To Kelly

**Beep***

Um.  Hi.  This is Suzanne S*, well, I'm Suzanne M* now, but ....and this is going to sound weird, but we used to be friends, like in the second grade and then best friends, in the only way that girls can be best friends, all the way up until high school. 

And, well, I can't believe I found you. Not then, I mean now.  I don't intend to sound stalkerish or anything but it was hard to find you because you got married and I didn't know your married name.

Even assuming that I have the right person, now.  If you didn't use to be Kelly T*, please disregard what I'm about to say next.

I've been thinking about you.  Whenever Project Runway comes on, actually, I think of you.  I believe that one day I'm going to see you, waiting in line to see the judges with your portfolio tucked under your arm.  I wonder if you're still in the fashion industry.  If you're even still in New York, because last I heard you had graduated our state school and got a job for a company who sold women's vests in the city.  It was still the 80's, after all, and I laugh a bit when I think about it, because who wears vests anymore?

Anyway.  I know it's stupid, but I'm calling to say that I'm sorry.

I'm really, really, really, really sorry.

You know that I still have the note?

We passed it back and forth in 11th grade, almost 25 years ago.  I still have it, but I can honestly say that I've never looked at it.  I know what I wrote.  I know what you wrote and I know the effect of my words.

I reflect on my 16 year old self in sheer amazement that she could possibly believe that you owed her anything, much less a confidence she had no right to expect.  I can't believe that I/she so confidently claimed the mythical moral high ground and from that space turned her back on you, expelling you from our little group of friends.

I applaud you for not trying to crawl back.

Anyway.  I've always regretted it.  I've always seen that self as my worse self.

And I'm sor...

*beep*

** Written for the Monday Mission over at Maypole's **

What Assertiveness Gets You

I've watched America's Next Top Model (ANTM) since, oh, about Cycle 6.

I'm not quite sure why I put the show on my TIVO because, as a 40 year old mother of two boys, I'm certainly not the demographic.  I'm not quite sure what 40-year old women watch instead of ANTM, but every week I join the hordes of women 18-34 and female teens who watch the show.  It's certainly a train wreck, which in and of itself is interesting, but it's also a train wreck with fashion, which is why it makes it on my TIVO.

I am not proud of my viewing choices.

I have never been less proud than this week.

Last night, the show known for terrible ideas decided to stage a photo shoot with real live homeless teens.  As the prospective models vamped for the camera, real live homeless littered the background, dressed in borrowed finery.  The lesson learned from this experience was summarized by Tyra as being homeless is hard.  If you're wondering how she knows this, it's because she pretended to be homeless for a day for her talk show.

I am not lying.

If you looked closely, though, there was another lesson embedded within the farce of the first. 

Before the homeless shoot, one of the prospective models spoke disbelievingly of the fact that she was asked to model a pair of $500 shorts and a bag over $2,000.  She admitted not understanding the need for clothes this expensive and expressed absolute confusion over their production and sale.  Directly after having these clothes on her body, the prospective model came face to face with real teens, just like herself, but whose future appeared far less rosy.

At this point, I was wondering if I was the only viewer left speechless by the juxtaposition of Bagdley Mischka and severe poverty.

The prospective model was not left speechless.  During panel, the segment where all the models are judged and one is eliminated, she announced in a somewhat quavering voice that "fashion doesn't interest me at all."  As she admitted this fact in front of the panel, all of whom had careers dedicated to the fashion industry, and the assembled group of girls competing to enter fashion's golden gates, I couldn't but admire the courage it took to stand up for herself, to assert what she knew to be true, and, perhaps unwittingly, expose the sickening nature of the entire episode.

For her pains, she was dressed down by Tyra Banks, basically ordered off the stage, and had her picture ripped in two.

I'm not sure that it affected her at all.

However, I'm not that worried about this one girl, but about the hordes of young girls watching this show and learning that it doesn't pay to go against the grain.  If you're going to assert yourself, how much better to do it over another girl stealing your granola bar or knocking your modeling talent.  It's this type of assertion that is rewarded, that gets ratings, that draws the public interest.  The real type of assertion, that of speaking truth to power, is dismissed.

And it's picture is torn up.

Back to the Book

G. and I have started doing "the book" again. 

Before the Catholic church would consent to marry us, we had to go through testing and counseling.  Neither one of us was looking forward to the counseling, but we had already sent out the wedding invitations, so had little choice.  The counseling ended up just being a discussion with another couple, who had been married for years, about our test and about a few of our concerns.  I didn't expect much from this session, but we both ended up learning a great deal.

