Category: Perspective

The Gray Matter In A Black and White World

Why can't we all just get along like the flavors in this cone?
Why can’t we all just get along like the flavors in this cone?

Confession: I haven’t watched any televised footage of the riots in Baltimore. Well…wait. Maybe I did see a few seconds of that video clip that was being passed around on Facebook, the one where the mom was slapping her son after plucking him from a crowd of rioters. And, for the record, that is exactly what I would have done if I caught my son like she did. But, I digress. The reason that we haven’t been watching the news since all the chaos erupted in Baltimore last Saturday is because I’m sick and tired of seeing this situation on television. I’m sick of news stories about African-American men ending up dead in situations that seem to defy logical explanation, and I’m tired of listening to clueless white folks try to explain the resulting violence. I try not to get sucked into the spectacle of the television news because it makes me nauseous. I choose, instead, to read the news so I can eliminate the pageantry and drama of pompous television news anchors who live to hear themselves speak. Yawn.

Last night, feeling a bit impudent, I broke down and turned on the news around dinnertime. I started with The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News and then caught some of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC because that is what I have to do to find fair-and-balanced news these days, watch two vastly different programs and interpret where the reality lies in the space in between them. O’Reilly spent part of his air time trying to blame the rioting on the 72% of African-American children born to single mothers. His assumption is that the breakdown of the nuclear family is primarily responsible for all the trouble in the African-American demographic. That’s one way to view it, I suppose, but I happen to live in a very grey world where things aren’t quite that easily defined. While O’Reilly seemed to have it all figured out, I found Maddow reporting on all the things we don’t know at this time…what the coroner’s report will say about the cause of Freddie Gray’s death, when the curfew in Baltimore will end, when we will know the fate of the six police officers suspended after Gray’s death, and what might happen once whatever is going to happen happens. I turned off the television news reminded once again why I rarely turn it on in the first place. There’s no news in the news.

This morning a friend shared this piece that was posted by Julia Blount on her Facebook page and then picked up and reposted by Salon. In it, Ms. Blount, a Princeton grad who grew up in an affluent home to a white mother and an African-American father, recounts her experiences as a person of color and, as her article title states, asks white people to respect what Black Americans are feeling. She writes of hopelessness, oppression, pain, poverty, anger, and despair. She writes about how fortunate she has been in her life and yet how even with all the privileges she’s had people still treat her differently. I know people like Ms. Blount. Our son’s best friend also comes from a mixed-race background. He lives in an upper-middle-class suburb of Denver where only half of 1% of the population is African-American. He attends private Christian school and has every conceivable advantage in his favor, save the color of his skin. I have no doubt that his American experience, while certainly impacted by his color, will be tremendously different than the American experience of an African-American child being raised by a single mother in impoverished, inner-city Baltimore. Poverty is reality for 31% of single-mother, African-American homes. Despite this statistic and many other statistics that show that African-Americans live in poverty on a far greater scale than their white counterparts, I know way too many white Americans who wholeheartedly believe that all Americans share an equal part of the American pie dream. Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps like the rest of us, they think, completely oblivious that it’s a lot harder to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you can’t afford boots. The disparity between us isn’t simply apparent in poverty ratios; it’s apparent in the complete inability many of us white Americans have to notice that we’re better off in nearly every way than any person of color in our country. We’re so clueless that we like to point to Oprah as an example of how the rest of the African-American population should just buck up and get their shit together because it’s totally possible…or at least it was for that one person. This ignorance disappoints me.

Over the past few days I’ve talked with my sons about what is going on in Baltimore. I’ve talked about race, poverty, the staggering number of African-American men in prison, and about the what the death of Freddie Gray and the ensuing riots say about our country. Last Sunday, my oldest son and I watched Selma. As we watched, I had to pause the movie repeatedly to field his questions and listen to his comments. Even my thirteen year old could watch that movie and point out how much things have stayed the same for African-Americans despite some advances. We talked about how fear figures so prominently into our racial inequality and how part of the problem is the ignorance white Americans have about the African-American experience. The marches of the Civil Rights movement occurred 50 years ago, but we’re still stuck with immense disparity between the wealth and status of the races and no apparent interest in ameliorating the current situation.

I’ll admit that I have no clue how we can move beyond these now too common situations, but we should probably start first by admitting that there is more than one reason why we’re still mired in inequality nearly fifty years after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and second by acknowledging that there isn’t a white person in this country who understands the frustration, anger, and hopelessness of the African-Americans rioting in Baltimore. When whites in this country stand in judgment without attempting to view things from the other’s perspective, we perpetuate a de facto Jim Crow situation where we are above and they are below, where we know better and they are ignorant, where we are master and they are slave. Sadly, our continued privilege as whites provides us with a podium and a microphone with which to pass judgment, and we continue to do just that. Maybe it’s simply hard for some of us to acknowledge there’s an uphill battle for others when we were born at the top of the hill?

