Playgroup With Sylvia Plath

One Life To Live... Many To Read

2012-02-14T14:47:00.000-05:00

I finally finished reading the Steve Jobs’ biography. My boys gave it to me when it was released on my birthday. (Coincidence? I’m not so sure.) Fascinating, inspiring, insightful, and provocative. I don’t expect to ever read a more current biography. It was as if the final chapters were being written when I laid the book on my nightstand. And had I been reading it on an iPad, I almost would have believed it to be true.

That said, three months to read about one life is a long time. But let’s remember there was Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s tucked into that quarter. And let’s remember that Steve Jobs – the analog version between two hardback covers – weighs over two pounds.

So, for stints on planes, trains and automobiles, I opted to travel with lighter fare - by all definitions. But after watching the puzzle pieces of a familiar life unfold so dramatically in that book, I was drawn to other biographies – particularly those of contemporary lives. First up was Tina Fey. I mean really, how can you not read a book named Bossypants? Or for that matter, listen to a song called Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong? Or follow a blog titled Playgroup With…?

After Bossypants and all of its delights, I moved on to Coal Miner’s Daughter, the autobiography of Loretta Lynn. I’m not really a country music fan and can’t even say I’d listened to any Loretta Lynn. But after hearing her leave NPR’s Terry Gross nearly speechless more than once in an interview (find the link here), I knew I had to read it. And it did not disappoint.

It wasn’t until my next book that I noticed a pattern developing. Slim and I were reading in bed. (If that surprises you, then you’re obviously a new reader – welcome.) In a pattern that was cemented probably not long after the honeymoon, he reads aloud the titillating bits from The Economist and asks me what I’m reading.

“Um, Stories I Only Tell My Friends,” I said behind the anonymity of my blue pleather Kindle cover. But Slim pushed for more.

“It’s Rob Lowe’s autobiography,” I admitted.

“So Bossypants was too demanding?” he asked.

And perhaps that was it. I didn’t want demanding. My stack of someday reads includes biographies of Charles Dickens, Ronald Reagan, Charles Darwin, Flannery O’Connor, Louis Armstrong, a second volume on Theodore Roosevelt, Alexander Hamilton, Etta James, and Rudyard Kipling.

But I didn’t choose any of those. I went for three contemporary lives. I wanted to read about people that were if not of my actual era, bios that were of the stories and experiences I was living. I was drawn to books that were perhaps more about the living of a life than the achievement of a given life.

Maybe it's because I've taken myself off of the achievement merry-go-round that I feel an outsider to the men and women doing, leading, innovating, and giving their TED Talks on making a difference. But I know that much of real living happens in the pauses, commas and spaces in between the achievements.

I remember when I had babies, my mother told me about the biography of then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that had just been published. She apparently taught herself Russian while breastfeeding her twins. I wasn’t sure I could even hold a book while I breastfed.

Biography as a genre goes all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh etched on clay tablets in 18^th century BC. The stories advanced to include powerful members of the church, then royalty, and then Renaissance artists. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is considered the first American contribution to the field.

The earliest published female life story is harder to find. But the lists are littered with familiar names and achievements – Abigail Adams, Joan of Arc, Clara Barton, Susan B. Anthony and The Autobiography of Alice b. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (explain to me how that one works?) Of course the oft-cited best selling and most widely read of all female biographies? Anne Frank’s The Diary of A Young Girl.

I am sure that each of these women led remarkable lives and made incalculable contributions to history. But some days you don’t want to read about what it’s like to be a teenager living in a secret annex in Amsterdam. Some days you want to read about what it’s like to have a teenager living upstairs in the suburbs.

And that’s the box a well-done contemporary biography or memoir can check. These are people leading fantastically colorful lives – and yet they struggle with the social pressures of parenting, the anxiety of a child with a driver’s license, and pursuing their own goals all the while trying to quiet the unrelenting internal debate, “Am I doing it right?” and its close cousin, “What did I @#!* up today?”

Tina Fey, Loretta Lynn and Rob Lowe write as much about the parts of their lives that are universal as those that set them apart. Loretta Lynn talks about finding a quiet place to write – away from her babies – leaning against the outdoor toilet. Rob Lowe talks about the challenges and charms of parenting his own sons, who are now the same age he was when he starred in The Outsiders.

And this bit of parenting angst is courtesy of Tina Fey:

I thought that raising an only child would be the norm in Manhattan, but my daughter is the only child in her class without a sibling. Most kids have at least two. Large families have become a status symbol in New York. Four beautiful children named after kings and pieces of fruit are a way of saying, “I can afford a four-bedroom apartment and $150,000 in elementary school tuition fees each year. How you livin’?

In their classic guide about how and why we read, How To Read A Book, Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren describe the genre. “Biography, like history, can be a cause of practical, moral action. A biography can be inspiring. It is the story of a life, usually a more or less successful one – and we too have lives to lead.”

And we too have lives to lead.

Hmm. So I’ve got bios of Charles Darwin and Andre Agassi queued up next. I wonder which one I will Open?

Waiting for Leo

2011-05-03T13:55:00.000-04:00

When my children were small we read a lot. It passed the time and there was less guilt involved than watching Teletubbies. (Not that I’m down on Teletubbies, mind you. Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Po and Laa-Laa will forever be the Fantasia chapter of my early parenting days.)

We started with the classics – Big Red Barn, Pat the Bunny, Peter Rabbit, and our five copies of Goodnight Moon. Note to any future baby-shower invitees – the Margaret Wise Brown book is charming, but as a gift it is not exactly original.

Over the months and then years, our shelves sagged with board books, Shel Silverstein collections, pop-up books, and the requisite Spanish picture books – because it’s never too early, just ask the marketing team at Baby Einstein.

We owned one book that irked me every time I read it. Leo The Late Bloomer. Sure, it was amiable enough. A book about a tiger that can’t read, can’t write, doesn’t speak and is a sloppy eater. While all of the other cubs are hitting their developmental milestones, poor Leo is a late bloomer.

I remember thinking that this might be a comforting addition to the libraries of other parents, but it was taking up valuable space on my shelves from more sophisticated fare. My toddler spoke in paragraphs, would best any adult at jigsaw puzzles, and could hit a pitched ball while still in diapers. A first grade teacher recommended that he read books for blind children because his fluency and enunciation were so strong.

So when it came time to weed our shelves, I gave away our copy of Leo The Late Bloomer. Little did I know that ten years later I’d be checking the book out of my local library – having learned yet one more lesson from a picture book. “Be careful what you think of others because it will turn around and bite you in the ass.”

Sure our little games of competitive parenting start small with comparisons of gross motor skills, potty-training, and baby teeth. And then one day, every kid can roll over but the comparing and judging don’t stop. It just gets more insidious. No one says to you on the soccer sideline, “Wow, his enunciation is really good for a 14-year-old.”

No, instead the acquaintance next to you asks, “Do you think he’ll really be able to compete, with his size?”

I resisted the temptation to reply, “Do you think reading will always be difficult for your child?” And instead said nothing at all.

She’s right; my child is small. And so am I. I’m not even big in the places it would be fun to be big. Slim is slim, but tops out at almost 6’3”. So if I want to take credit for my son’s agility with the English language, I’d better be ready to own up to my hindering his stature as well. But the potential is there.

When you are a 14-year-old in our body and sports obsessed culture, potential doesn’t get you very far. There are mustache competitions for boys and bra shopping parties for girls. And then there are the countless tales of the kids who skip the showers after gym and sports to avoid showing that they’ve nothing to show.

We try to be patient and wait for Leo to bloom. Recently, my son came home with his measurements from a school health assessment. I held my breath waiting for Slim to say, “wow, I was over 6 feet in eighth grade.” Yes, it is an interesting observation, but not a helpful one.

And my husband said to our son, “I was bigger than my friend Jamie all through high school. And now he’s taller than I am.” My son’s eyes grew huge and all he could say through the smile was, “Really?” I nearly welled with tears of pride. It was a parenting moment of clarity.

And I was served my moment while crawling on my knees in the children’s department at the library this week. Leo The Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus is of course shelved next to his sequel (who knew?) Little Louie the Baby Bloomer, which is next to The Growing Story by Ruth Krauss. Seriously, I was just in the K’s – I was not specifically in the late bloomer section! (And why are all these stories shelved with the picture books, and not in the juvenile and young adult sections?)

And there, next to The Growing Story was Krauss’ masterpiece, The Carrot Seed. Even though our copy was packed away in the attic with my other favorites, I immediately took the book off the shelf and read it. A simple story of a seed that no one but a little boy believes will grow. He waters it, he weeds it, and one day a carrot comes up, “just as the little boy had known it would.”

Leo and The Carrot Seed are essentially the same story. So why did I hold on to one and quickly shed the other? Granted, I don’t usually care for anthropomorphic tales, but it was more than that. The answer is in the colorful pages of the books and the competitive games parents play on the sidelines.

The little boy actively nurtures his seed and gets results. Leo simply waits with an expression of increasing doubt for 23 pages. “Then one day, in his own good time, Leo bloomed!” He can do nothing to move the process along. More importantly, Leo’s mother can do nothing to force the bloom.

As a parent of a young child, it is easy to take pride in and credit for an early aptitude, rote memory or even a taught or purchased skill. But as our children get older and grow – or don’t grow – that competitive parenting game on the sidelines becomes one in which there are no winners. Every parent and child is waiting for something, or nurturing a seed of some sort. I can only polish my watering can and tend to my own weeding.

And just so you know, if Harper Collins publishes a new release, Leo’s Constitutional Growth Delay, it is not actually a new book. Or a new story. Or a new diagnosis. It’s just Leo. And I’m trying to be patient.

What's Yours Is Mine and So Is Mine...

2011-03-16T16:10:00.000-04:00

When my husband and I got engaged, the subject of banking and checking accounts came up. My happily married in-laws each gave us a piece of advice.

My father-in-law said, “Absolutely have one account. It’s just so much easier that way.”

My mother-in-law said, “Absolutely have separate accounts. It’s just so much easier that way.”

The exchange went from comic to conviction when my own parents said exactly the same thing.

Like most in the honeymoon phase, I was sure I had won the husband-lottery. The fact that we ended up with two bank accounts -- “ours” and “mine” just confirmed it. I even kept my own Visa card that I had paid off monthly since I was 16 (and henceforth paid using the “ours” account.) For a time, I handled our banking, paid bills, and have some vague recollection that I even completed our taxes one year.

Watching my account accrue just compounded my pride in being a working, wage-earning woman in America. It was everything I had been raised and educated to believe was my right and duty. The “mine” account paid for dinners out with friends, our vacations and even a master’s degree.

But, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Rosie the Riveter needn’t have felt their feminist poster-woman status threatened. In just a few years time, we were fortunate enough to have three children and one career that funded the household. Somewhere in a fog of baby wipes and inertia, it just happened. The “mine” account dwindled to almost nothing, while the pile of stroller accessories and Dr. Seuss books continued to grow.

Initially, it didn't bother me. Money has rarely been an issue in our relationship, and for that I know I am fortunate, but I will not call myself “lucky”. I subscribe to the idiom, “as you make your bed, so must you lie in it” – especially when it’s a double bed. Sure, my marriage and our default roles as breadwinner and wife may be traditional. But we both know that if I didn’t buy the pants, he wouldn’t have them to wear.

Most often, “our” money pays for something for “our” children – shoes, piano lessons, little league fees, or a new pair of ice-hockey goalie pads that rivals the price of my first car. If it isn’t for “our” children, it is likely for “our” house – new windows, an oil contract or the plumber. And trust me, I have no feminist-angst over contributing to the family’s plumbing budget.

But, there is angst over a “mine” expense when there is no “mine” money. Conscious or not, there's a momentary pause when I pay for something that is solely for me. Sometimes it can be as small as the new hardback book I want because I don't want to wait for at the library. Or it can be as major as the new 27” desktop computer I want because I want it.

Our media does a banner job of promoting a culture of “you earned it, you deserve it.” But is the unspoken corollary, “if you didn't earn it, you don't deserve it?” As a former “earner”, I struggle with this. Because when you aren’t cashing a paycheck with numbers and a few zeros on it, it can be pretty easy to focus on just the zeros.

And I’m not the only one. Many women – whether wage earners or not – find ways to make peace with the issues of money and relationships: One acquaintance (a doctor) pays for her clothes half in cash and half in credit to avoid debates with her husband. Another writes checks out exclusively to “cash” to muddy the trail. A third takes out $100 cash on the debit card with every visit to the grocery store. My favorite is the friend who buys something for her husband every time she buys an item for herself, so that the charges are “commingled.”

Sure, the devices may be new, but these conventions have been part of domestic relationships for centuries. Back in the 1500s, King Henry VIII’s fifth wife Catherine brought the fashion of decorative pins with her from France. Within no time, husbands across the Empire were handing over cash to their wives so they could buy the expensive pins without asking for money each time. Thus the behavior of don’t ask, don’t tell was learned. And the term “pin money” was coined.

Frankly, a shiny cloisonné pin does nothing for me. I can even buy clothes and go to lunch with friends guilt-free. But, every time I make an appointment to have my hair done, I pause. It is the one item for which I long for a “mine” account. Sure, a girl can get a cut and blow dry at a strip mall Supercuts for $36. But if a girl wants to have any sort of, we'll call them, "enhancements" along with that cut to feel like she’s come a long way, baby, well, baby's going to have to pay for those. As my mother-in-law warned, a “mine” account would just make it so much easier.

A Philadelphia real estate magnate recognized the need for such comely currency when he created the Henry G. Freeman Jr. Pin Money Fund in 1912. The lucky lady recipients of his no strings attached $12,000 annual purse? The First Ladies of the land. Barbara Bush used her pin money to support a favorite charitable cause and "to do something nice for the grandchildren."

There's been no announcement as to what Michelle Obama will be using her pin money for. Sure, there's the J. Crew card she could pay off and the organic fertilizer she needs for the garden. But I would suggest setting just a little bit aside for a keratin treatment or a blowout now and then.

(This piece originally appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer's Women's History Month Special Issue - March 16, 2011)

The Old West Rides Again

2011-02-23T11:51:00.000-05:00

When my son was in kindergarten, he had to fill out an “expert” list so that he would never be short of something to write about when it came time for “writers' workshop.” His six-year-old scrawl went like this: "I am an expert on The Magnificent Seven, bullfights, Stagecoach, John Wayne and snow leopards."

Obviously, there is no lack of testosterone in my house.

The first time my three boys watched The Magnificent Seven, my youngest asked if he could watch it again even before the credits rolled through Charles Bronson, Yul Brynner, James Coburn, Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughan and Eli Wallach.

Days later he was still mesmerized by those heroes on horseback. He wandered into the kitchen and asked, "Do you think if I wrote Chris, he'd write me back?" Confused at first, I finally figured out that he was talking about Yul Brynner's character, the leader of The Magnificent Seven -- or as the aficionados know, the leader of the Seven Samurai. I explained that as real as Chris may be to him, Yul Brynner died in the 1980s, so no, he was no longer pen pal material.

In the years since, my son has added High Noon, True Grit, Once Upon A Time In The West, and one of The Duke's later pictures, The Cowboys, to his cinematic saddlebag of westerns. He has no patience for the more complicated pop-western Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. And we’re holding back on the Coen brothers' first contribution to the genre, No Country For Old Men. At least for a few years.

Even though he has advanced to full third grade maturity, my son still returns to his first love. Last week, he came home from school mid-morning with a fever and stomachache. He got into his pirate pajamas and asked if he could have some crackers, lie on the couch and watch The Magnificent Seven. Perhaps not what the doctor ordered, but it was just what a nine year old needed.

Westerns – as a genre – are built for nine-year-old boys. And ninety-year-old boys. They are considered to be one of the few wholly original American art forms. They tell simple but grand stories of the frontier, making order out of chaos, good versus evil, and that intangible yet definitive goal of justice.

The films are set in worlds with very clear order, the story lines are obvious and clean, and the characters fit traditional and predictable archetypes. They are tales of courage, determination and loyalty. The women can be damsels in distress or brothel betties, but all deserve protection. The good guy wears a white hat and the bad guy black.

Yes, they can be that simple. And at the same time, The Magnificent Seven and so many westerns, can be as complex as you would ever need them to be to teach a boy about being a man. They offer action, enduring dialogue, dramatic storytelling, character development, and morality. Mythic America meets Shakespeare.

Sure, the greatest injustice my son sees in his world is someone budging in line to go out for recess. But Westerns have a rare ability to meet a viewer where he lives, and then to expand as he matures. Filling me in mid-movie one time, my son explained why the less-than-virtuous woman was being shunned by all but John Wayne, "See mom, the others don't know yet if they like girls, but Ringo does."

When my boys watch Westerns, it is a whole body experience. They stand. They sit. They jump up and down on the couch, cheering the hero during fight scenes or when the good guys take chase on horseback. Even down with a fever, my son sat right up when the seven horsemen had gathered and began their search for the bandit Calvera and his men.

"Oh, this is my favorite part," he said. "From here to the end of the movie." There was an hour and twenty-seven minutes remaining.

This year, the Academy of Motion Pictures is awarding The Magnificent Seven’s “bad guy” Eli Wallach with an Honorary Oscar to recognize “a lifetime’s worth of indelible screen characters.” Sure, Wallach has been in more than 90 movies – including one of The Godfather franchise, Mystic River and last year’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. But he is best remembered and most loved for his Western roles.

"I'm going to write him a letter," said my nine-year-old, as soon as he heard the news of the award. Never mind that Wallach played the hard-hearted bandit stealing from farmers. My son still desperately wanted to have some personal connection to that world of heroes and fighting for justice. Okay, maybe it has something to do with the guns and horses too.

Sure enough, just like a gunslinger’s promise that he’d be back, one week later a letter arrived in the mail for a 9-year-old boy from a 95-year-old Eli Wallach.

“Respectfully yours, from an old Mexican bandit.”

And that’s how lessons of kindness, integrity, and reverence are passed on, from one hero to the next. And then, of course, he mounts his horse and rides off into the sunset.

Ranting and Roaring Over The Tiger Mother

2011-01-18T23:13:00.001-05:00

Rarely – if EVER – does an article on parenting styles make national headlines.

Sure, there was the call to arms to stop shaken-baby-syndrome. Then we had Octomom and Kate Gosselin to make everyone feel better about their own childrearing choices. And the election brought plenty of fodder on the parenting front with the complicated lives of Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama.

Now let us welcome Amy Chua to the Parenting Hall of Fame in modern America.

For those of you not yet familiar with this latest media firestorm, Ms. Chua will be known as the woman who took the term “Chinese mother” from referring simply to ethnic heritage to an entire school of thought on discipline and parenting. Or as a friend calls her, “that woman who beats her children into superiority.”

Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother, the memoir of her experience as a “Chinese mother” was just released and was excerpted in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal. One week later, the piece is still the most read and most emailed item in the paper. It has elicited nearly 7,000 comments from readers – more than any other piece in the history of WSJ.com.

It’s easy to see why. Everyone has either been parented or is parenting. And everyone has an opinion on the topic. And headlines like “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” are meant to fuel our subconscious fears for our country and our children. (Which explains why the book is being marketed in China under the title American Mother.)

