to have a sense of humor about what life brings our way.  Those words sting, and I am trying to see the constructive parts of those types of criticism.  I occasionally succeed (and other times, I employ a little technique I call "creative profanity" in my own head).   I have to believe that those people who call me out on this only have your best interests at heart, and that's an extraordinarily good thing.  You need good people advocating on your behalf, and I'm glad that you have them.

(**Let's also get it straight that when I hear these types of comments, it's usually because I let you make a catastrophic mess that will require a solid hour in the tub to scrape the crust out of your ears, hair and nostrils.  It's not like I gave you a crack pipe, a lighter and a Ginzu knife.  Jeeeez.  Priorities. )

But this isn't about them, sweet M.  This is about you.  At the end of the day, I don't care if every single adult person I know thinks that I am not taking parenthood seriously enough.  I do, however, care quite profoundly that you think that you have a good mom.  It's an audience-of-one kind of deal for me, and I think that you and I are square on this.  We both know that I take nothing more seriously than you and what I need to be doing so that you grow up to be an adult of character and of substance.   So long as you know it, I'm good.  Better than good, actually.

Some of my favorite times are our "woman-to-woman" discussions on the stairs where I dispense those tiny nuggets of life wisdom that may serve you well somewhere down the line.   I usually leave the heavy lifting of life's profundity for spiritual gurus like Pink, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift (never underestimate the power of pop music lyrics!), but I've had a few gems of my own.  If you remember nothing else I've ever done or said, I hope you remember these little nuggets:

1.  If a boy can't be bothered to wear shirts with sleeves, you can't be bothered with him.
2.  If a boy makes you walk on the street side of a sidewalk, you kick him to the curb.
3.  If someone in your company is rude to a waiter/waitress or doesn't say "bless you" when you sneeze, you don't walk away.  You run.
4.  You can tell everything you need to know about a person's character by how they react when their luggage is lost, their flight is unexpectedly cancelled or they receive the wrong dinner in a restaurant.
5.  In the long run, manners and respect get you further than tantrums ever will.
6.  Until you can consistently wipe your own ass, complete world domination is slightly out of reach.
7.  There is nothing more fun than dredging your hands through your birthday cake with your very best friend.  Mischief+good company=lifelong memories.
8.  Choose your friends wisely.  Spend your time with girls and boys of quality.  I know you know what that means.  Forget quantity.  Forget good-time friends. You may notice that your Aunt M just started cleaning up our house that was destroyed by 40 little people without being asked.  That's a real friend.
9.  Drama is something you watch on TV and not something you live.  It most certainly isn't something you start.
10.  Find something you love .  Do it sincerely and to the best of your ability. Raise the bar on yourself. Hold yourself accountable and find someone else to hold you accountable.  This is the path to success.

This is useful stuff, little girl.  It may not be profound, but it's certainly useful.

Happy birthday to my go-with-the-flow, sassy, effervescent little sprout.  I love that we are growing up together...

Over The Bridge

I have a list problem.  I love lists.  I may even be a little bit in love with lists.   Or a lot in love with lists.  I love the sense of order and completeness they provide and I love that little burst of accomplishment after I complete an item.  Lists are comforting to me and they're somewhat soothing--map out the steps, follow the steps, complete the tasks and POOF!!!!  A sense of purpose! A sense of control in an uncertain world!  What else does one really need, anyway?

I would totally bash my OCD---and you still may--but the fact of the matter is that my OCD basically pays the bills, puts food on the table and puts my feet in a pretty fierce shoe collection.  I may be borderline certifiable, but I'm also a loon who looooooove my shoes.   When the nice men come to haul me away to that much-deserved white padded cell vacation, I'm going to run away with the superlative for best shoes in the (looney) bin.  I've always wanted to be the best at something.  This is my chance. A victory is a victory, people.

I spent the entirety of 2012 committed to completing a good deed and having a new experience each day.  At the time, I thought it was so rewarding because I was forcing myself to actually live, but now, upon some reflection, it also makes perfect sense why it was also so comforting.  I spent every day of last year with a LIST.   I spent every day of last year with a PURPOSE.  AHHHHH.  I love lists.  Lists make everything so easy.

Here's the tricky part of coming off a year-long list challenge.  You enjoy it for a minute, you take a little breather, and then you need to figure out what the HELL to do with yourself after you've checked off every item on your list.   You need to figure out what (the hell) comes next.

Yikes.  What comes NEXT?

