May 1, 2012

It’s easy to think nothing but evil thoughts about a former spouse or spousal equivalent*. You went into the relationship swimming in endorphins and serotonin, sure that this was so different from every other relationship you’ve had, from every other relationship that’s ever been. You were positive it would last for ever. And then, maybe after years, maybe after months, things changed. You started sliding into something that eventually resembled some kind of nightmare — maybe not the kind that wakes you up in a cold sweat as an adult, but certainly something you feared as a teenager: being alone and unloved. So you cut your losses and end whatever your personal horror story was and try to move on.

When you have kids you never really part ways, and what with all that constant contact and communication, it can be hard to think other than evil thoughts. Your dream come true got up and went. Maybe some of your anger is even righteous. What you want is to stand before that audience of wrongdoers, however big or small, and have them all stand up and apologize for whatever they did to you that was wrong, acknowledge your moral and mental superiority, and tell you they’re forever changed by your inherent rightness. And the one you want in the front of the crowd, kowtowing and bowing the most before your rightness is that former spouse.

 

I’ve spent the years since the breakdown of my marriage trying to be positive because we have a child together and you never want that offspring in the middle of your joint animosity, right? But still, how can that youngster not sense the hurt and anguish from both parties? So I doubled down. I am consciously trying to remember each and every gift my spouse gave me. Not the physical gifts (thanks, though, for the diamond earrings when I gave birth to Darling Son, and all those wonderful books from the long long list of reads I want). I’m talking the gifts of self that burrowed into your soul and changed you — like the wide open curiosity about world cuisines that led me to a love of Ethiopian and Persian food or the secure knowledge that I don’t like bubble tea or that dill flavored yogurt soda they drink in Iran.

I thought of another one while I was looking for a card for my mom for Mother’s Day. I never buy cards with sayings in them. I don’t care if it’s Hallmark or American Greetings or upmarket Papyrus: they never say it better than I could myself. My husband never sent a pre-sentimented card. He got something blank with an appropriate picture on the front. For a great many reasons, his cards to me always had cats on them. Mine to him had rodents; capybaras if I could find them. Which I never did. What went inside often took my husband time to create — whether it was a birthday card for his brother-in-law wherein he finally settled on expressing my brother’s incredibly advanced age in hex, or something sweet for Darling Son written in the neatest printing so the boy could read it easily.

Now I look through the cards and most of the time opt for something that’s blank on the inside and I give myself time to come up with just the right thing to say. It doesn’t cost me any more to be a little more thoughtful — and I mean the kind of thoughtful that involves thinking of the appropriate thing to say, not the kind where I remember to send the card I bought and so very thoughtfully filled out. It revs the creative juices.

Most importantly, every single time I look through the card rack, I think a kind thought about my former spouse. Okay, I will also admit I feel a bit smug that I send cards as unique as the people to whom I send them. So thanks for everything you taught me and every way you changed me. It’s all building blocks — we are here today because of everything that passed before. And even though there was pain and heartbreak at the end, I know I’m better for having known you, loved you, and lived with you.

Now, don’t forget to get a card for your mom. Mother’s day is in 12 days. Also, remind our son to get his mom a card and consider teaching him why he should look inside himself, rather than a card, for the perfect sentiment to describe his feelings.

* You don’t expect me, at nearly 48 to write “boyfriend” or the exceptionally cold “partner” do you?

April 30, 2012

When I was a child, a weekend loomed like a vast expanse of free time. As a single working mom, the weekend looms as a vast expanse of chores and to-do lists. So when I was asked to be a part of a parent panel teaching would be teen volunteers about life with an autistic child, I wasn’t sure I wanted to add that to my list. In the end, I did. I gave up four hours of free time when Darling Son would have been part of J-Serve, the annual community service day for Jewish teens. I could have napped, shopped for groceries without a tag-along teen asking me for gum or chips or soda. I could have read the paper in peace, had coffee with friends, gone on a date. But I didn’t. I appeared at the Mercer Island Community Center to spend an hour and a half with about 40 teens who were interested in becoming volunteers with the Friendship Circle of Washington, an organization that provides one-on-one mentors for special needs kids and group socializing activities. One of those teens was my autistic son, who has benefited from the organization personally and is now moving into a volunteer role himself.