One of the strategies we learned was "the book."  Hearing of our occasional trouble communicating with each other, the counseling couple suggested that we write down our thoughts in "the book" each day and then discuss at the end of the week.  These weren't just thoughts, but thoughts about each other and the little things that troubled us.  One early entry, for instance, read:  "When you don't put the cap on the toothpaste, it gets all crusty and I have a hard time getting it on my toothbrush."

I'm serious.  This is what can happen when two people, used to living alone, marry each other in their mid-thirties.

We discussed the matter and started using two separate tubes of toothpaste. 

The book served us well.  It served us so well that we didn't need it any more.  However, I think that we're in the position of needing it again. The night of the Superbowl, we had one of those fights that are about nothing and everything all at the same time.  We argued about how much time he spends in the shower in the morning (seriously, twenty minutes?) and how, when I say I'm going to take care of the twins in ten minutes, it's usually more like thirty.  We argued about how his shows replace mine on the Tivo and my growing amount of time on the computer.

It was two year's worth of fight in one evening and not much got settled.

Back in November, someone asked me how we managed to preserve our relationship after having twins.  When reading this comment, I laughed silently because the truth of the matter is that we haven't been doing a great job of it.  The twins, in the way that children do, push everything out of their way and work swells up to fill the remaining spaces.

So, we're back to the book and hoping that it gives us the same common ground that it did five years ago.

That Kind of Kid

I adored my first grade teacher fiercely.  In the only picture that I have of her, Ms. Poindexter is a middled-aged, spare woman with dark hair, squinting in the bright sunlight as three or four polyestered children dance around her and make faces at the camera.

I remember pinwheeling down the hall at Ms. Poindexter, after some sort of school break, and flinging myself around her waist in simple enjoyment of seeing her again.  Despite my devotion, I understood without being able to put into words that the feeling was not quite mutual.  Indeed, I'm not sure that she knew what to do with the first-grade me, an awkward kid with abrupt passions who couldn't quite sit still.

I remember running up and down the long red counter along one side of the classroom, doing a sort of jumping thing in the middle.  I remember scooting in and out of the reading station, unable to stay put and listen to the story being read out loud. 

I remember being stood in the corner, the worst punishment ever, as it required some attempt to harness my impulses and ever-moving thought.  Casting about for anything to do, I contemplated the big green roll of paper, taller than myself, which shared the corner with me.  Wetting one finger with my tongue, I started digging a hole through all of the layers of that roll with the dream of finally hitting upon the cardboard middle.  I remember concentrating so hard that I didn't even hear Ms. Poindexter calling me from my punishment.  I had no problem hearing her anger and disappointment over the ruined roll of construction paper.

Let loose at recess, I would run the length of the playground, all the way up to the higher area where the farmland began.  And, despite the creeping feeling that I didn't quite fit, that I seemed to operate on a different wavelength altogether, I would feel vibrantly happy.

In the third grade, I learned that I would be leaving that small elementary school for a much larger one all the way downtown, which my mother diligently took me to tour.  I never went to that school, where the classrooms smelled of mold.  That fall, as everyone I knew was bused into the city, I started going to private school.

The kids in that school had known each other since kindergarten.  The lines were drawn. I would sit by myself on the playground, imagining a series of pipes, snaking all the way to my mother's office which would somehow connect us, allowing me to see her and her to see me.  I started drawing, transfixed with the way that a squiggly line could become a profile.

Enforced isolation lent me this startling new ability to concentrate.  While I ended up failing my science project because I couldn't remember to bring in the piece of requisite lettuce to serve as bait for the guinea pig tracing it's way through the maze, I also spent hours in the art room, focused so intently that I never noticed the class leaving without me.  The teachers at this new school didn't know what to do with me either, but they let me craft my own path with a little guidance and not much interference.  In the fourth grade, they discovered that I had read all the books in the little library and brought ones from the bigger middle school down the hill, just for me.

Things got better at this school; they slowly got better, until the sixth grade, when they were good.  By that time, however, my habit of concentration through isolation had become well and truly ingrained.  I survived in the classroom by drawing until the period ended and I could learn the material from books on my own.

In my second year of graduate school, I participated in a psychology experiment because I knew some friends who were also doing it and I needed a little extra money.  It was a long test, about three hours.  A week later, however, they called me back.  "We think that you have ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder," they said, and offered me the option of more tests.  I declined the tests, but I did start reading.

And it made sense.  The way that I learned to learn made sense.  My frustrating inability to sit quietly through a lecture or find my keys five minutes after putting them down just clicked into place.  I began pouring through my early memories and seeing them in this light in order to recognize my younger self as the brave, resourceful little girl that she was.