Because parenting is a personal and private endeavor, there are no annual reviews, bonuses or grades. So, we’re often left with comparing ourselves to the efforts, outcomes, strengths and weaknesses of other parents.

Two years ago, I was waiting in the airport security line with my kids when the mother in front of us turned to her teenage daughter and said through gritted teeth, “I can’t wait until we get home because I am going to kick your ass.”

My boys turned to me with wide eyes and red faces. I’ve never totally understood the phrase “discretion is the better part of valor,” but I was pretty sure that standing in my stocking feet holding my clogs was it.

But, invoking the old, “remember that mom in the airport?” was starting to lose its effectiveness over my boys. I was in need of a new crutch. And along came the Tiger Mother.

In her excerpt she extols the extremes of her parenting. Any grade lower than an “A” is unacceptable (excluding gym and drama, which, let’s face it, there’s meaning in that exclusion). Her daughters practice the piano or violin two to three hours everyday, including weekends, summers and vacations. Also, there’s no television, no computer games, no play-dates and no sleepovers.

Now, I hate sleepovers as much as the next mom (just ask my boys), but sometimes the mini-hockey champion of the world tournament does not end by nightfall and simply must continue through pancakes the next morning. And, I'm sure many would agree, some of the most enduring wisdom from a sleepover is the 11 pm call, "Come get me."

I read some of the juiciest bits of Ms. Chua’s piece to my family over dinner – conveniently just before the evening’s round of piano practice was to begin. Which we can now refer to as “piano practice for pikers.”

Ms. Chua’s tells of coercion at the piano with threats of no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents and no birthday parties for years to come. There’s kicking and thrashing thrown in and sheet music is ripped to shreds. She tells her then 7-year-old to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic. She calls her older daughter “garbage”, and she refuses a handmade birthday card from her youngest because “I expect better.”

Certainly, extremes raise discussion and controversy and perhaps boost book sales. And I mean to take nothing away from Ms. Chua’s love for and pride in her children, nor the accomplishments of the young women. But as another friend said, “It all sounds very exhausting. Who wants to listen to your child play violin for three hours a day? I can barely sit through a Holiday concert.”

The examples Ms. Chua uses and the tone with which she writes unfortunately take away from the interesting points she raises. First, she sets up her argument as Chinese or “immigrant” parenting versus “Western” parenting. Although not explicitly stated, it is abundantly clear that, in her mind, one is right and the other is wrong.

This is unnecessary, dangerous, and patronizing. She makes a strong case for “Chinese” parenting to attain certain goals -- quantifiable academic achievement and musical accomplishment. By her calculations these will lead to the ultimate goal, success. But a crucial, and perhaps very “Western” element is missing. An intangible we call "happiness".

Now I’m not espousing a regimen of “all play and no work make Jack an American boy.” I’m just raising the lesson that Americans have learned from a few cycles of prosperity. Success and happiness are not the same thing. Certainly, we hope that they are not mutually exclusive. But American parents expend real time and emotional energy trying to teach their kids the value of finding pleasure and pride – as well as a paycheck – in the work that you do.

Ms. Chua makes no allowance for such fragile aspirations in her parenting or that of others. On the contrary, every reference she makes to “Western” parenting drips with condescension and disdain. Granted, much of what she says may actually be true, but the biggest lesson I have learned as a parent is that of humility.

There is nothing more important to people than how they raise their children. And frequently how they struggle to do so. How one parents is inextricably a reflection of beliefs and culture. Ms. Chua offers some explanation for her unyielding approach: “Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything: Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.”

Her husband explains the Western stance. (Said husband, by the way, has been voted one of the country's "hottest” law school deans. Don’t know how The Wall Street Journal could’ve left that out.) “It’s parents who foist life on their kids, so it’s the parents' responsibility to provide for them. Kids don’t owe their parents anything. Their duty will be to their own kids.”

Chua’s reaction? “This strikes me as a terrible deal for the Western parent.”

Agreed, but the notion of raising my children to believe that they “owe me” is even more unseemly.

Apparently it runs strong in the Chua family. Ms. Chua writes of coming in second place in a history competition as a child. After the awards ceremony, her father said to her, “Never, ever disgrace me like that again.”

She credits Chinese parents with recognizing “that nothing is fun until you’re good at it.” She notes that many American parents allow a child to give up when something becomes difficult, whereas a Chinese parent will not. She reasons that rote repetition and more practice will lead to success, which leads to praise, admiration, satisfaction and confidence.

I’m rolling along and agreeing with her on this point. Rooting for the kid, rooting for the parent, loving the struggle that leads to the joy of mastering something, and then she blows it. And reminds us that she is a “Chinese mother” and not a “Western” parent. “This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more,” she says.

The debate over parenting styles was certainly on my mind when I read another piece this week called Social Animal: How the new sciences of human nature can help make sense of a life. (Obviously, I cannot be burdened with too many play-dates, sleepovers and three-hour piano practices when I have so many non-essential articles, books, and reality television shows to ponder.)

In his New Yorker piece, David Brooks synthesizes some of the latest studies on reason, intuition, connecting and happiness. He couches these complex scientific theories and results in a fictional tale, because to “Western” readers, story, characters, people and relationships are powerful things.

“The building blocks of his happiness had little to do with the lines on his resume,” the fictional Harold observes. “What the inner mind really wants is connection.” Brooks backs that up with science, citing research that found “joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income.”

No surprise, findings show that the endeavors that contribute most to happiness are those we do together -- "having sex, socializing after work and having dinner with friends." In Brooks' piece, Harold realizes that “the things that didn’t lead to happiness and flourishing had been emphasized at the expense of the things that did."

It was actually my boys who made the connection between Ms. Chua and a favorite movie, Akeelah and the Bee. When the contest is down to just two spellers, Akeelah Anderson and Dylan Chiu, they take a water break.

In the men’s room, the Chinese American father says to his son, “If you lose to that girl, you’re second place your whole life. No way, you hear me? No way.”

In the ladies’ room, Akeelah looks in the mirror and says to herself and her deceased father, “Pretty good, huh?”

We just might need to watch that one again this weekend. Right after we finish Minuet in G.

All I Want For Christmas Is...

2010-12-14T13:43:00.001-05:00

When I started this blog, I promised myself (and my four readers) that I would not write any posts about my laundry, what to make for dinner, or how long the lines are at Target. (Because, really, isn’t that what Facebook is for?) I’m not interested in hearing about someone else’s domestic minutiae or the logistics of the care and feeding of their children. So why would anyone be interested in mine?

But sometimes, as a parent, and particularly as a parent in December, September and May-June, all you’re left with is care and feeding and domestic minutiae.

The saga of my Fall started with the diluvial rains we experienced the last night of September and has ended with me getting a Christmas present I never knew I wanted.

Like any good domestic adventure, this one began with a drip – right over Thing Three’s head while he was practicing the piano. A quick sprint to the bathroom above proved that no, the pipes were not leaking, but indeed the second floor ceiling was. A trip to the third floor attic showed a knee-wall paint job rippled with water waiting to escape.

Expecting that I might not be the only one with water issues, I called my contractor to reserve my spot in line for the morning. (And, you know he’s a keeper when given the modern marvel of caller-ID, he still picks up.)

Somewhere in the 7-inches of rain and attendant winds during the night, we lost power. But, Slim’s keep-the-dream-alive aging athlete’s body still woke at 5:15 for men’s ice hockey. His dreams of greatness were short-lived, when he discovered the source of our troubles. A large tree had been uprooted and had come to rest across our dead-end street, blocking all possibility of exit.

Still, in those magic moments before sunrise loved by men’s hockey die-hards, Slim put his bag away in the basement and stepped into 8 inches of water.

Daylight brought more excitement. Dylan Thomas need not have worried, the tree did not go gently into that good night. It brought down the power lines, the transformer box and the entire utility pole to a grassy resting spot next to my driveway.

My boys (big and small) got to use a chainsaw to cut back enough of the tree to get out of our driveway. A neighbor let us drive across his lawn to leave the street, and the saintly contractor sent over a pump and a generator to empty the basement.

Even the roofer showed up to give me his diagnosis. He was happy to be avoiding his own domestic flood plane – where he was supposed to be hosting his brother-in-law's wedding on his lawn the next day. (Let’s recall those 7 inches of rain.) As my feet sank into my backyard, I felt like I might be the lucky one.

“You see that roofline up there?” the roofer says, as he points to my third-floor attic. “You ever been up there?”

I’m uncertain whether to be flattered or insulted that he thinks that my 5-foot, suburban mother self, might be found on a three-story rooftop. He explains that that’s where the water is getting in, and he’ll happily tarp it for me until it can be repaired.

So, by day’s end, we had a downed power pole on the lawn, a tarped roof, and the contents of our basement drying in the yard. Including 47 linear feet of Astroturf (Thing Two’s beloved birthday gift.) Can you hear the Sanford & Son theme song? (By Quincy Jones, by the way.)

After two days of cold showers and “family time” around candles and flashlights, the utility company arrived. They cleared the tree, untangled wires and freed the downed pole. I was optimistic that our power would be restored imminently if not immediately.

“Uh, ma’am. I have bad news,” the crew’s foreman says. “That’s a private utility pole.”

Sure private property, no-trespassing, I get that. But a private utility pole?

“Yes, ma’am you apparently own this pole, so we’re not going to be able to connect your power until you get a new pole installed.” In disbelief, I ask this fine employee of the utility company, who, if not the utility company, might someone contact to install a private pole?

“Oh, ma’am I have no idea.”

On the third day, another crew from the utility company arrives with their bucket trucks, saws, and service equipment. A new foreman – Slanker (seriously, that’s his name) – assures me that, indeed, I am the owner of my own (downed) utility pole.

I take solace vacuuming the remaining water from my basement using the generator that’s been left in my yard. I expect having a generator is like having a label maker – you find yourself looking for excuses to use it.

Soon, Slim appears and begins shouting what I hope is good news over my janitorial symphony of the wet-dry vac and the generator. “You know Slanker out there? He used to coach the Bantam team before they switched rinks. He’s got some names for a new pole.”

Of course. All hopes of getting my power restored could rest in the hands of youth sports. So my new friend, Coach Slanker, gives me his power pole connections, and then says, “I could probably jury-rig something to get power to your house.”

Under normal circumstances, you do not want the terms “jury-rig” “power” and “your house” to be used in the same sentence. But I own my own utility pole. These are not normal circumstances.

By nightfall, Slanker’s team had engineered a contraption of pulleys, cinches and ropes tied to various trees to hold up the rotted pole. We had lights, heat and were even ready to relay the Astroturf in the basement. Thing Three was repositioning the regulation hockey net when a brown slime oozed from the metal frame.

“Ooh, jeez, I hope that doesn’t stain the Astroturf,” he said. Truer words my friend, truer words.

Before we move on, I’d like you to consider the things in your own home that were originally meant as “temporary” but through inertia became “semi-permanent.” Like that case of toilet paper that served as a coffee table for months in a New York apartment. “Just throw that weed-beast fabric wall-hanging from college over it and no one will know,” one of you might have said.

Well, at my house, the blue tarp on the roof and the utility pole held up with ropes crisscrossing the yard became part of the scenery while we waited for bids, permits and scheduling.

Things finally came to a head on a recent sunny afternoon. I returned from the grocery store to discover that Slim had our 13-year-old driving my SUV to haul tarps of raked leaves from the backyard to the front.

My husband beamed with pride as he called out to his first-born son, “and be careful driving around the low ropes holding up the utility pole.” (I realize that this scene gives some credence to the notion that I might be found on my rooftop.)

It was time to take action.

On the day of installation all the stars seemed to be aligned. The crew arrived with a new pole just as the roofers were leaving with their ladders. And then the doorbell rang.

There in his regulation orange vest was Steve from the township. Here to confirm that I was indeed installing my own private utility pole.

“I have some bad news ma’am. I backed in to your mailbox with my truck. We’re going to have to replace that.”

I’m sure that Steve from the township has no idea how close he came to making a grown woman cry over a standard-issue mailbox post.

Wishing you a little less excitement this December. But, if you find yourself needing a utility pole, I know a guy who knows a guy.

(I'm pretty sure he's attaching a bright red holiday bow here.)

1985 -- A Great Song and A Great Year

2010-11-18T23:56:00.001-05:00

I have always loved listening to music. I listen to old music, new music, pop music, show tunes, rap, Latin, classical, and the much-maligned adult contemporary. I love to hear what’s new and I want to know what other people are listening to.

Of course, I made mix-tapes in high school and college, and I'll even be so bold as to say I still make a pretty mean mix-CD today. When you hear songs on the radio, that’s music and a message others are selling to you. But when you take the time to handpick songs, then that mix, conscious or not, says something about the way you see the world and yourself. A music mix is like emotional carbon dating.

So, imagine my thrill when for my birthday last month my thirteen-year-old made me a mix-CD. Okay, so he was a few days late and he cut the song list too small so it keeps sliding out the case. But he listened to and thought about music. He arranged 15 songs in a particular order. And he gave it to me.

Perhaps jealous they hadn't thought of it themselves, my younger two were quick to dismiss his song choices for their suburban mother. They paid no mind to the Ike and Tina Turner or UB40 selections but moved right on to today’s chart toppers.

"Seriously, Ke$ha?" one said.

"You put Eminem on a CD for mom?" asked the other.

"What's wrong, you don't think I like Eminem?" I asked him.

"It's just a little inappropriate for you," my nine-year-old told me.

While I appreciated the concern for my vulnerable ears and the moral high ground emanating from the backseat, I’d frankly heard it all before.

It was actually 25 years ago this month, when the music industry bowed to pressure from Tipper Gore, other political wives and the National Parent Teacher Association and began labeling music that contained explicit material. The “Tipper Sticker,” which evolved into the Parental Advisory label was born.

The debate raged that fall – over album covers, videos, backmasking, and explicit song lyrics – particularly those of “The Filthy Fifteen” – songs from Prince, Sheena Easton (?), AC/DC, Madonna, Def Leppard and Cyndi Lauper. The hearings in the capital brought out Frank Zappa, John Denver and Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider. (Such star power wouldn’t be seen again in the chambers until Stephen Colbert told Congress this fall that farm work “is really hard.”)

People took sides on the Senate floor, in the recording studios, and in my childhood home. Even though my sister already owned the requisite leg warmers, headband and satin shorts, my mother would not let her buy Olivia Newtown-John's album, Let's Get Physical. And my father was not a fan of us singing along with The J. Geils Band to (Angel Is A) Centerfold as he drove us to our parochial school.

But sing along and listen away we did. With our radios, our friends, our records, our cassette tapes and our Sony Walkmans. We wanted our MTV and we got it.

Watching the popular 1984 music video We’re Not Gonna Take It is still entertaining and now comically nostalgic. The dad screams, “What do you want to do with your life?” And the buttoned-up pre-teen with Yale and Stanford pennants on his wall says, “I want to ROCK” before morphing into Dee Snider, hair icon of the decade (which is, actually, really saying something).

So, 25 years later, Dee Snider spends time raising money and awareness for the March of Dimes through Bikers for Babies. And I have not-so babies in the backseat singing along to Usher, Kid Cudi, Katy Perry, Lily Allen and Jay-Z. Some of it’s good; some of it’s awful. Some would be laughably explicit, if they weren’t also crude. And my kids love it all.

We talk a lot together about the music and the artists. We play “name that tune.” We decipher some of the lyrics and we leave others alone. They own a few CDs with the parental advisory label, and they download some “explicit” songs from iTunes.

But every time, material is marked “explicit” or has an advisory label, it forces me to investigate, ask why, and make the decision myself. Perhaps just as it was intended those many years ago, the label raises a flag and actually calls on me to make a decision as the parent.

I know that my kids listen to more without me, and that’s okay. I don’t believe that pop or rap will cause them to wake up in Vegas and “shake the glitter” from their clothes or think that domestic abuse is okay. No more than I bought into Madonna telling me “the boy with the cold hard cash is always Mister Right.”

Yes, a remarkable amount of today’s music contains depictions of violence and sex. I say “no” to some and “yes” to others. I change the station a lot. Music has always been a generational defining line. I tell them they need a little Van Morrison and the Clash. And they tell me what I need.

“Mom, you would love this song because it’s about The Flinstones,” my youngest eagerly told me one day. Sure it is. Because the refrain goes like this, “call me Mr. Flinstone, cause I can make your bed rock." Wilma would've loved that one.

This week, I was the guilty party peddling inappropriateness when I brought up rock legend Meat Loaf in conversation and my children replied with disgust, “What is that?” I decided the situation needed to be remedied immediately.

And let me assure you. No matter how great you remember Paradise By The Dashboard Light sounding in the women’s ice hockey locker room during college, it is a decidedly different experience while driving your three young children to school at 7:45 in the morning.

Meat Loaf sings, “Ain’t no doubt about it, we were doubly blessed – cause we were barely seventeen and we were barely dressed.” I ended our mutual discomfort, when my oldest said, “This is terrible! What is the deal with the baseball announcer?”

No matter the alarm, fear and anger raised by Tipper Gore and her Parents Music Resource Center 25 years ago, the changes they brought are probably just about right.

No music was or is censored. Artists still create what they want and businesses still sell it. And the parental advisory label does just what it should. It announces to consumers, corporations, artists, children, and to parents themselves, that the ultimate authority in the life of a child is the parents.

While he actually spoke in support of the record companies in 1985, John Denver’s Senate testimony speaks to me today:

“The problem has to do with our willingness as parents, to take responsibility for the upbringing of our children. To pay attention to their interests, to respond to their needs and to recognize that we, as parents and as individuals, have a greater influence on our children and on each other than anything else could possibly have.”

Now I’m just waiting for Weezer’s latest single to start climbing the charts. The refrain goes, “Smart girls, never get enough of those smart girls, smart girls.”

My Child, My "Friend"

2010-10-27T10:31:00.000-04:00

Since this post is largely about sharing things online, here are two images that warrant such treatment.

Sure, that's one way to generate interest in a car, but here's another.

And now, back to the regularly scheduled post.

After months of discussions, deliberations and negotiations, I finally gave in.

I let my oldest child join Facebook.

I had spent the past two years telling him it’s completely unnecessary, it’s a waste of time, it’s more appropriate in high school or college, and that it’s just one more playground of vulnerability. I still hold every bit of this to be true.

I am also, actually, very glad that he is on Facebook.

As a thirteen-year-old in his last year of middle school, my son has a veritable lifetime of on-line exposure and virtual social networking ahead of him. And yes, as we’ve seen over the past months, that exposure and those interactions can be hurtful, dangerous and even tragic.

There are middle schoolers caught distributing explicit photos of themselves or others with their cell phones. There are high schoolers expelled for bullying on Facebook. There are graduates with job offers rescinded because of pictures others posted of them online. There are employees who have lost their jobs because of their blogs. And there are individuals who have taken their own lives because their privacy was no longer theirs.

That’s why I’m happy to have my teenager experiment and make mistakes while the computer sits on a desk steps from the kitchen table rather than in a dorm room hundreds of miles away.

We start our kids on bicycles with training wheels, we read to them before they can sing the alphabet, and we require them to have a learner’s permit before putting them behind the wheel of a car.