Posted on by Me 7

The Pelican Brief – A Fishy Tale

This is the kind of goldfish problem I could solve.
This is the kind of goldfish problem I could solve.

And from the Sometimes Things Just Work Out file….

A couple of years ago, someone released a few goldfish into a small lake near Boulder, Colorado. Over time, those few fish turned into a population of approximately four thousand goldfish. These goldfish, harmless though they may seem, could as a non-native species potentially damage the local ecosystem for the native fish and birds, so the people at Colorado Parks and Wildlife began working on fixes to the growing quandary. They had narrowed the possible solutions down to either shocking the fish with electric currents and then feeding them to birds of prey at a local raptor rehabilitation facility or draining the entire lake. As of last Friday, the story, which had been picked up and shared by news agencies around the globe, was still being reported on while officials determined the best way to proceed. Today, however, when folks from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife division showed up with trap nets to get a sample of the fish population in the lake, they found 26 green sunfish, two largemouth bass, 10 painted turtles, 18 tiger salamanders, and only four goldfish.

While they were trying to figure out where the goldfish had gone, wildlife biologists observed some American white pelicans feeding on the lake. The pelicans, which migrate to the area for the summer, presumably spied a lake full of bright orange fish calling to them like a neon sign for an all-night cafe on a deserted highway. After the long, migratory trip up north, I imagine they couldn’t believe their luck to find an all-you-can-eat buffet stocked and spread out for them upon their arrival. Ka-ching. 

Without fuss or taxpayer expense, the fishy problem was solved. And now the folks at Colorado Parks and Wildlife can take eradicating the goldfish at Teller Lake Number 5 off their list of things to do. The pelicans, simply doing what pelicans do, unexpectedly made their jobs a little easier. You have to love it when you have a problem and, while you’re racking your brain trying to figure out exactly how to solve that problem, the universe intervenes and takes care of it for you. That, my friends, is kismet.

Still, I can’t help but think how much trouble we humans create for ourselves. Sometimes we carelessly act without thinking how our choice might play out further on down the road. And when we’re not mucking things up for ourselves that way, we’re tangled in the act of solving the problems we unintentionally caused in the first place. I swear sometimes that we’re really not that far off the ape brains we started with.

I am a firm believer that everything we need as a species, everything we have ever needed, is here for us on this planet and we need only look for it. Sometimes, just sometimes, we get a little nudge to remind us of this fact. Today, it was pelicans from heaven.

Posted on by Me 4

The When Harry Met Sally Question

Twenty years ago before I made him grey.
Twenty years ago before I made him grey.

“If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” ~Richard Bach

Marriage is hard. When I think back to my twenties, when most women I knew were dying to find their soul mate and embark on the magical love train of happily ever after, I laugh. We had no clue. In sickness and in health and for better or worse were concepts we weren’t capable of understanding in any legitimate sense. Sicknesses were colds and worse meant having to watch a movie we hadn’t chosen. As I’ve grown older, there have been intermittent days when the vows I took at 27 have started to come into clearer focus. I’ve had occasional oh-shit revelations about what I committed to when I stood there in front of all my friends wearing an off-white dress I hastily purchased off the bargain rack, holding flowers I settled for on a fixed budget, and hoping against hope that the photographer would get at least a couple decent shots. Marriage is serious…heart-attack-bankruptcy-miscarriage-mortgage-infidelity-and-unemployment serious. I don’t think many of us understand the gravity of the lifelong task we’re undertaking when we sign up. We learn about it along the way.

About twenty-two years ago, I went on a double date with my roommate, her boyfriend, and her boyfriend’s roommate. Walking home from a bowling alley after a couple poorly rolled games and a couple of pitchers of beer, I had a long, admittedly drunken, talk with this new guy. I was six months out of a semi-disastrous “relationship” and not really looking for anything. I was tired of men. I was tired of stressing about love. I was finally content being alone. I told him that I had made mistakes in past relationships when I had given up things that had mattered to me because someone had asked me to. I told him I wasn’t playing that way anymore. If he wanted to date me, he had to take me as I was because I wasn’t changing. I told him I had many male friends that I would not, under any circumstance, be jettisoning. He could deal with that reality or he could walk. It didn’t matter to me. It was his choice. I’ve never quite figured out why he stayed with me after that full disclosure, but he did. And nearly twenty years of marriage and two children later, here we are, grown up but not, still floundering our way through the insanity that is intentional, lifelong commitment to another person against all odds and life’s randomness.