This post was written for Julie's Hump Day Hummmm, and it came out much more bleak than I thought it would.  I promise happy thoughts and FOUND Little Tikes basketballs (thanks, Jody) for tomorrow (or the next day).

READ -- Restless

About a month ago, Cat and I discussed starting an online book-club and chose the first book, Restless.  You can go here to join in the conversation.

If this just isn't the month for you (hey, it's a busy month), please think about joining us in the future!  If you have any ideas for the next or subsequent books, please let Cat or I know in email or in the comments section.

Happy reading!!

Fuzzy Head

I don't know whether it's the in-laws being here or trying to get back to work after having most of last week off, but I can't seem to keep a single thought in my head for more than one minute.  This means, of course, that I have the attention span of a toddler. 

Quite frankly, I don't see how they're ever able to get anything done.

So far, I've been distracted by the internet, coffee, lint on my sweatpants, the various spots on my jeans, and so forth.  I have things to talk about, but zero cability to put fit them together. 

As a result, I bring you photos and questions about photography. 

There's a funny and interesting post up about photography equipment on Nomotherearth where I learned that I have the same camera as Sin (yay, me).  However, I'm still learning what to do with it.  I'm still entirely bemused by the fact that the pictures that come out of my camera don't seem to resemble those that I see with my heart, brain, or eyes.  What do you try to do when taking pictures (aside from focusing and avoiding red-eye)?  Do you arrange people or look for the candid shots?   What, in other words, goes into taking a "good" picture?

I like this photo, but find it somewhat disturbing....

A bit better one of the Bug...

It's a little easier to take pictures of things that don't move...

How To Put Up Christmas Decorations (Monday Mission)

1.  Ask your husband if he would mind going up into the attic to pull down the boxes.  When he replies that he will after raking the leaves, remember that the boys will only be sleeping for another hour and decide to get down the boxes yourself.

2.  Hunt around for the stick that goes in the loop that pulls down the attic stairs.  Find it in the spare bedroom closet.  Put the stick in the loop, pull down the trap-door and unfold the attic stairs.  Gaze up at the stairs.  Flick the switch to turn on the attic light.  Gaze up the stairs again.

3.  Remember that you really, really, really do not like the attic.  In fact, one might say that you have an attic phobia.  Also remember the contentious relationship you had with the previous owners of your home.  When the home inspector found a dead bat in the attic, your husband joked that it was a voodoo bat.  Remind yourself that there is no such things as voodoo bats.  Remind yourself that the bat is long gone.

4.  Try to feel better about going up into the attic.

5.  Slowly climb the stairs to the attic.  Pause before sticking your head through the attic opening.  Try not to think about the fact that this is the point at which you are the most vunerable.*  Try not to think about things (voodoo bats) flying out of the opening and attacking your head.  Clench your teeth.  Finish climbing up into the attic.

6.  Look around for the boxes of Christmas decorations.

7.  Hear a scrabbling noise.

8.  Do not jump as you might fall through the opening.  Do not climb down.  Remember that you have not yet gotten the boxes. 

9.  Find the boxes. Open a few boxes to make sure that they include the decorations that you need to put up.  Do not allow yourself to think about black widow spiders which are far worse than voodoo bats and much more likely to be hiding in your attic.

10.  Find the boxes and lower them gently through the opening.  Climb down a few stairs to make sure that they land gently on the carpet.  Do this several times until all boxes have been rescued.

11. Hear your brother-in-law coming up the stairs. Know that he would think closing someone in an attic to be a superbly funny joke.  Ponder the fact that he is probably not married for this reason.  Scamper down the steps just in time.  Say "hello" to brother-in-law and enlist his help in closing up the attic.

12. Open boxes.

13. Put up Christmas decorations.

This post was done for the Directions Monday Mission over at Painted Maypole.

* Edited to correct this misspelled word.  oops.

Into the Dark

An old graduate school roommate of mine once called me a "top forty station" after entering the apartment only to find Jane's Addiction playing for the 500th time as I made dinner. 

He's correct. 

I don't listen to music that frequently, but when I do, it's entire albums at a time and I tend to repeat those albums over and over an over again until anyone around me is completely sick of them.  Once an album has run its course, however, I rarely listen to it again.  For about five straight years, during college and immediately afterward, Paul Simon's Graceland served as my personal soundtrack. 

"I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee," I'd sing. "I'm going to Graceland.  Poor boys and pilgrims with families and we are going to Graceland."  Despite the somewhat wistful lyrics, the song and all the songs on the album had the ability to make me feel okay .... okay about college, about graduate school, about being alone.