It's an interesting letdown, actually.  Kind of like the day after Christmas rolled up into the day after finishing a marathon you've trained 6 months for.  (Full disclosure:  I know what the day after Christmas feels like, but considering that I get tired after driving 26 miles, I don't exactly know the day after a marathon feels like.  But i can imagine).

So, I managed to set myself up pretty nicely to kick off 2013 in an interesting state of letdown, under the best of circumstances.  The problem is that I didn't end 2012 on some euphoric high after completing the challenge.  Oh, I lied and made it sound like it was great and even did it in writing, but the truth is I ended 2012 pissed off, shaken up, and thinking that I spent the entire year completing a challenge that was ultimately for NOTHING.

For this statement to make any sort of sense, I need to tell the story of the bridge.

The bridge was the Walt Whitman (which I've driven on a few thousand times) and the bridge happened on December 16, somewhere around 11:45 AM.   The bridge was on the eastbound downward side.  The bridge happened in the span of 10 seconds, or 10 minutes and I've been replaying it for nearly 7 months.

It was my mom's birthday, and we were driving to take her to brunch.  By some small miracle, we were actually going to be on time, which never happens.   Like never.  If I ever think I'm going to be on time, I manage to squeeze in an extra errand or two that will ensure that I will be at least 10 minutes late and racing to my destination.  Maybe I will ponder that one later.

But we were on time that day.  I wish we had just killed time at Target like good, non-punctual, Americans that day.

There was a black Jeep Liberty in front of us.  It was new.  It was really clean and shiny when everyone else's car had the sheen of early winter dust on it.  There were two men in the car.  They looked to be about 40.  I had noticed the car earlier, and I wasn't sure why.  In retrospect, I realize I was being warned.  Oh, foreshadowing.  Great in movies.  Not so great in real life.

Out of nowhere, and so quickly, the passenger door opened and the passenger dove out, head first, and landed head first, in a heap and with a thud you'd expect for someone who dove out of a car at 50+ miles and hour.  I can still hear that thud.  It happened less than a foot away from our car.

It was probably a series of small miracles that prevented it from being even worse.  My husband was driving that day and we were in his car, which is much newer and more nimble than mine.   We're not even going to talk about how much better his reflexes and reaction time are than mine.  There was no one in the left lane to hit us (with our 4 year old in the back seat) when he swerved to miss hitting the body.  He still only missed hitting the body by a matter of inches.

I have no doubt that if I were driving, or if we were in my truck, we would not have been able to avoid hitting him.  And THEN what?

I'll be deliberately light on details...because it was awful. I honestly don't know if it was a blur, or so clear that I can see it happening again.  Think CSI.  The pulling to the side of the bridge (did I mention I'm afraid of bridges?).  The frantic 911 call trying to explain it like an useful witness.  And the worst of it---the walking up the bridge to the scene itself to talk to the police.  The stream of blood that extended for at least 12 feet and ran down the bridge.   The heartbreaking wails of the man who was the driver of the Jeep as he tried to explain what happened to someone on his phone.  I won't ever forget what he said...ever.  The sight of the motionless and bloody person just lying on the asphalt.  Peering over the side of the bridge, looking down, hearing the noise of the ambulances and the police and the screams and the cries, and realizing that I was never going to cross that bridge again (and I drive it frequently), without remembering what happened that day.

Suffice it to say, no one was terribly hungry at brunch.  Of course, we were late.  Oh well.  The bar of expectations was already set pretty damned low in that regard.

It didn't take me very long to realize that the bridge was really bothering me and I really couldn't shake it, try as I might.   I kept on seeing it replayed---every time I closed my eyes, every time I saw a Jeep Liberty on the road, every time I saw two men driving together.  I knew I probably wasn't okay---but I also knew the only way to get okay was to dust it off, put one leg in front of the other,  get busy getting busy and wait for time to take care of it.  Wait for it to go under the bridge.  You fall, you get back up immediately, and you move on.  That's life.  And least, that's life done right.  No excuses.

I also realized pretty quickly that talking about it wasn't going to be much help.  What would I even have said?  That I saw something horrible happen to someone else, but I was actually unharmed?  What kind of weak crybaby talks about stuff like that????  I'm GERMAN, for shit's sake.  Germans just deal.  