I’ve held steadfast to most of the things I said in that drunken tirade that night after bowling, including maintaining my friendships with men. I am not a girly girl, and I never was. I’m a thinker more than a feeler and, partially because of this, I’ve struggled more trying to keep friendships with women than with men. Many women flat-out don’t get me, and I’ve accepted that. Men seem to appreciate my emotional reticence, my quippy, sarcastic retorts, and my no-nonsense attitude. Some of my male friends have been in my life for decades. Some I’ve met only recently. Some are people my husband has met. Some of them are relative strangers to him. I have male friends I communicate with weekly via text or email and others I see in person every few months at some public location where it’s acceptable for a married woman to associate with a man who is not her husband. Last night, for example, I enjoyed dinner with a male friend at a cool little taqueria in Denver where we sat at a community table and I decided that whoever invented the gourmet shrimp taco was the foodie equivalent of Einstein.

I know that accepting me as I am with my friendships not been easy for Steve, but he has muddled through it because he committed to doing so a million years ago before he knew what he was getting into and because he’s a man of his word. Because of Steve’s understanding, I’ve had exposure to conversations many married women don’t get to have. I continue to learn about the male perspective from multiple sources, and this has given me priceless knowledge about how to be a better human being, as well as a better partner. There is nothing like listening to your male friend talk about his failed marriage to help you see where you might be going wrong in your own. I’m grateful to my male friends for being honest with me about my shortcomings and for not telling me what I want to hear but what I need to hear. I continue to learn about the nature of communication (and miscommunication) and friendship through them. At the end of the day, Steve and I have new topics of conversation that have, as an unanticipated side benefit, created a level of intimacy between us I had not imagined was possible. We talk about our marriage. We talk about what is fair, what is difficult, and what is frightening because we have opened ourselves to what is fair, what is difficult, and what is frightening. We’re constantly negotiating our marital contract and figuring out how to make it better for both of us.

Like Harry in When Harry Met Sally, Steve’s not entirely sure he trusts that men are capable of being just friends with women, but he’s willing to entertain my little experiment because he knows I am not going anywhere. I am as pragmatic as they come. I know there is no man out there who is better equipped to love me as I am than he is. I’m not going to discover a new true love over tacos or at a concert. There’s no such thing as a perfect match, but I’ve gotten as close as I could ever come with a guy who loves me enough to set me free when I need to feel like my own person. I’m far too intelligent to walk away from a deal like that and a husband like Steve.

And, in case you’re wondering, Steve doesn’t have currently have a bevy of female friends. He does, however, have a wife who trusts him implicitly if you’d like to take him out for Taco Tuesday.

Posted on by Me 3

May You Live All The Days Of Your Life

The beast enjoying the fresh snow
The beast enjoying the fresh snow

“May you live all the days of your life.” ~Jonathan Swift

I love this quote. It’s so simple yet eloquent and profound. I mean, every day that you’re alive, you could argue that you’re living. But are you truly living? What does it mean to live versus to be alive? There have been plenty of days in my life when I’ve gone through the motions. I existed. And I was alive in only the most basic sense. I wasn’t living fully, deliberately, or honestly. Living honestly lies in experiencing the senses, feeling your emotions, promoting your consciousness. It lies in the awareness of the present moment and in appreciation for it. It lies in a daily choice to be open, enthusiastic, and mindful.

A few weeks ago, we were buried under February snow. It was cold. I spent most of the month of February this year as I do every year…holed up in my bed under blankets, sipping tea, binge watching shows on Netflix, scarcely moving from my spot, trying to convince myself I was not depressed. February is my annual, 28-day hibernation. One day, though, we had a lovely respite from overcast skies. The snow had stopped, the clouds had cleared the way for swaths of blue, and something called to me to live.

It was 10 degrees when I left my house, bundled in my ski gear, wearing snowshoes, and hauling additional gear. I had no problem coaxing the dog who had been housebound with me out onto the open space for an expedition. Her enthusiasm and joy kept me moving on each time I stopped to catch my breath, enjoy the view, and question my sanity. I was alone and, with no one to challenge me, this walk that would normally take me 15 minutes on a summer day took me close to 25. I was in no hurry. I had no plans other than this one.

Just a girl, her dog, and a sled
Just a girl, her dog, and a sled

When I reached the first hill, I kicked off my Crescent Moon snowshoes and began climbing. Against all logic and better judgment, I’d hauled my son’s bright yellow Zipfy sled out there with me, fully intent on some perpetrating some childlike behavior. You see, the day before school had been cancelled due to snow, and I had watched longingly from my kitchen window as some neighborhood children climbed that normally silent hill and put their mark upon the pristine landscape. My sons sled a lot in our neighborhood during snow season, nearly every afternoon when the weather allows it, but I have never joined them. I’m the mom. I have responsibilities. They would think it was too weird. And I am getting on in years and might break some bones, right?