Most of the songs that caught my interest during high school deal with the issue of being alone more directly.  "Who will drive you home, tonight?" asked The Cars.  It was a question that I couldn't quite answer, although I tried.  The question had come up before as my friend Kelly and I debated whether it was better to be the owner of a lonely heart (me) or have a broken one (her).  Yes was the first band we ever saw live, even though we didn't know most of the songs and I had no clue why the older people sitting next to me needed my binocular case to roll oddly sweet-smelling cigarettes.

In a way, however, it seemed that issue of loneliness, expressing it and coping with it had vanished from my musical tastes. I have a husband whom I love.  I have the twins and I am no longer alone. 

I really believed that loneliness would never crop up again until about three months ago when flying home from a client visit in Minnesota, listening to a series of songs which my friend had downloaded onto my iPod.  Most of the songs were good, but none of them grabbed me until I heard this:

And I do believe it’s true
That there are rocks left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

The song stunned me like a hand snagging the back of my shirt collar.  It whipped me around and focused my attention on something that had been bothering me since the boys were born.  Having everything that I ever wanted, it would be against my very nature not to worry about it being taken away. 

I bought the album, Plans.I found the same ideas stated more clearly in these lyrics, "Love of mine some day you will die/ But I'll be close behind/ I'll follow you into the dark."  As I listened and listened and listened, I realized that "love of mine" was broader than just my husband.  It meant the boys, too, and myself. 

I'm not a morbid person, at least I don't think that I am, but history has taught me that I listen to music to find solutions to problems, or at least identify them.  In an odd way, this is what I'm finding in Death Cab for Cutie.  I walk around the house humming, "I need you so much closer" from Transatlanticism.  And, so much of the time, even when I'm alone, I find it to be true.

One of the benefits of living near a college town is the music scene.  Going onto the DCFC website, I saw that they played a small, but storied, venue in this town back in May.  I've told my husband that if they come again, in 2008, that we'll be there.  We'll probably be the two oldest people in the audience, but there nevertheless.  We'll be together because, after all this time, I think that my friend Kelly was right.

It is much better to have a lonely heart than a broken one.  I know that, for now, I'm so lucky in having neither one.

** This was written for Julie's Hump Day HMMM.

Change of Season

Seeing pictures of Fall trees and first snowfalls reminds me of driving north to attend a yearly academic conference.  As the conference took place in Michigan in March, the drive there showed Spring slowly retreating as the miles accumulated.  On the drive back South, buds emerged from trees and leaves unfurled within a matter of hours.

So far, Fall has been slow in coming to our corner of the country.  It's been warm.  G. debated wearing shorts on Halloween.  The leaves have stayed firmly green far past the time they had changed and fallen last year.

It has not felt natural.  It's felt weird, as if the earth was shifting into a new phase and realigning itself.  I don't think it can be pinned to global warming.  Maybe to the drought?  I'm not sure.

********************

I've always been a morning person.  Sick of riding the bus in high school, I had my parents drop me off on their way to work.  As none of the classrooms were open, I would sit on the slick, clean floor with my back against my blue locker, reviewing homework or reading.  An occasional janitor would pass before the flow of people became steadier and my extended feet impeded traffic.  Only then, would I get up, stretch, and go to homeroom.

I loved the fresh start.  The feel of my skin in the mornings and the ease of being alone.  In the morning, the world seems to have fewer people in it. 

****************

Recently, however, I've been drawn to the late, late evenings, after everyone else in the house has fallen asleep.  I've been forcing myself to stay away late into the night with my computer on my lap and a blanket twinned around my ankles.  The problem is, I think, that the morning has become crowded with crying and showers and eating and noise.  I crave silence and my own time.

It's felt like a shift, like that of Summer unnaturally extending into Fall, and I'm not quite sure of its meaning.  I only know that I require that feeling of fewer people in the world and I'm having to find it where I am able.  What makes it better is that first trees have changed color and the leaves are finally falling. 

READ!!

A few weeks ago, I did the Library Thing Book Meme.

As I typed in all those books that I read, two things struck me. 

Number One:  I don't read that much anymore.  I read most of the books on that list before age 20 and remember them only in the most sketchy fashion.  My reading now-a-days consists of Ent.ertainment Weekly, blogs, and the New York.er, that is when the babies don't rip it to shreds first. 

