Category: humor

Gen X parents Rejoice! Stranger Things is the Gift We’ve Been Waiting For

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If you’re a Gen X parent of pre-teenish/teenish kids, perhaps you also are experiencing lightning in a bottle this summer.

A new parenting level unlocked.

The impossible made possible.

That’s right, a portal has opened and our 1980’s childhoods have crossed with those of our thoroughly modern and exhausted children and…our life experiences have suddenly become interesting to our kids!

I love you, Stranger Things.

IMG_2428Season 3 of the Netflix show,  released and immediately consumed by viewers way back on July 4, has delivered to our adolescents a story about kids THEIR age back in the 80’s which, blowing young minds everywhere, makes the show’s beloved characters OUR exact age. Flash forward to the show’s bad ass girls Eleven, Max, Nancy, Robin and pint-sized Erica in 2019 and you would find them in my book club, or in your swim practice carpool.

Yes, the Stranger Things kids regularly battle alien hellbeasts, but mostly, they are at the mall wearing OUR clothes (I’m looking at you high top Reeboks, Swatches, and the ugliest shorts ever), listening to OUR music, and watching OUR movies. (Bonus points to all of you who immediately recognized “Neverending Story,” right in front of your awestruck kids. Dusty and Suzie’s rendition is the REAL song of summer.) Thanks to Patrick Swayze and Red Dawn, we really did think the Russians were going to come marching through our small unassuming towns. We rode our bikes places and enjoyed free reign in 1980’s malls. (My Starcourt Mall was Sunrise Mall. What was yours?)

The meticulously detailed world of this season captured the imagination of our kids, successfully romanticizing our collective childhoods that in reality were fueled by sugar, hairspray and occasional parental supervision. For wistful Gen Xers, the season re-created an environment otherwise lost to us forever because unlike our future children, we walked through our adolescent days documenting very little with our rarely used LeClics.  Buying and developing film was expensive and annoying, you guys!

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This week, I’ve been low-key answering questions about what it was like in the olden days; explaining Orange Julius, Chess King, Waldenbooks, Wicks ‘N Sticks and Neverending Story, while trying not to be noticeably excited about my newfound valuable subject matter expertise. The other day I heard something along the lines of “So cool. I wish I was around for that.”

To make this crossover of time and space even more magical, the show stars a member of Gen X royalty, Queen Winona Ryder along with Maya Hawke as this season’s new fan favorite character, Robin. Princess Maya is of course the offspring of Lady Uma Thurman and Sir Ethan Hawke, Winona’s costar in Gen X manifesto movie Reality Bites. “It’s all happening,” I’ve said to myself over and over.

So, this summer, I am thankful for this little gift of a loud, exciting, heart warming, scary, kinda gross but delightful gift to Gen X parents. Any opportunity to connect is a good one, right? Because by the time school rolls around again, our kids will have forgotten that their parents were once hellbeast battling, feathered-hair-having, bike riding heroes.

 

*Above you will find my better half John whose look, car and pose obviously served as the inspiration for Billy. My buddy and Laurel and I go shopping…Esprit…everything Esprit.

Our Apologies to the Y2K Babies

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IMG_1429Do you remember the Y2K babies…the four million+ little ones born into the tail end of the first internet boom?

Like the mysterious cicadas, these equally mysterious young people have emerged from their not-always-comfortable kid cocoons and have started graduating from high school and pouring into the world. They overran the college application process. They’ve taken all the men’s medium t-shirts and women’s size 7 shoes. They have used ALL THE DATA. They’re eating all the frozen yogurt and have taken up every seat on flights to Europe. Dear God, I hope they are finding their way to their polling places.

These kids were just little chubby babies on September 11, 2001, and our perspective and hopes for them changed in an instant, and continued to change again and again with the awful and exciting things that tend to happen through a person’s lifetime. Inventions. Wars. Societal and political shifts. Natural disasters. Personal heartbreak and triumph. Epic movie franchises and broken sports curses.

Our oldest son is one of these former babies/current graduates. He and his cohorts have put up with years of our inspirational chats, and the retelling of cautionary tales – urban legends about kids who didn’t study hard enough for the SAT or only took three years of a foreign language instead of four. They were constantly reminded that every move they made would affect the rest of their lives.  Now that they’re done, and exhausted by all of our help, we’re like, “Oh don’t worry, you’re going to be fine. We just want you to be happy.”

It’s time for them to figure out their way. Our way depends on it.

The options for Y2K babies are different than those of every generation before them. We’re sending them into a weird world – where the possibilities feel infinite and finite, depending on the day. We (I) can’t unload our (my) panic about the mysterious state of the world onto them (him).

These new adults are Post Millennials. And it seems, while we were trying to make things so great, we’ve done everything in our power to make things as difficult as possible for them. As a proud Gen X parent, I feel like we’ve quietly put up with a lot, but we didn’t use any of that experience to help these kids. And so to you adorable group of Y2K baby graduates, I say…sorry, guys!

College admission is insanely competitive, and infinitely more expensive than what we had to deal with…tuition has gone up 260% since 1980, while other consumer goods have only gone up 120%. We’ve made it prohibitive in every way. You’re welcome!

