Independence

I guess it's only appropriate that I write today about independence. My 13-year old son's - not our nation's. There are 1,337 really good words on that here, so I won't go into it.

No, today's independence has to do with my son's increasing desire to acquire the "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" or at least his own.

I want long hair.
I want a cell phone.
I want to play video games all of my waking hours.
I want to have a sleepover with my friends every night until school starts again.

And this one, which makes my head explode at the mere thought of it,
I want to learn to play drums.

Drums. As in those really large, really loud musical instruments which, I might add, are at the center of most "rock bands."

Now, I grew up in the '80's. I know rock bands. I was a roadie. I was a groupie. I wore a bandanna around my neck and rocked out until the bartenders threw us out at 4am. I still try to stage a coup for the extra microphone when I see live bands. And while I might not have "knowledge" of interpersonal drummer "relationships," but I have eyes. So I know what being a drummer is all about.

If I had a $1 for every time I heard a girl in the audience say, "Oh my GOD, that drummer is HOT!" I won't get into the etc. after that sentence. You know the drill.

And my son wants to be one. Yes, I know, my son is only 13 years old. And he's a straight-A student. A fine athlete. Polite boy. Eats his veggies. Yes, he leaves his wet towels on the floor but we're working on that.

The worrisome drummer-related rock band activity won't happen for a few years. But it will happen. As sure as some too old 80's band will do a reunion tour this year, it will happen.

It's not that I don't respect his opinion or the fact that being a drummer takes like...two separate brains to be really good. That most people can't rub their tummies and pat their heads at the same time, let alone play three different beats simultaneously.

It's just that, as a mother - a mother in a very small, not so noise-proof house - you might want your children to choose another instrument. Oh, a piano concerto would be lovely, you want to say to your son. Oh, play me the Ode to Joy on the violin, sweet daughter. Let's sing along to James Taylor on the guitar at the bonfire, shall we?

Not, hey, play that sick Neil Peart solo in that Rush song we heard last night...dude.

I like Rush. I like rock music. I just don't want them in such close proximity to my ear drums.

I know, I know. It's not about me. All the time.

I know he thinks I'm a despot. An iron-fisted tyrant in an apron and a ponytail. He just wants to pursue his happiness. Free himself from a long train of (perceived) abuses and usurpations. I can dig that. A little revolution now and again is a good thing, yes?

Perhaps I'll give in on this if he lets me sing lead for the band. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Happy Independence Day!

Ten Years Old - Onto Bigger Numbers

The "moving up" ceremony for the 5th graders went off without a hitch. We had pomp & circumstance, a few awards, a few tears and even sunshine for most of the day - perhaps a graduation gift from Mother Nature. And for those keeping score, yes, I caved on the cell phone thing.

And so all these 10-year olds will move on to the "big numbers," as nearby Westchester resident and Poet Laureate Billy Collins called them in this poem about the first birthday divisible by ten.


On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

—Billy Collins

A Graduation of Sorts

My 10-year old daughter is very smart. Which I knew, of course, long before her report cards started coming from grateful elementary school teachers. "We love having her in class!" "If only whole classrooms could be filled with Rachaels!" (It should be noted here that I am fully aware that many teachers say this of many students and I shouldn't get a big head over this.)

(It should also be noted here, that my son is very smart, too. Equally, of course, because I show no favoritism for one or the other although both would argue that point...equally. I digress.)

She is smart and well-practiced at the art of getting what she wants, aka: conniving (which I had to check the spelling on but she wouldn't have) and she likes to succeed. Succeed in school, in sports, in pretty much anything she does, particularly when her brother is doing the same thing. Success is directly related to him. "I did (this thing) better than him." "I am SO beating him at (that thing) next time!" "The only reason he beat me (at this thing) was because he's older - if I was his age, I'd win, too!" "I did better in handwriting than yoooouuu!"

It's an endless and often tortuous game of cat and mouse with them. But if you have kids, this is no surprise.

What is a surprise, this week, anyway, is that this very smart girl she believes that she should get a special "graduation gift" for "graduating" elementary school.

This seems a wee bit indulgent, oui? I guess I was brought up with old world values. Values that rewarded honest and real achievements, often with only a "good job" or pat on the back. Or even a, "Well, we knew you'd do great. We expected nothing less - this is no surprise to us. Why would we reward you for what you are supposed to do?"