I’m not one who beats around the bush. I’m direct and forthright. And I told these kids exactly what it was like to have a baby and discover that something wasn’t right. I explained the financial realities of an insurance system that didn’t view autism as a medical problem, but a psychological one and didn’t provide adequate coverage for therapy that could make my son a productive and tax paying member of society. I talked about having a child who didn’t speak until he was four and how I have watched him blossom into a son I wish didn’t talk so much or ask so many questions, often late at night. The boy who viewed other kids as furniture — things you walk around or climb over — is now a very social young man. He may have his social quirks and has to learn norms of teenage relationships by rote, rather than naturally as neurotypical kids do, but he is mostly normal. On a good day, you can’t tell him from another surly teenager.

Then I opened it up to questions. Some of the kids were extremely curious and asked very astute questions. I expected a question from everyone, though, and barring one girl who turned red and was obviously painfully shy, everyone obliged. They asked me how I knew my son was autistic, how strangers treated him, what his weaknesses were. One young man, also somewhere on the autism spectrum, asked what strengths my son had because of his autism. He knew what most people don’t: that many kids on the spectrum have unique skills — prodigious memories, mad math skills, perfect pitch — that their normal peers don’t. It’s not all bad.

The whole time, my son sat next to me. Sometimes I deferred the questions to him, sometimes they directed them to my son themselves. They treated my son with a great deal of respect, often saying they had no idea he was on the spectrum. There’s no bigger compliment you can give a teen with special needs than to tell him that they think he is just like everyone else.

I know a lot of people worry about the future of this country, this world. But I saw a group of teenagers who were extremely engaged, polite, funny, exuberant in the best way. And they were all there, giving up their free time on a Sunday, too. They could have been playing soccer, seeing a movie, working on a school project. But these few dozen kids — along with several dozen others who chose to do other community service projects in the Seattle area on the last Sunday in April — decided to give their time to an organization which would require they give up their time multiple Sundays a month, as well as the occasional weekday afternoon. Some have special needs siblings or cousins. Some have career goals that would benefit from this kind of volunteer experience. But not a single one of these teenagers looked at this event or the prospect of volunteering with special needs kids into the future as a chore to be got through. They were, to a one, interested in being part of something bigger than themselves. And isn’t that the antithesis of what we think teenagers are?

So it’s okay. These kids will be running the world one day. And that’s just fine with me.

June 8, 2011

I was at the U2 concert last Saturday in Seattle. It was a glorious day here in the Pacific Northwest – clear, warm, and sunny as 65,000 people streamed into Qwest Field. The crowd was slightly different from the last time I went to a U2 concert – in 1987 in Croke Park in Dublin with 100,000 of my closest friends. This time there were more balding and grey-haired attendees, fewer teens, more people bringing their kids. Where in Croke Park the people did their drinking before entering the hallowed grounds of Gaelic Football, in Seattle, you could get your beer and wine in the stadium. And the middle aged folks certainly did that. Along with kettle corn and red vines, which is weird. This is U2, people! You should be attending with your petitions in your hand, not a hot dog dripping mustard down your Amnesty International shirts. Whether you have enough cash for an $8 beer and some overpriced nachos should be irrelevant.

I came to some conclusions during the show that I think are the result of being more mature now than I was 25 years ago. This is my list of revelations.

1. Bass players all look stoned, whether or not they are. They also all look like they’re playing with themselves because they wear their instrument down by their instrument.

2. I’m pretty sure I know what the sex face of every drummer I’ve ever seen looks like. They all all in that pre-orgasmic space when they’re beating away on their snare drums.