Oddly enough, I didn't read that much fiction in graduate school either.  One of my most vivid memories from those years is of sitting in my office, grading stacks of student papers, and over-hearing a senior faculty member advising a student who had come to him for a recommendation to graduate school.  "I like to read," said the student.  "Well," said the faculty member, "you won't get to do much of that in graduate school.  If you really like to read, I would go into business where you'll have the money to buy books and the time to read them."

Have I ever mentioned that the faculty members in my graduate program were tremendously jaded?  And not all that well paid?  Even as that remark angers me a bit now, I have to admit that it has the ring of truth.  If only he also added, "and don't have kids.  Or twins.  Don't have twins."

Number Two:  Doing the book meme also brought home to me how much I wanted to have a book club.  However, I'm not good at face-to-face things.  Actually, to be honest, I suck at them.  By the time I get to the end of the day, I'm so tired that it's hard to drag myself out of the house.  If I manage to make a meeting, I just sit there waiting for someone to talk to me.  Oddly, nobody ever much does.  Maybe its the hole in my jeans?  Or the fact that I still carry my diaper bag, which smells of wet cheerios and butt paste.  Maybe I need to give these things more time than I give them, but I just don't have it (time that is).

I figured that I'd just stick to what I'm good at.  This computer thing.  So, Cat and I are starting an ONLINE BOOK CLUB.  I think that Cat's really nice to add my name to it, seeing as she's done most of the work.  Please check it out.  Our first book is Restless, by William Boyd, and discussion begins December 2nd.  I have to say....I'm excited.

Where do we go from here?

In her Hump Day Hmm, Julie Pippert asks us to answer the question of "where I'd like to go next."  The answer can be in the form of almost any type of goal - social, personal, political, professional, or cultural.  Having already decided days ago that I would address this question, I find myself having tremendous difficulty pulling words down to my virtual page. 

The truth of the matter is that I once had passionate goals which I pursued almost to the exclusion of everything else.  I wanted to be a tentured professor in a small college town.  I wanted to be published and respected in my discipline.  I wanted a husband.  I wanted children.  I wanted a home.  I wanted a car and people whom I could respect as friends.  I wanted to be creative.

As I moved from my twenties into my mid-thirties and then into my late, late, late thirties,  I achieved or lost sight of most of these goals.  But in so doing, I think that I also shifted focus.  I would like to say that I'm more aware of social or environmental issues.  However, other than the fervent desire to see Bush out of office immediately, that doesn't seem to be the case.  Rather than moving further afield, my goals have shifted from having myself as their immediate concentration, to the boys.

I want to see the boys happy.  I want to see them educated and well-adjusted.  I'd love for them to acheive as I did, academically, but without the pressure that I felt to succeed.  It would be fun if they learned to enjoy sports and I can't wait for them to begin to read.

It's probably pretty natural for my goals to shift from myself to my children, but it doesn't feel natural at all.  In not having any goals for myself anymore, per se, it seems like I'm giving up. It also seems like I'm edging closer and closer to seeing things from my parent's point of view. Sure, I'd like to advance at work, but that's unlikely and I'm in a pretty good spot.  I'd also like to improve our marriage and have a house without popcorn ceilings.  But I don't want these things desperately, anymore.

Not like the things that I want for the boys.

It's tricky, this having goals for other people.  I think that it's good, in a way.  I've seen too many of my friends and children of my friends stumble without some sense of the future to guide them.  But it's also frightening to want so much for somebody else and not to know where to draw the line implementing those desires.   I suppose, as the boys get older, that they will let me know and I, hopefully, will listen.

Book Talk

I don't have much to say, having just spent a brain-draining, exhausting, but completely enjoyable Saturday chasing the boys around the outside bits of our city's children's museum.  I thought that I'd just do this meme that I saw earlier today over at the Painted Maypole. 

Basically, the meme involves taking the top 106 unread books from Library Thing and indicate those that you've read (bold).  I've left off "didn't finish" because I'm strange about finishing books and also "are on your bookshelf" because I constantly purge my books.  There's more, but because I can't resist making some order of these seemingly random 106 books (other than a whole bunch of people never read them), I created my own categories:

Stuck With Out Of Sheer Literary or Academic Obligation
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
Great Expectations (I really don't like Dickens)
The Grapes of Wrath
1984
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Olver Twist
Guilliver's Travels
The Scarlet Letter
David Copperfield

Read for Class (Reasons Why I Became an English Major)
Catch-22
Wuthering Heights
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Iliad
Emma
Mrs. Dalloway
The Canterbury Tales
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Inferno
Sense and Sensibility
Mansfield Park
To the Lighthouse
The Sound and the Fury
Beloved
Lolita
Persuasion
The Aeneid

Stumbled Upon and Later Assigned for My Own Class
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Poisonwood Bible

