Close Your Eyes and Blow!

December 31st is hardly an appropriate day for starting something new, although my mental to-do list for tomorrow continues to grow. Today is a day for looking back and reflecting, certainly not for making headway on that book I keep meaning to write or for settling into that new healthy lifestyle.

It has been a slow year for my blog, which may or may not mean that the past year has been uneventful but most definitely means I did not have to scroll down very far to see what I was up to last year at this time. As it turns out, I was pretty much up to the same things at the end of last December that I am up to now: missing the kids who have already come and gone, enjoying the one who is still in town, worrying over a lethargic dog, experimenting with various odor and stain removers for carpet and upholstery. And, of course, looking ahead optimistically to a clean slate for the year to come. Plus ca change. 

An overabundance of senior moments makes it difficult for me to identify any particularly memorable moments from the last twelve months, but I am certain there had to be at least a few. I hate to think I spent 365 days doing nothing but wait for some annual comings and goings and mysterious canine ailments and stain removal and air freshening, but for the life of me I am struggling to come up with anything more interesting. I decided to flip on a morning news show, which I rarely do anymore because there never seems to be any news going on. As luck would have it, the year in pictures montage was about to begin.

Wow, what a year. "Polar vortex" actually sounds exciting when you don't have to hear about it and you cannot even recall where you left your shovel. ISIS, ebola, the Ukraine, the thaw with Cuba, football players abusing women, Bill Cosby abusing women, medal controversies at the Olympics, police shooting citizens, citizens shooting police, racial tensions, politicians barking across the aisle, airplanes dropping into the ocean -- it's difficult to believe the morning news shows had time for so many segments about hair and makeup. It's the "In Memoriam" piece that really knocks the wind out of me, though. So many people who seemed to live enviable lives are, suddenly, gone. If you had told me last year that there would be no more Robin Williams, no more Philip Seymour Hoffman, no more Joan Rivers, no more Lauren Bacall, no more Shirley Temple, no more Maya Angelou (who will balance out Beyonce at the next presidential inauguration?) I would not have believed you. If you had told me that countless other people I haven't really thought about for a long time but just assumed would live forever would be gone I would have been skeptical. If you had told me that Mickey Rooney had died this year I would have sworn that he had already died a long time ago. Maybe that was Mickey Mantle.

It gives one pause. I look forward each year to the final New York Times Magazine, filled with remembrances of not-so-famous people who did or said or endured extraordinary things. It is, in large part, a celebration of unsung heroes, and a reminder of how much of a mark mere mortals can leave in such a short period of time.

Today, as I look ahead, I reflect upon the unsung heroes and the unsung moments of my daily existence. Lots of things have happened between December of last year and now, even though I am still spending an inordinate amount of time worrying about my kids and cleaning up after my dog and planning to finish that book and start that healthy lifestyle.

I may not be able to articulate why, but my life this year has been pretty darn exciting. And if you don't believe me, just close your eyes and blow.

Seeing the Light

At a holiday party recently, I resisted taking a turn on Santa's lap for many reasons. For starters, I thought it a bit unseemly for a fifty-five year old woman to sit in the lap of an unsmiling grown man dressed up in a bright red suit, particularly since Mrs. Claus was standing right there next to him and she did not appear to be in a particularly good mood. Factor in the long line, the tantalizingly close do-it-yourself bloody Mary bar, and the little girl who had boldly announced her intention to taint a perfectly lovely chocolate fountain with her next helping of chicken nuggets and the jolly lap pretty much lost its allure.

Bah humbug. I totally get why Mrs. Claus was looking a bit sour. If I have to drag myself out for one more minute of forced merriment I could be forced to emerge from my funk and, well, I just don't feel like it. A well meaning acquaintance who also happens to be a highly trained professional in matters of the mood made the mistake of asking me the other day how I was doing. He didn't seem horrified when I unloaded my sorry tale of woe about nothing in particular, and he didn't even suggest I pop in for an official hour on the couch. He simply suggested I go on line and order myself a special light. It would cost a few hundred dollars, but if I stared at it for forty-five minutes every morning the results would be obvious and amazing within two weeks. In fact he asked that I call him with a report after he returns from his sunny beach vacation. I wondered why he would bother with a beach vacation when he could just get his own light and stay home and watch endless reruns of Criminal Minds and Blue Bloods but he's the expert so I just let it pass.