3. The sex face thing: also pretty sure I know what Bono looks like when he’s finishing up.

4. Lenny Kravitz opened the show. He can say absolutely anything and it would sound sexy. I was going to write “and it would want to make me git nekkid”, but I decided that would be unseemly.

5. The backstage folks run a well-oiled machine. There’s a song where Larry Mullen is banging on some bongos, walking around the outer stage. He was back behind his drum kit and the bongo tossed to a stage hand in about 3 seconds flat. I’m thrilled I caught that.

6. Screeching 40-something women in my 40-something ears isn’t pleasant. Actually, I don’t care how old the screechers are. I also think after a point, it’s just a little siilly. You guys know Bono can’t hear you, right?

7. There really is a Northwest Look. For men, it’s cargo shorts, a button down short sleeved shirt, Keen sandals and wool socks. Sometimes there’s a baseball cap. For women, it’s jeans, Birkenstocks, a t-shirt, polar fleece vest, and sometimes a baseball cap. Neither wear makeup or do much to their hair.

8. Women teetering on stillettos, wearing a puffy skirt, a ton of makeup and extensions look really out of place at a Seattle concert. Even if it’s not Dave Matthews.

9. U2 was the perfect band for me when I was an idealistic college student sure I could change the world. Now, at a time when I am continually questioning whether there is any overarching justice in the world, it makes me wistful to see them. They still think they can change the world. I’m not sure I can. Or they can.

‎Lastly, a no screeching section. Really. I want one. It took me twice as long to recover from this concert as the last big-venue show I saw. Here’s the question, though: If my desire to see another arena concert is predicated on whether there is a no-shrieking section, am I officially too old to see an arena concert?

 

May 31, 2011

Yesterday was theme day at the Blogathon, in which we were supposed to create a Wordle of our blogs or of some meaningful language and post it. Unfortunately, for reasons I have yet to discover, I’m having difficulty adding pictures and videos to my blog. I’m working on it. So for now, here is a link to a Wordle I created of my favorite poem by ee cummings, i thank you god for most this amazing.

I sang this once in choir and still think of the words musically. Here they are as written (without the music)

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

There are a few different choir versions — the most popular on YouTube seems to be one by Whitacre. But this is the one I sang.

Enjoy this amazing day!

May 30, 2011

I did it again: two random books that on the surface couldn’t be more different, read back to back, and they go together like barbecue and Copper River Salmon.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was reading A Mountain of Crumbs. Throughout the book, author Elena Gorokhova recalls how she came to crave a chance to make her own decisions and a bigger life outside of the claustrophobia and pretending of the Soviet Union. The realization comes slowly, over time.

A delivery of another book came on Saturday and I picked it up to look at the front and back covers. And then made the mistake of reading chapter one. I finished it in the wee hours of Sunday. The book is Matched by Ally Condie, the first of three books about a girl named Cassia who discovers that a planned life, no matter how stress free, isn’t as good as a life of uncertainty that you make for yourself. The realization comes slowly, over time.

I did it again. A memoir of life behind the Iron Curtain. A dystopian novel for young adults. And they go together. Go figure. I have another 50 pages in the first book, and 6 months until the next book in the Matched series comes out (unless I can snag an advance readers copy — anyone? Bueller?). Next up is The Emperor of All Maladies, a biography of cancer. I’m thinking the chances of me chancing on another book that “goes” with that is slim. But you never know…

May 29, 2011

If I have a large pile of books next to the bed, I often have a hard time picking which one to read next. So to help with my decision making, I read the review blurbs in paperbacks. The other day I picked up  A Mountain of Crumbs, the memoir by Elena Gorokhova. One of the reviews by Elena Lappin of the New York Times said it could be taught as “a master class in memoir writing.” That caught my attention. I started reading. The first chapter is riveting, full of evocative writing that paints pictures, sets the scene, conveys smells and emotions and sketches out characters in a fulsome way. I thought if I could imitate this first chapter, the book I’m working on would sell.