More than my parents' generation, we pile on the hugs and I love you's and I'm proud of you's. We give our children as much as we can, as we think necessary, in terms of rewards and gifts...for good grades, good behavior, excellent concerts, etc. We often overindulge, but graduating a school where you started out taking naps for part of the day seems a bit...over the top.

"It's just elementary school," I tell her, trying to give perspective about the obsurdity of it all, "When you graduate from high school, college - when you actually embark on a new direction in life, a new path...yes, we'll have a party - with appropriate showers of gifts - but this is just elementary school. What did you graduate from? Having to be quiet while walking on the right side of the hall?

Of course, to an elementary school student, this is blasphemy met with gasping breath, gaping jaws and bulging eyes!

"We learned a LOT of stuff in elementary school, Mom! A LOT!!! We will have spent more time in elementary school than any other school...not junior high, not high school, not college! This is something big!"

Maybe she was right. She did, afterall, use the proper future perfect tense of the verb "spent" in her argument! That alone should garner a gift or at least praise!

I'm not diminishing everything she's done in elementary school or what great work the teachers do with the children. It's not that.

I guess it's because I know what huge obstacles and mountains she'll have to climb after elementary school, so this one seems...less significant. But to her, this is all she knows. The daily battles and challenges she overcomes in elementary school are as real and demanding as any we face in our own lives. They just look smaller when we're looking down at them from way up here with these grey-colored glasses we picked up along the New Jersey Turnpike of life. They ain't seen nothin' yet, right?

But you know what? They've also come a long way, baby. Her first day of preschool was on 9/11. Talk about overcoming challenges and adversity.

They've gone from, yes, naps (ah, the naps!) during the school day and playing nice in the sandbox, to reading and writing, lava explosions and "new math", orchestra and poetry and talent shows to, well, future perfect verb tenses. She, like her classmates in the Elementary School Class of 2009, have achieved a great deal going from little preschoolers to adolescents. And yes, they have a long, long way to go.

So this month, in a month full of graduations, in our own challenging times and adversity, this is an important mini-milestone along the way. And it should be recognized.

Maybe not with the CELLPHONE YOU KEEP ASKING FOR, which was the WHOLE REASON YOU EVEN BROUGHT THIS UP, as if I didn't KNOW IT, ha! - I wasn't born yesterday, ya know! Ahem, but maybe recognized with other things, less...electronic.

How would you feel about...an ice cream cone? Double scoop? Or a movie? I hear the drive-in has a great double feature! Pool party? The floatation devices are just about blown up...!

Did I mention she's good at getting what she wants? Uh, yeah. Anyway...

Cheers to the Class of 2009, from elementary school, junior high, high school, college - or just life. You made it to today. And you earned it. Well done.

Godspeed. Onwards and upwards!

Solitary Walker

There was an interesting column in the New York Times today about happiness. A philosophical question in a blog about coping through these "hard times." I put those in quotes because I think that's a relative term. "Hard" today is not "hard" from the Great Depression. Nor is "hard" today the same for everyone. A worker laid off today may not experience the universal suffering that was prevalent during the Depression. Each person or families' "hard times" are certainly unique. What we have lost is different for everyone. I have lost some. Others have lost much.

Nonetheless, the column has a good overview of some philosophers' thoughts on happiness. The author quoted a passage from Rousseau's "Reveries of a Solitary Walker," and I identified with it. Mostly, I think, because I had just returned from a solitary walk myself at Baird Park. Here's the passage:

"If there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul."

I know what you're thinking - what a long sentence! But if you get beyond that, don't you think it's so true? I think, on good days, you can find yourself in these moments of "perfect happiness" without actually trying or looking for it. Which is a gift, if you think about it. Completely free, no strings, no planning necessary, no waiting in line, just complete and perfect happiness.

Sometimes I can get there when I'm gardening (not digging new holes for plants in shale...just regular gardening) or watching the kids play or going for a walk. You do have to disconnect yourself from the electronics, which can be hard for some. But it can be found.

Honestly, just today while I was walking on this gently bend in the road, I heard rustling in the leaves of the forest. As I walked nearer to the edge of the road, I heard water sounds below me and there near the dam in the stream was a wood duck and a squirrel sharing the same shady spot. The squirrel sipped water from the stream edge, perfectly balanced on a small branch that was half submerged in the water. The duck seemed to be watching the squirrel, as he just tread water nearby. Small birds were flying here and there and deeper in the forest, other unseen creatures stirred making noises on the dry leaves of the forest floor.