Read Because I've Read Everything by Tolkien and Atwood
The Silmarillion
The Blind Assassin
The Hobbit

Never Heard of it Outside of this List
Guns, Germs and Steel
American Gods
Quicksilver
Anansi Boys
Angels & Demons
A People's History of the US
Cyrptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Collapse
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Freakonomics

Books I Am Alone in Loathing
The Time Traveller's Wife
The Kite Runner
The Corrections
Angela's Ashes

Books I Haven't Read and Wouldn't Mind Reading
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Reading Lolita in Tehran
The Satanic Verses
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Books I Haven't Read and Have No Intention of Reading
The Count of Monte Cristo
A Clockwork Orange
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Prince
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Northanger Abbey
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Gravity's Rainbow
The Three Musketeers
Foucault's Pendulum

Books I Read Too Young to Fully Understand
Atlas Shrugged
The Fountainhead
The Catcher in the Rye
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Books that Made Me Sad I Don't Belong to a Book Club
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Life of Pi
Wicked
The Historian
Love in the Time of Cholera
Les Miserables
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (wow!!)
The God of Small Things (double wow!!)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Slaughterhouse-Five

Just Read Because I Read Alot
Dracula
Brave New World
Dune
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Mists of Avalon
Watership Down
In Cold Blood
Treasure Island
The Once and Future King

Wednesday Matters

Knowing that I planned to blog on the flight from Charlotte, NC to Houston, TX, without an internet connection, I should have had the good sense to write down the exact wording of Julie’s Hump-Day hmmm.  Instead, all I have is a vague memory of wanting to write about what I do that matters.

I’m finding as I grow older, that this question is becoming more important.

In my 20’s and early 30’s, I really didn’t care about whether I made a difference or not.  What I really wanted to do was to succeed at my chosen profession, one which I believed I was truly called to do, in an almost religious sense.  I also wanted to earn enough money to replace my un-air conditioned car.

Eventually, and to the surprise of almost everyone, I ended up leaving this chosen profession for one which, although not as chosen, allowed me to maintain ties to my previous career and purchase a rather nice, totally air conditioned car.  With my career settled, or at least mostly settled, I focused on finding a home, a person to share it with, and, eventually, a family.

Well, we know how that turned out.

Home - yes.

Person to share it with - yes.

Family – not so easy.

As Chris recently described in her not-quite-manifesto, one of the hardest things about infertility is that it tends to consume everything that it touches.  Living with infertility is like living in a bubble.  You can see everything going on outside those plasticine walls, but you can’t touch it or engage in much contact at all.  Because your bubble protects as much as it isolates, you ultimately don’t really want to.

Recovering from infertility is like coming out of that bubble.  It’s the process of discovering other people and extending friendships to replace those painfully removed years earlier.  It’s starting to ask that question of how one might matter - not just to the wider world, but within a community and to a family.

Aside from the infertile aspect, this question has become increasingly important to me because I don’t believe that there is anything other than this world or the people that live in it.  When I think about dying only to reunite with those that I love in the arms of a being who is love, the image is so beautiful that it makes my heart break.  But everything I’ve seen or read or experienced makes me believe that Chris Haddon, in the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, said it best. 

Unfortunately, I don’t have the book here with me on the plane, so I’ll have to improvise.  One of his characters said that you die and are buried and your atoms and molecules mingle with and become those of the grass, and the tree and the sky.  And, that’s it.  You lack consciousness, but you're a part of the world.

In some ways, this is a comforting belief, but in other ways, it's not.  Mattering on a day to day basis to those around you is the only immortality available. 

Great responsibility comes with that belief.  It makes me want to make a greater impact, to do something to truly change the world.  That is, until I see my messy house, an inbox heaping with email, a child dragging a book, and wake up thinking of coffee.

Maybe this is a cop-out, but I don’t have the energy or the time to matter on an earthshaking scale, so I do it small.  I recycle.  I turn out lights.  I reuse bags at the grocery store.  I teach people how to write, so they can improve their lives.  I help others use technologies with which they can change the world.  I’m kind to my husband and rub his feet when they’re tired.  I raise my kids the absolute best that I can.  I feel that if I can raise kind, thoughtful, and loving people, who in turn, raise kind loving and thoughtful people, that I would have made a real difference.

I write it all down.

That is how I matter.

Stop, in the name of ?

In preparation for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the whole holiday season, I took my camera into the store for a cleaning on Wednesday.  Buying the entire cleaning, lessons, and warantee package was one of the smartest things we did when purchasing the camera.  Nobody's thrown the camera into the toilet, but we'll be able to traipse down and get a brand new camera when it happens....and it will happen.