I always read the acknowledgments in books, too. Usually before I start reading, but sometimes after I’ve read a chapter or two. After the first chapter, I turned to the back of the book and read the section. She mentions a class on memoir writing that she took with Frank McCourt the late author of Angela’s Ashes. Gorokhova mentioned that she had bits and pieces and McCourt advised her to concentrate on the “hot spots” of her life. I took that to mean the situations that were turning points — they either altered the path of her life or her world view.

When I finished reading for the night I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and wrote down the hot spots of my own life. The story I want to tell, need to tell and that I think will be beneficial to the world at large is all about my most recent years. But when I wrote my list of hots spots, they all occurred in a seven year period between the ages of 8 and 15. That list of events, however insignificant they appear to an outsider, are the little things that changed the way I see the world, that stunned me to the core.

So now I am left wondering if the story is about what happened to me in the last three years, the last decade, or if it really is those hot spots that so changed my world view. If the best memoirs are stories of moving through an event and coming out the other side, what is the event I have moved through? The list from my childhood impacted exactly how I dealt with what life handed me as an adult. I don’t mean to imply that chronic illness, a special needs son and a husband who decides he’s really a woman aren’t life-changing events. But they didn’t change me. Just my life. What altered the person I am are the moments from that list. Those are the things I carry with me day to day, that color the way I see the world and how I interact with it and respond to it.

So what is the story? Really. I want to know: what’s the real story I need to tell and how can I find out?

May 28, 2011

Do you like words? Books? Esoteric discussions about words and books? The Happy Bibliophile takes a writer a week and uses that person to explore the world of writing and words. I love the idea. And happily, I love most of the writers! Another great book blog is Some Can Whistle. I particularly like that the books listed aren’t always new ones. That The Shipping News makes a summer reading list makes me happy. That the author, Sawyer Franck, is rereading it makes me even happier. I hate to think how many great books are lost to time.

For some honest commentary on raising kids in general and teens in particular, read Parenting by Trail and Error. Along with entertaining words, it’s a pleasure to look at, too. This blog also turned me on to a great blog for health writers, called (wait for it) Health Writer.

Oh, Tai! What would I do without your blog about social media, Practical Profitable Social Media? I know nothing. You are teaching me. If you want tips on improving traffic, how to use social media for more than tracking down your 8th grade crush and posting pictures for your mother-in-law, read this blog. Another great resource for me has been Yael Writes. She may blog about SEO or fitness or post links to interesting stories out on the interwebs. Whatever it is, Yael makes it entertaining.

I think if I added them all up, I’ve found about 15 blogs that I’ll subscribe to or visit regularly from the blogathon. That’s probably about a tenth of the particpants who wrote daily during the month. Thanks again to Michelle Rafter for organizing it. I’m sure I’ll be a better writer because of it.

 

 

May 27, 2011

Washington State passed a two year budget the other day. It cuts funding for medical services for the poor and plugs budget gaps with a 1.9 percent cut in teachers’ pay. Other school personnel will lose 3 percent of their paychecks.

For the life of me, I cannot understand that this is who we have become: a public that would rather not pay a 5 cent premium for sodas and bottled water in order to maintain funding for schools; who would rather see poor people waste medical resources by using the emergency department as their primary care physician (and many of those people are the working poor) than ask the richest of us to pay a 2 percent income tax (currently Washington state is funded by sales taxes, which are regressive and subject to intense fluctuations depending on the economy). We talk about how cushy the jobs are for teachers, many of whom can’t afford to live anywhere near where they teach, even with housing costs down and interest rates at record lows. We talk about how all this money we send to the government is ours and they shouldn’t have a dime of it.

Bull crap. You want stuff like roads and schools and clean hospitals? You pay taxes. You want to be the country that takes care of the least of its citizens or the country that lets the really rich run the show and shout how they pay too much in taxes so why not cut the services instead? The people who use those services most, who don’t go to private schools and have concierge healthcare services, who work one or two minimum wage jobs and still barely make ends meet, who have disabled adult children who are being turfed from programs that give their working elderly parents some respite from changing diapers on children who outweigh them by half — these are the people who pay the price when people convince themselves they can have something for nothing.