I don't know how long I stood and watched this bit of nature but it wasn't until a park truck drove by that I was distracted from it. I remember thinking that I was smiling as the truck drove by and wondered what they thought of a woman, standing alone, smiling at the woods. But then, maybe they have these experiences regularly and are happy knowing others are doing the same.

It was pleasant to walk along the mostly carless road and identify plants and trees along the way. Fern, oak, poison ivy, maple, elm, is that cranesbill flowering there? No way! Fern, coneflower, is that hosta? Some nameless swampy plant, pine, elm, oak...the minutes just fly by.

And when you're in that moment, everything else seems to wash away. No job? No problem. Ten loads of laundry to do? No problem. Worried about an upcoming doctor's appointment? No problem.

I think if we give ourselves opportunities to rejuvenate like this, in moments when we can kind of escape ourselves, and time, perhaps, then we can better face all the things that are on the agenda in life.

I think Rousseau was spot on. And there's something to be said that he was spot on in 1776 and spot on in 2009.

Onto the laundry.

Zen of Gardening

We've lived in this house since 1994, the same year our small business failed and we got a huge tax return which we dutifully plopped down as downpayment on the house. It's small. It's old, but it's ours. The trees are tall and shady and the entire acre is shale. Not a gardener's delight.

I've worked, labored, sweat, toiled, (choose your own fancy verb) since that first year and for all the work, I still only have a few small gardens - two perennial beds and one veggie garden.

After digging up rock after rock, shearing off the tips of two, TWO, pick-axes in the process of "digging" new beds - after lugging soil and building beds, after bouts with head-to-toe poison ivy, tick bites and the latest, tiny ant attacks in the veggie garden, I finally have gardens I can be happy with.

Borders are lined with hostas and wild lilies I got from my grandfather. The perennials started with my neighbor's and aunt's divisions. I've added a few of my own over the years and I finally got it to a point where I don't need annuals!

For a gardener, this is a pivotal moment - when you have every blooming cycle covered. From April to October, your gardens are in bloom. When you have color, texture and height all accounted for. My gardens are not perfect, and they're not big, but they're not bad either.

Everything has a name to me now and when fall comes around I can share my plant divisions with my friends. And the garden that started from gifts from other gardeners keeps on going.

Of course, there will always be geraniums and petunias beckoning me at the garden center, pansies winking at me on the deck planters and, come on now, who can resist a new rose bush when they're on sale? Ok, ok, and the impatiens look so pretty in the shade. And the marigolds, so sunny.

I think maybe the garden is just another addiction to feed (and water and weed) but if I had to pick an addiction, this is a good one.

Remembering Mom on Mother's Day

There's a guest blog on the "Motherlode" blog in the New York Times today. Another mom who lost her mother at age 58. That's just too young to die. My mother was 58 when she died of a stroke after suffering from emphysema for a dozen years. I suspect there are many moms like me, who have lost their mothers far too early.

I was 30 when she died, just five months after my son was born. You're just kind of getting comfortable in your own skin around 30, figuring out where you're going maybe, starting a family, settling down. Mom isn't the enemy she once was, if she ever was (she wasn't). This was the time to reconnect.

It was 1996. I had quit my full-time job to be home with my son and help take care of my mother. My dad was out of work and things just weren't great for them. I was going to help her and she was going to help me figure out parenting. Of course, we didn't know how much worse things could get until she suffered a stroke on her birthday, of all days. She was in the hospital for five weeks, her condition improving, until another massive stroke took her.

I remember thinking about how much I would miss her. How would I raise my son without her help. It was a gaping hole in my life. My mother was gone. She was always there to guide us and was an incredibly wonderful mother. How would I do it without her?

The answer was, I figured it out. I had to. I was the Captain of this ship. So I read tons of books. None of our friends had kids yet, so I asked other relatives, in-laws, older people. And I learned to try to just do things the way she would have. I was always happy. Happy as a child, a teen...I thought, well that's because of her. She'd be my mentor in absentia.

My aunt told me after I'd had my son that my mother always carried us around - me, especially. We were her appendages. She always talked to us like big people, not with baby words, she fed us well and healthily and she loved without bounds. She made us tough and smart and caring. She made us respect ourselves and our elders. She gave us room to grow and explore.