Add that all to the fact that pretty much everyone I know is insanely busy, with much bigger and more pressing problems than mine.  Trust me- I'm not complaining that my life is basically a perennial bake sale.  I know I'm lucky, and I also know that I don't want to be the winner of the "World's Shittiest Life" competition.  It just seemed kind of tactless to talk about something like this to someone who was busy...with real problems.

And then there's the kicker.  I realized that I was angry at the guy who jumped.  Not sad, not full of compassion for what caused him to do it in the first place....I was straight-up angry.  I felt horrible for the man who was with him, and horrible for his family, but the man who actually jumped?  ANGRY.  Angry that he came out of nowhere, on a seemingly innocent day, and jacked it up.  Angry for the flashbacks.  Angry for the fact that if my husband wasn't able to avoid hitting him, my husband would have to live with that guilt for the rest of his life when he did nothing more than being in the wrong place in the wrong time.  Angry that if I were driving, I'd be the one that would have to live with that guilt.  Angry that my child was in the car.  Angry that all it took was one unstable person to royally jack up people who were previously stable.   Angry that I had spent 350 days at that point doing freaking GOOD DEEDS which I thought were some sort of insurance policy, only to have that exercise end up being utterly pointless.   Angry that every time I saw a Jeep, I'd feel a crazy fight or flight response.  Angry to have the efforts of a year's worth of trying to restore some level of good and order in the world end up in complete, unstable chaos.  Angry that my list was worthless.

Angry.

Yup.  You can't really tell people that you're angry at someone who dove head first out of a moving car on the highway without sounding like an asshole.  Go ahead and judge.  I have.  More times than you can count, actually.

I did finish off the good deeds of 2012---largely because I had committed to it, but I no longer believed that it meant anything.   I no longer believed that it had any purpose.   And when 2013 started, I decided that my "now what?" was going to be doing the basics, and nothing more.   I was going to get up, show up and handle my business, but I wasn't going to take on any more risk or more effort.  Oh, and I started to really notice how interdependent people are, and I don't necessarily mean that favorably. I started to really notice the number of times things slipped through my hands, even when I did everything my lists told me to do, because someone else came through with a bigger issue that required immediate attention.  I was rapidly becoming completely bitter.  I decided that my lists were pointless.  I stopped writing lists.  I never thought I'd stop writing lists.

Until, one day, when I realized that I missed my lists.  That I missed the sense of purpose.  That I missed the sense of implied hope that were associated with those lists.  When I began to reconcile that "good will prevail in the end" and "life's not fair" weren't mutually exclusive and that they had to co-exist for life to really mean something.  It's easy to have hope when the results include only good outcomes.  To be able to accept that you can hope, and you can execute and the end result might still be bad, and you choose to hope anyway???  That's where real courage kicks in.  And I'm there.  I'm really there.   I'm not sure what my next list will include, but I'm going to enjoy the hell out of writing it and seeing what happens next.

It's funny.  One day last week, someone commented that they considered me to be "bulletproof" because they thought I could take anything.  That's quite a compliment- one I might treasure for the rest of my life, actually--but it's not entirely true. It's actually not true at all.  I'm not bulletproof.  I feel every single bullet that I take, and most of them hurt like hell.  But I can take those bullets.  Every single one of them, I can take and get back up.  For me, it isn't so much about avoidance, it's about being able to take them, deal with them, and carry on while missing as few steps as possible.  It's not waiting for things to go under the bridge, it's about finding a way to cross that bridge and move on to the next.  I think I like that...a lot.  Can't lie, though- still a pretty cool compliment.  I'm taking them these days.

My One and Only

I'm finally getting smarter with this whole youth sports thing.  Finally.

Once upon a time, I would attempt to be friendly---not will you be my new best friend friendly, but more along the lines of if we're going to be here for the next 16 weeks, it would be nice to smile and say hello while we watch the kids friendly.

That effort came to a screeching halt a few months back---right after the first day of soccer practice, which is also known as the day when I was totally shunned by the soccer mom clique.  While I do have a teeny-tiny tendency to be ever-so-slightly overdramatic, this was not one of those times.   I saw a group of women talking, and I smiled and said hello.  In response, the group stopped speaking, started at me, looked me up and down multiple times, said NOTHING, turned their backs and resumed their conversation.

Yeah.  That was AWESOME.  Kinda like 7th grade all over again--only this time, I don't need braces.  Whatever.  Some of us actually leave cliques behind in middle school.