This whole camera thing is relevant because it turns out that, this week, I wanted to take a picture.  And it didn't involve the twins.

They started appearing on stop signs around our neighborhood early in the week.  By Friday afternoon, they spread to the next neighborhood and I could go through five intersections without seeing a stop sign so unadorned.  There they sat like elogated index cards, over the "s", the "t" and between the "o" and the "p."

Maxi-pads on stop signs.

It's like some mysterious invasion.

And how does this occur to people?  Hmmmm...I have a maxi-pad, let's put it on a stop sign!

Whoo Hooo!!

Feeling Forty

On Saturday morning, we do one of two things, neither of them sleeping in.   The first option involves Cracker Barrel for breakfast followed by Target, because who doesn’t need a few things from Target on a weekly basis.  Alternatively, we venture to Blue Jay Point to play on the slides and take a walk down by the lake.  The option we chose depends entirely on the weather and our hunger level. 

This morning, we woke up starving to one of those hot, humid southern mornings, so to Cracker Barrel we went.  The breakfast progressed uneventfully as did the trip to Target.  We roamed Target, picking up diapers, baby toothpaste, baby cold medicine and crayons.  We tried to get Halloween costumes, as a cheaper alternative to the ones I already selected, but they were sold out.

What are Halloween costumes doing sold out in the middle of a hot, day in early September?  Who, other than me, the super planner, thinks of this?  Who? Who?

Thankfully, the checkout lines weren’t crowded, so we selected a young fellow and proceeded to check out.  Everything proceeded according to plan until he held up the baby cold medicine.

“Are you over forty?” he asked.  We are both 39.  We looked at each other awkwardly.

“Why do you want to know,” I snapped.  He smilled.  He said that he meant to say “over 21”, which we had to be in order to purchase the baby cold medicine. 

“Sure he did,” I said to G. later.  “He was actually thinking that we looked over forty.  That’s why he said it instead of over 21.” 

I don’t really care if we look over forty.  The truth of the matter, as G. and I decided later, was that we both felt over forty.  Let me say again; we’re both 39.  It bothers us that we feel older and I wondered why. 

During our twenties, we worked on ourselves, going to school, partying (in G’s case) and starting to work (also in G’s case). During our thirties, we focused on finding someone and settling down.  Because it took longer than anticipated (on both counts), we didn’t have what we wanted until our late thirties.  Throughout all of this, we still felt young.  It hasn’t been until recently that we started feeling, well, a little old.

I think that it might be, for the first time in both of our lives, that we’re surrounded by people who are younger than us.  Most parents with toddlers are younger than us.  The folks that we work with are starting to be younger than us. 

They say that the young make you feel young.

They’re wrong.

We either need to make some friends our own age, who also have toddlers, start volunteering at a retirement home, or just start accepting it.  We're almost forty and we'll be over forty soon.  For us, our forties will be about family and that's a good thing.

At least we're old enough to buy baby cold medicine.

Me Meme

When DD tagged me for this Seven Quirks/Habits about yourself meme, I did this little happy dance because she said nice things about me.  I'm a real sucker about nice things said about me.  In fact, I clean the bathroom whenever G. tells me I do it well, even though his efforts are always so much more meticulous than mine and I really don't like cleaning the bathroom. 

This meme is a tough one too, because I've been writing in this space for over two years.  After that amount of time, I'm wondering if it's even possible to come up with seven things that folks don't already know and might possible think interesting.

So, here are my Seven Quirks/Habits:

1)  I can't cook.  At all.  In fact, I once helped to make a batch of cookies which were still in solid-as-a-rock form a year after the baking.  I think that the lucky recipients were using them as door stops.  I do still cook from time to time, but it has to either be something fairly easy or a special occasion.

2) I'm allergic to shellfish.   No lobster.  No crab.  No shrimp.  I found this out when they gave me bunches of iodine for an x-ray during freshman year of college when I was in the hospital for a kidney stone.  I don't know whether kidney stones are the pain equivalent of labor, as someone once told me, because I didn't get to experience it.  I'll just have to take them at their word.  And yes, if you don't already know, that person was male.

3) I always keep my window cracked when driving in the car, no matter the weather or the drifts of snow that accumulate on my sleeve. This is partially, I believe, because I'm terribly claustrophobic and can't imagine being completely enclosed in a such a small space as a car without even a whisper of the world outside.

This is hard...I'm only at three? 