Yet many parents think nothing of handing a child a laptop and telling themselves, “it’s educational.” (I’m sure the parents of the Duke co-ed whose PowerPoint presentation on the sexual attributes of her 13 partners did not find the viral sensation “educational.”)

I think lessons about the responsibility and power that can come with technology and social media should be learned and practiced at home first. (Same goes for the privilege and dangers of alcohol, but that’s an issue for another day.)

For an adolescent, there’s the initial thrill of “joining” Facebook. You’re a member of something. You’re wanted. You have friends. In fact, if you are thirteen, you have hundreds of friends. Overnight.

You get to say things. Funny things. Dumb things. And sometimes really, really dumb funny things.

I joined Facebook a few years ago largely as research for an article. But I also knew I was joining to be there first, before my son wanted in.

Like most parents I know, I let him join Facebook on the condition that he not only had to be my “friend” (thanks for that bit of generosity there, son), but also that I be granted complete access to his page if I ever asked for it. We set up the account together and talked through each of the privacy options that came up.

Obviously, the questions raise the issues of protecting children’s safety on the internet, the sexual exploitation of minors, and identity theft. Those were the easy ones.

The more significant conversations were about taking responsibility for one’s online identity and behavior and understanding the meaning of privacy and a private life. And just as important, respect for the privacy and private lives of others.

Sure, Facebook, texting, instant messaging and other social media sites are more arenas in which students can bully, tease and hurt each other.

I assert that the opposite is also true. It is easy and powerful to write “great game today” on someone’s Facebook page. And it can be supremely validating when an older schoolmate or a girl writes on your page, “Yoooooo! So happy you’re here.”

Some parents and schools decry that students feel safer bullying online

because it is faceless and takes just a few keyboard strokes and a click of the mouse.

But what of a student who feels safer standing up for him or herself online because it is faceless? From simple statements of “likes” and “dislikes” and the clever or not-so-clever status updates, each is a valuable exercise in self-expression.

I watched as my son updated his “friends” that he had completed his homework and was moving on to a favorite television show. (Let’s accept that why anyone needs to know this – or what my “friends” have just purchased at Costco – is beside the point.) Within an hour he’d amassed all kinds of comments passing judgment on his choice of entertainment.

At the lunch table, he might have been stunned into silence and personal doubt, but with the benefit of a screen and a deep breath, he was able to spout back in his own defense and smile.

Knowing that technology will spread into nearly every corner of my children’s lives as they get older, I expect that they will feel very at home online.

And home is where I want them to learn that friendship is a human relationship, not a technological transaction. And that privacy is a gift to be guarded and respected, not a setting on a computer.

Losing My Innocents

2010-10-15T11:00:00.000-04:00

Of course I knew it would happen. I have three boys. I’m not in denial. I just kept thinking, “They’re so young. Does it have to happen so early?”

First, it was my oldest son up in his room. Alone.

The other day, I was cleaning out my middle son’s backpack. There it was at the bottom of his school bag.

Then, the postal service delivered a thick envelope for my husband. It didn’t actually say what was inside, but I knew.

One by one, I’m losing the boys in my house to J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord of The Rings. It started with the paperbacks from our own shelves, then the audio books, extra copies checked out from the library, and now Netflix DVDs of the Peter Jackson masterpieces. I thought the tales might be a passing fad in our house, but their pull and power seem to get stronger.

Back in college when I moved to China for a semester, my now husband told me he wanted to give me a gift to remember him by while I was halfway around the world. He then presented me with The Lord of The Rings trilogy in paperback – plus the prequel, The Hobbit, to get me started. That should have been my first hint to the whole Mars and Venus debate.

But, I hadn’t read the stories and was eager to find clues to the deeper meaning of our relationship that were surely written within. I read away – all 1,646 pages (excluding appendices). And no clues emerged from the depths. Just Gollum and Smaug and other man-beast-amphibian type creatures.

The books did eventually unlock one mystery for me. Like, why I had so many male suitors to my Chinese dorm room. We’d have tea, make vocabulary flash cards, and practice our Mandarin accents. Eventually, every time, they’d find the way around to asking, “Can I borrow your Return of The King?”

Yes, all those adventurous American college boys halfway around the world wanted a little piece of The Fellowship. They and more than 150 million other readers – making it the second best-selling book of all time, just behind Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

As if the written words weren’t enough, New Zealand director Sir Peter Jackson renewed and deepened the spell cast over men and boys by Lord of The Rings – or LOTR to its fans – with his big-screen version of the trilogy released in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

Slim and I walked out of the first installment together, both nearly speechless. He finally mustered the words to say something akin to, “I think that was the best movie I’ve ever seen.” I was still trying to wake myself from a 2 hour 18 minute stupor of incomparable boredom.

The husband of a friend uses his VHS (!) tape of the movie to lull himself to sleep at night -- like the soothing lullaby of a trusted storyteller. His trusted, soothing wife waits about five minutes and then turns it off.

Sir Peter and his shire-mates are hard at work on the two-part film of The Hobbit. The movie’s production is rumored to be the most expensive of all time. And that was before this month’s fire ripped through Jackson’s studio of miniatures used to create scenes and special effects for the films. Mind you those are miniatures, not Gandalf and Frodo dolls.

Yes, I get it. Boys love fantasy and a good adventure story. But why these more than any others? And why do they still appeal almost exclusively to male readers, when girls have been borrowing from the fantasy bookshelf for years?

The answer is apparently the only simple thing about Tolkien’s complex world.

“Basically, it’s a men’s club. A very interesting one, but a men’s club,” says Anita Silvey, the premier authority on books for children and young adults. “Children always like to see themselves reflected in a book – there has to be a role for them to play. This is a cast of all male characters, with women playing only very minor roles.”

It shouldn’t surprise you that there are all kinds of websites with games, wikis, role-playing, and quizzes dedicated to the lore of LOTR. In the “Which Lord of The Rings Girl R U?” quiz, I landed Galadriel. I don’t care if Tolkien did consider her “the greatest of elven women.” If she doesn’t end up with Viggo Mortensen, I’m not interested.

Silvey says that Tolkien’s mastery of the genre and the English language has also bolstered his tales’ endurance. “He set the highest standard of fantasy for anyone in the twentieth century. So it’s no surprise that readers who don’t normally want a fantasy world are perfectly happy to live in that fantasy world.”

Which explains why Thing One, who has no patience for the fantastical and make-believe, will gladly trade the action of a game of men fighting for the ball on one channel for the tale of men fighting for a ring on another.

Completing The Lord of The Rings series is no small feat for any reader. But for a child or a maturing reader, the accomplishment can be a milestone. “A child who finishes Tolkien knows that all of literature is open to them,” says Silvey. “It is one of those books that changes the way you look at the world. And those are very rare.”

That sentiment has me warming to the fact that Thing Two has taken to the books after resisting the series for years. “In reading, you are looking for the right book, for the right child, at the right time.” Silvey says that many readers attempt the series a number of times before they are ready. “And then one day, you think I am really ready to go on this journey with them. And with The Lord of The Rings you’ve got to be prepared to go all the way to the end.”

And that explains why a friend of mine calls The Hobbit a gateway drug.

Mr. Tolkien ends the first book – which, like so much of fine literature, began as a bedtime story for his children – with a blend of inspiration and reassurance to which most parents can only aspire. “You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

As a mother of three little fellows in the wide world only too eager to be part of an epic journey to Middle Earth, I am considering adding the book to the stack on my night table.

“I envy anyone who can read it for the first time,” says Silvey.

Then again, maybe I’ll just read Jane Eyre for the fourth time.

"Phineas and Ferb are Making a Title Sequence"

2010-10-07T14:36:00.000-04:00

October. School is fully back in session and routine has returned. There’s homework, soccer games, hockey practice, piano scales, and that shoebox diorama on inventions.

Which explains why I hear so many people saying, “I miss summer.” Or, “I’m ready for school to be out already.” Or even, “I miss the long, lazy days together.”

But I wonder, is this not just a wee bit of revisionist history?

Do many families today really spend their summer mornings chasing tadpoles, nights catching fireflies and afternoons reading on the porch with a lemonade – purchased from the neighborhood (organic) lemonade stand, no less?

Yes, I have done each of these things with my children. But not all in the same summer.

Like those of many of my friends, my summers tend to start and end strong. There’s a little fishing, summer reading, some sandcastles and maybe a ceramics camp in June. We usher out the season with apple picking, a day in New York, the dreaded trip to the zoo, and the reappearance of that pesky summer reading.

That leaves days and sometimes weeks in between when I find myself staring at three brothers, pleading, “Go outside and do something. Play something, build something, just do something.”

By this time, they are likely ensconced on the couch fighting over the remote control. “But mom, we were just going to watch Phineas and Ferb.” Sure, they want to stay inside to watch a show about brothers who go outside to play something, build something and do something.

And who wouldn’t, the show is fantastic. The hit Phineas and Ferb – about two brothers intent on making the most of summer vacation – has won an Emmy and has been rated the #1 animated show among kids and tweens.

Of course it’s animated. Because as everyone knows, it’s much easier to depict fantastical things using cartoon characters rather than real people. Like a boy who wakes up every morning of the summer and says, “I know what we’re going to do today.”

One of the first things my boys say in the morning is, “what’s for dinner?”

But not Phineas and Ferb. These stepbrothers with pointy heads and green hair usually say goodbye to their mother at the beginning of the show, proceed to invent, create, build, travel, and solve in their backyard and beyond for the remainder of the day – or the 22 minute episode – to greet her again just before the credits roll.

Surely, I am not the only parent of children less ingenious, motivated and productive than Phineas and Ferb Fletcher. Asking their mother how she does it is impossible. Not only is she animated, she’s always busy getting her hair done plus she plays triangle in a free-form jazz band. So I talked to her creators instead.

“There’s so much more competing for kids’ attention these days with computers, video games and the internet than there used to be,” agrees Dan Povenmire, a co-creator. “We are always encouraging our kids to go out on their bikes, or draw or color instead of watching television.”

Feeling confident that these creative giants and I struggle with the same parenting challenges every day, I pushed further. Do Dan and his creative partner Swampy Marsh think that the days of unscheduled summer wandering and adventuring are over?

No, they’re not over. But it’s harder now. “Kids need to be given the time and the space and tools to be bored and then be creative,” says Swampy.

I am then reminded that during his summers, Dan’s mother let him drape the living room with black fabric to use as an outer space background. He would then hang model spaceships and film movies with his Super 8 camera. (I decide against mentioning the cardboard boxes and rolls of duct tape I’ve given my children to enhance their summer experience.)

For his part, Swampy grew up in a “large blended family” and spent his summers outside “exploring” and taking part in lots of “different activities” in order to have fun.

The loose translation of their youth goes something like this, “mother gets out the way, boys find something to do, don’t get hurt and return for dinner.” Of course, Dan and Swampy have turned that into a global creative franchise, I’m just looking to get through a few long days.

One of my greatest frustrations as a parent is that in the absence of scheduled activities, arranged play-dates or specifically required tasks, my kids seem to struggle with what to do next. So I ask, WWLFFD? What Would Linda Flynn-Fletcher Do?

The key to her character is not her great hair, her boundless patience or her admirable involvement in the Mexican Jewish Cultural Festival (Oy-lé! – seriously, you should hear the song). After reviewing several episodes, I see that the real gift she gives to her boys, from my seat on the sofa, is to leave them entirely to their own devices.

Surely this is something I can at least strive for. And, after reviewing several months of my own mothering episodes, I see I’m well on my way.

Just last week I came down to find that my youngest had gotten up at 6:30 so he could have a little time to read before school. “Now that summer’s over I never have enough time to read,” he said. Right. And what fine piece of literature is the boy making time for before third grade calls? The Encyclopedia of Immaturity.

It should come as no surprise that this is the child who extolled to me the virtues of the game created in a vacuum of parental supervision, Sting Pong.

“Well, it’s like ping pong but you play it with no shirt on and if you win the point, then the other guy turns around and you get to hit the ball at him as hard as you can. And, so you see, it ‘stings’ so that’s why we call it ‘sting pong.’ And hopefully it leaves a mark.”

Sure there’s college prep, and then there's frat prep.

The absence of an overly involved mother has encouraged my older two to take their inventiveness to the great outdoors. They have spent many a summer day cavorting at what Rhode Island has deemed “the dirtiest beach in the state.” This sorry state of environmental affairs surely only enhances the mystery and pleasure boys find in the cool bay where they play “Proof.”

One boy dives down to the bottom of the bay while the others watch him from the dock. When the swimmer emerges from the deep, he must hold in his hand "proof" that he reached the bottom.

The intricacies of the game deepened this past summer. In the latest iteration, the diver emerges from the deep holding "proof" of the dive, and then he proceeds to fling this handful of mud, seaweed, pebbles and sludge onto the boys watching from the dock. The spectator hit with the most murk is the next diver.

And the name of this mentally taxing game? Clearly television has taught them valuable lessons in marketing. "Proof Extreme," says Thing Two. No surprise then, that this is the child who presented me last week with his own sketch of Phineas and Ferb.

I’ve accepted that unstructured, creative adventuring won’t happen every day in my house and that it probably won’t spawn a hit television series either. But, I realize that a little bit of cultivated boredom can go a long way in rounding out a childhood.

And when I look out my kitchen window, I swell with a certain kind of pride that the boys are out there making their own fun – and I didn’t even have to lock the door. Just don’t tell my pediatrician that the game is called “who can lasso the guy on the bike while he rides downhill.”

If only we had a Super 8 camera.

PS – Here’s a bonus round for the Phineas and Ferb fans out there who love to pick out the guest voice-overs. Sure they’ve had Seth Macfarlane, Cloris Leachman, Ben Stiller, Barry Bostwick, John Laroquette, Sandra Oh, Kevin Smith and Jennifer Grey. And who can forget the duet “I Believe We Can” sung by Clay Aiken and Chaka Khan in the “Summer Belongs To You” episode? Seriously.

Who would be Dan and Swampy’s dream voice-over on Phineas and Ferb?

“Meatloaf.”

The Wheels on The Bus

2010-09-14T22:01:00.000-04:00

They say you can find anything on the internet. Well, do you know how difficult it is to find a photo of the back of a school bus to use for a blog post? There are hundreds of images of school buses from the front or the side, or the smarmy pics with the stop sign extended and the smiling kids waiting to board. And there’s always some eager student ready to help load his wheelchair-bound classmate. But really, it’s the view of the back of the bus I’m interested in. Come September, I want to see that bus pulling away not pulling up.

So, instead of an image of a jaunty yellow school bus fading into the distance, I offer up this gem. This bus is going places.

Sure that yellow barge on wheels means school is back in session, but it is also more than that. In just a few brief moments every morning, groups of children and adults wait for a bus. The bus arrives, the children board, parents give a wave, and kids take their seats. (And contrary to many an After School Special, there’s actually no drama in finding a seat, because every child knows exactly where he belongs on the bus.) In the scant minutes this drama plays out and the bus pulls away, the tectonic plates of the earth have shifted. It actually is that big.

You head off to the bus stop or even the carpool drop-off circle as a family unit of three or four, a few doors open and close, the pneumatic brakes squeak and you are all alone. And, yes, perhaps happier than you have found yourself in weeks.

What I hadn't realized until late last year was that the bus offers magical transitive powers when it travels in the other direction as well. My boys usually ride the school bus halfway home and I pick them up at a transfer point. Mostly, it is a matter of convenience. It keeps me out of the arduous "carline" that threatens to define the lives of so many suburban parents, and it gets my boys home an hour earlier than if they rode the bus the entire way.

Through painful observation last spring, I learned that the ride offers not only convenience, but also a buffer for my kids and me – particularly for my child who is letting go of childhood. That fifteen-minute ride bridges his two worlds. The days are spent in classrooms that demand a student to be simultaneously independent and a dutiful pupil, and in a schoolyard that requires a child to be both offensive and defensive. At home, for better or worse, dependence is tolerated, and he can let go of any need to be offensive or worry about self-preservation.

Home and family, by definition are a safe place. Middle school, by definition, is a proving ground, a stage for pitched battles of discovering and defining one’s identity and role in the hierarchy. To have these two worlds collide in a suburban parking lot is almost too much.

When he rides the bus, my son has time to digest his day, let go of most incidents, words or frustrations, and settle into his own skin again. If I arrive in his world at 3:00 bringing the protective aura of home – in the guise of a 2400-pound SUV, it is almost too much for the raw emotions and fragile state of adolescence. Even Clark Kent needed his phone booth to rectify his two worlds.

As a parent, middle school pick-up and drop-off has been strangely reminiscent of preschool. I remember watching the teachers working carline crawl into the car in front of mine to physically extract a child from the idling minivan. Most of the time mine were happy to go, but there were days that required extensive negotiations, and sometimes even going in to settle them with a puzzle or Play-Do, offering promises that I would definitely be back (really, how far can you get in two hours and fifteen minutes?)

Then there was preschool pickup. In the early months, I remember saying over and over to myself as I waited in car line, “please let him be wearing the clothes he went to school in.” (I have heard from some mothers of middle school girls, that they actually hope for the same thing now, in seventh and eighth grade.) Such were the demands I put on my children and my preschool. If there was no accident, the day was a success. If the teacher approached the car with a plastic grocery bag and my child was wearing shorts in a snowstorm, well, then I knew I’d be volunteering to bring more than cups and napkins to the holiday party.

Of course, you’d think that with the trappings of cell phones, Friday night dances and homework done while instant messaging, those days of graham crackers and construction paper pumpkins would seem far away. But they feel acutely near.

A friend who counsels troubled teens says that middle school is the time when kids figure out who they are and who their friends are. And because self-discovery is no small task, many young teens spend much of middle school lost, confused, and afraid. Sure, most of my son’s sixth grade challenges were remembering the right books on the right days, and seventh grade was more work and more books. But in the vast spaces between books and sports and dances, he battles away at the real work of middle school. And there are still mornings when a little boy wearing size 8 men’s shoes takes a deep breath before getting out of the car.

And on the afternoons when I do pick up at school, I am the one taking a deep breath saying over and over to myself, “please let him be smiling when he sees me.” And really, I could care less if he’s wearing the clothes he went to school in. Clark Kent can have his quick-change phone booth. I’ll take the emotional buffer zone of school bus #34. Besides, my kids say George the bus driver is hilarious. And he does Sudoku while he drives.

The Suburban Mom Blog Post in Which I Share A Recipe

2010-09-14T21:59:00.000-04:00

Hop, Skip and Go Naked. That pretty much sums it up right there.

Here are the particulars: 1 can of limeade, 1 can of vodka (yes, that is as much fun to type as it to say), and 4 cheap light beers. It's perhaps best when stirred in a plastic pitcher of the ilk used for making Kool Aid and Tang. Pour over ice. Enjoy. Hop, skip and go naked if you care to.

The recipe is not actually mine, and in true Barefoot Contessa style, I won't be shy about my outright plagiarism. A good friend brought the drinks to a board meeting during which we were voting on summer award recipients. She prefaced the pour, "Well, if we're going to be talking about people behind their backs, we might as well do it right." (Like I said, she's a good friend.)

So there. Bring a pitcher of "skip and gos" to your next board meeting. Or book club. I would also imagine it would transport fine in a stainless steel travel mug to this weekend's soccer games.