We’ve re-wired your brains with our own lack of self control with technology – forcing our own addiction on you, then we get frustrated with how much you look at your little screen.

We shrug and turn to you – firmly resting our collective future onto your young shoulders. You’ll need to fix the environment and health care and race relations because it’s too hard and we can’t do it.

You’ll have to fix education – good luck since we messed that up pretty good (see above re: prohibitive)! We’ve known for a long time what keeps you healthy, but sorry – we’ve put sugar and garbage in everything you consume.

We haven’t fixed equity or equality of any kind. Sorry! We have only anecdotally modeled volunteerism, civic engagement, patience, kindness, generosity, and creative freedom. We haven’t let you explore your neighborhood, goofy hobbies, free time, play time or diversity.

You need to overcome a lot – us – to get to where you need to go….and not just where you need to go, but where you want to go. Because, let’s face it, we don’t know what you need.  If we did, you sure wouldn’t be in this pickle! However, I do know that WE NEED YOU!

You’ve gone from being the children entrusted to us, to being our new co-workers, team members, fellow citizens and allies.

When you moved your tassel to the other side of your fancy flat hat, that’s what you got…a graduation party, and a seat at the table that should have been occupied by you all along.

Thank God for us, it looks like you nerds know what you are doing.

You’re smart, in spite of us, kind in spite of us, connected in spite of us. And yes, though you may not want our help anymore, we are in it together. We obviously can’t do it for you, but maybe if we work together, we can move the needle.

Hope you enjoyed your two days of sleeping in, you’re needed on the floor.

 

 

 

 

Imagine This

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I KNOW IT’S BEEN A VERY LONG TIME since I’ve written anything here. My return has the potential to be like walking into the gym after a year’s absence, arms raised in triumph, proclaiming “I’m back! Sorry to keep you guys hanging!” But the people at the front desk are new, and your favorite gym characters like the grunting guy in the shorty shorts or the lady who lounges on whatever machine you need while checking her email, have been replaced by new characters in unfamiliar shorty shorts. Nobody knows who you are or how long you have been gone, and they really truly do not care that you are back.

However, in case you are curious and have a couple of minutes, there have been some interesting developments over the past year. Our family added a second dog, Minnie, to our menagerie. I posted here long ago about how I did not want a dog, but as my oldest son prepares for high school graduation, and the youngest is entrenched in middle school, I see why people in our particular stage of life get dogs. Dogs – unlike your children and the people at the gym – are excited to see you, and you realize you’ve forgotten what that feels like.

I’ve toned down the highlights and my hair is a little browner.

I’ve found I don’t like sushi as much as I used to and I’ve miraculously fulfilled my goal of regularly making pasta from scratch.

I’ve become more serious about my skincare routine and I’ve started listening to news radio and podcasts…all natural outcomes of turning 43.

Oh, and hot darn, I wrote a book.

Released in September, “The IFs” is my first novel, and the entire experience has freaked me out in very good and very scary ways. But mostly it’s been great…fun, exciting… a dream come true, that has allowed me the coolest opportunities to talk with people about not just the process, but the story itself.

If this is the first you’re hearing about it, “The IFs” is about otherwise fully functioning adults forced by the demise of social media to create imaginary friends in order to battle their loneliness and survive a foreign social landscape. It just so happens, in real life, I’m the mom of a Y2K baby and the book takes a speculative peek into the future, when the Y2K babies are venturing out into the world as new adults. I regularly categorize “The IFs” as a quirky beach read, but at its core, the book is about friendship and human connection and what might happen if we’re suddenly deprived of both.

So through a three-plus-year process with the book, I thought a lot about loneliness, isolation, friendship and our reliance on staying electronically tethered to each other. I often stared at my phone and wondered if the thing was making me happy or miserable. I stared at my children and their friends, and wondered if they were happy or miserable as they sat silently together staring into their phones. I sat on our local commuter train staring at people as they stared into their phones, startling them when they looked up to find me, a strange psycho offering uninterrupted eye contact from afar.

A few days ago, as I was parking my car, news radio cranked and thumping from my speakers, I sat just a little longer because one non-traffic story caught my attention. The UK has just introduced the Minister of Loneliness. Named for Jo Cox, the late, dynamic British politician who established the UK’s Commission on Loneliness, the position is designed to address the issues caused by social isolation. Loneliness is a recognized epidemic in the UK, and here in the US even though we don’t yet have a minister for it. (Find out more about it here and here)

This is what I thought about and wrote about and dreamt about for years. Not the minister part, and spoiler alert, I didn’t come up with a widespread solution for how the world should deal with our connection problem. But seriously, WHAT WOULD HAPPEN?  WHAT WOULD HAPPEN if we experienced a radical shift in our surroundings that once again changed how we formed our relationships? Would our collectively deteriorating social acumen be enough to help us find our way?

We don’t know how the world will change next, or what we humans will have to do to adapt. But we’ve all had, at our luckiest, glimpses of loneliness and isolation. For those surrounded by people most of the time, an evening of solitude sounds ok, because you can eat a baguette for dinner and binge watch true crime shows. Soon enough though, you feel gross about the baguette and paranoid from the true crime shows and solitude loses whatever weird appeal it may have momentarily held.