Upon reaching the top of the hill, I threw the sled down and climbed on. My dog was poised in front of me. She’s a border collie. She loves to herd things. She planned on herding me all the way down the hill. When I finally summoned the nerve, I inched forward with my feet and began sliding down that very steep hill. If it felt steep on the climb up, it felt steeper on the ride down. The dog bounded in and out of my path as I careened down the slope picking up speed. Before I realized it, I had neared the bottom of the hill and noticed what I had not seen before. Those little stinkers had built a ramp. I hit it at full velocity, whooshed into the air, and dropped some obscenities as the sled and I collided with the ground with enough force that I wondered if my neighbor felt the tremor in her home. My face was covered in snow. I felt snow down my shirt. I surrendered into the earth and laughed at the absurdity of a nearly 47-year-old woman collapsed by herself on a deserted sledding hill at noon on a Friday. What kind of crazy woman does that?

I stayed on that hill for about a half an hour longer, hiking up repeatedly so I could retrace the path the children had carved out for me as well as fashion a few lanes of my own. The dog challenged my efforts, lunging at me sporadically while I lurched and swayed my way down the hill in an attempt to avoid running her over. Each time I wiped out. Each run found me increasingly covered in snow. When I’d had enough, I sat and began petting the dog, noticing the chunks of snow in my soaking wet hair, breathing steadily and consciously, feeling gratitude for the time, energy, health, and means to spend an hour of my day outdoors, frivolously free from the mundane.

Seeing that quote today reminded me of my sledding adventure. We adults don’t indulge in living often enough. Swallowed by routine and obligation, we stagnate. We place responsibility over fun, whimsy, and novelty. To make this earthly journey worthwhile, though, we need to remember to let go on occasion. Joy is not just for children and border collies. We need to have our own sledding days, to bear witness to the beauty of nature, to smell the moisture in the air, to feel the sun on our face and the snow down our shirt, to taste the blood from our lip when we bite it on a hard landing, and to laugh out loud at ourselves. That is living.

Posted on by Me 7

The Ponce de Leon Syndrome

Ignore the facial hair and focus on the balayage brilliance.
Grey? I don’t see no stinking grey.

“If I can challenge old ideas about aging, I will feel more and more invigorated. I want to represent this new way. I want to be a new version of the 70-year-old woman. Vital, strong, very physical, very agile. I think that the older I get, the more yoga I’m going to do.” ~Jamie Lee Curtis

I was sitting in the chair having my hair guru, Danielle, work the miracle of balayage on my way-too-quickly-greying tresses when I came across an article about a growing trend of women shaving their faces. One of my joys in going to see Danielle is that I get to check out all the latest copies of People, US, and In Style without actually having to buy any issues. It’s how I get to act like a typical female without having to admit to a grocery store clerk that I am typical. But I am going to have to stop reading these publications if articles like this continue to pop up. Why can’t I just read in peace about Bruce Jenner’s transformation to woman without realizing I’m failing as one when I already have all the right parts?

As I battle the march of Middle Age, a battle that becomes more arduous and gruesome as my forties pass, I can barely make time for whitening toothpaste, moisturizing sunscreen, and a daily appointment with my Clarisonic (which is really more of an every third or fourth day meeting if I am being honest). Now I’m supposed to add shaving to my already overtaxed routine? Apparently, this is the latest resurgence of an old exfoliation trend. The article claims that mens’ skin is much less wrinkly and smoother because they shave, thereby removing dead skin cells each time they drag a razor across their face. You can have this dermaplaning done at a dermatologist’s office or spa for between $85-150 a month or you can buy razors and attempt to master the technique yourself and repeat it every four weeks. The more I thought about it, the more it began to make some sort of sense. Most men age pretty darn well. But, still, are you kidding me? Is this what it’s coming to? It’s almost like there’s someone out there trying to see what wild things they can get American women to buy into. The beauty industry does quite well for itself.

I’m not thrilled about getting older. In a few months, I am slated to hit 47. Forty-freaking-seven. And as much as I am trying to be all zen about it, I am not even remotely there. Am I glad I’m still on this planet after nearly a half of a century? Absolutely. Living is much better than dying. But long life comes with aging and aging isn’t pretty. I struggle with the reflection in the mirror. I notice the wrinkles, the blossoming jowls, the dark circles, and the skin imperfections earned after too many days at high altitude without sunscreen because when I was a kid it was SPF 4 tanning lotion on my redheaded body at the pool. It freaks me out. Maybe I should skip the shaving? Honestly, I might be better off with a full beard, now that I’m thinking about it. A beard could hide all sorts of stuff. Wonder if I can grow enough chin hair for that?