Studying The Recent Studies

2010-06-17T11:04:00.000-04:00

Admittedly, most talk of the health care bill and the state of medical care in our country causes my eyes to glaze over. (Apologies to my many friends who are talented, valuable doctors.) But this spring, some new research was released with quite a splash that did catch my attention.

The recent study said that the lives of 900 babies could be saved along with billions of dollars in lost employee wages if 90% of American women breastfed their babies exclusively for the first six months. I am not sure which part of that goal stuns me more – the 90%, the six months or the “exclusively.”

When you really think through those demands, it is no wonder that only 12% of American mothers currently comply with that goal. And they’re hoping for a 600% improvement – even for the government, those are some pretty high expectations.

Sure, I’m all for solving the deficit and saving lives, but aren't there far more insidious foes out there than suboptimal breastfeeding rates? For example, smoking during pregnancy is said to cause more than 1,000 deaths annually. And yet, more than 12% of women report smoking during the last three months of pregnancy. I’ll go out on a limb of deductive reasoning here and say that 12% is not the same 12% that breastfeeds exclusively.

I lend full support to the efforts of the study The Burden of Suboptimal Breastfeeding in the United States – breastfeeding-friendly legislation, more support for nursing mothers in the workplace, and more breastfeeding help for new mothers in our hospitals.

However, a goal of 90% of American mothers to breastfeed exclusively for six months is an effort I cannot rally behind, and nor frankly, as a woman and citizen, do I think it is a very healthy goal.

Sure, doctors and researchers have been able to put numbers and dollars on losses due to the nation’s breastfeeding rates. But, what they haven’t looked at is what these “suboptimal” rates have prevented or gained for American women, children and families. Where are the statistics on how many marriages have been saved by limiting breastfeeding? Or simply what post-partum independence has meant for women’s mental health, and their confidence and trust in their relevance outside the domestic sphere.

When baby comes home from the hospital, there are those few first magical days of shared responsibility with your lab partner. And then inevitably, someone’s got to take charge. With breastfeeding, there is no question who is in charge, the authority, the source, the expert, the ultimate backstop. And for many, so begins the road of resentment. A road on which it is very difficult to make a U-turn.

For many women and couples, having a baby is an epochal event after which a tenuous level of shared responsibility and psychological equality can be recovered. Half a year of exclusive breastfeeding would make such reparations nearly impossible.

I suffer this bizarrely narcissistic relationship to many of the challenges of parenting and find myself frequently thinking, “If it’s this hard for me, imagine what it’s like for…” Breastfeeding was no exception.

For me, nursing was fine. Which is a far cry from saying it was easy. I can still recall the nights with my firstborn when we’d play our own little game of, who can cry longer, baby or mother? And of course, it’s strategic cousin, who can cry louder? (That one was more fun during daylight hours while Slim was away.)

I nursed each of my children for respectable terms – 3 months, 5 months, and an almost embarrassing 10 months. I stayed at home, I worked, I used a pump (and there is nothing stylish about the Pump-In-Style). I nursed in the Nordstrom’s “Mother’s Lounge” and pumped in The Gap dressing room. I breastfed in the front seat of the car on I-95, though never while driving. I even breastfed on a bathroom floor in Dallas wearing a bridesmaid’s dress. It was novel, it was never elegant, and it always struck me as more science fiction than biblical.

I do not resent breastfeeding, my children, or my nearly perfect husband. I do resent the expectation that after carrying a baby for nine months, that American women should surrender control for six more months.

Because really, it’s not just the physical and time commitment that breastfeeding takes (which at 6 to 18 hours a day is, no doubt, significant). Being a nursing mother overrides everything. It dictates what you do and don’t eat and drink, your sleep schedule, and where you can go, when and for how long. It even holds sway over what you wear. For an entire six months.

If that weren’t enough, the real rub is what women give up psychologically during that time. There’s the illusion that you can return to any previously held status of equality at home or in the workplace, and that others’ perception of you, your value, and indispensability will not be affected. Well, that notion is a four-ounce Avent bottle of expressed milk gone bad.

An entirely different, more compelling study was released just last month: You Can’t Be Happier than Your Wife: Happiness Gaps and Divorce. I know, sounds like complete common sense, but I love a good study by German experts in “economy and wellbeing.” And here’s what they found: the happiness gap increased when the wife handled most of the housework. As they say in German, duh. But they also discovered that unlike other benefits in a marriage, happiness cannot be redistributed between spouses. You can share happiness. And be happy for one another. But his happiness cannot become her happiness.

Its conclusions? “When spouses “agree” on too unequal a distribution of welfare, this puts the durability of their marriage at risk… public policy should avoid giving spouses incentives that lead to diverging levels of happiness. Individual income and employment have been shown to be among the main determinants of happiness; policies that affect the division of labor inside households should keep this in mind.”

In a word, be careful what you wish for. Blue-ribbon breastfeeding goals could -- in the extreme -- lead to increased divorce, depression, and long-term damage to the delicate ecosystem of gender roles in our families, workplaces and society. At the very least, the effort sanctions the message to women that their children and domestic duties come first. For women and researchers for whom long-term breastfeeding is the answer, the question certainly needs to be asked, at what cost?

Oh Captain (of Industry) My Captain!

2010-05-24T22:22:00.000-04:00

Let's just start with it. While other girls taped up pictures of Duran Duran, Rob Lowe, Eddie Van Halen, and Matt Dillon, in my high school locker, I hung pictures of Steve Jobs. And my friends (yes, I had some, despite the previous sentence) let me. The fact that I also hung pictures of Wayne Gretzky and Ivan Lendl means I clearly missed the memo that looks were really the point of high school hero worship.

And trust me, you can't find pictures of Jobs or Lendl in your average Tiger Beat or Teen Bop magazine. No, my pinup pictures of Jobs were from Fortune and Time magazine. When I asked a friend last week if she was familiar with the covers, there was immediate recognition, "the one with the 1970s porn mustache?"

Yep, again, missed that memo on looks. But he had the glow of success, mystery and brilliant boy wunderkind about him. If Matt Dillon had bad boy Outsider appeal, then Steve Jobs had bad boy confiscating parts of his mother's blender to change the world appeal. And therein was the attraction.

See, when I was 12 I had the rare thrill to meet and chat with Steve Jobs. It was an awards conference for people who'd done uber-nerdy things. Even though the organizers dubbed it Gathering of The Greats, Slim is right when he refers to it as gathering of the geeks.

When it came to making conversation with Steve Jobs, a few of my brethren with thick glasses and I would ask about computers and he would ask if we liked fishing. We were quite clever in telling him that he could invent a program for fishing on his computer. (I won't actually demand royalties for iFish, but let’s just say, the seed for the game was planted long ago.)

But even when I was twelve, I got it. He urged us, begged us to have a host of experiences and try new things. Don't just study, and focus on grades and the next achievement award. (Granted, that's easy to say when you've likely flown in on your own plane to pick up your award.) In order to contribute to society in a meaningful way, you had to acquire not only academic skills, but you also had to experience life emotionally, intellectually and passionately to see needs and solutions in our world.

I recently made my boys listen to the speech Jobs gave at the conference in 1982. First I showed them the cassette tape it was recorded on, and explained that it was actually a precursor to the flash drive back in my early computing days. (And if you ever need someone to write an if-then statement that will loop your name on the screen, I'm your gal.)

They were not all that impressed with the cassette and only marginally more so listening to Jobs' words of wisdom. He spoke about what it means to be intelligent and the challenge to find some way to give back when you do have gifts. He defined real intelligence as akin to being on the eightieth floor of a building while everyone else is on the ground trying to find their way with a map. I thought him brilliant back then, and I still find this to be a great way to describe being smart.

When the speech ended, I asked my boys what they thought. Two tried to be complimentary, while the middle was busy asking his brothers how the world looked from the parking garage and the sub basement.

You see, we’ve been talking about Steve Jobs at our house a lot lately. Because when you reside somewhere between the 3^rd and 4^th floor of that building, you can get yourself enough freelance assignments that Apple will give you an iPad for a month on “editorial loan.”

Once again, we are in awe of Steve Jobs, Apple Computer, and the magic that can be made when you have innovation, a bag of experience, oodles of computer programming and luck. And perhaps my boys are just even the tiniest bit in awe of their mother - because for about three days there, the playground smack was, "Does your mom really have an iPad?"

I find it a remarkable feat of individual endowment as well as a testament to our times that my children and I could potentially hold up the same person as an object of admiration. Neil Armstrong, Michael Jordan and Sandra Day O’Connor do not appeal anew to multiple generations, but Steve Jobs has.

When my teen reverie for the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Steve Jobs takes over, Slim chimes in, “Make sure you mention that he is a control freak who backdates options and doesn’t tell shareholders he has a terminal illness.” Corporate blemishes, I say. Even the Greek heroes were endowed with human weaknesses.

In the years (okay, decades) since hearing him speak, Jobs’ words have come back to me periodically. And although I may not have been a poet in Paris, visited lepers, or bought a Buddhist monk lunch – all experiences Jobs recommends to take you on a winding path – I have remembered his advice. He was adamant that we be very careful when defining the term "success." And to know that it is possible to be very successful and happy without being a “rags to riches” story. And as an adult and parent today, I recognize the wisdom in those words once again.

In today's world of competitive parenting, accelerated classes, elite youth sports, and private college admission consultants, any yield sign is good. Hearing the words of Steve Jobs is a reminder to help my kids find a passion before a profession, teach them that they can change the world rather than just letting the world change them. And that fishing can be just as important as solving x for y.

Remembering my high school locker, I asked my oldest about his heroes and people he admired. Now, lest you think this is normal dinner conversation at our house, right away he said, “Are you writing about this?” But he played along and named some of his favorite sports and music stars – Jay-Z, Will.i.am, Patrick Roy, Dustin Pedroia and Claude Giroux. And then he said, “and probably Steve Jobs.”

Sure, there's a decent chance he's gunning for an iPad of his own. There is also the distinct possibility that the figurehead of iTunes, iPod, iTouch, and iMac is on his list of heroes. Perhaps most likely is a combination of the two. And if my boy has figured that somehow my hero being his hero is just one more step in his master plan to get an iPad, well then I think the elevator just let him off on about the 17th floor.

All Hail National Babysitter's Day

2010-05-06T12:36:00.000-04:00

Obviously this Sunday is Mothers’ Day. Or, as a friend of mine calls it, Mother-In-Law Day. Certainly, you’d think that as a daughter, a daughter-in-law, a mother to three children, and a bona-fide blah-ger I’d have lots to say on the subject. Let’s just call it a Sunday and move forward.

Or backwards as the case may be – to Saturday. Because this Saturday is in fact National Babysitter’s Day. Now there’s a subject near and dear to me. It would be easy to write a tribute to all the gals – and a handful of guys – I’ve gladly paid so that I could work, go to meetings, grocery shop, eat dinner out, or even, I’ll admit, sit in my bedroom and read.

But I won’t. Instead, because this is a “blog," let’s talk about me. And what I think. And I think that knowing a babysitter, having a babysitter, and paying a babysitter is a thrillingly, freeing milestone of parenting.

There are many, many parenting landmarks that I have been or will be slow to reach. Affording myself the confidence and luxury to hire a sitter has not been one of them. And I mean this in all seriousness.

Certainly with a baby, hiring a sitter is an absolute necessity. After enough weeks at home with an infant, the visiting grandparents leave and the sun stops rising and setting over the weigh-in at the pediatrician’s office. At some point, it’s time to put on actual clothes and leave the baby behind.

Early on – and to this day – that act of handing my baby or my children over to someone else for a few hours says a number of significant things. Perhaps most importantly to me, it means that my circle is large enough that I actually know people who babysit – or at least I know people who know people.

As a mother at home, it thrills me to count in my company high schoolers, college kids, part time cafe workers, grad students, and the neighbor’s boyfriend’s sister. And each of these individuals makes my children’s world larger and more textured as well. My kids will ask for the sitter who helps them make music mixes, or teaches them to string a lacrosse stick, or brings her beading supplies to share, or is king of basement floor hockey.

It’s also useful to have in my back pocket that one sitter I know they fear. “No, no not her! She just does her homework and yells at us. We promise we’ll be good. Anybody but her.” Obligingly, I call the favorite sitter who runs the family room dance contest, and harmony reigns for all.

I know for many parents having a babysitter creates more anxiety than it seems to be worth. And some put babysitters through “dress rehearsals” while they are still at home before they consider leaving them to do the job alone. There are also plenty of parents who will only leave their children with family members – no outside sitters allowed.

Granted, you can only do what you are comfortable with as a parent. But, to me, such a policy drastically limits your options for freedom, and it also seems to foster a distrust and anxiety about the outside world. Parenting is difficult enough without having to fear every tree nut, legume, shellfish and individual outside the family.

When our firstborn was several weeks old, the momentous occasion had arrived. It was time to leave our only child with an outside sitter. As we drove away and headed to the movies, Slim asked if I knew our babysitter’s last name. I told him I was pretty sure her first name was Kelly.

When we became parents, I had the supreme luxury of having a cousin majoring in nursing at a nearby college. Her roommates, also nurses-in-training, were the cutest, most enthusiastic bunch you could dream up – just ask my husband. And with one call, I’d take anyone – we couldn’t go wrong.

Leaving my child with someone else meant that I had the self-confidence to admit that babies and motherhood were not all consuming and that I still had other ways to spend my time. Paying a sitter is also the best way to free yourself from the guilt and the debilitating notion that you are the only one who can do it. I have indeed left my children in the hands of capable 12-year-olds.

Hiring an outside sitter also serves as a much needed shot of praise and approval for a mother at any stage. It seems to be part of the babysitter protocol to tell parents how great the kids are at the end of the job. Yes, I’m usually handing over a small stack of tens and twenties at this point, but I choose to believe they are sincere every time. (Note: those who use family to babysit have assured me that this endorsement of one’s mothering is in no way part of the evening’s transaction.)

It is only after you’ve had a sitter a good many months and you tell her that you are writing an article for Parents Magazine about putting your baby on a schedule that she feels comfortable enough to burst out laughing. It is at this point that you remind your sitter that she was the one who just waxed her eyebrows using your microwave.

My male babysitters bring their own special gifts and delights as well. I’ve come home to a room of sweaty, shirtless boys lying on the floor giddily watching Tom & Jerry – including the 17-year-old sitter. One summer night, my sitter asked if I needed him the next day because he’d be back anyway to find the shoes he lost outside in a game of Manhunt. My youngest declared one boy "the best babysitter ever" because he taught him how to shoot marbles out of his nose. And I'm quite certain I paid forty dollars for that skill to be passed on to my children.

The actual transaction of paying a babysitter is no small issue either. Every time I hire a sitter to watch my children, I know that my family is economically fortunate. Not everyone has such luxury. (Strangely, I'm discovering that a lot of my parenting satisfaction comes from that notion of, “it could be worse.”)

It also means that it is a service that my husband and I both feel has real financial worth. Every time we pay someone, the unspoken message is, this is valued work that someone is paid to do.

Granted, I'm not paid to do it, but the understanding is that if I weren't caring for our kids we would need to pay someone else to do it. And when the subject of money and babysitters comes up in our house, I point out to Slim that there is actually a direct correlation between the number of sitter hours we pay for and his happiness. I assure him this is not a threat or, more importantly, it is not a promise. It is just an observation.

To observe National Babysitter’s Day I will simply acknowledge to myself the value my sitters have added to the peace, richness, and life of my family. I will not actually be having a babysitter this Saturday, however, because my mother-in-law is coming to town. We’ve both agreed to head into Mother’s Day with low expectations and hope to be surprised on the upside.

And so, a happy National Babysitter’s Day to me and the individuals who’ve cared for my children. A thank you for giving me respite to breathe, for telling me I was doing a good job at valuable work, and, of course, for teaching my children to blow marbles out of their noses: Ali, Alison, Amanda, Andrew, Andrew, Angelica, Anna, Ashley, Becca, Beth, Betsy, Bobby, Caroline, Caroline, Carolyn, Chloe, Christine, Christina, Claire, Claire, Courtney, Eliza, Emily, Erin, Haley, Hannah, Hannah, Hannah, Honore, Hope, Janine, Jen, Jesse, Johanna, John, Julie, Karen, Katie, Katie, Katie, Katie, Kelly, Kelsey, Kristin, Lauren, Liam, Liam, Maddie, Maddie, Maggie, Mary, Mary, Meg, Megan, Meghan, Mikaela, Miranda, Naomi, Nicole, Patty, Ray, Rose, Ryan, Sarah, Sydney, Tara, Tayler, Taylor, Tory, Tucker, Will, and Will.

Play Ball!

2010-04-27T11:33:00.001-04:00

For anyone who’s spent more than 60 seconds with me and knows the logistical paralysis I can suffer at the hands of youth sports, this will surprise you.

I love Little League. The season’s opening games happened in our town this month, and I couldn’t be happier. Mind you, I wasn’t actually at any of my children’s opening games (see above paragraph on me and youth sports).

Certainly, I could write volumes on the benefits and evils of programs my children have participated in – from ice hockey and soccer to sailing and swimming and everything in between. But I love Little League. Everything about it.

For one, baseball is the most storied of sports. Writers, historians, poets and politicians have held the game up as the American ideal, the American dream, and the American spirit. Baseball, at its best, is our national character writ large. And in Little League, it is that character writ small.

My town’s Little League is just one of more than 7,000 around the world, in which 2.5 million boys and girls will participate this spring. It’s grown every summer since its first in 1938 – with a few neighborhood kids and a vacant lot in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Fill out your form, write your check, and the hat, the t-shirt, the socks, the season, and the American dream are yours.

That’s one of its greatest appeals. There is room for everyone in Little League, and there are no divisions for elite players, or travel teams. Players are divvied up as equitably as possible, and the game is never a showcase for the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest.

Men such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and George Will have penned paeans to the game of baseball. They talk about the geometric beauty of the field and its near da Vincian dimensions. They talk of the poetic perfection and the rhythm of the game’s three strikes, three outs, three bases, nine players, and nine innings.

The big league writers can have the Major League. I’ll take on the game where boys still need help tying their cleats and girls’ uniforms hang down past their knees. Because Little League is governed by an additional set of immutable laws, and it is precisely those rules that make me love the game. (And any dad who chooses to quibble with my analysis, well, you can forget me as your “snack mom” next year.)

Unlike most youth sports, Little League begins with the very basics, and size, rules, dimensions, and complexity are added with each passing spring. The game evolves as its players mature. It is not, however, a series of checkpoints or milestones the players must pass or achieve. It happens silently and magically over the hibernation of winter. As a parent, this process is gloriously unceremonious. Spring dawns and a new game awaits.

The game begins with tee ball, which any 8-year-old will tell you, is what babies play. But it is actually where a 5 or 6-year-old kindergartner begins the baseball journey. The ball is served up, immobile on a pedestal. The batter gets as many swings as it takes. Every player bats every inning, and rounds every base. (Which is why Thing Two liked to take up residence around home plate as a fielder -- so that he could tag every player, every inning, every game.) Of course, the game is always a tie. And there are often as many adults on the field as there are off. Kids and parents alike are learning the rhythms of the game.