Writing is the perfect way to repeatedly plunge into a messed up kind of solitude. You have to take yourself out of social media or you won’t write a word. You stare into space. You think about what snack you will have next and why your thumbs bend the way that they do. You look at your cat as nothing less than co-author of your work. One day, you think what you’ve written doesn’t completely suck, the next day, you’re ready to throw in the towel and never write again, not even your name. You’re operating in a vacuum. Giddy, depressed, numb, repeat.

And then, when the dang thing finally goes out into the world, you physically can’t sit there wondering if people are reading and liking it or maybe hating it so you occupy your brain and hands by reorganizing every nook and cranny of your house, trying on every piece of clothing you own to see if it brings you joy. Oh, and people…you find where the people are, and you go there.

Have you noticed a change in the nature of your relationships? What you seek in a friendship? These aren’t hypotheticals – I’m truly asking you, yeah YOU.

We need to ignore each others’ ill-fitting shorty shorts and connect. The future of the planet depends on it.

If you’re interested in the book – you can find it here or here. If you’ve read it, thank you! And if you liked it, could you like mention it to a friend who’s looking for a quirky beach read? 

That photo up there on the left is me and my book club. I was terrified for them to read it, because they are all so smart and well-read and discerning. But they were incredibly gracious and supportive and amazing.

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And allow me to introduce you to Moe and Minnie

moms: taking care of business since the beginning of time

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Me and Mary Jo, circa 1985

She was a blur of suntan nylons, pink lipstick, and curly hair tamed into a D.A. that came courtesy of a JC Penney salon stylist that knew “D.A.” stood for “duck’s @$$.”

In our small house, there was no mistaking when Mary Jo was leaving for work.  She click-clacked across our tile in her sling-back pumps; her dozens of keys jingling with a celebratory clatter announcing to the world that all was well, the keys had been located, probably in a side pocket of a 40-pound purse or under the pile of mail on the kitchen counter.

In our tight-knit neighborhood, there was no mistaking when Mary Jo was leaving for work. The echoes of her signature door slam and engine rev, pin-balled between the tract houses. If you were lucky enough to be standing in your yard when she tore out of the driveway, you were on the receiving end of an enthusiastic wave, and had a good view of her careening around the corner in our Chrysler Cordoba…a vehicle so long, my friends thought our family had a limousine.

She was not much older then, than I am now. Like me, she was a mom to two kids constructed of 80% freckles, and 20% defiance; and again like me, married to a great husband/awesome dad who adored her, but wished she could relax, just a little bit.

She made breakfast, lunch and dinner each day, breaking sometimes for Sunday outings to Sizzler or Kentucky Fried Chicken. She ironed every piece of clothing that touched my body. She reminded me often, that she’d won an ironing contest when she was in high school.

I didn’t babysit or mow the lawn. “You don’t need that,” she’d say, “You’ll have to work soon enough.”

She changed Rod Stewart’s sexy lyrics so convincingly, it was years before I realized the words weren’t “If you want my money, and you want my money.”

She let me roller skate in the house.

She fought her speeding ticket in traffic court, and won.

She was concerned, when at 14, I watched a VHS copy of “Heathers” or “Gleaming the Cube” every day after school.

Before there were rules about parents yelling from the sidelines at kids’ sporting events, she yelled from the sidelines…but only because she was my number one fan.

For a while, she told every grocery checker where her kids went to college. These days, she shows those same checkers pictures of her four grandkids, and of the roast my husband cooked on Christmas.

I was 24 when I finally apologized to her for how I acted when I was 18. I was 26, and only weeks into motherhood, when I acknowledged that being a mom was not exactly easy, and it must have been…not exactly easy for her either. I thought of her when I careened out of work to get a kid to baseball practice. And somewhere over the course of my almost 16 years of motherhood so far, there was a precise moment when I realized my children weren’t spending their every waking moment marveling at all that I get done in a day. It was that precise moment when I became Mary Jo’s number one fan.

I always knew her as a working mom. Not a high profile executive. Not a woman bent on dynamiting the glass ceiling… a suburban mom, taking care of business, so her daughter could do whatever she wanted when the time came.

Mary Jo was just a kid when she learned shorthand and bookkeeping. I remember her perched at our kitchen counter working late into the night. Her fingers, strong from years on a manual typewriter, flew over the keys of her Selectric.

She worked for the railroad, a loan company, and an elementary school. Her bosses had mustaches, cowboy boots and long cars, too.

She worked hard and cared hard and she did it all without needing to blog about it or escape into sacred girls’ nights out.

And now, at 81, she’s still a working mom. When she’s tired, I tell her she she should quit her job, and she tells me she’ll quit when she’s good and ready. She’s tougher than I am, and always will be. Chances are your mom’s tougher than you too. They were tough so we wouldn’t have to be.

Motherhood is taking care of business. It’s careening. It’s click-clacking through the house and caring what your kids watch after school. It’s bragging about them to people who don’t care. It’s making sure Taco Tuesdays happen on Tuesdays. It’s wanting to yell from the sidelines, stopping yourself, then yelling just a little bit. It’s deciding only to quit when you’re good and ready. Motherhood is being somebody’s number one fan.