Seasonal Affective Disorder. S.A.D. It's all about the lack of sunlight and vitamin D3, and it's too cold to go out even if I were inclined to so the indoor miracle light seemed like a reasonable idea. I even paid for an expedited delivery so I can reap the full benefits during the months when the sun don't shine pretty much at all. Sugar plum fairies danced in my head; I thought about calling some friends; I even imagined walking the dog for more than a block. Goodbye S.A.D.

The package arrived as quickly as promised, and I could hardly wait to open it and let the happiness begin. Well, hardly, but I am more patient than I thought because I was perfectly content to wait and finish watching one of my favorite episodes of Criminal Minds as it built to a climax. So I tucked the box under my desk and made a mental note to open it as soon as I began to feel sad. Or S.A.D. Which did not happen until hours later, when I thought the light might interfere with some good sleep.

It has been a couple of days now, and I have caught up on several more episodes of Criminal Minds and Blue Bloods and have even had more than a few wild mood swings but I have still not gotten around to opening the box. I have come close, but every time I think about slicing through the tape I feel S.A.D. (and more than a little bit S.T.U.P.I.D.). I think about what it might feel like to sit in front of a big blank screen of imaginary sunlight for forty-five minutes every day and I know in my heart I would much rather be sitting in front of the television watching a screen filled with imaginary serial killers and other bad guys working their own special brand of magic. I also know in my heart that I wouldn't last more than five minutes before running to the pantry for some chocolate, which is on the list of things that exacerbate S.A.D., and that would just be counterproductive. I suppose if I switched over from my stash of Reese's to a bowl full of leafy greens the light might make better economic sense, but I'm a realist, and the thought of replacing hours of crime shows and lethal carbs with overpriced fake sunlight and tasteless leafy greens just makes me sadder and sadder.

Yes, it's sad and a little bit wasteful that I am now about to pay another shipping fee to return the unopened promise of happiness, but ultimately the refund of over two hundred dollars will ease the pain. And in a few months, Santa and the bitter Mrs. Claus will be back home on the North Pole and holiday parties and sunny beach vacations and chicken nugget infused chocolate fountains will be a distant memory, and maybe everybody will stop being so S.A.D. At the very least we'll tire of it and find countless other reasons to be in a bad mood.

As for me, I am planning to use my fake sunlight refund to make sure my cable bill is always paid on time and to purchase enough chocolate to keep me from coming down from my very real sugar high before the next vernal equinox.

Ode to Oy

At home in suburban Chicago on the Monday before Thanksgiving, I should have anticipated that the chilly morning raindrops would turn into snowflakes by noon. I should have also anticipated that the wintry precipitation would precipitate a mad rush to the local grocery store and a concurrent dip in the value of human life. A pervasive fear of melting (or possibly ruining a pricey new blow dry) turned parking into a contact sport. And the sudden threat of a potato salad famine resulted in a crowd at least three deep at the prepared foods counter. The joyous holiday season is upon us, and it's all about survival of the fittest. Let's face it, peace and love and the spirit of giving are nice ideas, but they just can't compete with good science.

With my nerves still frayed from a death defying attempt to pick up some staples on Monday, I woke to an early text from my mother on Tuesday. Again, I should have anticipated that my iphone's weather forecast for rain and above-freezing temperatures in New York on Wednesday would be so displeasing to the media that reporters everywhere (remember what I said about survival of the fittest?) would be chatting incessantly about yet another storm of the century and the prospect of thousands of American travelers not making it home for Thanksgiving. My mother was begging me to change my own flight and my daughter's flight from New Orleans so we could arrive before the apocalypse. I ignored her. Later in the day, I relented and called the airline. The nice man on the line politely put me on hold for a respectable number of minutes so he could get over his laugh attack and then came back on to tell me there were no seats available on earlier flights. I rechecked the weather forecast on my iphone; still no snowflakes. There was nothing I could do, so I went ahead with my manicure and hoped for the best.

Every year, holiday excitement is accompanied by a fair amount of holiday dread, and it seems to start earlier and earlier. This year, Walmart moved Black Friday up a week, and the pumpkins decorating the trees in the center of my town were replaced during the first week of November by strings of lights shaped into snowmen and reindeer and fake presents. All this jump on merriment simply adds to the stress -- the anxieties about travel and overcooking the turkey and the hours on end spent with family members you otherwise don't see. Or about the hours on end you won't get to spend with family members you otherwise don't see. Even in the most dysfunctional families, the only thing worse than family gatherings is no family gatherings, or family gatherings without one hundred per cent attendance.