I thought Washington was different. I thought that we didn’t want to be one of those states at the bottom of every list, where businesses are happy to relocate because there are no unions and no taxes and where the people who fall below the poverty line are so poor some of them don’t have running water or electricity. In 21st Century America there are people so poor they don’t have running water or electricity.

I know that there are good people who disagree with me on every point I have made. But I would hope everyone would agree that if you want to live in a certain way, you have to pay a price for it. I don’t think most people want to live the way they have voted. I think they have decided they want someone else to pay. The problem is that now, everyone who has to have a child in public school will pay; everyone who drives on potholed roads will pay; everyone who wants to have a good college education available to their children for a price that isn’t close to what a private college costs will pay — that is if their kids can even get into public colleges, who are cutting enrollments and raising tuitions to help deal with the cost cutting happening at the state level. This is who we have become. Think of that next time you buy a soda and thank the voters for not making you pay an extra nickel for it.

 

May 26, 2011

As much as I think it would be hysterical to watch Jon Stewart during any campaign for president you launched, I think you need to find some people who aren’t always agreeing with you to talk to you about such an endeavor. I think you would be spending money — yours and other people’s — and wasting your time. You don’t have a realistic chance of winning.

While this might be entertaining to the left, I think it’s a disservice to the country to have “joke” candidates run for the highest office in the land. Donald Trump didn’t add anything to the discourse, and while you probably have purer motives for a run, you just don’t have the relevant experience or gravitas. You are a polarizing figure who doesn’t have a real shot at the presidency.

What this country desperately needs — and deserves — is real candidates who will discuss the issues without all the polemic and without demonizing  the opposition. I don’t think you’re that person. So don’t run. Please. It’s not worth it for us, and if you really care about us as much as you say, you’ll consider that more than the fire in your belly.

 

May 25, 2011

I found this great blog, called Hyperbole and a Half. The whole thing is hysterical, but the author, Allie, is especially funny when talking about her dogs. Especially the “simple dog”, whom she fears may be, well, mentally challenged.

I have always thought our pup Ruby the Moose Dog is smart and large and therein lies my trouble with her. She needs entertainment, perhaps a job. But after reading about “simple dog,” I’m not sure. They way they both look at their respective owners, confused about what the words coming out of our mouths mean, offering every trick they know to see if that’s what we meant.

Her dog was suddenly afraid of a statue of a horse; my dog is afraid of random items — a bag in the front yard; a garbage receptacle at the park; a lawn mower and some strollers; men in hats. Walking the neighborhood with her must sound hysterical to someone who isn’t me. A girl walking a dog randomly saying, “It’s a bike. It’s a truck. It’s okay, it’s just a garbage can.” The guy with the riding mower the other day looked at me as if I was telling him that it was a  lawn mower, not the dog. He looked like he swallowed the “duh” he wanted to shout at me.

Trainer Ali — who turned me on to Hyperbole and a Half — doesn’t think Ruby is dumb, but I’m not sure any more. She thinks Ruby is just skittish. She says there is doggy research that shows mama dogs who are stressed during pregnancy often give birth to skittish pups. We don’t know about Ruby until she was 4 months old, when she entered a shelter and was fostered. She’s never been neglected or abused, but she’s a nervous nellie. The research might explain that.

What it doesn’t tell me is why no matter the tone of our voice, or how we turn our backs or walk away, she is always the happy girl whose only urge seems to be playing The Game, which I described  here. She understands nothing but the rules for The Game which she has made up and may alter at will and which we need to play. Now. Also, later. If possible, yesterday, too.

If there is only one word, about one game, does that make her dumb? Only, I suppose, if we refuse to play. Given how often she gets her way, it’s possible she’s the smart one in the family.

 

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