I’ve tried all sorts of things to make myself feel like I don’t look my advancing age. My latest insanity is micro needling to improve skin texture, but even poking myself in the face to increase collagen production doesn’t seem to be helping. No matter what I do or how much I invest, time’s gonna keep right on marching across my face. And even if I enlist every treatment known, from Botox to fillers, from laser skin treatments to facelifts, I’m never going to look 20 again. I could spend the GDP of Lithuania on anti-aging treatments, but it won’t stop the inevitable. The years will take their toll.

So I am now trying to discern what aging gracefully might look like for me and how I might achieve it. I think every day about my friends who are on the backside of 50 and who assure me that all my insanity over my appearance will decrease. Eventually I will become more comfortable in my own skin and won’t care as much how I look. I won’t give a second thought to staying younger looking by adding a close shave to my routine. I’ll strive for good health. I’ll focus on drinking lots of water, eating my greens, getting restful sleep, practicing more yoga, and cultivating bigger smiles. And I’ll stop reading stupid articles about how shaving will make me look younger.

Truth is that I am much happier with myself now than I ever was at 20. Would it be nice to have my 46-year-old wisdom in my 20-year-old body? Sure it would. Just like someday I will wish for my 70-year-old wisdom in my 46-year-old body. But I’m not a Disney fan and I don’t live in Fantasyland. This idea we have as a nation about women staying and looking young into our 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond is a bit Ponce de Leon. If we’re smart enough to acknowledge that the Fountain of Youth doesn’t actually exist, we should be smart enough to know we can’t wish it into existence either.

We spend our youth looking forward to being older and our adulthood wishing we were younger. It’s a horrible paradox. I’m working on becoming more zen about aging, but I have a feeling I’ll be working on it until the day I die.

Posted on by Me 3

The Sky Falls…Get Used To It

When the sky gives you snow, go snowshoeing.
When the sky gives you snow, go snowshoeing.

Denver was expecting a big snowstorm this weekend. On Friday, the weather forecasters on all the local channels had everyone in full on survival mode with Winter Storm Warnings posted for counties all along the Front Range. Ahead of the storm, grocery stores were packed with people and short on food. There were lines at gas stations, and events were cancelled in advance of what might possibly be up to 18 inches of snow over 48 hours. (Go ahead and laugh at us, Boston and Buffalo. We deserve it.) While all the preparations were going on, I shook my head and made plans to see a movie. I knew we had enough food to survive weeks even if it meant we would have to eat canned tuna and white rice, so I went back to watching Season 2 of Scandal. After a lifetime in Colorado, I don’t spend much time worrying about snow. It’s cold. It’s white. It happens. Every single year. Many times. We own shovels, all-wheel drive cars with snow tires, and skis, for sweet baby Jesus’s sake. I’m not exactly sure why snow surprises people. We freaking live here at a mile high where it can snow pretty much any time between September and May, and it does. While it can be annoying when the first flake of snow falls before summer has officially ended or when we’re halfway through spring and our tulips and daffodils get crushed under a heavy, wet, spring snow, it’s hardly shocking. It’s par for the course.

It’s Sunday evening as I write this. Most of the storm has passed, and we have about 8 inches of snow on the ground, which is not surprisingly less than was forecast. The snow continues to fall lightly, but the roads are plowed. They are icy in spots but not impassable. Even when the heaviest snow was moving through last night and the visibility was diminished, hubby and I were able to return home from an afternoon viewing of American Sniper without incident by driving cautiously in the blowing snow. So far it appears, to the great chagrin of our sons, that most schools will be open tomorrow. And after two snowy days, the sun is even scheduled to make an appearance. As I predicted, the sky, while yielding snowfall, has not itself fallen. The world will go on.

What I’ve been puzzling over all weekend is the way we Americans get ourselves in a tizzy over everything these days. We’ve come a long way from the American pioneers who drove wagons pulled by oxen over unmapped territory, encountering new landscapes and sometimes grumpy natives, without assistance from the National Weather Service, CNN, and global positioning systems. Sadly, we’ve become a nation full of Chicken Littles who thrive on drama. Perhaps it’s because we live in the cushiest time yet experienced that we’ve become completely paralyzed by the notion of adversity? You’d think with all the information available to us we would find ourselves at greater ease. Instead we experience the opposite. The news overwhelms us. Everything we hear causes panic. We live in fear of everything from Ebola to measles, terrorism to random acts of violence, natural disasters to run-of-the-mill snowstorms. What I can’t decide is if we are so conditioned as human beings to endure calamity (fight or flight, you know) that in the relative absence of it we can’t help but continually ready ourselves for it. Is it because of our human makeup that we are unable to relax or have we with our non-stop, 24-hours-a-day news cycles created a relentless culture of fear?