I remember her sense of humor and her high standards for school and grades. She was our number one fan at sports and the proudest parent at graduations. In between all that, of course, she was countless other things. Chef instructor. Financial advisor. Social worker. Timekeeper. Personal shopper. And before that, diaper-changer, bottle washer, chief executive of boo-boo fixing, hugging and tear-wiping and a million other things I'll never know.

Everything she was helped make me who I am. And everything I am helps make my kids what they are. So when I think today, what would I do without her, I know the answer is - I'm not without her. She is here even though she isn't.

Of course, I wanted her to see all the years of my kids growing up. All their special moments and how they grow, grow, grow faster than my eyes can believe - even though she warned me, "They grow so fast - you'll see." She was right.

I want to show her the piles of outgrown shoes and class pictures and old videos from their diaper days. How big the lilac bush is they gave me for Mother's Day so many years ago. All the little handprint cards and poems that begin, "Roses are red..."

She never met my daughter, who is so very beautiful and smart, like her. She would've enjoyed spending time with her, I'm sure. And she would've loved the way little Jeremy grew into such a big boy. And she would have fed them more than they could possibly consume every time we visited.

"Are you hungry? No? You'll eat anyway. Here. Sit! Eat! Carolyn, feed your kids! Why are they so skinny?" Then she would've fed me.

I miss these things, but I know she's watching from her own front row seat, the "Jeremy & Rachael Show" featuring, in her starring role, Carolyn Torella as Mom. She's our biggest fan.

She took nothing and gave everything and none of it came from a store. She loved Elvis, food from her homeland and gardenias and us. For my Mother on Mother's Day and every day. Thanks, Mom.

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms! And to all the people who lost their moms - remember, she's still there, way out in the bleacher seats, a little higher, cheering you on!

Rainy Day Poem

I love when I open a book and find a poem I wrote. It's usually written on some random scrap of paper dragged out from the scary, lint & gum-covered depths of my purse. This one was on the back of a receipt, a long one, thankfully, as my words seem to fill it, even around the edges.

Sometimes I don't remember writing them. I read them like they're someone else's words. Which is refreshing, especially when it's awful. Either way, I think, "Did I write that? I must have. It's my handwriting and it's in my book. Must be mine."

Sometime I date them and write the location I wrote it in. This one was easy - Christmas break. Borders. I found it in the book I bought there, a poetry collection by Garrison Keillor.


Scenes from a Bookstore

Ten feet from new fiction
A blender screams
Above it a teenager cries
Whip cream with that? Whip cream???
The words in my head are chopped
In the blender blades
Sentences beheaded
Thoughts pureed
The spitty squirt of the whip cream
Once, no twice
We need more ice!
She screams above the din.
Latte, chai – gingerbread?
Coffee on ice, mocha latte with a straw
Diluting my head, a watery mess.
A familiar song chimes inside a purse.
Deeper, deeper, to the left. There you are!
Can you hear me now?
A girl on her cell leans near the window
How about now?
Her breath clouds the glass
Her voice shatters it.
Her friend abandoned at the table
second place to the boy in the purse.
Two friends at a table. No words were said.
Her friend watched her ice melt
Her eyes glazed
Like round donuts under glass
This one swam in cologne
That one mugged by a makeup kit
mmm...pizza fresh from the oven invades the open air
battling cologne and gingerbread
Pizza wins.
My words are gone, lost in the melted cheese.
My book is closed.
It was never opened.
At the bookstore.

S'mores Mini-Snacks

I love S'mores but who has a bonfire going all the time? These are quick, fun snacks for kids to make after school when there's no bonfire around.

One Hershey's chocolate bar (or two, if you think you'll just end up eating the other one)
12 marshmallows
3 full graham crackers

Break chocolate into squares and in a shallow-edged microwave-proof bowl, melt chocolate bar 20 seconds on high. Remove bowl, carefully stir, and add 10 second intervals if chocolate isn't melted. Stir each time, as residual heat will continue to melt chocolate.

Place graham crackers into a small sandwich bag and fold over opening. Crush crackers into crumbs gently with rolling pin or meat pounder.

Dip the top of a marshmallow into the chocolate and roll around to coat the sides of the marshmallow. Dip immediately into the graham cracker crumbs until chocolate is covered with crumbs.

Place the mini-smores on a dish and refrigerate for 10 minutes or until chocolate is firm. Or...just eat 'em as you make them!

I know it may be tempting to microwave the little s'more, but just after six seconds (trust me, I tried), it bubbles over itself and then you have to eat it with a spoon.