I chalk up that magical experience, along with numerous other parenting mishaps, to the fact that Little M is my first child and I'm still learning the rules of the road.    The problem with this logic is that Little M is also my only child, which means that I won't get to experience that "senior parent" moment with a subsequent child when I get something right on the first try because I have at least a partial clue as to what the F I am doing.

Luckily, Little M and I are on the same page.  We've agreed that neither one of us knows what we're doing, but we're going figure it out together.   I've also agreed to try my best not to embarrass her most of the time, though I have reserved the right to act like a complete bozo in places like Target if the background music warrants.  I can't be expected to behave all the time.

Soccer wasn't my best moment, but I'm much smarter at gymnastics.  This is fortunate, as gymnastics runs all year and it would be a loooooooong year in Social Siberia.   I smile and say hello to the fellow parents, and then I sit down, put on my iPod and zone out while watching Little M do her thing....and then I smile and say "see you next week" on the way out.

I may be a slow learner, but the good news is that I do actually learn.

While observing yesterday, I realized that I couldn't get a tune out of my head and was actually humming it.

You're my one and only
My one and only true love
True love

Moments like this are totally inconvenient when you're consciously trying to not embarrass your child at sports practice.  Even worse, I realized that this song came from my late 1980s New Jersey middle school era--so it was both understated and classy.

Only I couldn't remember the title and artist.

Cover Girls?  Expose?  God help me, Samantha Fox?

(Pause for moment of silence for S-S-S-Samantha Fox.)

I realize that I could have googled this mystery song, but c'mon.  Where's the fun in that?  Instead, I conjured myself up at a 1988 middle school dance in NJ---all decked out in the finest clothes that the Echelon Mall offered**, a mouth full of metal, and hair that looked like it belonged in a Bon Jovi video. And then it hit me---the elusive song was Seduction's "You're My One and Only."  Bought it on the spot and threw it on "repeat" for the rest of gymnastics.

**Note:  Those would be the finest clothes that my mom would allow me to wear and were also available for purchase in the children's department of Strawbridge's, as I was all of 4'7" and about 65 pounds.  As far as I was concerned, Strawbridge's Echelon was actually the height of sophistication.  Please do not try to sully that fine memory.

As I jammed out, reliving the joys of middle school (and decided that if my child was on the other side of a glass wall, I wasn't embarrassing her in the technical sense), I started thinking about my one and my only.  Child, that is.

Being the mother of an only child is kind of an interesting place.  There are all sorts of questions and comments; mostly raised by well meaning people and many of which border on entirely too personal, but are brought up anyway.

For the record, I despise the question "are you planning to have more children?" I like its follow-up, "why not?" even less---not only due to their personal nature, but also because I'm fraught with some level of worry that I may regret this decision sometime later in life.  I also hate these questions because there is inevitably some level of judgment that follows---the judgment which shouts that a woman who chooses to only have one child must  have something wrong with her, be it physical or mental, but she's somehow less of a woman.

That all said, there are 2 questions that drive me completely up the wall.  In no particular order, they are:

1.  Is it just Little M?  (usually said IN FRONT OF my child).   Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm a bit touchy about this one; however, unless the word "just" is followed by the words "awesome", "perfect" or "terrific", let's not use it to describe my child...in front of my child.  It's kind of rude.  It's more than a little dismissive.   And I'm pretty sure that I would never go up to someone with multiple kids, point at one, and say something like "is that just your youngest?"

2.  Don't you want to give your husband his son?  I fully acknowledge that my education in the sciences ended with Biology for Business Majors, which I believe is one small step above Rocks for Jocks in difficulty at the collegiate level.  Even with my limited knowledge base, I'm pretty confident in saying that I don't actually get to pick the gender of future children.  X chromosome, anyone?  Sarcasm aside, I'm not a fan of the implied insult of both my husband and my daughter.   That little girl, my  little girl, is the absolute greatest joy in both her parents' lives.   I'd say the same thing if my only child were a son.  Real men love their kids, regardless of gender.  Real men teach their kids to ride bikes and to throw a ball.  And yes, real men play tea party and My Little Pony.

The ideal family size is so personal and should be decided inside the family--and not be a topic of debate or criticism.  And I don't think that criticism is squarely directed for families with one child---for every time I've heard feedback that my family wasn't quite "enough", I've heard my friends with larger families saying that they've drawn comments about their family being too big and too much.   Whatever happened to all families, the big ones and the little ones and the ones in between, being beautiful and sacred?