We all go through this, every year. Lost rituals, changing dynamics, dashed expectations. Tis the season to be melancholy, yet we all look forward to it for some reason. Are we that complex, or are we just stupid. Maybe it all boils down to survival of the fittest. If we remembered, each year, what a pain in the ass the holidays are, we would stop celebrating, and then what? No more memories of freezing our butts off making sure the turkey in the deep fryer on the deck doesn't blow us all to kingdom come. No more memories of long waits on the tarmac, of pretending to eat one cousin's annual cranberry mousse despite an aversion to pink food, of gastric distress so severe your jeans don't zip again for months. No more good stories.

Then again, there's nothing wrong with a non-story. The camera crews wandered around Ohare on Wednesday morning looking bored. The arrival and departure screens were filled with rows of "on time." At LaGuardia, things were just as grim. I smiled alluringly at one cameraman, hoping he would train his lens on me instead of the decidedly uninteresting screens, but he remained optimistic that cancellations and delays would soon take over. Finally, as I waited for my daughter's flight at Newark, a reporter was bored enough to talk to me. This was my moment, and I was not about to let it pass. I told him all about my own family's version of this year's non-story. The panic. The phone calls and texts. The sleepless nights. All for nothing. My flight was not only on time but I also had an entire row to myself. The kids behind me didn't cry. Nobody near me threw up. My daughter's flight was only a few minutes late. Even the descent through the dark rain clouds felt no more death defying than a child's roller coaster ride. Yawn.

But I got my name in the paper! Okay, it was a local New Jersey rag, but my story made it in, the lead three paragraphs in an article that contained two other even less remarkable stories. And we are heading out, shortly, to celebrate our family's umpteenth Thanksgiving in Connecticut. Attendance will not be perfect -- it hasn't been for some time -- and I will miss the ones who aren't there. But I will joyfully eat way too much deep fried turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts and macaroni and cheese and deep fried pickles and whatever other new item we add to the menu this year. And I will pretend to eat too much cranberry mousse.

And I will put my skinny jeans away for a few months, and, eventually, after the distress passes, I will look forward to next year.

Lone Sharks

By the light of my opened laptop I managed to shower, get dressed, and even put on a little makeup without mascaraing my lips or glossing my lashes. Between the time change and the power outage that had somehow managed to correct itself in all but one block of hotel rooms, darkness had descended unexpectedly early on day three of what otherwise seemed to be a perfect vacation.

I expect little snafus whenever I head to Mexico and have learned, after many visits, to turn a blind eye and just stop and smell the coffee -- even when the single espresso machine on the property is on the fritz. I have also learned to turn a deaf ear to friends' dire warnings of drug lords run amok and random shootings and mass beheadings. Not that I really pay attention, but the closest thing I've seen to violence at a touristy all inclusive on the beach is somebody slapping at a mosquito.  Anyway, it's Mexico; shit happens, and I just don't let any of it ruin my day.

Maybe I operate in darkness more often than I care to admit. Old habits die hard, and I see only what I expect to see, pretty much ignore the rest. It is only when I am out of my comfort zone that my senses become more acute and I notice my surroundings and find myself being surprised. Like when I am forty feet beneath the surface of the ocean and find myself swimming in the wake of a giant sea turtle, locking eyes with him as he glances back and waves a little flipper as if to say "follow me." Or when outsized versions of the impossibly flat fish with iridescent stripes that I barely notice in the aquarium in my dentist's waiting room criss cross in front of me as I cut through their undersea paradise with the grace of, well, a fish out of water.

Ask me, though, to tell you what colors those iridescent stripes were, or to describe the exact pattern on the turtle's shell, and I would be stumped. Ask me to describe the shark that glided toward me as I stared, paralyzed, from my perch about ten feet above, all my senses on high alert, and I would not be able to tell you much. He was gray and his triangular teeth appeared sharp; I could swear he was looking up at me, deciding whether he was in the mood for a snack. I saw nothing but garden variety shark. I wonder if he noticed anything other than chum. My senses may have been on high alert, but my powers of observation were abysmal.