In subsequent springs, tee ball gives way to coach pitch on a bigger field with real bases, an actual backstop and even a players’ bench. But with these luxuries come the responsibility of strikes, and strikeouts, and three outs an inning. The reality of winning and losing and the highs and lows of taking your part in each begins to settle in.

Driving Thing Three to his first practice this season, he weighed in from the back seat. “You know there’s strikeouts this year, right mom?”

Uncertain whether to help him face his fears or boost his confidence, I asked how he would feel about striking out. He replied, “Oh no mom, I’m not worried about me. But have you seen David bat on my team? I’m worried for him.” So, perhaps the reality hasn’t set in quite yet.

Every child should know what it feels like to strike out. And to hold in the tears as he walks back to his teammates. And every boy and girl should know what it feels like to be one of those teammates who says, “you’ll get ‘em next time.”

And one of those next times, a batter will send the ball sailing out over centerfield and a lucky kid with an open glove will hold his breath as the ball falls into the leather palm. And every player should know the thrill of being on both sides of that ball.

Then all of a sudden one spring evening, there is a ten-year-old boy standing on that pitcher’s mound, 46 long feet from home plate. The dads are now in the dugouts or coaching from the baseline. The ball and the drama are handed over to boys and girls who have earned that responsibility.

It is also the year when, for the first time, a player will bobble the ball somewhere on the field and that coach on the baseline will say to his runner, “steal.” And if you’ve watched a team of rule-following ten-year-olds suffer its very first steal, then you understand what it is to be violated. Just another lesson from the parable of baseball.

One more lap around the bases and those boys and girls are 11 and 12 and there is a fence around that green field. And somewhere on that fence is a big sign that says “205.” Some days that yardage number may taunt the batter, and other days it may whisper, “you can do it.”

And that is one of the rarer and finer sites of spring – when a ball takes flight and time stops until the ball lands on the other side of the fence. No, the lights don’t get shattered and the leather cover doesn’t fly off the ball. But for all too brief a moment, a child will believe that he can do anything. Achingly, it happens about the same time that as a parent, you begin to fear that child may never believe that again.

Bart Giamatti, who having been the President of Yale University and the Commissioner of Baseball, had a perfect blend of cerebral respect and awe for the game. Many of his baseball writings spoke of the significance to a nation of young immigrants of the goal of home plate.

“Baseball is about going home, and how hard it is to get there and how driven is our need. It tells us how good home is. Its wisdom says you can go home again but that you cannot stay,” he writes. He even calls on his Greek to further define baseball, “Nostos, the going home, the game of nostalgia, so apt an image for our hunger that it hurts.”

For Giamatti and other scholars “home” may be the base to return to, but for parents using Little League as one more ally in mentoring our children, “home” is surely the base we are preparing them to leave behind.

And then all of a sudden, one spring, Little League is over. You turn thirteen and it is someone else’s turn to run the bases and rule that patch of grass. And every year, there is a gaggle of 13 and 14 year-olds standing around the fence – decidedly not in the game, but not quite ready to take their place as spectators on the bleachers.

If you are lucky enough to watch a small boy or girl with a big dream play Little League on a sunny afternoon this spring, keep in mind my favorite baseball line from Mr. Giamatti, “It breaks your heart, it is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again...”

What's The Right Age To Take A Child's Cell Phone Away?

2010-04-14T11:41:00.000-04:00

I realize for many, the question is usually, “What is the right age to give your child a cell phone?”

Well, in my house, that question had been easy. With the confidence of an all-knowing parent who’d never had a preteen much less a teen, I adamantly stated my case to the women in my book club a few years ago.

“Kids with cell phones are ridiculous,” I asserted. “Mine will get it when he needs it – the same time he gets his driver’s license.”

Well, imagine my surprise when I found myself in the AT&T store adding that extra phone line, making ours an official family plan as he was turning 12.

He was midway through his sixth grade year and still settling in to the ups and downs of junior high. He had risen to the challenge of wearing the jacket and tie that sets middle schoolers apart from the “little kids” at his school. He gladly schlepped hockey pads, squash bags and lacrosse sticks to school everyday – another signal to his immediate world that he had graduated from the elementary years.

But, despite the heavy baggage of those exterior signs of maturity, what he most wanted to symbolize that he was an independent middle schooler weighed a scant 3.4 ounces. The cell phone.

Like in many homes where adolescence blooms, “the cell phone conversation” was a weekly occurrence. He would insist that he was the only one without a phone. When this argument took him nowhere, he reasoned that I could always find him if he had a phone. I reasoned back that if I didn’t already know where my 11-year-old was, then we had bigger problems than cell phones.

I described our familiar patter to a friend, a father of two other middle school boys, “He’s acting like by not letting him have a cell phone, I’m completely emasculating him.”

“You are,” the friend replied simply.

So, living by the mantra “pick your battles,” I decided that $10 a month was a small price to pay for middle school acceptance. Obviously, I was not factoring in insurance, texting, taxes and a phone that was more than a tin can with a string.

With that, my son became just one more of the 20 million teens bouncing their cell phone signals off towers and satellites across the American landscape. He couldn’t have been happier standing with his peers texting after school – likely to the boy standing right next to him. On days I picked him up, he was apt to call and say, “Oh, I see your car, I’ll walk right over.”

How had we managed without this technology for so long?

Studies show that more than 70% of teens now own cell phones, up from five years ago when just 40% of kids aged 8-18 owned cell phones. And even that number is a drastic jump compared with pre- September 11 percentages.

Before 9-11 most schools banned cell phones on campus. “But after 9-11 and the Columbine shootings, parents wanted to be able to reach their kids all the time,” explained the head of my son’s middle school. “And now the cell phone is not going away, so we have to learn how we can use it to benefit us.”

For your benefit, here are just a few lessons learned in our year-plus with the gadget:

If your phone is in your sweatshirt on the floor of the locker room, chances are high that a skate blade will find it, thus requiring a replacement. This is not recommended.

If you give your phone to a group of girls because they want to “program” it for you, it is entirely possible that the speaker will cease to work, thus requiring a replacement. This is not recommended.

If you are sitting in the kitchen with your mother when her phone rings and it is your cell number that comes up, it is best to fess up that indeed you have no idea where your phone is.

If you are sitting in the car with your mother when her phone rings and it is your cell number that comes up, it is best to fess up that indeed you have no idea where your phone is.

If you decide to prevent further incidents of losing or damaging your phone and begin leaving it safely in your backpack, hockey bag, lacrosse bag, or on the kitchen counter, it becomes increasingly difficult – nearly impossible – to hear or feel your phone when your mother is calling you. This is not recommended.

If it is your father, who ostensibly pays for your phone, calling when said communication device is stowed safely out of useful range, this is really not recommended.

In just over a year, the cell phone and its tempting trappings of responsibility and independence had become a burden.

Once again, Slim and I found ourselves having “the cell phone conversation.” And he was the one who captured the situation best, “He can always say had a phone. He lost it and now his parents have taken it away. That’s a credible narrative.”

Indeed, it was not a week later when the familiar chirp of his phone alerted my son that one of his people had messaged that most expressive mot, “ ‘sup?” My youngest moaned with envy, “I can’t wait until I can get a cell phone.”

“Trust me, you don’t need a cell phone,” said his big brother. “I don’t even need a cell phone.” And rather than try to reel his words back in or backtrack on his logic when our eyes met, he accepted and owned the truth of his statement.

He found me later and laid his cell phone on the kitchen counter, just like Charlie Bucket returning the Everlasting Gobstopper to Willy Wonka. The evils of temptation, Slugworth and sexting had been denied in one fell swoop.

“I just think I’ll be able to relax so much more if I don’t always have to carry it with me and worry about it all the time,” he explained. “Could you just turn it off for a few months and then we’ll try it again when I really need it?”

I’d love to say that the story ended there, we each learned our lesson and went out for ice cream. But instead, we learned another lesson called “early termination fee.” So, we’ll be leaving the phone on, handing our ice cream money over to AT&T and using the gadget as a “special occasion” phone.

Blanket

2010-04-07T07:34:00.000-04:00

It was spring vacation and it happened. One of every mothers worst travel nightmares. No, there was no lurker in the airport bathroom and we survived a week of skiing with all of our bones intact. Even all of our bags and skis made it home.

But we are short one small blue and yellow plaid cotton blanket belonging to my youngest child. Yes, it’s his security blanket, his lovey, his transitional object, his wubby, his everything.

After spending 5 nights in a slopeside condominium, he was readying himself for bed at his grandparents’ house in Denver. He was crouched in his flannel insect pajamas pulling out the contents of his backpack – a set of colored pencils, a “Beginning Cursive” workbook, wintergreen Lifesavers, iPod headphones, Madlibs vacation edition, neon green swim goggles, and bubblegum.

“Mom, where did you pack Blanket?”

Let’s face it, if it was anyone or anything else, I would have immediately launched into my practiced monologue of, “if you want it, you pack it, you carry it.” But this was a very young 8-year-old with freckles across the bridge of his nose looking for Blanket, without which he’d never spent a night in his life.

I froze. I had packed the bags and even checked under the beds while the family was on the mountain. But I did not come across his blanket. It must have been left between the sheets over 100 miles away.

“We’ll find it. We’ll call the hotel and they’ll mail it to us at home. Don’t worry.”

But I am worried. It may not be found, and a replacement is impossible. The blanket was hand-woven by my mother-in-law while I was pregnant. This bears repeating. The blanket was hand-woven by my mother-in-law.

Blanket has traveled with us to 26 states, 11 countries and 3 continents. I say this not to make a pitch for Blanket as a guest star on Lifestyles of The Rich and Famous, but more as plea for leniency in the peer judgment department.

I have safeguarded the two foot square piece of cloth (did I mention that my mother-in-law wove it?) on planes, trains, automobiles, and a camel ride through the Sahara Desert. Yet leave it to one routine trip to my native Colorado to blow my record of perfection into perfect failure.

It is said that over 60% of children develop strong attachments to a blanket, a doll, a stuffed toy or some other object during their first months of infancy.

Credit for the term “security blanket” goes to Charles Schultz and his Peanuts comic strip character Linus van Pelt, whose ever-present blue blanket debuted in 1954.

However, the phenomena of children and their attachment objects was studied and named by British pediatrician and psychologist Donald Winnicott in the early 1950s. He asserted that a “transitional object” stands in as mother for a child fending off separation or anxiety – be it falling to sleep, when mother leaves the room, or going on a trip.

To compensate for this loss or fear, a child will imbue a soft object with the attributes of mother, comfort and safety. As the child “transitions” from an inner world of infancy to a better understanding of self and the external world, the blanket or other object is intimately bound up with the identity of the child.

In our house, this holds true for Thing One and Thing Three. Thing Two, on the other hand, came into this world with a healthy understanding of self, independence, and I’ll call you when I need more money attitude.

I remember taking my oldest to his first movie when he was two years old, The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland. The film was reviewed as “perfect family entertainment… lots of nice music, jokes and warmth.”

For those of you who may have missed the 1999 release of cinematic mediocrity, the entire plot is Elmo searching for his security blanket which has been sent to faraway Grouchland – a place full of villainous people and creatures.

Hello! That’s like running a loop of child abduction films in the maternity ward.

Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, has studied children and their possessions, particularly their special comfort objects. One study gave children the option of putting their belongings into a “magic” copying machine that would make exact duplicates. They would then be allowed to take their original, or the presumably “brand new” copy.

When it came to just any toy, most children selected the duplicate. But when it came to replicating a special comfort object, some participants would not even let their “lovies” be put into the machines, and almost all of the children chose their originals.

Bloom surmises that children believe the favored object has “a hidden and invisible property – an ‘essence’ – that distinguishes it from everything else.”

And this should surprise no one.

As the horse in the nursery explained to The Velveteen Rabbit, “Real isn’t how you are made. It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL.”

And Blanket was real.

More than any other possession my boy has or will ever have, Blanket was, if the psych field is to be believed, his facsimile of me. And as his mother, I can tell you that Blanket was indeed the closest facsimile of him.

Every parent knows that hiccup of the heart when you hold the threadbare blanket, the shaggy stuffed dog, or the lumpy lop-eared bunny your child has dragged from crawling, to walking, to finally being tossed unceremoniously up the stairs as he heads out to a baseball game.

We may yell at our kids for leaving their shoes or jackets in piles on the floor a thousand times. But as more complicated toys, heavy backpacks and sports equipment are added to those piles, the loved doll, Puppy, bunny, Blanket or Dog-Dog takes on relic status.

In analyzing possessions and what gives us pleasure, Professor Bloom explains, “Everything is either a social being or has been in contact with a social being, and so even the most mundane things have histories. This is their essence.

The first night back in his own room, I suggested to my youngest that he might want to take a stuffed animal to bed with him. As a plush toy connoisseur, he specializes in replicas of endangered species – or at least those “on watch” – bald eagle, tiger, snow leopard, emperor penguin, polar bear, manatee, the clouded leopard, and a giant anteater.

He pulled out the panda Tai Shan from last spring break’s trip to Washington D.C. (a trip from which we did return with Blanket).

“I’ll try this tonight,” he said cheerily as he climbed into his fire engine red sheets. “And maybe tomorrow night I’ll pick out a different one to sleep with.”

Which is how I came to realize that I am now more desperate for him to get his blanket back than he is. I’m sure any pediatrician would tell me that my child has reached some healthy developmental milestone of self and independence.

But what the doctors have missed is that the “transitional object” goes both ways. Because of their 8-year history together, Blanket is indeed imbued with my son’s essence. He has made it REAL. And I want it back.

So for now, I’m counting on Jalva Jiminez of housekeeping to return it to me.

She tells me they are behind 8,000 pounds of laundry. And a small piece of the essence of his childhood and my motherhood is in the laundry pile.

Don't I know it.

If A Reunion Is Supposed To Be A Celebration, Why Does It Feel Like A Minefield?

2010-03-23T13:05:00.000-04:00

The email chain started a few months ago. So many friends from my college circle lived in or around New York City, that it seemed a good idea to plan a dinner. You know, get the band back together. Nothing formal. No need to wait for the university to plan it for us.

The date was picked, location settled, and at least a dozen women and men planned to be there. What a treat it would be to catch up with so many acquaintances after almost twenty years.

And then the week arrived and I was nearly nauseous at the thought.

First, there was the location. The initial email from one of the women was, “I am glad to host either at our apt or the downtown house.” Wow, the apartment, the downtown house, (got a pool, got a pond). Good living in Manhattan.

A later email clarified, that no, my friend was not actually long on real estate, “The Downtown House” was an exclusive club where there would be a guest list, a private room and a hip downtown atmosphere. Which, of course, made it almost worse.

The night before the dinner, the real crisis hit. No matter the size or contents of your closet, every woman knows that paralyzing fear. What to wear?

This particular event left me without my usual crutch of asking a friend what she was wearing. Each of these women lived in Manhattan, and I was afraid someone was going to use the words “skinny” and “jeans” in the same sentence.

But more than where to go or what to wear, I was most anxious about what to say.

Normally, I’m the last person in the room to be short on words or self-confidence. However, this would be an Ivy League dinner and the table would look something like this (okay, exactly like this): lawyer, doctor, lawyer, doctor, lawyer, banker, corporate VP, banker, corporate VP. And then there was me.

And, well, “blogger” just sounds way too much like “blah-ger” or “blomit” to throw it out there with my head held high. The word “freelance” really isn’t much of an improvement. And once it’s been ten years, it’s probably time to drop the, “well I used to…”

Fundamentally, I knew the dinner would be great, but all I could see on my plate was a heaping portion of “I used to be somebody and now I’m somebody’s mom.”

Truly, I’m not interested in the tongue twisting debate of working mothers, stay-at-home-mothers, mothers who work at home, or mothers who would prefer to work in neither locale. The roles are not a debate to be won or lost.

Regardless, we open our conversations and make small talk with the nearest common denominator. If you are on the baseball sidelines or one more birthday party at the go-kart park, then the line of questioning is, “how many?” and “what are their ages?”

But if you are at a cocktail party or a fundraising dinner, then inevitably “how about that rain?” will be followed with “so, what do you do?”

I realize this is intended as the most benign of questions and meant to be about as personal as the weather. But the silence seems to grow louder the longer I wait to respond. The question calls out to be answered simply with a title or a company name. And when you have neither to supply, then it seems that a more personal question couldn’t have been asked.

This single conversation is a minefield for me every time.

But this group of people should have been different. I’d known them half my life and we’d collectively matured into adults together. How could they make me feel like a seventh grader heading to the middle school dance?

“Reunions are supposed to be a time to be together, celebrate life’s changes and get back in touch with each other’s lives,” explains Long Island psychologist, Linda Sapadin. “They are not supposed to be a career contest or a beauty contest.”

Intellectually, yes, that’s an easy argument to make. But, emotionally, reunions can feel like a checkpoint or a pit stop on life’s achievement track.

And then, Dr. Sapadin’s years as a relationship specialist and success coach come to bear as she names my affliction. Social comparison theory.

“We don’t compare ourselves to the average person, we compare ourselves to our own social network. How am I doing against these people I started off with, and how will they judge me?”

Sure enough, I was doing it to myself. The morning’s visit to the orthodontist, the appointment with the gutter expert and The Downtown House conundrum weren’t enough. I had added the universal burden of “measuring up” to my to-do list.

“Particularly people who were successful in very competitive schools seem to think they can have it all,” she explains – obviously forgetting that I have asked her for an interview, not a one sentence personal analysis. “People take different paths in life, and all of these paths show us that you can’t have it all or do it all at the same time.”

And my path had me on an afternoon train, hurtling towards Penn Station, New York. Surprisingly, as the dinner got closer, my anxiety began to dissipate.

First, there was a pre-drink with one of the bankers. And what did he want to talk about? His kids and mine.

Then, while still down the street, I got an email from one of the doctors who’d already arrived at the dinner. “On the 6^th floor, in some sort of David Lynch film. Food and beverages. Come.” Oh yes, there would be skinny jeans aplenty and every flavor of uber-hip, metro-techno character at the exclusive club, but not among my people. Come.

With each new arrival to the party, there was a flurry of enthusiasm and laughs. And it was just like Louis Armstrong’s line, “Sayin’ How do you do? They’re really saying I love you” from What A Wonderful World. Every time someone said, “so what are you doing now?” they were really saying, “It’s so good to see you.”

Our last classmate arrived grinning just like he used to breeze into the dining hall twenty years ago, “Hey, guys, which way’s the bar?”

Yes, the cocktail party could begin. No flak jacket required.

13 Going On, Well, 14: A Snapshot of The American Teenager

2010-03-16T13:51:00.001-04:00

Just last week I took my first-born to the pediatrician for his 13-year-old well visit. An official teenager. What better opportunity to make a study of the species and prepare myself for the years to come?

The American teenager officially came into existence in the 1940s. Obviously, kids have matured through the “–teen” suffixed years since time immemorial, however the social construct and even the term “teenager” are relatively new concepts resulting from modern American privilege.