I’m sure I don’t have the answer to these questions. I simply know that we become stressed far too easily these days over things that aren’t really worth the worry. And if I get to the store tomorrow and find it devoid of milk, eggs, and toilet paper because the storm crazies preparing for a veritable Snowmageddon snarfed it all up on Friday when I was binge watching Scandal, everything will still be fine. I just won’t be making any omelets.

 

 

 

Posted on by Me 1

A Belated Holiday Letter For All The Late Bloomers

On their way to becoming awesome…someday
On their way to becoming awesome…someday

I was rifling through a stack of papers on the counter yesterday and came across a holiday letter that arrived in a card from some friends of ours around Christmas. Okay. I feel your sneer of judgment. Yes. I still have holiday mail on our kitchen counter. Guess what? We still have a broken, faux Christmas tree lying on the floor in the rec room too. I’m leaving it there at least until Easter to prove how very zen I can be in the face of ridiculous things. So there. Anyway, I opened the letter and reread it. It was, as most family holiday letters are, a beautifully composed, loving tribute to our friends’ apparently flawless, exceptional, decorous, loving children. I’m a natural skeptic, so I’ve always assumed children like the ones outlined in those letters are figments of fantasy, like Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and men who multitask…a charming idea, but a complete fabrication. Still, we get many letters just like that one every year, rife with phrases like Eagle Scout, straight A honor student, Varsity letter, State championships, class president, volunteer hours, and first place, which are aimed at making me believe that children like this exist in families all across this nation. It must be reality for some people.

Friends have asked me why I do not send out a letter with our Christmas cards. They figure that a writer should be at the top of the list of Persons Most Likely To Write A Holiday Letter. But I don’t because comparison is an ugly thing. We don’t have the kind of children who look good on paper. They’re off schedule and complicated and not in line with many other children their ages. In terms of learning, our children are classified as “atypical” and that doesn’t play well without lengthy and exhausting explanations. Even though we don’t write holiday letters, we think they’re awesome. We’ve just accepted that their beauty sometimes gets lost in the comparison game.

If I were to write a holiday letter, it realistically might contain paragraphs that read something like this:

Joe is thirteen and in seventh grade this year. He’s completely immersed in Pokémon and adores Japanese culture. He keeps asking when we can go to Tokyo. He used most of his Christmas money to buy Pokémon plush toys that he and his brother use in elaborate stop-motion video stories they are creating for their YouTube channel. Despite his ADHD and dyslexia, he’s making great progress at school. We are so proud that he’s using capitals and periods in his schoolwork on a more consistent basis these days. He’s still reversing his Bs and Ds, but we are hoping that he’ll have that mostly figured out by the time he’s writing college entrance essays. Joe has finally mastered the coordination and multiple steps to tie his own shoes now, which has taken one thing off my plate. He uses about 400 knots to make sure they don’t come untied, though, and that has created a different hassle as I now have to unknot his shoes each morning. Be careful what you wish for! After two years of private ski lessons, his core strength and coordination have improved enough that he has a mastery of most beginner slopes. We hope to have him exclusively skiing intermediate slopes by the end of next season. His favorite books are graphic novels, his favorite food is pasta, and his classmates call him “Puppy.” He never misses his nightly spa time, which mainly involves sitting in the bathtub while watching a continuing stream of Netflix videos on his iPad from across the room. Thank heavens he was gifted with great eyesight and the brains to know not to bring the iPad into the tub with him.

Luke is eleven now and in fifth grade. He is a talkative, class clown, and his teachers have initiated a rewards system to keep him reined in during class. So far it seems to be working because our last parent/teacher conference went off without tears. This year his decoding skills have gone off the charts and he is reading at a beginning of fourth grade level. He’s still struggling with fine motor skills and his pencil grip is downright bizarre, but his handwriting is bafflingly lovely. He loves to draw, write stories, build Legos, and watch episodes of Parks and Recreation. And, this year he began catching footballs successfully. He’s still two inches shy of being tall enough to ditch the booster seat in the car, but he’s getting there! His latest career aspiration is to be an entrepreneur/architect/engineer, but he’s planning to author books in his free time, which we think will make him quite well balanced. His sensory issues force him to sleep in a nest of blankets, pillows, and plushes, but he showers regularly, doesn’t eat in bed, and sleeps on the top bunk so we are reasonably sure there are no rodents up there with him.  All is well and we are grateful. 