On my first full day back home in American suburbia, where bad things don't happen, my senses once again kicked into high alert as somebody out of the ordinary drifted toward me. As much as I had dreaded my return to reality, I relished the comfort of my tried and true routine. Feed the dog. Get him into the car. Run into Starbucks to get my grande mild roast. Walk the dog in the eerie quiet of downtown suburbia as I sip my coffee. Same old. When the person dressed all in black, including a hood and a scarf wrapped around his face with only a narrow opening for his eyes, jogged by me I thought something was amiss. I stared directly into his eyes, even noticed that he was not wearing jogging shoes. I kept walking, even called my mom just to catch up.

When I came back around the block, I saw the person again -- or at least I thought I did. Same dark shoes and clothing, only this time the hood and scarf were off, and he stood still by a tree, staring at the array of rotting pumpkins at its base. I noticed that he was African American, certainly unusual at seven o'clock in the morning in lily white suburbia, but not out of the question. Again I stared, but he averted my gaze. I stared but all I can tell you is that he was dressed all in black and he was African American. I could not tell you the shape of his face or his height or his weight. Garden variety, like the shark. Gray, sharp triangular teeth. I wonder if he noticed anything other than suburban white chick.

I felt silly later that evening when I dialed the police hot line. They were still looking for the guy who had robbed a dry cleaner two blocks away from my Starbucks only moments before I walked my dog that morning, coffee in hand, senses on high alert only because something seemed out of the ordinary. I had read about it on line, seen the surveillance video picture of a man dressed all in black, his eyes barely visible. The police were looking for somebody with light skin. Could that be right? Was the man I saw dressed all in black but without a hood or a scarf the same man who had jogged by me. Was he the man who had stared with barely visible eyes into the surveillance camera?

How is it possible, that in the brightness of the post-time-change early sunrise, in the snafu-free streets of American suburbia where all the lights were on and I rarely had to shower or get dressed or apply makeup in the dark, with my senses on high alert because something was a bit out of the ordinary, that I could see so little. All I saw was a person who, contrary to on line news reports, was not light skinned, a person who may or may not have been the same person who jogged past me covered from head to toe, a person who may or may not have been the same person who robbed the dry cleaner.

Darkness descends, early and often.

Scuba Don't? Scuba Do!

I was just along for the ride. My idea of an aquatic adventure is staying up for the midnight chocolate bar on a cruise ship, and scuba diving has never made it to my bucket list. Not even close, along with sky diving and karaoke. 

I'd like to blame my change of heart on peer pressure, but most of the folks on the boat barely knew me, and could not have cared less whether I suited up or sat alone drinking tequila while they plunged in. Our guide, an ex military expat who had experienced less difficulty choosing to be a PADI instructor than deciding where to do it (location, location, location), prodded me gently, and by that I mean not at all. Occasionally during the pre-dive briefing I imagined he was looking directly at me -- especially when he was tossing in assurances about all the things beginners don't need to worry about -- but it could have been because my entire body was shaking so badly he was assessing the need for medical assistance. 

The good thing about bracing for a life or death situation -- like your lungs over inflating or your brain imploding from atmospheric pressure changes -- is you forget about the things that really freak you out, like slimy fish brushing against your legs or jelly fish tentacles dangling in front of your nose or the occasional misguided stingray who feels threatened by the unidentified flippered objects (UFO's) cruising through the neighborhood. The bad thing about bracing for a life or death situation is your mind is so preoccupied with imminent catastrophe you forget to pay attention when the guide is explaining how to prevent that from happening. Inflate, deflate. Top button, side button. Red gauge, black gauge. Inhale, exhale. Blah blah blah. 

Life is not a spectator sport, no matter how much your friends and loved ones encourage you to accept your limitations and sit this one out. I could almost hear my mother's sobs through her email: Please don't do it. Promise me. I promised. There was no chance I was going scuba diving when the thought of diving off the side of the pool makes me queasy. And don't bake in the sun either. It's bad for you. Well, so are french fries, and life's too short. But I get what it's like to be  a mom, so I promised and didn't mention my fingers were crossed. My friends laughed at the thought of me on the ocean floor without a good reason (like being on the Titanic). In fact, they laughed at the thought of anybody being on the ocean floor without a good reason. What are friends for, if not to validate your cowardice and your complete lack of a sense of adventure. 

I suppose I knew from the moment I agreed to go along for the ride that I would not just be going along for the ride. The prospect of watching everyone else emerge like conquering heroes from the deep, exhilarated and clearly on the verge of chatting incessantly about the indescribable thrill of it all, was too much to bear. Our ex military expat guide did not seem surprised when I grabbed the wet suit he had brought along for me "just in case" and squeezed myself into it. He also did not seem surprised that I had put it on backwards. 