And to my Little M, you are not just enough.  You are everything.  I couldn't be luckier that you were chosen to be my one and only.

Happy Birthday, Tomboy...

I got a phone call today from someone who wanted to wish this little blog a happy first birthday.    How cool is that?

I can't believe it's been a year.   The beginning of 2012 feels like an entire lifetime ago--and I guess that, in some respects, it pretty much was.

It feels odd that anyone would celebrate the anniversary of something that:

(A) Was inspired by Ryan Seacrest, who just might be the cheesiest person alive, and Beyonce, who annoys the shit out of me most of the time;
(B) Was created because I was bored out of my skull, completely plastered from cheap wine and domestic beer and wearing an ancient (and ill-fitting, might I add) pair of flannel critter pants;
(C) Mostly talked about boring me and my boring suburban little life, usually with copious amounts of profanity.

Seriously.   Even I'm not that interested in what I think, what I do, and what I have to say....and I spend all of my time with me.

But....I owe you all a status update.   A year ago, I drunkenly proclaimed that I would do two things each day in 2012:

1.  Gain a new experience and stop being so accountant-y
2.  Do a good deed for someone else.

It's kind of funny.  When you're buoyed by alcohol and a fresh crop of enthusiasm, those two things seem not only attainable, but easily attainable at that---and accomplishing them is a piece of cake.

At first, anyway.

At first, goals like those are new and exciting, and I went after them with that sort of deluded self-confidence that probably encouraged men to invade countries.

And then, you know, I got kind of tired and just wanted to resort to my other favorite recreational activities, which include lofty activities such as painting my nails, online shopping, screwing around on facebook and watching TV.

But did I do it?  Did I actually do it?  For a year?

Yes**.

**  Yes means that I might have missed a few days, but overwhelmingly YES.  I made good.   Mostly because I'm too stubborn to do otherwise.  And because I was stupid enough to take this on---in a journal and with an audience.  Damned accountability.  Gets me every time.

The good deeds were waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier.  I seldom walked away from good deeds feeling worse than when I started, or with more questions than answers, or wondering what the f*ck I was doing with my life.

The new experiences, though?   They were a wee bit tricky.  Had I thought about this experiment for more than, I don't know,  5 seconds,  I would have realized that not all new experiences are necessarily good experiences.   That's the funny thing about deciding to take chances---while many of them pay huge dividends, some of them blow up in your face, a few of them are misguided, and a handful are just straight-up stupid.

Taking chances on people and taking chances on yourself.....it's a little bit of a risky proposition.  Sometimes, you take chances on people and endeavors that are worthwhile, and sometimes you just don't.  Sometimes, you realize that, try as you might, the decision isn't yours to make and the outcome isn't yours to control.  Sometimes, the hardest decision to make is the one between trying harder and cutting your losses and walking away.

By no means was this the easiest year of my life, but it was by far the most worthwhile.  I am grateful for this experiment, thankful for what I've learned, and excited to see where this little adventure takes me in 2013.

So, cheers to the year where I dusted off my passport and debuted my daughter's, the year where I inadvertently crashed a party (and stayed!), the year I was featured on the news while doing a good deed (and also for being "dateless and desperate", again), the year where I contracted the plague at a children's playplace and, most importantly, the year where I fiercely loved my people and they fiercely loved me back.

Happy birthday, little blog, and a very happy 2013 to each of you.

The One Where I Lose People

This will be the entry where I lose and anger people, and the entry where people start to question what kind of person I really am.   I deliberated, agonized really, about putting this one out there in the interweb---but here it is.    It relates to a topic that I'd rather not discuss, at all really and certainly not in public, and I will likely never discuss again, but today, I need to.  And I need to discuss it right now before the opportunity for revisionist history creeps in and the story begins to morph into something a little more palatable and a lot more simplified.

I will explain how I arrived at this point.  I will explain why I chose to write this and why I chose to share it. I will say that these thoughts apply to me only and by no means do I project them onto anyone else.  And I will ask a great favor from each of you.

First, though, I should tell you what I'm actually talking about.   I'm talking about religion, and about religion affecting my daughter, and about how she and I found our way into a church on a Friday afternoon. It's about a decision that was ultimately made in a split second, but that I've been mulling over for 4 years.  Or 37 years.  Or something in between.  It takes on a different dimension when kids are involved.

I should take a step back.