4)  I have a slight problem with closure.  I leave the caps and lids off of everything and will leave doors slightly ajar everywhere if they don't close on their own.  G. and I have two separate tubes of toothpaste - one for him (lid) and one for me (no lid).

5)  I can recite the first 18 lines of the Canterbury Tales in Middle English and frequently do so under my breath when bored.  I used to think that this was pretty quirky until people started quoting these lines to me whenever I mentioned that I used to study medieval literature.  The most memorable was some guy that I rode next to in a ski lift.

6) I can't stand noise that I can't control.  The pizza guy who leaves his base thumping in the driveway while he stands in our doorway handing over the pie and collecting money drives me nuts.  Absolutely, completely, totally, nuts.

7) I'm happiest without surprises.  People tend to feel pretty passionately about this issue.  If folks like surprises, they really like them.  The good bit about this is that the twins won't have anything on me if they turn out to be non-surprise type of people.  I know how to hide a birthday present, but good.

Okay ... tell me your quirks, please:

1) Stiletto Mom

2) Christy

3) Bittersweet Mama

Speler

Recently, Niobe asked her readers how they differed from the persona on their blog.  Although I didn't comment on the entry, my immediate response was "I can't spell."  Not on my blog and not in real life.  It's not that I have anything against spelling or people who spell correctly; I honestly can't understand all the fuss.

When called out on this outstanding non-talent, I usually deliver the same response -- that over fifteen years of grading student papers has eroded my ability to tell an incorrectly spelled word from a correctly spelled one.  This isn't exactly accurate and more than a little unfair to the learners.

The real answer is that I'm not a detail oriented person and spelling seems to be one of those details that consistently falls through the cracks.   Before hitting the "save" button on a post, I usually read it over a few times in order to try and catch any errors.   When I think that everything's correct, I click the button, only to read the post a few days later to find it riddled with misspelled words.   How did that happen?  I'm careful. I read voraciously.  I should be able to spell.

On Thursday, I gave a presentation to about 150 people for work and, in the middle of the presentation, in the absolute middle of it, a woman raised her hand.  Thinking that she had a question about my material, I acknowledged her.   "As an educator," she said, "I have to tell you that you have a misspelled word on that slide."

I was floored.  Completely and totally floored.  Now, I understand that misspelled words bother some people.  Presumably, they're like a fly in the ointment.  An irritant.  A thing out of place.  Misspellings can signify that the author didn't care enough about the work or the audience to spend the time proofreading the paper.   In regard to this presentation, however, this couldn't be further from the truth.  I read that presentation about 50 times.  Not only that, but I had no fewer than four people look at it.  One word slipped through, but it was enough for this person to use to humiliate me.

One of the reasons why I chose to major in English and go onto the Ph.D. in the field was because, as opposed to math and science, I saw this as a place where there were no "right" anwers.  As long as you used appropriate evidence, the text could mean whatever you saw in it, and intepretations differed only by degree.  Now, I realize that this is a very simplistic way of looking at the disciplines and I paid close attention to the specifics when I wrote literary criticism.  Equally, I would never overlook a vast amount of misspellings in student paper.  However, I find that, as the grammar and misspellings go, so does the rigor of critical thinking.   It's rare to find a paper that's been well thought out, but still has a plethora of misspellings.

Even though I have fantasies of Hen-Bug or Ty-Baby being one of those spelling-bee finalists on ESPN and respect the knowledge of languages that it takes to be really good at spelling, I have to admit that it's just not one of those things for me and I have a hard time seeing a scenario where it could be.  What do you think?  Can you spell?

First Lines

As seen on both Raising WEG and Moxie, I bring you my year in review as encapsulated in the first line of the first post of every month.  Despite the rough beginnings, it seems that we've found our way toward some sort of stability and peace, which isn't a bad way to start the new year.

January - "I feel guilty for hating bedrest."

February - "Since returning home on Wednesday, we've spent most of the time trying to customize the home for my unanticipated disability."

March - "All last week we were told that the boys would be sprung from the Special Care Nursery on Wednesday."

April - "Every day since the boys came home, I've started a new post in my head."

May - "As I type, there's a rather large baby sprawled across my chest with his head on my shoulder."

June - "I have two remarkably unphotogenic babies."

July - "Me to Neurosurgery: Why will you not call me back?"

August - "Every summer, we fly up to Connecticut to stay for a week in a beach house owned by George's parents and to visit with his family in general."

September - "Up to this point, I've always talked about "the babies" or "the twins."

October - "I've been thinking a lot about motherhood."

November - " I found these t-shirts in the Orlando airport and just had to buy them for the boys:"

December - "Friday has turned into my blog-reading and writing night."