First, the depression brought child labor laws into effect, keeping kids out of the workforce and putting them back in school. Second, prosperity followed World War II; and American society shifted to become more child-centric. It was the “perfect storm” – high schoolers with free time, increasingly indulgent parents with money, a country riding the wave of a postwar boom, and the release of the Fender electric guitar in 1946.

The American teenager has been a driving force in our culture, media, and economy ever since. My boy is now one of about 30.5 million teenagers populating our middle schools and high schools. I have been conditioned as a parent to expect the coming years to be simultaneously precious and painful, as I watch my son pass through the crucible of adolescence. Just a handful of years between Legos and legal age in which to find out who you are, forge an identity, and achieve autonomy. That’s a pretty tall order when you weigh 82 pounds and don’t quite reach 5 feet.

Fortunately, teens have always had plenty of adults telling them who they are and what they want – just ask them. Although new to the world of teens, I know enough to let the dude “chillax” on the weekend and not ask him to cut his hair because it might kill the “flow,” which I’m assuming is a close relative of Qi and fengshui. I also know enough to call on some psychologists, youth marketing analysts and sociologists to help me make sense of the landscape.

First, adults like labels. And I don’t mean youth market favorites Abercrombie and Fitch, American Eagle and Under Armour.

Many sociologists and demographers put my son’s birth year, 1997, as the start of a new generation, Generation Z. Christened as such simply because it falls after Generation X (those born between 1961 and 1981), and Generation Y (those born between 1980 and the late 1990s).

What happened to all of the catchy descriptives? The Lost Generation, The Silent Generation, The Baby Boomers. Are entire chunks of the population destined to be known simply as alphabetical letters by which academics have dubbed them?

Just weeks in with a new teen, I find myself defensive on his behalf as outside forces try to label, categorize and define him and his amoebic peers by attributes and timelines completely out of their control. They seem to be told who they are before they have a chance to discover it for themselves.

Some have even referred to my son and his younger cohorts as the Homelander Generation because they have no first hand memory of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Others have labeled them The Net Generation or Generation I (internet) or Generation D (digital) because they will be the first group of Americans to never experience education, work and play without the internet.

So far, my teen seems to be living up to those expectations. “If I could have anything, I’d get the iPad and an iPhone. But if I couldn’t get an iPhone then I’d want the Droid,” he explained when asked about a fantasy birthday list. “AT&T’s service and coverage are better, but Verizon has better phones. It’s just always been that way,” he says like he’s working a pop-up booth at an industry trade show.

“And if I couldn’t get an iPad, then I’d get a MacBook Pro with the biggest screen available,” his tech reverie continues. When asked why the Pro laptop over the more consumer geared MacBook, he explained, “The Pro has a better battery life and I would definitely want the biggest battery.” Clearly, that seventh grade science report calls out for the one extra hour of battery life costing an additional $1500.

Indeed, research and marketing guru Josh Weil, CEO of Youth Trends, says, “You cannot underestimate how savvy today’s teens are with all things tech-related. It sets them apart from all previous generations.” This next generation seems poised to teach us that technology is the medium and the message. Technology is the means and the end.

But for the youth who’ve yet to break out (literally and figuratively), perhaps it’s just the beginning? I want the media and society to leave open the possibility that my son and his generation might surprise us. I don’t want them to be defined simply by how frequently or how quickly they text, swipe, blast, tweet, and update.

Certainly, experts say there are other signposts to today’s teens – environmentalism, initiative, vampires, stress and enhanced water drinks. But aren’t those all things that have been sold to them by Generation X, Generation Y and The Baby Boomers?

When I watch my 13-year-old singing next to me in the car, or even when I look at a picture of his smiling toddler face, I still see limitless potential – and unnamed possibilities. Not teenage angst and not the Homelander Generation. I am optimistically looking forward to discovering what his generation teaches us about themselves and our world.

And as a parent, I can teach my child that labels aren’t everything. Not Urban Outfitters or Juicy Couture. And not Generation Z or Generation I. And I can teach him that people can grow and labels can change. The G.I. Generation may not have been all that unique as teenagers either, but decades later they earned themselves a PR overhaul courtesy of Tom Brokaw, and became The Greatest Generation.

Just in case, I’ll keep a space open on my bookshelf for the 2050 bestseller, The Greatester Generation. Actually, I’ll probably just have to set aside some memory for it on my e-reader.

Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

2010-03-05T14:22:00.003-05:00

As if anyone needed proof, it's been a really long winter...

Like many in his gender, Slim likes to throw around numbers, statistics and dates the way most women can be dropped in a grocery store like a military recon mission and know instinctively where the produce, eggs and bread are located. (And need we even ask the question, which one of these skills actually keeps the family fed?)

A few weeks ago, he floated this one out there. “Did you know that forty percent of women have had car accidents in their own garages?”

Seasoned by his particular line of baiting, I immediately brushed him off with a convincing, “That is ridiculous. That is totally made up.”

“No, it’s true,” he went on. “And you know what else, 100% of those women think it’s not funny.”

I thought this would set off a round of women screwing in light bulb jokes, or a discussion of the years-old claim that a woman over 40 was more likely to be killed by a terrorist than get married.

But no, he was content to stick with women challenged by the confines of their own homes, or rather garages.

“If you don’t believe me, prove it,” he said.

Happily rising to the defense of my gender, I checked with insurance agents, drivers ed instructors, homebuilders, commercial parking lot designers, and body shop specialists. None could give me any hard data on the postulation.

However, they were each happy to share countless stories of women drivers who had indeed come in too close contact with their own domestic structures.

“It happens all the time,” said my local body shop, which repairs over 1,000 cars a year. “It’s always, ‘I didn’t see the car,’ ‘I didn’t see the pole,’ or ‘I didn’t see the wall.’”

As for those walls that seem to jump out of nowhere, builders told me of routinely having to return to clients’ homes to repair the door frames, garage doors, the actual garage walls, side-jambs, and even the drywall at the front of garages that bumpers mysteriously break through.

Over the last few decades, garages and their attendant doors have steadily grown to meet the demands of larger cars, and perhaps increasingly distracted drivers. A standard double car garage door used to be 16 feet wide by 7 feet high. With many SUVs and minivans measuring in at over 6 feet high, 6 feet wide, and a whopping 18-plus feet long, that would be a tight squeeze.

Garage doors are now made a standard 8 feet high and are commonly broken down into two 9 or 10 feet wide his and hers bays. Plenty of room for a $600 collapsible stroller to be moved without collapsing.

It would appear, however, that this additional width might not have solved the problem.

Although I’m no statistician, I built a few spreadsheets in my day and can certainly collect a set of data. So, I farmed the question out to 25 friends and family across the country – trying to account for city dwellers and suburban types, number of kids, size of vehicle and even style of driver. Yes, I’m equipped to judge my circle.

I’ve looked for all kinds of angles to spin the data, but sadly, it comes out that nearly 70% of women have had some type of altercation with their own garage, driveway or mailbox.

And a note to many of my friends who started their replies with “no” and followed that with “however,” “except,” and “actually.” You could have just skipped the “no” part.

Buried in the numbers, replies and explanations, there were some real treasures. I promised to protect the innocents, but these are my people and this is why I love them:

I clipped both side view mirrors without leaving my property.

I took out the whole tail end of my car when I backed into a concrete planter. Stupid thing shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

My second incident was when I backed the Volvo wagon out of the garage with the ski rack on top. Put two perfect circular holes in the garage door that was hanging above the car.

Addendum to the note to friends: numbering your incidents is not in your best interest.

I didn’t judge how far the boat trailer stuck out in the driveway, and it ended up right in the back seat through the hatch.

If it’s worth getting there, it’s worth getting there fast. I had my pedal down all the way while backing straight out of my curving driveway and a huge tree popped out of nowhere to shatter my back window.

Actually, the only driving altercation I’ve ever had was in our driveway—backed right into another vehicle. What can I say? It was where I needed to go.

Of course there was the time I was multitasking and forgot to close the back hatch before I exited the garage. Calling my husband was not one of my favorite phone calls to make…

And let’s face it, once you’ve made that phone call, explaining the incident to the insurance agent is easy.

“Oh sure, we get a lot of claims of women hitting their garage doors,” said an Allstate specialist. “But the highest claims we see from women are probably parking lot instances.”

Ah yes, the challenge of maneuvering a beast of a vehicle into a 9 foot opening, while reading an email that lacrosse practice has moved fields and your eight-year-old explains that he didn’t mean to spit his gum in your hair. He was just laughing so hard.

Well, parking lots are no laughing matter.

China is not exactly the first nation that springs to mind when you hear “female-friendly.” (This is where my kids would say, cough–cough, one-child policy, female infanticide.) However, the nation hit the news several weeks ago after a shopping center opened a dedicated “car park for women.”

The parking lot’s spaces are three feet wider and the lines are painted in pink and light purple to “cater to women’s strong sense of color and different sense of distance,” according to officials.

The news set off accusations of gender stereotyping and sexism round the globe. Sure, it’s a bit presumptuous and debasing. But, ladies stop with the doth protesting too much. What’s wrong with bigger parking spaces? At our golf club, there’s a flat screen television in the men’s locker room but none in the ladies. And trust me, Slim’s not clamoring for change saying “Hey, that’s sexist.”

Besides that would just encourage my middle, who received the movie Spinal Tap for his 10th birthday, to say, “What’s wrong with being sexy?”

I decided to see if these generous parking spaces were going to become an international trend. And for that, my local mall took me straight to the top. The King Of Prussia Mall is the largest retail space in the country (apologies to Mall of America, an indoor amusement park doesn’t count as shopping).

With over 13,000 parking spaces, I was curious, would they be widening any of them with their largely female consumer base in mind? But alas, no. No larger spaces and no light purple lines, although they do have valet parking and shuttle bus service during the holiday season.

So, as much as Slim would like me to end with: "And my husband was right." I think I’d rather leave you with an observation from a wise drivers ed instructor.

“One thing I notice with drivers is that there is more or less an inverse relationship. The brighter the person, the more difficulty they have picking up some of the basic concepts of backing out and parking.”

Olympic Fanfare Part 1

2010-02-24T10:41:00.003-05:00

I love the Olympics. Everything about them. The sports, the athletes, the stories, the drama, the medals. As I write this, the women’s moguls are on in the background, and I’ve even changed my ringtone to the John Williams’ Olympic Fanfare theme. Really. Call me. I love it when it rings.

I remember watching Dorothy Hamill in 1976. She not only won gold, but taught every girl how to wear her hair for the next five years. Slim can detail the entire saga of the US hockey team’s march to gold in 1980. Thirty years ago today, 20 American boys (and I do mean boys – average age of 22) won the gold medal by beating Finland after besting Russia two days earlier in the Miracle On Ice. At the time, Slim was twelve and playing in a PeeWee hockey tournament himself, which was stopped for the announcement that the Americans had won gold. And yes, he was carrying the puck at the time. American boys remember these things.

Now with kids of my own, I love the Olympics even more. For one, it is the best excuse to let them watch television with zero guilt involved. And I’m not alone. Apparently, the Winter Games are watched by more women than any other sporting event. And clearly advertisers have gotten the memo. I was a fan the first dozen times I saw the Proud Sponsor of Moms commercial, but by now I can hear the wheels of the marketing machine churn around me.

Watching the games as a family can also bring up a surprising number of issues. Citizenship, politics, history, and geography. The difference between socialism and communism? Shhh, just watch the ice dancing.

My oldest roots against China because they’re against the Dalai Lama. My middle is not a fan of skating for the Republic of Georgia if you were born in Michigan. My youngest is taken with curling because “they’re working really hard sweeping out there.” And my husband roots for Australia because he’s a fan of Torah Bright.

The Olympics are the original reality television. These are real people who’ve sacrificed and trained for years for the chance to compete for a gold medal. Their dream came true when they made it to the Olympics, now they are trying to make ours come true watching them. Most of the athletes are anonymous when they arrive, and many are anonymous when they leave. Regardless, they are Olympians. They have competed at the top of their game on the world’s stage. The phrase “world class” takes on the meaning it was meant to have.

The United States has won more gold medals than any other country, bringing home the gold just over 1000 times since the modern Olympics began in 1896 (and only 85 of those in the winter games). Accounting for summer, winter and team sport wins, there are 1,493 Olympic gold medals residing within our borders. Not something you get to see everyday.

When the movie Miracle came out in 2004, we were invited by a bank to preview the film and meet one of the players from the 1980 team. Obviously, that was back when financial institutions were allowed a more generous definition of “customer service.”

Thing One, all of six years old at the time, invited a friend within whom the hockey blood also ran deep. I remember the two boys mapping out what moves they were going to try on this Olympic great, and what they would say to the Russian and Finnish teams, which in their minds, would obviously also be at the suburban shopping mall multiplex. I was too busy trying to control the unruly sticks they’d brought for autographs to break the news that it was unlikely that the Finnish National team would be at the King of Prussia Mall.

Needless to say, they were a little disappointed to find a man in a business suit standing next to the popcorn “topping” dispenser. There was no Russian goalie and no Finnish hockey team. Just a rep from the bank, 1980 forward Rob McClanahan and his Olympic gold medal.

And indeed, he was world class. He talked to the boys about their teams, told them to work hard and even let them try on his medal. And he didn’t appear offended when they asked why he put it on a light blue ribbon, shouldn’t it be red-white-and-blue?

The other night I asked my three what they would do if they were fortunate enough to take home the gold. Thing Three said he would wear it around so people could look at it. (Presumably not dangling from his waist. For shame, for shame, Scotty Lago.) Thing One said he would have it framed and hang it on his wall. Thing Two, who is worldly beyond his ten years, said, “I’d get it appraised.”

And how would they like to win those medals? Snowboarding. Ice hockey. And “anything but figure-skating.”

This year my children have made Olympic memories of their own. They are completely taken with Shaun White and his helicopter-access only secret half pipe. They’d really like to get their hands on some of those US snowboarding team gloves with the flag on the palm. They say that our U.S. women totally dominate. And they have watched Ryan Kesler’s last minute open net goal against Canada a half dozen times.

Watching the first-time Olympian skate down his opponent and reach around to make a backhanded sweep at the puck with 45 seconds to go, you’d never guess he was cut from every high level team he tried out for when he was 13 years old. Cue the music, because that shot teaches you to believe in Olympic dreams.

And years from now, at a strip mall sporting goods store or a suburban elementary school’s Winter Carnival, a new host of seven-year-olds just might have the chance to touch Ryan Kesler’s gold medal if the Games continue to go our way. And that’s how Olympic dreams are passed on.

Olympic Fanfare Part 2

2010-02-24T10:09:00.005-05:00

I could go on and on with my love of all things Olympic, so I’ve decided to break my piece into two parts. Breaking all kinds of blogging rules at the same time, I’m sure.

For as much as I love these two weeks in February, I do have one little pet peeve. It’s 8 lines long and, according to Olympic rules, can last no longer than 80 seconds. It’s our national anthem, and why none of our athletes seems to be able to sing it on the medal stand.

I’ve watched an almost embarrassing amount of Games coverage now, including a half dozen medal ceremonies. I have yet to see the winner join in song when his or her anthem is played. Sure, they’ve just won a gold medal for themselves and their country. How can I possibly expect them to sing? But I do. I want them to sing it. Quietly to themselves, or as loudly and off-key as I sing in my car.

Obviously, every athlete goes to the Games knowing the ultimate goal is to stand on that middle platform. So why do they all look so lost, confused, and surprised when the music begins? Poor Alexandre Bilodeau, the first Canadian to ever win the gold on home soil, looked like a (charming) deer in headlights as the Maple Leaf flag went up. You’d think that Canada’s $120 million campaign to “Own The Podium” could have covered a lesson or two on Oh Canada.

A study in 2004 showed that two out of three American adults could not sing the national anthem. I decided to test the numbers on my own Americans. Thing One belted out the full verse a cappella with pride. Thing Two claimed “stage fright.” And Thing Three got stuck in a perpetual loop of “dawn’s early light.” But, our Olympic athletes have shown us we can expect more from them.

We all know The Star Spangled Banner was taken from a poem Francis Scott Key wrote as he waited to see who would emerge victorious when the British Royal Navy took it to our young nation in the War of 1812. And it’s not metaphoric. The rockets and bombs really were bursting in air, but early the next morning 15 stripes and 15 stars rose above Baltimore Harbor and Fort McHenry. The Fort is the only National Historic Shrine in the country and was the first site ever allowed to fly the flag night and day, 365 days a year. And whenever our flag was changed to add a new star, it flew over Fort McHenry first so that the quilted cloth would indeed become The Star Spangled Banner.

The song’s first association with sports was baseball’s opening day in Philadelphia in 1897, but it became a game fixture during the Boston Red Sox 1918 World Series win (Slim would tell you that’s when modern history as we know it began). President Herbert Hoover declared The Star Spangled Banner our national anthem in 1931.

The tune has been played a remarkable 7 times already at these Games, yet only snowboarder Seth Westcott has attempted to mumble his way through the verse on the podium. I expect Bode Miller thought it would be difficult to chew his gum and sing at the same time. However, my oldest proved in the third grade that one can play an entire recorder concert while chewing gum. I think Bode could have managed it.

Some athletes have taken their hats off, and some have even placed a hand over their heart and faced the flag, as is protocol laid out by the official U.S. Flag Code. There is no mention of the common conundrum of what to do when wearing a tiara during the anthem.

But what about the singing? The U.S. Olympic Committee has tried to script and control every aspect of the team’s appearance and behavior (what to wear when, and no tweeting or Facebooking until March 3rd), so it would reason they might also help our 216 athletes prepare for the podium.

To find out, I asked a U.S. Olympian – who happens to sport at least one medal of every color, and indeed did sing as our flag was raised. “The US Olympic Committee requires you to attend orientation and one of the items is ‘singing the national anthem,’” he said. “They gave us the words but told us NOT to sing if you don’t know the words. The USOC thinks it’s disrespectful when the words coming from the athlete’s mouth don’t match the anthem.”

You’d think that if our athletes can train up to 11 hours a day, that they’d be able to memorize 8 lines. As for the singing, if you’re sporting gold, nobody cares if you’re off key. When the hockey team beat the Russians in 1980, they spontaneously sang God Bless America – and with their discordant Boston and Minnesota accents, it couldn’t have been pretty. Yet I’m sure they all sang the anthem two days later when they received their gold medals.

But they weren’t singing it from the podium, as the platforms were only intended for team captains back then. After the flag was raised and the anthem sung, our U.S. captain invited the other 19 Americans to squeeze onto the stand with him. Since then, Olympic podiums have been enlarged to accommodate an entire team of gold medalists.

And that’s why I love the Olympics.

Making Peace With Sylvia Plath

2010-02-19T11:09:00.005-05:00

While "celebrating" the 6-day weekend with my three kids during Snowpocalypse 2010, I had the ingenious idea to avoid the oven and grill. It turned out to be less than genius.

Even in just a few weeks of writing this blog, it has come up more than a few times. Sylvia Plath, isn’t that a little dark? Isn’t she dead? Is Sylvia Plath really in your playgroup? And, who’s Sylvia Plath? Granted, I’m related to most of the people asking these questions.

However, it raises the topic nonetheless. Yes, the author Sylvia Plath is indeed dead after asphyxiating herself in her oven while her two young children napped in the next room. And, as if there was any doubt, it did happen during the month of February. So, yes, parking oneself in a mothering club with Sylvia is ironic, sardonic and dark. It is also the truth.