I'm not religious.  I don't go to church and have not gone (outside of weddings and funerals) since it ceased being a requirement for graduation.  That's not my parents' fault.  They tried.  They made sure that I received all of my sacraments.  It's no one's fault, except maybe my own.

Maybe.  But then, again, maybe not.

The problem is that I don't really know what I believe.   Like, as in, I have no idea.  I want, perhaps desperately, to believe in something.  I believe in good people and I believe in good people doing good things.  I believe in service above self.  I believe in miracles and hard work and perhaps even the evidence of grace.

But I'm just not sure where I fall out with respect to religion.  Though not recently, I've tried different churches in the past.  That experiment has not really worked out for me, thus far, and it probably won't ever.  I may be religionless and I might not be able to tell anyone exactly what I believe in, but that doesn't mean that I believe in nothing.   I'm okay with my being noncommittal and searching. In some ways, being without a team makes it easier to be open to different viewpoints---I have nothing to defend.

Belief is personal, and I'm fine with where I stand.   I have close friends that cover pretty much every religion under the sun- I have Catholic friends, Jewish friends, Muslim friends, friends from practically every Christian faith, Atheist friends, Agnostic friends, spiritual-but-not-religious friends, Born Again Christian friends, Quaker friends.  You name it.  I've befriended and had interesting discussions with the Jehovahs Witnesses that stop by every 3rd Saturday. I ask people to tell me about what they believe and I listen.  I am respectful of others' views, while having few of my own.  I try really hard at that, actually.

That's me- but now, I also have HER.  I have Little M to think about, too.  

And since I've received feedback like "Don't ruin her because you're a mess" (yes, someone actually said that to me), I've thought about it even more carefully.

When Little M was born, I made a few decisions with respect to this:

1.  She has the same right as everyone else to decide what she believes or doesn't believe.
2.  She has the same right as everyone else to ask questions and arrive at her own conclusions.
3.  I wasn't going to tell her what she was supposed to believe.
4.  I would take her to any church/synagogue/mosque/meeting/fellowship that she ever asked to go to and encourage her to investigate that which she found noteworthy.
5.  I would tell her that no matter what she believed, I would love her unconditionally, all the time, no matter what.
6.  I would not baptize her--because I want her to choose for herself.  This is her belief system, and not mine.  And because I wasn't going to stand on an altar at a house of worship and lie to a person in the clergy and a room full of people about how I was going to raise her.   Religion probably isn't for me, but I would never go to a place of worship and be disrespectful.

As you can probably guess, these decisions have made me pretty popular.

Flashing forward to now.  Little M and I love to go to a very cute French bakery---we eat croissants and all sorts of French pastry and pretend to speak French.   Across the street from the bakery, there's a beautiful old church---it happens to be Episcopal.  That part really doesn't matter.  The first time she saw it, she asked to see the beautiful castle. She's 4.  She loves castles.  I explained to her that it wasn't a castle, but a church.

"Oh, a church.  Like God's house, right?", was how she responded.

She asked to go in.  We walked across the street and I tried to show it to her.   Unfortunately, it was the middle of a Friday afternoon, and every door was locked.   So, I took her to another nearby church that looked like it---which, of course, was also locked.

She asked me why God wasn't home, but then started talking about cupcakes.  I exhaled a huge sigh of relief.

We went to the bakery again yesterday, and again, she asked to see the church.  LOCKED.

This time, though, she looked at me with her sad little 4 year old eyes, and asked why God was never home when she was looking for him.  That was all it took--I grabbed her hand, and we prowled the premises (trespassing, really) until I found a janitor.  I begged him to let us in.  I told him that my 4 year old wanted to say "hi" to God.  He let us in.  We stayed for a bit.

On the way home, she asked me all sorts of questions that I am not qualified to answer.  I tried anyway.    Progress.

She's why I wrote this entry.   I owe her the truth and I owe her the reasons why I do things the way I do.  She deserves to know what was going through my head when certain things happened, without me glazing over certain elements after the passage of time.  Someday, she will read this blog and hopefully, she will understand...if not agree.

And here is where I ask you a great favor.  I realize that many of you will disagree with me and how I'm doing things.   I'm asking for you to keep the criticism off of this blog- if only because I don't want Little M to read it.  Tell me in person or over the phone, tell me on my Facebook page, write emails about it.  Tell me all you want- but, please, keep her safe.

I don't have any answers of my own, but I think a Live song best captures what I do believe:

I don't need no one to tell me 'bout heaven
I'll look at my daughter
and I'll believe.