Now, this holiday letter fodder might seem a bit hyperbolic, but overall it’s an accurate account of life with our exceptional sons. They are not straight A students. They are not athletes. They are not overachievers. They’re not on the Dean’s List. They’re not first chair in orchestra. They struggle a lot, work hard to catch up with other kids their age, and keep plugging away. They are, in every way I can see, damn near perfect human beings, emphasis on the human part. And I may never be able to write a holiday letter extolling the impressive scholastic or athletic achievements of their youth, but I could not be more proud of my young men.

I don’t begrudge any of our friends the joys of having children who are achieving at a high level already. After all, it’s a lot of work being a parent, and a smart, capable child who is excelling in many things can only do so with personal support and chauffeur services. My friends have earned the right to brag about their offspring. As for our boys, I suspect they are simply late bloomers. Sooner or later, all their hard work and dedication will pay off. And someday I’ll send out a holiday letter to share how far they have come. Our Christmas card with personal letter in 2035 might just blow your socks off.

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Going Left Shark

Image credit (http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/201512/rs_560x388-150202131054-1024.Katy-Perry-Super-Bowl-Shark.2.ms.020115_copy.jpg)
Image courtesy of EOnline.

 

Like many Americans, I watched the Super Bowl a couple of days ago with my family. For the most part, we were not invested in the outcome of the game, with the exception of our youngest who a year ago became a staunch New England Patriots fan (presumably just to vex the rest of us). We were tuned in for the spectacle and the ads and the cultural experience. No one wants to be left out of the conversation on Post Super Bowl Monday when the country is engaging in deep commercial analysis and heated game commentary. One thing our entire family agreed upon was that we were looking forward to seeing what Katy Perry would do at half-time. While none of us are huge Katy Perry fans, we all like her well enough and were decidedly more interested in her show than any of the half-time shows in the past five years. So we watched.

When Katy came out dressed in flames, channeling her inner Katniss Everdeen, and riding a jungle cat for Roar, we were duly impressed. But when Teenage Dream began and the sharks came out, we lost our minds. Seriously. We couldn’t stop giggling over those dang sharks. Joe, our resident Sharkboy, immediately requested a similar costume for Halloween in 9 months. The dancing beach balls and palm trees were fun too, but the sharks were stars. As good as Katy was, no one could mistake that she was being upstaged by sharks. Twitterverse blew up with all kinds of hashtags…#KatyPerrySharks, #dancingsharks, and #superbowlsharks. And pretty soon there were dancing shark memes to pass around. The country apparently felt the same way we did. We fell in love with them en masse.

And nearly as quickly as the shark love affair began, people began singling out the Left Shark (the one on the viewer’s left) as their favorite. There’s always a favorite, right? While the Right Shark was flawlessly performing a highly choreographed dance routine, the Left Shark looked a little off cue, a little goofy, a little devil-may-care. He was the class clown, there for the laugh. Soon everyone was tweeting about #LeftShark. There was an immediate assumption that the Left Shark forgot his choreography and that’s why his movements weren’t in sync with the Right Shark. But the show’s choreographer went on record saying that the Left Shark performed exactly as he was supposed to. And everyone loved him, including me. Right Shark? What Right Shark? Who cares? So conventional. Boooooring!

This morning, though, I was thinking a bit about Right Shark and how he’s been relatively ignored while Left Shark has gone onto Internet infamy. People are saying that he should have been the Super Bowl MVP. I can almost hear Right Shark using his most Jan Brady voice and exclaiming loudly, “Left Shark! Left Shark! Left Shark!” It seems so unfair. I can relate to Right Shark…out there, doing his job, behaving as expected, and feeling unnoticed and under-appreciated. We tend to overlook the thing that is a constant. We tend to notice the novel, the amusing, the different.

Still…there’s something valuable to be learned from the Left Shark phenomenon. We admire someone who can cut loose and have a good time. We laugh at the class clown. We appreciate the one who is brave enough to stand out. We all have that friend who, while perhaps unreliable, always gets invited because they’re just that much fun that the occasional hassle they present is 100% worth it. They say that, in the end, it’s the way you make someone feel that matters most. So we love the Left Sharks of this world because they spread joy, reminding us that life is too short to take seriously.

Go a little Left Shark this week. See what happens.

 

 

 

 

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Circumstance Is A Weak Choice

Scenic view or septic tank? Your choice.
Scenic view or septic tank? Your choice.

“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Here is my blanket statement of the day. There are two kinds of people in this world…people who embrace choice and people who don’t. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this differentiation. I know many people who live their lives through the filter of circumstance. Things happen to them. They are firmly locked into the victim mindset, unable to let go of what is now in the past. Life has been unfair to them, and life has made them unhappy. But life is unfair to everyone in one way or another, and this is where choice comes in. When something unwelcome happens to you, you unexpectedly lose your job or your child or your home, for example, that is circumstance. How you deal with circumstance is choice, and that choice is the difference between lifelong happiness or lifelong disappointment.