This is just a snapshot of what Mother’s Day means to me…my hard working mom and hard-working mom-in-law Ruthie…two awesome broads who are taking care of business and loving their families fiercely. Mothers Day might be something else to you. A hard day. A sad day. Here’s to everybody out there who’s taking care of someone – showing compassion, working hard, putting on a bandage, listening, loving, praying, feeding, guiding, giving, hugging, bragging, and changing the lyrics when necessary.

My paradise is your prison: a trip to The Container Store

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“Please don’t make us go. We’ll be so good starting right now. Please. Please. Please, don’t make us go.”

Where could I have been dragging the children, that was such a nightmare? What on earth could have evoked such desperation and sheer terror?

Not prison. Not a hard labor camp. Not the dentist. It was The Container Store.

While the children begged for clemency, I tried to contain how excited I was to have a perfectly valid, legitimate reason for going to The Container Store…not even one of my usual made-up reasons. I needed a laundry drying rack…. a big industrial-sized model, because I am never not doing laundry. I had nothing but the welfare of our family in mind. My last drying rack had just collapsed in defeat, a stack of plastic knobs and metal pipes, finally done in by the weight of yet another uniform, and another pair of jeans I was trying to preserve for their human occupant who was just going to fall in mud or grow two feet the next day, anyway.

I needed a drying rack because I still haven’t figured out all of the weird sporty, wicking fabrics the males in this house wear. The material of all that gym/basketball/baseball/running stuff feels so delicate, though I could probably dry all of it by running over it with a tractor and it would be fine. I didn’t need a dorm-sized drying rack. I needed the one that professional football teams use. I’m a professional.

They pleaded their case, but it wasn’t enough. We were going to the store whether they liked it or not, which is one of the necessary realities of childhood, and of parenthood, too.

Just that morning, they had already woken up to beautiful sunshine, had been fed pancakes AND hot chocolate, and then suffered through another store where I had unsuccessfully looked for a laundry rack, yet successfully found a new lasagna pan, a pan I would soon use to make them a lasagna. Quelle horreur!

The Container Store contains more containers than I could ever use in my lifetime. They are colorful, lovely boxes and bins and bags stacked to the sky, each representing the hope of what could be…beauty and order harnessing the chaos. I don’t think that’s what my kids see.

And I guess I see something different in the stores they prefer.

Those stores represent the hope of what could be for them…zombies to be pursued, goals to be made, races won. Two months before my drying rack quest, I went into the video game store on the release day of “Some game with Zombies,” and I vowed loudly, “never again.” I’ve waited on the sidewalk when they go in ever since. I go with John to those stores that sells TVs and phone cases and wires of every shape and size, and my eyes glaze over. If I fall behind and lose him, I wonder around, saying “John?” to all the other brown haired guys in khakis and button down shirts.

“Sorry. You’re not John.”

“Yes, I am John.”

“Not my John.”

You can’t make someone love The Container Store, and you can’t make someone love the wire store or the video game store. It turns out a 41-year-old mom is – often, not always – different than a 10-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy and a 42-year-old boy. And that’s fine, and that’s one of the reasons there are Girls Nights Out and Man Caves.

On that day in The Container Store, the boys knew what would happen, even when I didn’t. They knew I wasn’t just running in for an enormous best-drying-rack ever that would fill the car’s trunk. They knew it would be something else too. And there it was, the ultimate container…a huge plastic box designed to hold our artificial Christmas tree. The one they held on their laps without complaint as we drove the six minutes home.

 

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I’ve already vowed to hold the zombie game on my lap the next time we drive home from their store.

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sunburnt: a summer (cautionary) tale

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There are a few minor adult ailments that might be described as humbling. The first of the non-graphic variety rhymes with… tangover.

The second – a summer staple, perhaps next to the tangover – is the sunburn.

Maybe you are of Irish descent, and you have freckles, and you spent 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s summers with ineffective and/or expired SPF 4 slathered on your parts, only to have the lotion rinse immediately off on the first pass through the sprinklers, or with the first toe dipped in the pool, or with the first sweat broken. Maybe you decided you were better off with an unflattering oversized t-shirt covering your bathing suit – a shirt that became a 40-lb anchor once you jumped in the pool.

Maybe you are an olive skinned beach beauty who’s only had to look with pity at one of us less fortunate folks, roaming the sweltering grounds of the state fair, pink and defeated.

As a grown-up, I listen to my doctors. I wear sunscreen on my face every day. I wear a hat. I sit in the shade. I even went so far as to move to the foggy part of a notoriously foggy city. This ain’t my first rodeo – I’ve been burnt before. (I have been to a rodeo, but it was at night, so I was not actually burnt at the rodeo.)

I was burnt in the usual locales – the pool, the park, the passenger seat of a car, the driver’s seat of a car, the back yard, the front yard, and while sitting on a bench/blanket/lawn eating a sandwich/popsicle/cheeseburger.