I’m not saying that I should be put on watch or that I don’t enjoy being a mother. I am only saying that there is a very, very dark corner to motherhood and that being able to acknowledge that has not only made me a better mother, it has also allowed me to enjoy the role more. And for that, I have Sylvia Plath, Andrea Yates, Maggie Young, Susan Smith, Melanie Blocker Stokes, and hundreds of other women to thank. Because of their own deeply personal and grisly tragedies, I have learned one of my life’s most important lessons. Mothering is that hard.

When I was pregnant with my first, I went back to Manhattan to visit one of the few people I knew who had a baby. The babysitter had her nine month old out for a walk, and as we sat in her fabulous Madison Avenue kitchen, I waited for my friend to tell me how all of this fabulousness soon would be mine.

“Until I had a child of my own, I never understood child abuse,” she said as she calmly stacked our luncheon dishes and moved on to the sink. I was speechless and desperate for something to busy my eight-month pregnant self. Only weeks later, I viscerally understood that truer words were never spoken. Certainly, motherhood is a very big continuum, be we are all decidedly on it.

In my baby days I kept a mental clip-file of these stories of women who’d gone before and failed by ending their own lives or those of their children or both, as grim testimony to the challenge of motherhood. And that meant some crying and some screaming (on my part) was more than okay.

I also had another little file for Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey and their septuplets and their 15-seater van outside of Des Moines, Iowa. That was my “it could be worse” file. Over the years I have augmented the file with such gems as Nebraska’s safe haven law, which allowed parents to abandon children of any age at hospitals, no questions asked. Nothing like indulging in a little dose of domestic schadenfreude to make my own fortunate lot a little easier.

Only now, when I am far from those dark corners of the early years of motherhood can I consider the subject academically. To that end, I’ve found two academics who’ve taken up the subject full time. Professors Cheryl Meyer and Michelle Oberman write books, comment on trials, speak at conferences and receive weekly phone calls when a new tragedy strikes. “People need to realize, some of it is hormonal and some of it is the social construction of motherhood. And we need to address both,” Meyer says. “People who were close to the woman always say, ‘she was such a good mother, such a devoted mother.’ She’s always, always described as ‘a devoted mother.’”

Their important work is aimed at increasingly awareness, understanding and help for women and families so that such extremes can be avoided. “The media tries to spin it ‘this couldn’t happen to you.’ When the reality is exactly the opposite, this could happen to anybody.”

Such was the case last summer. I was with friends when someone mentioned the story of a local mother who was pushed to – and over – the edge when she put her hands on her daughter’s mouth to make the screaming and crying before a bath stop. It did, and so did the girl’s breathing.

The collective reaction from the gathered group of women was, “Oh my God, that’s awful. I can’t believe that happened.” Then, leave it to one in the crowd to say, “I can’t believe it doesn’t happen more.” And, if you’ve ever wondered how to clear an entire deck at a summer tennis club, then consider that my little gift to you.

But it does happen more. There are over one hundred cases a year of children dying at the hand of their own mothers. That’s one every three days. These were not violent women and they did not have any criminal histories. At its simplest, they were women whom mothering had gotten the best of. And what they were left with was often depression, inadequacy, isolation, too many babies and not enough money, and crying that wouldn’t stop. And most insidious of all, they were left with a reality that did not match the dream.

And whose does? No one but another mother will believe you when you say that those most magical baby days can be the loneliest, darkest, most isolating and angriest you will experience. Sure, you are surrounded by people bearing gifts and good wishes, and the baby is fast asleep. But your guests will leave as soon as the baby wakes and you are left with the seemingly insurmountable task of writing a thank-you note for a hooded hippopotamus bath towel. And your husband will ask why he is having toaster waffles for dinner.

And for many in the great sisterhood of motherhood, it doesn’t seem to get any better. Yes, I could afford the toaster waffles and I had a husband to eat them. Many have neither but have two or three times as many babies as I. However, as the academics discovered, these extreme cases of helpless and hopeless follow no pattern for birth order, religion, time of year, age of mother, age of child, gender of child, or number of children. It would appear isolation and exhaustion are doled out fairly equitably in motherhood.

I fortunately seemed to get more than my share of irony and dark humor. Which helps explain why I write Playgroup With Sylvia Plath and will never have to be described as “such a devoted mother.”

Baby Teeth

2010-02-12T12:41:00.004-05:00

“Mom, I have some really exciting news to tell you,” my eight-year-old said to me when he got off the bus recently. This is one of my favorite things about having a child in the early grades of school. They seem to come home almost daily with some great conquest of knowledge or observation they’ve been keeping in their pocket to share with me all day. “Mom, did you know there are 8 million atoms in a period in a book?”

The exciting news this time from my second grader? “I have a wiggly tooth.” His palpable excitement was crushed quickly by his older brother – all of twelve years old, “You are such a loser.”

“Do you want to feel it?” Because, for an eight-year-old boy, it’s completely normal to ask if you want to stick your fingers into his mouth, grasp his tooth and push it around in a circle and back and forth in his gums. In fact it is so normal that if you say “no,” he will say, “why not?”

The tooth fell out a day or two later and he was able to add another little plastic tooth keepsake box from the school nurse to his collection. We went through the charade of the tooth fairy – whom he has actually told Slim is spelled M-O-M. Somehow, I find selling my children on the Santa fantasy palatable, yet I have a harder time thinking that convincing them to believe in a magical fairy that exchanges cash for teeth is good parenting.

In many European countries, the traditional belief is that the tooth fairy is a magical mouse. Excepting Scotland, where the little dental sprite takes the form of a white fairy rat visiting children’s bedsides under the cover of night. Now there’s an image that invites a peaceful night’s sleep.

Then just a few days ago, my seventh grader informed me that he has three loose teeth. I refrained from telling him he was “such a loser.” Instead, I got to thinking, why do kids lose their teeth? There is no other body part for which you get a practice round and then regenerate.

And why do kids get their permanent teeth and all of the attendant orthodontic wear right in the prime of gawkwardness? Wouldn’t it be better to emerge once the food groups have expanded from gum, Nerds and Skittles? To say nothing of waiting until a kid can actually be responsible for his dental hygiene more than two nights in a row?

But, apparently no. Our bodies are designed to follow a particular course of growth, development and maturation. And teeth are an important part of that process. In fact, for many who have theorized and constructed timelines on the stages of development, teeth can be important milestones.

Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner linked teeth directly to his theories of the 7-year cycles of childhood and learning. A child ages one through seven is busy growing their physical bodies, the central nervous system is getting itself under control and the child is all about himself.

Jean Piaget, a Swiss biologist, called this stage pre-operational. For him, a child during these years is “oriented to the present, the child has difficulty conceptualizing time.” That explains the odd – but frequent – question from my youngest, “Mom, I forget, is this yesterday or tomorrow?”

Piaget goes on, “His thinking is influenced by fantasy – the way he’d like things to be. He takes in information and then changes it in his mind to fit his ideas.” Piaget would like this one, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a giant gumball machine robot in our backyard, mom? Wouldn’t it?”

When the primary teeth begin to fall out, this is the beginning of the end of early childhood. Steiner’s Waldorf schools go so far as to all but require a missing tooth to enter the first grade. It is seen as a sign that the mind is ready to take on the task of learning to read.

Of course being slightly on the touchy-feely side, there would be no chart of who’s lost how many teeth in a Waldorf kindergarten. The “lost teeth” charts have even been phased out of many traditional schools, as the perceived competition has only added to children’s anxiety. And really, it’s important for everyone (parents especially) to understand, just because Lauren has lost four teeth doesn’t mean she’s gifted.

Even my pediatrician and orthodontist agree, once the top four and bottom four teeth fall out, there is a period of latency. A few years for the body – and the parents of that body – to catch their breath. It’s generally a period of health and happiness.

For the theorists, the years between the loss of the first and the last baby teeth is middle childhood. It is the stage of the concrete. Kids begin to gather a body of concrete knowledge, facts and observations and make rational judgments. The world becomes much more black and white, and there are no longer fantasies of gumball machine robots. As awesome as those would be.

And then, somewhere between twelve and fourteen years old, the proverbial other shoe, er teeth, drop and adolescence begins. To the theorist, this begins the stage of abstract thinking, opening up the youngster to issues of morality and ethics. Ah, yes the teenage years, the last seven-year stage in the cycle which will wind from adolescence to adulthood.

That stage still feels far away for me, but I know that it gets closer every time I see my oldest put his (filthy) hands in his mouth to wiggle a loose tooth. I wouldn’t mind if he held onto those last teeth for another few years. Because this is what those European scientists say about the teen years, “adolescents perceive future implications, but may not apply them in decision making.”

When I opened up one of my littlest boy’s bedroom drawers, I found his handful of lost tooth boxes. I know that eighth tooth will fall anytime now. And then he will close the drawer on early childhood. And unfortunately, I have no difficulty conceptualizing time. Very clearly, that will be yesterday, and my tomorrows with my three boys will be one less.

A Google Search For Meaning

2010-02-09T10:28:00.003-05:00

Thing One returned from a squash match yesterday to tell me that he didn’t finish all of his homework in study hall because they were busy watching commercials from Sunday night’s Super Bowl. Ah, now there’s my education dollars at work.

But really, at $3 million for a 30-second spot, and all the water cooler and gym locker buzz they generate the next day, the commercials really are the highlight of the Super Bowl. In our house, Doritos was the clear winner with the younger set, but Slim and I agreed that Google’s spot stole the show. In case you missed it, take a look:

We thought the one-minute micro-fiction was clean, clever and charming. Google’s “Parisian Love” was a 1-minute search engine fantasy, and viewers loved it. But let’s take a look at Google searches in reality.

Recently, I’d heard a lot about a book where a man places a classified ad in the newspaper looking for a wife. I’m sure I had picked the book up a few times in the store, maybe read a random review and I decided I’d like to give it further consideration as a potential read. – Maybe some strange curiosity about any woman who would reply to an ad looking for “a wife” and think that she was getting a real bargain.

I racked my Rolodex of a brain overloaded with useless information (does anyone still need to know my P.O. Box number – from college?) and all I came up with was “something wife.” Was it good wife? Pretend wife? Simple wife? Average wife? – Eureka! I was sure it was Average Wife (and thought, what an awful title). So like any modern info junky, I entered it right into the Google search window. As I typed, my good friend Google was there by my side, happily suggesting things along the way to speed my search. With “A” I got Amazon, “A-V” gave me Avatar, “A-V-E” brought up Avery, and then there it was, the most recommended search with the letters “A-V-E-R?” Average penile length.

My immediate reaction was that there was something wrong, I must have mistyped the letters or something so I tried it again. Sure enough there were the words staring at me (and I mean staring) as the cursor blinked patiently. Then it occurred to me, this could be unique to my personal computer because of my Google history (see Whither GoMommy.com.) I asked around, but the search suggestions held true in California, New York and Pennsylvania. Inquiring minds across America want to know average penile length.

Really? Is this something a lot of today’s consumers of news and information are concerned with? This is the top “item” people would like to know the average of? As a professional reporter who knows a thing or two about tracking down an answer, I got to employ one of my favorite Bill Murray lines, “Back off man, I’m a journalist.” (Even with just “back off” typed in, Google nails Ghostbusters’ “Back off man, I’m a scientist.”)

Just an email and a quick phone call to the Google press room, and I had an official expert on the line. “The feature you’re asking about is called Google Suggest,” said Jake. (Of course his name is Jake. How many people do you know over the age of 25 named Jake? In fact, according to Social Security records, the name was hovering around “Dustin” and “José” in popularity in the early 1980s. Jacob and Jake broke through the top 20 in 1990 and continued to climb the charts to become the number one boys name in 2000 – a spot it has held every year since.) So, back to my waiting-to-become-legal Google friend Jake.

He explained that Google Suggest uses a number of different variables and signals to refine its suggested offerings, chief among them the overall popularity of similar searches. He apologized for not going further, “We don’t get into the nitty-gritty of how the algorithm works because we don’t want people to try and game the system.” Yes, that’s me. Just ask Social Security: most popular activity for 40-year-old housewives in 2010? Gaming Google’s system.

So, by this logic, it would appear that “average penile length” is a far more popular search than average IQ, average temperature, average salary, average height, or any other average, for that matter. This just further supports my pet theory that Google is actually run by a room of 15-year-old boys subsisting on Cool Ranch Doritos and blue Gatorade.

My brief foray into the world of Google algorithms and search engines also taught me that, if you are looking to attract readers interested in thoughtful writing on modern parenting, then combining the words “playgroup” and “Sylvia Plath” is not exactly the go-to move. Indeed, aligning yourself with a woman who committed suicide by putting her head in her own oven while her children napped in the next room, puts you in the “difficult to label” category. This explains why my blog is clustered with others writing about families that have had either a variety of hospital stays or other “issues.” Perhaps I really am right at home in the blogosphere.

So, when I finally made my way back to my book search, I discovered what I was looking for: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. It is billed as a mysterious, gothic tale about a 58-year-old man, claiming he wants “a simple honest woman. A quiet life.” Well, the personal-ad protagonist and his betrothed seem to have differing definitions of “reliable.” His bride-to-be arrives with some real baggage. Alongside her comfortable shoes and wool dresses, she’s packed a bottle of arsenic with which to poison her new husband.

And now I know why A Reliable Wife was not among the dozen books Slim gave me for Christmas. I also know a little more about how the Google Suggest feature works. And because all of America seems to want to know, it’s 5.1 to 5.9 inches.

Get Some Gumption Girl Scout Badge

2010-02-04T13:05:00.004-05:00

Disclaimer: When I was eleven I was asked to make a choice. Either clean the outhouses at the Meadow Mountain campsite, or turn in my Girl Scout sash. I found it completely unfair that Rhonda and Kathy were sweeping out the cabins (waving at me) as I was handed the Comet and directed to the bank of latrines. I don’t care if it was the chore I drew from the “Girl Scout Job Jar.” The Girl Scout Law implores its members to respect themselves and authority, and also to be a sister to every Girl Scout. Well, that round I chose myself over authority and turned in the sash – along with the Comet. So, today, I’m doing my part to be a sister to the Girl Scouts and teach them a thing or two about gumption.

The Girl Scout Cookie sale is an American institution. It’s been around since the 1930s, pausing only during WWII because of flour, sugar and butter shortages. (The gals in green then peddled Girl Scout Calendars, which I have to imagine were a far cry from girly calendars.) All hail the great Thin Mint – my boxes are being delivered today. My issue, however, is with names and numbers.

Specifically, where has my Samoa gone, and who is this poor stand-in Caramel deLite? Also, just how much of my $3.50 goes to the girls in troop 507 for field trips and sparkly beads for their next project, and how much goes to pay the heating bill of the Girl Scout headquarters in New York City?

To track down my facts, I called up a friend. And believe me, you are no one in the suburban hierarchy if you don’t know a mom who can hook you up with a box of pre-market Tagalongs from the back of her garage.

My friend assured me she could fill me in on all the cookie details because she’s been a Brownie troop leader for years. She was even willing to be a point person on the Boy Scout popcorn sale because her husband was a Cub Master.

Whoa, stop right there. They get Cub Master and we’re stuck with troop leader and cookie mom? She assured me, however, that she does not have to call him “Cub Master” in bed (I asked). And, she informed me that “cookie mom” has been upgraded to “cookie manager” in case any dads wanted the position. Perhaps the title of “Cookie Madame” would have given the job a little more appeal.

As for names, it turns out the Caramel deLite, née Samoa, Peanut Butter Patties, née Tagalong, and Shortbread, née Trefoil, did not undergo a name change as part of a political correctness cleansing or a dumbing down by the marketing department. It’s a simple matter of brand management. Something the Girl Scouts should learn a thing or two about before receiving their “Smart Cookie” badge.

The Girl Scout Cookie business has been streamlined to two bakeries churning out more than 200 million boxes of cookies each year. One bakery finessed the rights to all of the original cookie names, and the other was left to use bland descriptions. Thus explaining why the same cookies are known by different names according to which bakery supplies the region.

The two bakeries are appealingly named Little Brown Baker and ABC Bakers. Very Norman Rockwell, right? They also happen to be subsidiaries of two corporate behemoths known as Kelloggs and George Weston Limited. Can you guess which one got their paperwork in first to own the trademarks on the names Samoa, Tagalong and Trefoil? I’ll give you a hint. One company names its products Froot Loops, Pop-Tarts, Cheez-It, E.L.Fudge and Smorz cereal (brilliant). The other’s brands include Oroweat, Stroehmann, Freihofer’s, Entenmann’s and Bimbo Bakeries (can you say bun in the oven?)

Girls, how could you let this happen? Who wears the vest around here, you or some technicolor elf? You should be telling the bakeries what your cookies are called. But instead, half of your customers are wondering what Samoas are and the other half is mourning the disappearance of the DoSiDo (Jackie O’s favorite, according to Girl Scout lore). And before you work into your sales pitch, “get your Tagalongs also known as Peanut Butter Patties,” ask the Burmese how they feel about being from “Myanmar, formerly Burma”.

Now let’s get down to pricing. Girl Scouts are expected to be working towards their awards for “Math Fun” and “Penny Power,” so this should be pretty clear. This year, Girl Scouts will sell more than 200 million boxes of the long adored treat. At $3.50 a box, that’s a $700 million haul. That’s a lot of Thin Mints. Of that $3.50 that a Girl Scout brings in, her troop gets about 50 cents to use for their activities, while the greater Girl Scout Council keeps $2.00 per box. Granted, a lot of 50 cents can add up to a lot of feathers and glitter glue for a troop.

But, when compared with a Boy Scout troop's take of 35% of his popcorn sales, those aren’t good margins. Girl Scout sales are divvied up 15% to a girl’s actual troop and nearly 60% to the larger Council. Boy Scout sales fall 35% to the boy’s troop and 30% to the Council. Now I never earned my “Money Sense” badge, but where is the sense in the boys earning double what the girls get? And believe you me, that is nothing compared to the prize disparity.

Highlighters, leg warmers, spiral journals, fabric bookmarks, and stuffed frogs. Oh sure, I’d much rather have those over a pocket knife, compass and torch set, or a Wal-Mart gift card. The Boy Scouts have even taken their sales online and can earn Amazon gift cards. A Girl Scout is only allowed to email friends and family that she has the goods for sale, but she is not allowed to traffic in online commerce. Since taking their efforts online, Boy Scout sales have risen 700%. You don’t even need a “Consumer Power” badge to understand that.

So girls, here’s the lesson in gumption. Forget about the “Rocks Rock” patch and move on to the “CyberGirl Scout” award and get building yourselves an online storefront. Then, write your National Council and tell them as part of your “Healthy Relationships” badge you’d like the cookie profits to be split a little more equitably. You might also urge your higher-ups to use some of that $400 million you just earned them to hire a good lawyer and reclaim ownership of your cookie names. Barring that, maybe you should just start marketing your product as iCookies.