I’ve cycled through both the victim and the champion role in my life, gratefully remaining more on the champion side as a rule. Sometimes I would sit in suck-i-tude for a while before putting on my big girl panties and making changes. And it’s true that sometimes you need to let yourself be where you are in your disappointment, sadness, and regret. It’s part of the human condition. But I’ve realized that remaining stuck there is a waste of time. Life is too short to hang out too long where grief and sadness reside. I am in charge of writing my story. The people I have most admired have taken what life has handed them and worked it in their favor. It might not have happened overnight, but it happened. It’s a process.

Now that I am better at not relegating my life to well-gee-it-is-what-it-is, I find myself struggling with the appropriate way to act when others are marooned in the quagmire of circumstance. Some people only feel better when they are getting attention and sympathy from others, and the best way for them to do that is to remain lodged and helpless in their unfortunate circumstances. When you are involved with people who rely on you to make their life better, interactions with them are exhausting. How do you show empathy while maintaining self-preservation? It’s a tough line to walk. I’m working on being compassionate while remaining cautiously distant so I don’t get sucked into their vortex of pity-poor-me. That attitude is like the flu and, if your choice mindset is underdeveloped or suffering a setback, you can catch that victim bug more than once. And I have.

I don’t want to feel trapped by anyone’s circumstances, including my own. I want to be creative and find ways to negotiate obstacles as they arise by determining what choices I have in the situation. I know I don’t have to own or be responsible for any choices others make to remain trapped in their situations. Intellectually, I understand that, but I invariably wrestle to free myself of others’ negativity and focus on my own reactions instead. I’m striving to be braver and to recognize the bad for what it is…a chance to grow and adapt. I’m getting there. And, someday I will successfully be able to navigate the landmines that life’s victims leave for me. For now, all I can do is worry about myself and tread lightly in the direction of positivity.

 

 

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Snap Out Of It

This is what you do with untrodden snow.
The beauty of untrodden snow

“We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and to love the wrong people and die. I mean, the storybooks are bullshit.” ~Moonstruck

It’s a new year. And, although I understand that every day is a blank whiteboard upon which I can write the story of my life, there’s something about a new year that sucks me in. It’s not simply one 24-hour revolution. It’s a 365-day, brand new trek. There’s a faint whiff of that new year smell. There’s potential and promise and possibility rolled out before me. It all starts now.

When I was a child, my mother stubbornly forbade us from running through freshly fallen snow in our front yard. We could run around the back yard or in the neighbors’ yards to our hearts’ content, but our front yard was not to be disturbed. There was something about the appearance nature’s immaculate whitewash in front of our house that appealed to her. I knew it was some sort of sacred space she needed, but her unwillingness to let us weave patterns with our boots and leave our personal marks vexed me. Snow is meant to become snowmen and snow forts and snow angels. Eventually, these flawless white yards became folklore as I grew older and stopped playing in snow because boots and coats were uncool. It became a vague memory that I decided I fabricated or embellished to tell a better story. It wasn’t until a few years ago that my sisters confirmed my truth. Our childhood had a boundary, and the perfectly snowy front yard was it.

As I headed out with the dog today for a New Year’s Day walk, I stopped to appreciate the snow in our yard. It wasn’t the yard my mom cherished. The boys had been out there, and it was cacophony of uproarious footprints, not an untouched spot in sight. I thought about my mom and her need for that clean yard. I can relate to her sense of beauty and the pleasure she must have derived from the serenity of tidy snow. Motherhood is, after all, a sloppy endeavor, and the front yard was something she could control. It was the part of our home life that could be unblemished. Our flawless front yard granted her a facade of order and some semblance of peace. But, at the end of the day, virgin snow is about as realistic as a clean house. No matter what you do, it never lasts for long. It’s the perfect family photo that fails to relay the chaos behind the moments just prior to its capture. Reality is messy. Life, like a snowy yard, is meant to be experienced. Trying to keep it neat is a waste of time.

As an adult, I see each new year as my childhood’s unblemished front yard. After years of avoiding messes, I understand the privilege inherent in making my mark. Decorum is optional. If 2015 is anything like 2014, I will leave circles where I chased my tail and lines where I dragged my feet. There will be angels where I stopped for fun, some snow critters where I was creative, and forts where I dug in and fortified myself for the long haul. I will leave this year as gloriously pockmarked and lived in as I left last year. Today, though, on a spotless 1/1, I’m gazing over that quiet, blank slate and trying to decide where to head first. Last year’s funk is gone. Time to snap out of it.

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