For the life of me I cannot explain how I allowed myself to be shoved off the side of the boat backwards into the ocean only to endure some basic skills training that involved some maneuvering of equipment and coordination of mouth and nose breathing and swallowing of gallons of salt water. My ears were already in pain, and I was barely a foot beneath the surface. Somehow, though, I was deemed capable of progressing to an actual dive, and, for the life of me, I cannot explain how I once again tumbled backwards into the water, this time without a friendly shove, and descended slowly into a strange world where, theoretically, I could not breathe. As promised, our guide stayed close to me, checking on me and showing me some sights. He gently poked his finger underneath a diaphanous jelly fish, and I watched it fold into itself as it ascended and then open into what looked like a delicately painted umbrella as it floated downward.  More quickly than I would have believed possible, the guide let go of my hand. 

For the life of me I cannot explain how I felt in those next moments, gliding through the water as if I was born there, practically skimming the top of the reef, wondering why the exotic creatures weaving in and out of the intricate undersea housing development beneath me did not even seem to notice I was there. Or care. Maybe that's why I felt so at home. The water in this first spot was a little murky, the reef and the fish not quite as vibrant as the ones I've seen in pictures. But after forty-five minutes seemed to pass much too quickly and I popped to the surface, exhilarated and wishing I could chat about the thrill but rendered utterly speechless, I would have had no trouble explaining how much I looked forward to dive number two. 

By the time we arrived at the next spot, where the crystal blue water was so clear you could see forty-five feet to the bottom, I was feeling confident. I rolled in backwards as if it were a normal thing to do, floated over to our buoy, and reminded myself not to rush. I descended more quickly this time but still carefully, stopping frequently to alleviate the pressure in my ears so nothing would impede my progress. Once again, I was near the bottom, feeling strangely at home in a world where I was a complete stranger. I was closer than I ever thought I would be to a stingray, then a barracuda, then a slithering eel. That's the stuff you can see in pictures though, the stuff I thought I could easily live without seeing in person, in a wetsuit, forty-five feet below civilization as I know it. But what you cannot see in pictures is the feeling that you are floating in space, the steady and unfamiliar sounds of a vast unknown, the calm of breathing in and breathing out slowly through your mouth, oblivious to what lies around the next corner. Time stands still, real life is suspended. Wet yoga. 

One of my new scuba buddies asked me if I was going to get certified now. I don't know about that, but I cannot imagine never visiting that place and again feeling that indescribable feeling. So, to the naysayers -- myself included --  I admit that, before this trip is over, I will suit up one more time and dive in, eyes wide open, backwards. 

Cowbells and Whistles

Five days have passed and I am slowly recovering from the punishing physical effects of the Chicago Marathon.

At mile twelve I felt just as exhilarated as I had at mile three. By mile twenty-six, had it not been for the pressure of the cheering crowd, I might have thrown in the towel. My young friend and I had pushed through, gotten as close to the finish line as security would allow. It was grueling, but we had somehow managed to wedge ourselves into the front row, and we couldn't move, even if we wanted to. We were in it for the long haul.

Watching my daughters run their first -- and, they both claim, last -- marathon was exhausting. Exhausting and priceless. Personal space be damned, we were so close to our fellow spectators, as one woman put it, she thinks she might have had sex with at least one stranger. I told her I hoped she enjoyed it, although I certainly hoped it had not been with me. The physical intimacy drew us close emotionally. We traded runners' names, adjusted our positions based upon projected finish times, and promised to cheer loudly for each other's loved ones. We guarded our positions jealously, glaring at anyone who dared to encroach, elbowing latecomers who attempted to seep through the cracks. Bonding made the wait so much less excruciating.

At mile three, my daughters seemed to be floating on air, waving when they heard us, mugging for our cell phone cameras. At mile twelve, they looked just as strong, just as happy. Well, almost, anyway. We felt pretty good too, having just replenished our depleted reserves with a greasy breakfast sandwich and more coffee. We felt a twinge of guilt, snarfing down food even though our path from mile three to mile twelve, as the crow flies, was no more than a few blocks. It could have been worse, though. Some cops had directed us to "the best—you guessed it -- donut shop in the world," but we thought that would be unseemly. Well, it would be unseemly and the line was way too long.