In college and during that sliver of time in which I wore a bikini, my then-boyfriend/ now-husband and I uncharacteristically spent the day jet skiing on Lake Tahoe. It turns out Lake Tahoe is closer to the sun than I am used to. The jet-skiing part exposed enough parts of me – top, bottom, front, and back – to make sleep impossible as there was not one way to avoid resting on a throbbing purple and blistered patch of skin. I was out of commission for two days, calling in sick to my barista job, and freaking my mom out with sunburn fueled hallucinations.

In high school, I went to the mid-day Oakland A’s baseball game with friends.  Our upper deck seats put me at roughly the same elevation as Lake Tahoe. As I rode back home, rolling around in the back of my friend’s grandma’s old van, I knew I was in for a world of hurt. I couldn’t bend my knobby violently violet knees and the blisters were already presenting themselves. It was days before I could ride my bike.

Over the next 20 years my baseball outings were relegated to night games, or day games at the San Francisco Giants’ ball park where one usually freezes one’s rear end off, regardless of what weather is happening immediately outside the gates. But July 4, 2013 – armed with a hat, two tubes of sunscreen, and an additional precautionary spray from my friend Megan’s sunscreen can- I re-entered Oakland Coliseum at mid-day, ready for my show-down with the sun.

Our kids had been lined up in the parking lot and sprayed down with an additional protective layer of cream over their little faces, necks, and the oft-forgotten tops of ears.

Somewhere in the 2nd inning, I took off the knee brace that protects my wonky joint but makes my leg fall asleep when I sit for very long. Maybe it was my hops-based beverage in a souvenir mug. Maybe it was the nostalgic and patriotic delight of being with friends at a baseball game on the 4th of July. Whatever it was, I missed sun-screening my darn knee. On that day, in the stadium cleverly designed to focus the sun’s powerful rays on whatever seat my pale limbs occupy, the sun won.

Our friends from New Mexico emerged from the game looking as if they had been kissed by the sun. (Fun “fact”: New Mexico’s climate was designed to resemble that of the Oakland Coliseum, so they had the advantage going in.)

My little family unit walked to the car with 7 pink knees, and one familiar-looking, raging violet knee.  I knew I what I was in for.

Beginning with the failed attempt at prevention, your general sunburn experience might look a little like this:

  • You feel false confidence that you’ve done enough to protect yourself
  • As the sun goes to work on you, you remain blissfully ignorant
  • You congratulate yourself for wearing shorts and a tank top because it’s so hot
  • Your friend slides her sunglasses down her nose, peers at your afflicted area, alerts you to your pinkness, and pokes it with her finger
  • You put on another layer of sunscreen or move to the shade, knowing it’s already too late
  • You realize it’s going to hurt
  • It hurts
  • You wonder if it should really be as purple as it is
  • It hurts more than it did before
  • You vow never to wear a tank top and shorts again, let alone go in the sun
  • You love aloe
  • You love aloe so much
  • You consider filling the tub with aloe and sitting in there for a while
  • Nobody is allowed to touch you
  • You do not sleep
  • You can’t stop talking about your sunburn, as much as you want to
  • Your mom tells you not to worry, it will fade into a tan
  • You assure her that it most certainly will not fade into a tan
  • She remembers that she and your brother are the only family members who enjoy the “fades into a tan” phenomenon
  • You realize the burn does not hurt as bad as it did yesterday
  • It’s itchy now, a sure sign it will peel soon
  • It peels
  • It’s peeling and you feel like a lizard, and you have finally found the one thing that grosses out your boys so it’s kind of funny

All the while, and just like with a tangover (I’m guessing) you waiver between feeling sorry for yourself, and feeling like an idiot.

You should know better. You cooked your own goose. Or in this case, you cooked your own knees.

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* At the top is our actual sun prevention collection. It is strategically spaced through the house, so that by the time you reach the front door, you will have had three to four opportunities to remember it.

**This is me and my awesome friend Megan at that fateful game. I’m the one in the stripes. The one with the freckles. The one who’s legs are sizzling just out of frame.

costume conundrum: saying no to the morph suit

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I hadn’t forgotten this blog. In fact I thought of it often, but found that just like everybody else around here, most moments during the notoriously crazy start of fall were wrapped up in work – kid work, house work, work work, and the annual duties surrounding prepping the DVR for a new season of TV.

And during the most frenzied moments, oh, how I longed for the calm, predictability, and parameters that routines seem to give the serene and well-rested families I read about in parenting articles. Those parents have it together. They have systems. They know what’s for dinner next Thursday. They are never stumped. Most striking, they are not afraid to say no when they need to, and their kids thrive within their well-appointed boundaries. The routinized life I’ve haphazardly aspired to through the years, has always been just beyond my half-hearted reach.

So if I’m not that, I must be spontaneous and carefree! I must welcome every new opportunity to come our way in the interest of raising curious and whimsical little adventurers!  I know plenty of people in that category too.  They say, “YES! Of course!” They run headlong into life with great gusto and imaginative barefoot kids in tow.

“There’s a street fair! Let’s go!”

“It’s hot! Let’s have ice cream for dinner!”

“You found a puppy!?! What luck! Of course you can keep him!”