This Little Piggy Had the Flu

All the news about the swine flu had me in a panic this weekend. No, it's not because I'm a panicky person by nature. I don't panic often unless we are low on milk, bread and eggs and a storm is coming - God forbid you can't make French toast on a snowy day.

It's because my daughter woke up with a fever on Saturday morning right as the news of the swine flu broke. So I did like any good parent would do, I Googled symptoms and treatments and then I got a little nervous...a little...nauseous...a little, little, tiny bit panicky. Just a bit.

"My baby! My baaaaaby! My baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaby's sick!!!!" went through my mind. But I waited a whole 24 hours to call the pediatrician to tell them that I was not, in fact, panicking...I was just...you know...making sure I shouldn't panic. Unless they thought I should. Unless they knew something like...kids from our school taking spring break trips to Mexico. But they were good and didn't add to the panic.

"We could do a culture for strep." A fine deflection and redirect by the nice, calm nurse. "You usually wait 24 hours until you come in because there's a risk of false positive." Again, nice, calm message there - wait and see. She said there's strep going around. She didn't say swine flu. No mention of swines.

"But, but...she has the symptoms...sore throat, fever, chills, a really high fever!!!" I said, not panicking, OK just panicking a bit.

*long pause* "You can bring her in today if you want...............*another pause*....if that would make you feel better...."

Make me feel better? Ah ha. So it's all about me! The kid's fine - it's the mother that needs a pill!

She was probably right. Her fever broke this morning and now she's just sniffly. Glad I didn't panic.



I could see how these illnesses spread so quickly though. Take my daughter's schedule last week:

In class with the kids who were sick last week for five days last week and after school. She had softball. We went shopping. We went out to dinner. We went to her talent show - where many, many people in the audience were relatives from out of town. The kids are singing, dancing, coughing and sneezing in the enclosed auditorium for two hours. Everyone's breathing in and out. Off everyone goes back to their hometowns, human incubators for whatever germs they inhaled at the show. Then select few lucky ones get sick from the germ and start spreading it in their hometowns. Maybe they're business people who have to travel, so they take a multi-symptom OTC drug and get on planes with other germy people. It travels fast and it's next to impossible to contain.

I'm not sure what germ tackled my kid this weekend. I'm just glad it's leg go of it's nasty germy grip and she's feeling a smidge better. I could do without the 103.5 fevers, thanks.

Be a germ-slayer! Wash hands, cover mouths when coughing (with shirtsleeves and shirts, not hands!) and stay home if you're sick.

Scarsdale Mom Charged With Child Endangerment

How many times have you wanted to do this but didn't? Kids arguing in the car, it never stops and you think, that's it, I've had it, maybe steam pours out of your ears, your eyes bug out, and you think, I'm going to drop them off on the side of the road! But of course, you don't do that. Because you know better.

Alas, Madlyn Primoff, a Manhattan lawyer living in Scarsdale, didn't know better or knew better but didn't care. Now she's being charged with child endangerment. Yikes! A mugshot and everything.

If you read the comments on LoHud.com or the NYTimes site, you'll see a lot, a LOT of mad mommies. And a lot of parents who think what Primoff did was within her boundaries as a parent.

I'm thinking that after 12 years of parenting, I would hope she had some personal coping mechanisms to deal with what I call "inner car insanity" and some good ole' fashion punishments waiting for those who argue too loudly in the car. Cell phone repossession is one that comes to mind immediately for that age set. Also, video game repo - basically any electronic device taken away for, say, a week, is good punishment. Of course, it doesn't work as punishment if you give in after a few hours of whining. Whining, btw, gets another day added on.

Was she guilty of this crime? I don't think so. Kids have been walking home from school or the mall for eons. But have her kids done it? Are they "street smart" enough to know how to get home or get help? Three miles home is a long walk when it's getting dark.

Could the "good samaritan" just as easily been a child molester? Um...yes!

Would she have been charged anywhere but Scarsdale? I really don't know...but I doubt it. What's the difference in saying, "Kid, walk home from the mall," and "get out and walk home."

What did the children learn from this? Mom can really lose her mind sometimes. But who are we kidding - they're going to keep arguing. That's what kids do.

How about the mom? I suspect she's really, really, reallllllllllly sorry she did this.

I think this can be completely avoided if American car makers would just make the cone of silence for minivans - and make minivans hybrid, please. Then we'd be saving the environment and keeping our sanity all at once.

So many questions...what do you think?