A Toy From A Boy

2010-01-28T11:17:00.002-05:00

I got my best Christmas present days after the holiday and I didn’t even know it was coming. I was picking up Thing Three from a friend’s house and before I left the father said, “Hold on, I’ve got something for you.” He handed me a little square box of perfect packaging with something shiny and silver in it. It was a 2 gigabyte iPod Shuffle with “Have A Great 2010” engraved on the back. “I gave these to all of my clients this year for Christmas, and I had an extra one and I knew you would like it,” he said. “I loaded it up with about 800 songs for you. – There are some surprises and some real gems in there.”

Just the week before, I’d had my annual $25-and-under holiday gift exchange with 11 girlfriends. Sure, there was a one-of-a-kind bottle of hand-pressed olive oil from Italy, a hooked “Ho Ho Ho” rug and a charming pinecone candelabra. But let’s face it; it was no shiny new shuffle.

Driving home, I was giddy with my swag – I have a clinical weakness for all things Apple. But then it dawned on me, the real gift was that I’d made a male friend with a common interest – and that hadn’t happened in a long time.

Back in my working days, I had plenty of men co-workers, colleagues, pod and cubicle mates. Male friends. We would have lunch, coffee, dinner, and even go to bars after work. – And yes, I was married. My male co-workers taught me to smoke a cigar in a glass corner office on the 51st floor on Park Avenue to celebrate a big banking deal. And I was the go-to call for a client when he had extra tickets to the Rangers games at Madison Square Gardens.

But, my male friends mostly disappeared after I left work, and vanished entirely as soon as Thing One arrived. But I didn’t miss them right away. I was consumed in babydom. Then there was Thing Two, Thing Three, and I needed a village. I have my village and couldn’t be happier with it. But 12 years in, it’s about time for a weekend pass from the village.

I wondered, was it just me in my miasma of selfishness, or was this a real issue lots of women were facing? Every thinking stay-at-home-mom who really cared about larger world issues yet inexplicably found themselves discussing the evils of over-scheduled middle-schoolers (again) agreed with me wholeheartedly. But that could’ve been just because they were from my village.

So, I asked a psychologist who’s been practicing relationship therapy for 25 years on Long Island. It was like my own Friends episode. “All relationships take place within a social context. They don’t happen out of the blue,” she said. “Once a woman is home, there’s a lack of freedom and conversation is based on what is active in your life. All of a sudden there is a lot of talk about throw-up and laundry.”

Keep singing it doctor: “The current generation feels it more than any other because these women had real friendships with men in college and the workplace more than any women before them,” she said. “All of a sudden – and it may be 10 years all of a sudden – you find yourself thinking what am I doing here? I never intended to be here.”

I figured I’d either nailed a great social issue of our time, or I just knew the right expert to call. I wondered if the modern men we went to college and the office with valued their cross-gender friendships (that’s what my new Long Island friend calls them) as much as women did. So I asked Slim, who works in a three-person office, if he missed having lots of female colleagues. And he said, “are we out of cashews?”

Clearly, Long Island psychologists were my people. The psychologist waxed lyrical about a woman’s need to be considered equally valuable as a human being, and the feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself and the rewards of being connected to the male part of the universe. All of this happens organically when you have male co-workers. There’s also the bantering, competition, joking and big brother protectiveness that come with male friendships. Female friendships, on the other hand, are filled with emotion and support, but often a certain delicacy or tension because their feelings get hurt more easily.

That explains why my email in-box is littered with digital flower bouquets, chainmail encouraging me to let 10 women in my life know how much they mean to me, and plenty of Maya Angelou poetry. And if I receive one more copy of the essay comparing motherhood to the invisible, nameless builders of the world’s greatest cathedrals, I will begin sharpening my own special stonemasonry chisel. Why don’t any of my stay-at-home mom friends send me emails that say, “Four words, people: John Edwards sex tape.”

After much discussion with friends and my Long Island psychologist, I’ve accepted that in order to have that richer texture of easy friendships with both genders, I would have to go back to a work environment with male colleagues. But I’m pretty sure that after not too long of that, I would need a weekend pass to visit my village. And that’s a sacrifice I’m not yet willing to make. So for now, I’ll have to be happy with my shuffle as a small window into the male mind. Although I’m still not sure I understand how a song by the hip hop rap group The Roots works as a lead-in to an aria from Puccini’s Turandot.

So, when I sat down to thank my friend for my new toy, I could’ve written, “Dear Scott, Thank you so much for the iPod shuffle. It is so cute and just perfect to listen to while vacuuming or folding laundry.” (Which, admittedly, it actually is.) I could have even quoted a few lines from Gift From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. But I didn’t. I sent him a link to an awesome YouTube video of Hitler reacting to the Democrats losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat.

Sarah Palin, Free Pizza and Me

2010-01-23T17:07:00.006-05:00

There was a brief window during the 2008 election when the hockey mom was vaulted above the soccer mom. Mind you that doesn’t exactly bring either to any great heights, it just seemed the whole lipstick-pitbull thing was too hard for the media to resist once Sarah Palin unleashed the comment.

And yes, after nearly nine years of driving to rinks around Pennsylvania, I am technically a “hockey mom.” Although, you won’t see me sporting any “You Don’t Scare Me, I’m A Hockey Mom” sweatshirt in the stands, nor will I be wearing the 100% cotton classic thong that reads “HOCKEY M.I.L.F.” anywhere. (Really, what marketer thinks that’s funny? And, has he actually seen many hockey moms?)

So along came a message to my email in-box this week pleading for extras to take part in “Hockey Mom,” the final project of a local film school student. It seems the image of mothers pounding the glass while their offspring glide by on sharp metal blades still captivates.

The young director, we’ll call him Adam, sets the scene, “Two mothers get into a fight over their kids. The bad mother is very obnoxious, blows an air horn, rings a cowbell, and curses. The good mother is quiet, timid, and polite until she is provoked into action. The scene ends with them being pulled away from each other by security guards.”

Obviously not too familiar with his target audience of mothers who’ve already spent enough time driving to and from and sitting in cold ice arenas, Adam offers this as enticement for Saturday’s 10:30 pm to 1 am shoot, “This scene is the climax of the movie…I promise it will be a massive amount of fun…Afterward we will have copious amounts of pizza and beverages for everyone.”

Our young film student, whom we’ll now call Adam Scheiner, also must expect that hockey moms are much better at ringing their cowbells than using the internet. (Granted, some probably are.) However, if you can get a kid to the rink by 5:15 am and dressed (in goalie gear!) for a 6 o’clock game, you’re probably willing to make those extra few clicks at the keyboard. It's also clear that this budding movie-maker has completely missed all of the cases, articles, and red lights warning young people that "anything you put on the internet can be found and held against you."

And that’s how I discovered that this student – who so desperately wants my help – describes himself as “filmmaker, writer, huggable person.” Fine. As for his "Twitter" location, instead of sticking with your basic "Philadelphia," he writes, “In your mother’s vagina.” Right, and that’s who I’m going to trust with my big screen debut playing a mother. Adam, Adam, Adam, if you were lucky, your mother would have been a hockey mom with plenty of hours to cart you to the rink and give you a lesson or two on major and minor penalties. This one is more of a game misconduct.

So, no, I will not be spending this evening having massive amounts of fun and copious amounts of pizza. Plus, I just couldn’t decide if I wanted to be listed in the credits as “Good Mother” or “Bad Mother.” I'll just be home polishing my cowbells for next weekend's game.

Serviceable Service

2010-01-21T12:23:00.010-05:00

Note: This post is in direct response to Slim, who after reading the first two posts said, “Well it’s nice, but isn’t it going to be about something? It’s just, ‘blah, blah, blah.’” Apparently the Boston sports blogs he reads are not just ‘blah, blah, blah.’ Who knew?

First let’s accept that the institution of motherhood is service itself. Sure it’s best when there’s a healthy dose of love and nurturing involved too. But let’s face it, just love isn’t going to get you to hockey practice or marinate that chicken.

So, from time immemorial, the job requirements have been to birth that baby and then quite simply keep that baby alive. Service. Then along came industrialization, processed sugar, youth sports and Greenpeace, so now there’s a healthy side portion of guilt to go along with the service. Don’t get me wrong, I love mothering as much as the next girl who calls a construction paper turkey with googly eyes “art.” But there’s a lot of service and guilt involved.

So, this week’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. First, let me get it out there – love the man, love the sentiment, believe in community service. However, as a woman in a job pretty full-up of service and guilt, this “opportunity” to teach my children weighs on me. Mostly because I struggle with what the appropriate lessons and actual service efforts should be for young children. But also, because by turning the holiday into a service day, the actual curriculum and cause for celebration and reflection is lost.

For my kids, and many out there, the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and his place in our nation’s history is still the more age-appropriate and important lesson to learn. He was a martyr for civil rights in our country, he led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, he led the March on Washington, and he was the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. As a ten-year-old, he even sang with his church choir at the 1939 Atlanta premiere of Gone With The Wind. I mean, as an American citizen in history, the guy ruled.

And yet, at the completion of a second grade unit learning all about “Our Friend Martin,” my son struggled with his reading response homework. “How am I supposed to know why he was killed? It only talks about all the things he did and then it just says he was killed.” Granted, my son may be a little slow in the inference department, but he is eight! Go ahead and teach him that there was an ugly time in our country of fighting, inequality, and racism. And it’s not over yet.

My friend Martin’s lesson to elementary school children should be about that fight and the bravery to stand up when something is not fair. It should not be about making birdfeeders for the community, beading bracelets, washing the local fire-trucks, or even sewing new fleece pillows for hospital patients.

If your friends are there, you do arts and crafts projects, there are snacks (proceeds going to help find a cure for cancer, of course) and you get a cool new t-shirt to take home, that’s called a birthday party not a day of service. (And don’t get me started on the birthday invitation that says, “Instead of gifts, Reilly would like his friends to bring blankets for the homeless.” Because I’m actually quite sure Reilly would like the new Lego Star Wars Droid Battleship.)

Like the man in his day, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was met with opposition, hatred and bigotry. The Day was voted an official U.S. holiday in 1983 – the first of its kind to honor a private citizen. Right there, something to talk to kids about. It wasn’t actually celebrated until 1986, and even into the 1990s some states still weren’t giving the day its due. The Super Bowl was moved from Arizona to California in 1990 because The Grand Canyon State was acting less than grand.

In Virginia, the holiday used to be a three-fer – celebrating great generals of the Confederacy and civil rights – they called it Lee-Jackson-King Day. Nice. While employees of the state of South Carolina, up until 2000, could choose to observe either MLK Day or one of three confederate holidays. (Unless of course you are the governor and you are going to visit your Argentinian mistress, then you’re probably going to need all three of those.)

Perhaps I am hyper-aware of the issue because Philadelphia is where MLK Day was transformed into a Day of Service, and it is still the largest of its kind in the nation. Could it be that being surrounded by 70,000 volunteers in matching MLK service day t-shirts has contributed to my guilt?

Speaking of which, is it any mystery why Target and other corporations spent upwards of $100,000 to get their logos on 70,000 backs for the day by “donating” the shirts? Mind you, when trying to research the store’s role in the Day of Service, I continued to be given “Target store hours for MLK Day.” And trust me when I tell you, I’ve nothing against Target.

But I do have something against teaching my children charity that is more about the “chairing” or service that is too disconnected from the “served.” Many of the savviest (and self-servingly so) causes out there are teaching consumers “embedded philanthropy” – like the RED campaign, or Buy One-Give One efforts that make a corporate donation when you buy the product. So yes, teens can get that new iPod and fight AIDS in Africa at the same time.

Similarly, most of the MLK Day service projects for children seem to be teaching embedded service. I am still on the lookout for projects that will show my kids that socializing can be a by-product of service, rather than service as a feel good by-product of socializing. Teach my kid about MLK the man before we move on to solving world hunger one hand-painted ceramic bowl at a time in a “simulated soup kitchen environment for kids in grades pre-K through 12” (I am not making that up).

Besides, all I really wanted to do on Monday was clean out my basement. And, somehow, I felt guilty about that.

Whither GoMommy.com?

2010-01-15T10:25:00.004-05:00

Apparently, starting a blog these days is really just dipping the big toe in. To really make waves on the web, a friend instructed me, you have to get a domain name. And how does one actually “get a domain name”? – Well, obviously, you do it at godaddy.com, this friend assured me. Yes, I’d seen the ads during the Superbowl, lots women in skinny jeans and even tighter tank tops that say “GoDaddy” on them. Well, of course, they’re selling alphanumeric identification labels on the internet.

Which got me thinking, why does the term “daddy” connote cool, hip, and even sexy, while its partner “mommy” decidedly does not? In addition to GoDaddy, there’s Puff Daddy, sugar daddy, mac daddy, big daddy, daddy-O, daddy cool, Trick Daddy, skydaddy and who’s your daddy? (Which I’m not sure achieves its desired effect when an 8-year-old says it to you in a game of Backgammon.)

And on the other side of the not-so-equally-divided double bed, there’s Mommie Dearest, mommy wars, mommy and me, mommy track, mommybloggers, and of course PHATmommy – for those interested in parenting, homeschooling and technology.

So, why the disparity? To get to the facts, I asked an Ivy League marketing professor who specializes in identity, influence and behavior – I mean, he’d know, right? And he came right out with it, “While mommy is mainly associated with parenthood, daddy is also associated with music such as jazz and ska. Bands like Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and websites like UrbanDaddy all build off the fact that the term is associated with being knowledgeable or hip to things going on in the world.”

Subtext, “mommy” is derived from words like mother, maternal, mama, mammy and mammary gland. The word just oozes… hipness, no? Let’s face it, any term that has to do with breastfeeding should rarely be used in marketing, unless of course you’re selling a breast pump. Ever mention that term around your unmarried brother? I guarantee you a good laugh.

Sure “mommy” rules the playground set and “daddy” is king in the music world. All even. But “daddy” reigns even higher in books, television, and especially the movies (With a particularly high presence in porn. Yeah, so that search is now part of my Google history. Forever.) In sheer numbers alone – and daddy’s all about the numbers – 40 movie or television titles use the term “mommy,” while 212 have found it worth their while to use “daddy” in the title.

And now let’s take a closer look at those titles, shall we? Daddy Knows Best, My Heart Belongs to Daddy, My Daddy The Astronaut, My Wise Daddy, and My Daddy The Crocodile Hunter. Then there’s a rash of titles which would be right at home on the early 80’s afterschool special shelf: Bachelor Daddy, Daddy Puts One Over, For Sale: Daddy, Disappearing Daddy, Since Daddy Was Taken Away, Where’s Daddy, When Daddy Comes Home, and the more troubling, Daddy Left Me Alone With God. Daddy and The Muscle Academy appears to be part of the Finnish gay cinema wave.

As for mommy on the big screen? Mommy Loves Puppy, Mommy Mommy, Your Mommy Kills Animals, My Mom Works at Sears, Mommy Mommy Where’s My Brain, and my personal favorite, made for TV, Because Mommy Works.

To be fair, there is one porn series that gives the nod to mom (now the Google search minders are really confused!) – Mommy XXX: This Soccer Mom Can Handle Big Balls. There’s also a series on cable called Wife, Mom, Bounty Hunter, where you can watch a former female wrestler balance family life with running her own bail bond business in Arizona. Lastly, there’s Mommy’s Bosses that I initially misread as Mommy Bosses, which is frankly probably a more fitting title for the science fiction television episode.

So, in this literal “mommy” vs. “daddy” war (like I said, I tackle the important issues), it was pretty clear who was (can’t resist) coming out on top. I polled a few others, even talking to someone at YouTube – arbiters of everything hip, now and useless. He tried to claim that there was no difference in the two terms. “Mommybloggers are way cool,” his 23-year-old self said. I let the appropriate pause pass for him to get comfortable with his judgment, and then asked, “would you rather date someone who worked at GoDaddy or was a mommyblogger?” There was no need for a pause, “no comment.”

And So It Begins...

2010-01-08T11:52:00.006-05:00

As this is the my first post, I thought I'd better do a little explaining about "the blog," and how I've either risen so high or stooped so low as to even be writing "a blog." (Not to worry, a few posts in and I'm sure I will stop referring to it as "the blog.")

First, I've always been a little queasy with memoirs and first person writing and swore I would never do it.

Second, I always cringed when other writers would sing the refrain, “write what you know – you should write about your kids.” Please, I had far more interesting things to write about than my kids. (That would have been the stage when writing a book on mutual funds was “interesting.”)

Third, as a former journalist for a national newspaper, I scoffed at the prospect that I would ever write “a blog.”

So, here I am. Writing a blog, largely about my life and parenting my three children. Whoa, Peter, did you just hear that cock crow?

I plan to write regular pieces on issues that come up or interest me as I raise my three boys (four really, if you’ve met my husband) – or perhaps they are issues that interest me so that I can avoid raising my kids. We’ll see. I also plan to put up smaller posts of things I’ve seen or overheard that have given me a chuckle or pause. Like yesterday, a woman used the phrase “tricked out Odyssey.” And I’m pretty sure she was serious.

Now for the blog title. That might take a little explaining, but less than you’d think. First, I’m not actually a big Sylvia Plath fan. I have never considered myself smart enough nor troubled enough to really understand or appreciate poetry. (Nor do I buy that Bill Clinton or Monica Lewinsky ever read much of their copies of Leaves of Grass.)

So it’s really more about the playgroup part. Back when my kids were in the playgroup stage, I had bastardized that dream dinner date game. – You know, when the Miss America candidate from Arkansas says, “My three dream dinner dates, living or dead, would be Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Julia Roberts.”

I pondered, who would be a dream addition to playgroup. Sure, I could have been separating my toddler from the 1-lb bag of Twizzlers, but this required some real thought.

I went through the short list of smart, funny women. Hmm, none of them had kids. There were plenty of smart, admirable, accomplished women. And some of them actually had kids. But in playgroup, you’re not looking for admirable and accomplished. Why surround yourself with people who are constant reminders of what you’re not doing?

And then it came to me. Sylvia Plath. She covered all the bases – smart, interesting, accomplished, we could swap writing struggles, she’d lived abroad... And let’s face it, here’s someone who could make even me feel like I was being a pretty good mother. Besides it’s always fun to have someone in your circle who’s a little bit famous – or maybe infamous.

And really no matter how great your playgroup is, wouldn’t it be nice to once in awhile have a mom say, “you know I’ve hired a sitter for playgroup this morning – bring all your kids over and then we can each go out and do what we want for the next four hours, separately.” Sylvia would have been just that kind of playgroup mom.

And bonus, have you seen her ex? He was hot in an older-man, Sam Shepard sort of hot. There’s always a chance Ted Hughes would come to couples' dinner (they’d bring something room temp.) – or knowing Sylvia, he might end up doing a Friday morning playgroup stint or two.

So there you have it, the genesis of the title of “the blog,” which will have very little to do with playgroups and even less to say about Sylvia Plath.

As for the tagline under the title, some of you may wince and think, “yes, but, isn’t that a bit much?” Well, frankly, sometimes as an over-educated and under-employed wife and mother who does the shopping, planning, driving, cleaning, sports equipment-hauling, homework-checking, music practice monitoring, and Nerf war refereeing, etc., I frequently find myself at the end of the day staring at four people who expect me to feed them – every night. And I think to myself, “yes, but, isn’t that a bit much?”