But….no. I tap-dance between the two– feeling equally ill at ease in both approaches to parenting. It’s exhausting for me and certainly confusing for the kids; especially when they’re already stuck in their own kid-sized limbo, figuring out where the little boy stops and the big kid begins.

Which brings me to the issue at hand: the morph suit.

Oh you haven’t seen it?  You would remember if you had – once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The morph suit is a Halloween costume – conveniently available in children’s and disturbing adult sizes. It appears to be a one-piece stretchy leotard, designed to cover every inch of a person — hands, body, feet, and the whole head, including the wearer’s face. It’s reminiscent of the horribly scary rubber suit that kept popping up in the promos for the first season of the hit TV show I never watched, American Horror Story; or the lesser-known, just-as-creepy “Human Being” mascot suit from a show I always watch, Community.

The costume catalog arrived in the mail from one of our local party stores. Most households likely tossed theirs out with the Pennysaver before it ever hit their kitchen counter top. Not us. For days, the boys pored over the catalog’s flimsy pages examining every wacky, gory, cartoony, super-heroic option. But they always came back to the morph suit.

I stumbled out to the kitchen early one morning to find the catalog on the counter where I couldn’t miss it. The red morph suit was circled and surrounded by a dozen subtly drawn arrows.  You know what they say though, better to wake up to a picture of the morph suit, than wake up to the morph suit.

As the boys ate their Cheerios, and I buzzed around the kitchen, I casually pointed to the catalog and blurted out, “There’s just no way you’re getting the morph suit. Aside from the fact that it’s disturbing in every way and would give us nightmares forever – you can’t wear it to school. You’re not allowed to have anything over your head and face.  Then you’d just be sitting in class in a skintight suit, regretting your choice and wishing for a pair of pants.”

The 7-year-old shrugged and moved on to the Avengers page. The 12-year-old mumbled in agreement, but stood in front of the morph suit display when we finally made it to the store (effective catalog mailing, Party City!). Zach was thrilled that (spoiler alert) Captain America was still in stock, as well as the a la carte shield and gloves. After carefully considering the pros and cons of the Captain America suit with the built-in muscles, he opted for the slimmer, standard non-muscled version citing flexibility, breathability, comfort, and ease of storage as its winning qualities.

“The morph suit is not happening,” I told Jake, as he stood looking at more morph suit options than even the catalog had boasted.

“I know. I don’t even care, I’m over Halloween anyway. I’ll just hand out candy,” he said.

Had my flippant dismissal of the (still-terrible) morph suit sullied his last gasp for his little boy-hood? I took him down the next aisle in a quick attempt to preserve his childhood. “How about you dress as a rocker? Mobster? 80’s guy? 70’s guy?” I was just pointing out a mullet wig, when an old friend and her 12-year-old daughter appeared in the aisle.

Zach, having found a new audience, immediately launched into the laundry list of why the muscle-free Captain America might just be the best costume in the history of Halloween.

My friend gestured to her daughter, “she’s not so sure about Halloween anymore; she might just want to hand out candy.”

Before saying our goodbyes, the tweens mumbled back and forth in some kind of primitive communication that conveniently allowed them to act as though the other person did not exist, as only 12-year-olds can do. We made our Captain America purchase and Jake left empty-handed. By the time we got to the car, he was chattering about his science project and asking about lunch.

Transitions are hard and helping your kids navigate the pitfalls of adolescence is no picnic. It can be fun to say yes with abandon, but sometimes the one thing I bring with me to the parenting table is that I too, was once in middle school. Sure, saying no to the morph suit may have been a big bummer, but it’s better than sitting in math class wishing you were wearing pants.

tiny dancers: the show must go on…and on

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Have you ever witnessed something that you immediately realized could only be experienced, and never adequately described?

I did, and let me describe it.

It was the end-of-the-year dance showcase that my youngest son just happened to be a part of. This dance extraveganza is a long-standing tradition for our neighborhood dance school and likely similar to shows in any town with a tap class and a kid with a dream.

Or maybe any town with a jazz class and a kid from one county over, where dancing isn’t allowed – so when Kevin Bacon the kid isn’t angry-dancing in the barn to the cassette in his tape deck, he’s sneaking over the county line to blow off steam the only way he knows how – with a kick ball change, pivot, barrel turn.

As for our 6-year-old, he simply wanted to unleash his hip hop moves onto an unsuspecting world. Just like most little boys are sure they are born naturals at martial arts, they are also “natural” breakdancers.

The first week in class, Zach realized his “natural” abilities could use some guidance and fine tuning, so week after week, he would run excitedly into the dance studio with his new buddies to grapevine, learn the snake and spin an imaginary record to JJ Fad’s classic, “Supersonic,” after the teacher with-the-patience-of-a-saint explained what a record was.

And week after week, the hip hop parents stood squished together in the hall watching every rehearsal through a window while complimenting each other for being way more chill than those other dance parents, like, oh I don’t know, maybe the ballet moms down the hall.

Weeks turned into months until the big day finally arrived.

With the costumes on, the hair done, and audience packed into the theater, the rest of the afternoon was uncomfortably out of our hands. There would be no last minute hugs or gentle reminders of which foot was in fact, the left one.