When I began running over thirty years ago (yipes), I was sure I would one day run a marathon. Some combination of joint pain, muscle aches, and a pitifully short attention span has proved me wrong. I have yet to run that marathon, and it seems highly improbable that I ever will. Accompanying my daughters as they picked up their registration packets, I contented myself with the vicarious thrill of their excitement, feeling a bit mopey about not joining them. I chastised myself, as I trudged through the maze of the registration site, soaked from overdressing and an ill timed hot flash, for settling for a cowbell while others collected numbered race bibs with computer chips. I am not good at vicarious.

I am, however, good at being thrilled. In fact, I am really good. When I watched my daughters run by, close enough to be hand in hand, from start to finish, there was nothing vicarious about my joy and pride. They were doing it, they had done it; my children had accomplished something that to me, and many others, seems unattainable. Yahoo! Yay for them! So incredibly cool!

It's a feeling I have experienced often as I have watched my three children grow and navigate the world in ways I never would have dreamed possible. The thrill of being in the stands, doing little more than shrieking encouragement and shaking a cowbell, has been anything but vicarious. The journey – whether I go the long way or cut through as the crow flies – remains exhausting but priceless.

After a few days of walking backwards down stairs, both daughters have recovered from the punishing physical effects of twenty-six miles of pounding. I am still a bit achy; these days, it takes me a long time to bounce back. Blissfully, though, the exhilaration lingers.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Same old same old. Well, I'm the same, but older, and the kids are different, but the same.

Seven years after my oldest child was a college freshman, I again find myself visiting campus, meeting a new crop of eighteen year olds. Each one reminds me of someone I had met years ago -- the kid everyone on the floor loves, the one everyone loves to hate, the few you just know you'll see in cap and gown less than four years from now and feel as if you've known them forever and wonder why time goes so fast.

As I lay practically comatose on my daughter's dorm bed, my body contorted unnaturally around the various items of her daily life that seem to occupy permanent spots on top of her rumpled comforter, I gave up on trying to hoist myself up to greet the seemingly endless stream of visitors. At one point, alone in the room, I was momentarily embarrassed when a boy pushed the door open without knocking. Unnecessarily, no doubt, I peered up at him and explained I was not one of the girls who lived there. When he introduced himself, I apologized for not getting up to shake his hand. He didn't seem at all offended. I suppose you can't expect social grace when you're the one who didn't knock.

The quad outside the dorm was swarming with baby faced boys (I wasn't fooled by the facial hair) playing volleyball and football or just simply on the move, filled with energy and burgers and hot dogs and clearly unaware of the paunches in their future. Unaware that one day the hair on their backs will be thicker than the hair on their heads. They don't know yet about nose hair clippers; they are light years away from proctology jokes.

I had convinced myself I was down in New Orleans a mere four weeks after school had started because my daughter was homesick. Apparently she thinks I was down in New Orleans because I was, well, "child sick." It's not that she wasn't glad to see me -- I did, after all, come armed with a credit card and a dozen Chicago bagels. Not New York bagels, but still a treat in the culinary wasteland of jambalaya and po boys. She's been away before, for even longer than four weeks, but freshman year in college is different. A more official sort of parting, the kind from which there can be no real return. And, as she pointed out, it had been just the two of us for five years. You get kind of attached.

I've been down this road before. Twice. It's the same but different. Six and seven years ago there were still birds left in my nest. There was always somebody else around and I thought it was good to give the college kids their space, to really let them leave. Not that they ever really did, completely. Six and seven years ago it was Facebook that kept the kids tied to their old friends from home and maybe slower to connect with the new friends down the hall. Now it's instagrams and snap chats and selfies. The phones have gotten smaller and now they're getting bigger again, but there's no stopping the trend toward staying in touch, always being somewhere outside the moment and place you're in. Maybe it's like love though; maybe there's enough connectedness to go around.

After dinner with my daughter and her roommate last night, I headed back to my hotel, sad to leave them but happy to wind down the day, alone. They headed back to the dorm, excited to get ready for a frat party. The night was young, and they would be spending it surrounded by friends they've just met and, at the same time, constantly in touch with friends they've recently left behind. Two girls boarded my street car, and they seemed disappointed that there weren't two seats together. Diagonally across the aisle from each other, both tapped away at their cell phones the entire time. When we pulled up to their stop, though, they took off, still tapping away but giggling together about something. Maybe it is possible to be two places at once.

It's Sunday morning, and it will be hours before I meet my daughter for breakfast. For me, it's the same routine, different Starbucks.  I can barely remember the Starbucks on M Street in D.C., and am already feeling quite at home at the one on Magazine Street. The people are different but the same. Students, young families, twenty-somethings just back from a run. I'm the same but older.