My older son Jacob sat next to me fidgeting in his seat undoubtedly uncomfortable with the acute lack of texting that was about to happen for him.

Every grandpa, uncle, neighbor, and big brother who flipped through the program, likely said, “Forty routines!! What the – can’t we just leave when MacKenzie/Avery/Abby is done?”

I couldn’t believe it either. I would not have exactly been first in line for a ticket if my kid weren’t in it. I have no patience for talent shows on TV. As a kid, I could hardly sit through an episode of “The Gong Show,” without having to leave the room when things got weird or uncomfortable. The embarrassment I felt on behalf of the contestants was simply too much to bear.

But, as the curtain rose, my breath caught in my throat, and in true Colleen fashion, the tears came. I was overwhelmed with emotion, and my own kid wasn’t anywhere in sight. He wouldn’t be for quite some time;  his 3-minute dance was 33rd in the line-up, near the very end of this 2+ hour operation.

But I didn’t have to know these kids to tear up for them.

From 3-year old cowgirls, to 10 year-olds tapping to Lady Gaga, and to the ethereal, lithe ballerinas who’d been training since they were the pint-size cowgirls – they showed the lucky ones in the audience what happens when you mix joy with talent and hard work.

These little stinkers were amazing.

Every dancer was shining up there. Jake, perhaps once the grumbliest of them all, sat transfixed. Maybe he was trying to understand the mechanics of tap dancing, or popping and locking. Maybe he was just noticing for the first time that a girl he’d known since 3rd grade, was not just a face in his class, but a truly talented, and graceful dancer… who was in like, 15 numbers. Jake leaned over during her 11th dance and whispered, “imagine how much money her parents had to drop on costumes.”

And there, close to the end, was Zach’s little group.  They were an instant hit, and danced their way through cheers and whoops and hollers. Sure, the Gen X parents went immediately bananas when they heard JJ Fad’s signature devastating beats; but these kids were not just cute,  they were having a blast, dancing their little hip hop-loving hearts out.

We didn’t buy tickets to see a parade of dance prodigies – the chances of these kids growing up to be professional dancers, were likely similar to those of the kids at any baseball field growing up to be Buster Posey. We didn’t even come to be entertained. We came to support our sweet, regular, goofy kids who happen to work very hard at their fun hobby – a hobby that also happily counts as exercise. We came to cheer and encourage and support. We came to be nervous for them, then excited, then relieved.

We also came because most of these kids can’t drive, and they needed rides.

Amelia Earhart: a girl and her freckles

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ImageAfter an un-fun cycle of disheartening political news, economic news, and more cannibal news than there should be in a week, I was happy to see a very timely Amelia Earheart headline. Just like I will always read a story about Kate & Wills, or the year’s most popular baby names, I will always read about Amelia.

I’ve been keeping up enough to know an unfailingly patient/obsessed team of folks have been getting closer to solving the 75-year-old mystery of her disappearance. The headline teased that they’d made a new discovery on the remote island where they’d been focusing their search; the team unearthed something that surely belonged to Amelia.

By golly, this just finally might be it!

What did they find? Her flight log? Her signature cap? A diary full of her hopes and dreams?

The amazing clue? A jar of anti-freckle cream.

C’mon Amelia, not you! World-renowned aviator, off on your historic around-the-world flight, and what did you make sure to pack? Dr. C.H. Berry’s Freckle Ointment.

Something I did not know about Amelia – she hated her freckles and desperately wanted them to fade.  She had fame, glory and the adoration of the world, but those freckles just had to go.

I would not deny a lady the little luxuries that lift the spirit, especially on a desert island – a moisturizer, some sunscreen, a honey-infused lip balm – but when you are a modern day heroine with stuff to do, it’s time to own your freckles.

OK, so it’s no secret I have freckles. The spaces in between my freckles are not so much “alabaster” or “ivory” as much as they are, “see-through.” I wasted many years of my youth apologizing for it and covering it up with pants. Even with 100% percent humidity on an 8th grade summer trip to Washington DC, I was the one kid in pants, sweating profusely but pretending I wasn’t even hot, like, at all.

As an adult, it’s still not ideal –self-tanner continues to be a requirement as a public service – nobody needs to see my veins.

But I had Seventeen Magazine and MTV and modern day middle school to blame for my insecurities. I guess I just assumed Amelia would have been thinking about loftier things – I mean, she had known a time when women didn’t have the right to vote, for pete’s sake. But maybe  how American women think about themselves through the decades has not changed as much as we’d thought – for the better or worse.  Maybe we all at some level dream about the big, and fret about the small.

Sure, I might be a little bummed that someone like Amelia Earheart was hung up on her freckles, because freckles are great  (I tell myself and that charlatan Dr. C.H. Berry); but in one little discovery on one little island – I realized that Amelia is as much a modern woman as can be found today – gutsy and delicate,  brave and insecure, all at the same time.

Those aren’t qualities women aspire to, it’s just what we are, and what we’ve been throughout all of history. Maybe we can get rid of the “insecure” part when all of the girls of the world collectively decide that they’re tired of striving for the perfection that is always out of reach – whether by a lot or a little – and think about trailblazing, instead. One can blaze trails while still having freckles.

The beautiful pic of Amelia is from: http://www.americaslibrary.gov/assets/aa/earhart/aa_earhart_learns_2_e.jpg, and happily in the public domain.

oh, voir dire: the reluctant juror

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“Does this outfit say, ‘poor decision making?’ Because that’s what I’m going for.’”

“Colleen,” said my darling husband, “you’re going to get picked, just because you so intensely want not to get picked.”

The 11-year-old gave me his advice at the breakfast table, “Smile a lot, but not a regular smile, a scary one; and don’t blink; oh and leave your hair like that,” he said gesturing at my wild morning mane.

Everybody had given me advice – bless their hearts – advice I in no way felt comfortable taking as it all involved total untruths; “Tell them you can’t sit very long. Tell them you’re racist. Tell them you bring with you the wrath of God.”

My number was quite literally up – I had jury duty.

After blithely and incorrectly assuming I would be excused by phone, I packed my purse with reading material, then as I do at the airport, proceeded to make a spectacle of myself at the courthouse metal detector.

“Ma’am, don’t put your purse in a bin.”

“Oh sorry, I do at the airport; should I take out the water bottle? I forget at the airport too-”

“No, that’s fine, don’t take off your jewelry – oh you already did – take off your belt then walk through with your hands over your head.”

“I’m still beeping.”

“It’s your boots.”

“Should I like, jump through the machine thing, or take the boots off? Do those go in a bin….like at the airport? Can I put my arms down? ”

 Close your eyes and picture “Jury Assembly Room.” Got it? Whatever image you conjured up is likely correct. Did you also imagine the emotionally unavailable clerk handing out questionnaires and clipboards? Yes, you did.

The last time I was filling out paperwork with total strangers en masse, I was taking the SAT, which is likely what brought out my competitive streak in the Jury Assembly Room.

Boom! Done!

I triumphantly turned in my paperwork – second! Second one done in that whole room of people!

I was all the way back to my seat when I realized I had made a potentially grievous error. What if my paperwork efficiency was the sign of an eager and capable juror? Perhaps I would have been better served by taking forever with it and acting confused.

The clerk came to the podium, and instead of giving out awards to the people who finished their paperwork first, he hit play on the VHS tape DVD of smiling former jurors telling us how fulfilled we were about to feel by the process.

The people watching the video with me were not smiling, nor obviously anticipating fulfillment.

There was a grown-up Sesame Street thing happening – there were as many people of different heights, ethnic backgrounds, and walks of life as you could fit in a room. I sat behind the nurse, and the plumber sat behind me, flanked by the elderly gentleman with the crossword puzzle, and a dude with a Big Gulp. The young guys with computer bags sat interspersed with ladies in business suits and ladies in sweat suits.

 *****

“Yes, it’s an imposition on your time,” the judge said after our rag tag group had filed into her courtroom, “but it’s your duty as a citizen to serve, and if you ever need a jury, you would want someone to step up for you.”

Was she looking at me? Did she know I had considered the advice of an 11-year-old to get out of this? The judge was obviously a mother, because she knew right where to strike to make us squirm in our seats, look at our shoes, and feel bad for being such whiners.

She was right – we weren’t like those bums from jury groups 5, 6, 7 and 8 who were excused over the phone the night before. We were the jurors of groups 1-4! We had to cancel doctors’ appointments and hair appointments (that was me) and meetings to be there – we were outstanding citizens!

The sexiness of civic duty waned over the next three days however as we sat through voir dire, which is a much cooler way of saying jury questioning. We heard from an EMT, the nurse, a real estate agent, a bookkeeper, a financial analyst, a gaggle of scientists and retirees, a lifeguard who could not imagine a universe where he could be unbiased, a furniture salesman, two teachers, a liquor store owner, and a lady from the Teamsters Union who I also had lunch with. As a nosy curious person, this process should have been fascinating, but the questions were long, tedious, and repetitive – often ending with “Do you watch CSI?” and “Do you understand that CSI is a fictional show?” You’ll be happy to know, they did.

Our numbers dwindled until just a few of us remained, unquestioned and anxious, watching perfectly good jurors stream out of the room, excused. At break times we chatted about our work, shared harrowing tales of parking in the adjacent “Detention Lot” and whispered about who might be excused next. Everybody’s money was on the elderly lady in the glitter pants who was asleep on the bench by the water fountain, and who had already slept through a day and a half of questioning. She was excused – not for the sleeping, but more for answering, “Can you have an open mind?” with “No! Guilty! Go to jail!”

When I least expected it, I heard, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have our jury,” from the judge who motioned to the group that did not include me.

I gave a nod of goodbye and good luck to the Teamsters lady who sat in the jury box surrounded by the truck driver, three of the retirees, two of the scientists, the nurse, the liquor store owner, one of the teachers, and the furniture salesman.

I stepped out into the sunshine, feeling free and light and also wondering how I got to be so low on the selection list. Was it random? Was it because I worked at a church and was married to a pastor who had also attended some law school, which I absolutely made sure to mention during my awesome paperwork-completing on day one? I’m afraid that the most likely scenario is that somebody got his or her hands on the video footage of me trying to get through the metal detector.