I am looking forward to spending another day with my daughter, but content with my time alone. Well, alone except for the occasional text with folks far away. Same old, same new.

Namaste. Damnit.

As I teetered my way clumsily across a narrow concrete curb the other day, avoiding the relative safety of the broad sidewalk (and risking ridicule), I thought this was how a twelve year old boy must feel (minus the risk of ridicule) on a quiet summer afternoon, skipping stones by a lake. Alone but not lonely, joyful but not overly so. Teetering across a narrow concrete curb -- my version of a happy dance.

There has been a noticeable change in my gait since a relatively new friend set me straight a few weeks ago. "Aha!" We had been practicing amateur psychology on each other for several hours, and were heading back to our cars. I felt like I do when I emerge from an afternoon movie, blinking and confused by the harsh assault of daylight. As we prepared to disappear back into the solitude of our own heads for the rest of the day, our conversation moved to lighter topics -- the indignity of lactose intolerance, the joys of going gluten free -- the innocuous yet inescapable minutiae of life in the third millennium.

And yoga. My on again off again passion, the unlikely discipline that once kept me afloat, then made me feel trapped, and then, only recently, began to buoy me up again. I had confessed to my new friend that I felt a bit intimidated in that morning's class. It felt like extreme yoga, or, I suppose, yoga for extremists. I was surrounded by overachievers: a sinewy specimen to my left wearing paper thin tights that gave the illusion of being full leg tattoos, a fearless fireplug on my right who kept going upside down and toppling onto the wood floor with a reverberating thud. Forty minutes into the class, I was still struggling with the simplest poses, trying to convince myself that an inability to completely straighten my left knee did not make me a bad person. Oh, how I envied the overachievers, how I pined for the good old days of hyper extension.

Aha? I expected a bit more empathy from my new friend, who seemed well versed in the feelings of inferiority that plague us women as we forge deeper into middle age, the era of all sorts of pauses. "I am better than you are at yoga!" I could swear she had told me only moments earlier that she sucked at yoga. My inner goddess was withering; I wanted to punch this woman, wipe the serene smile off her face, reclaim some ground on the superiority scale.

She elaborated. "I suck and I don't care!" I felt ashamed, tempted to turn in my Lululemon professional discount card. She was right, more right than she could have been had she stood on one hand and folded both legs into a perfect lotus behind her ears while she sipped at a cup of green tea. She is better than I am at yoga, if there is such a thing as being better at yoga. All the lessons yoga had taught me, the words I have pretended to live by, that I have passed on to others, they were all coming back to bite me in my flexible ass. What happened to non-competitiveness and non-comparativeness and being present in the moment? My own moment, that is, not somebody else's.

Days have passed since that walk of shame with my friend, and I have tried to be present and non-judgmental and enjoy as many moments as possible without wanting anything more or less. I shrug the small stuff down my back with my shoulders, and I celebrate even the most minor victories.

This morning, in a hot and overstuffed holiday yoga class accommodating the dedicated yogis for what would have been three classes on a normal Monday, I teetered my way into a balancing pose, one that usually requires little effort. I was hesitant, trying not to fall. "Nice, Lisa," I heard the instructor say. She could not possibly have been talking to me, as shaky as I felt, but, then again, maybe she was. I sucked, but I just didn't care.

Green Waves

The other day, an oddly subdued and melancholy young woman I know explained she had just sent her only daughter off to kindergarten for the first time that morning. I shared with her the words of a very eloquent friend: friggin milestones test us! Or, as sometimes seems the case, milestones suck. 

With a wave of a chubby little hand, the newly independent five -year-old had given her unsuspecting mother a brief glimpse into the inevitable yet still unimaginable future. One day, if things go according to plan, that child will be able to stand on her own two feet for a lot longer than a few hours, sometimes even days or weeks. But for now, I thought the weepy mom's pity party seemed premature. She will still be enjoying milk and cookies with her daughter after school, will still tuck her in at night and touch her soft cheek and tell her how much she loves her, and, by mere virtue of her presence, she will still have the power to filter out all but the sweetest of dreams. Add to that her own wrinkle free face and still not saggy ass and her blissful unfamiliarity with waking up in the middle of the night soaked in a pool of her own sweat and I really couldn't see why she was so mopey. I'm ashamed to admit it but what I felt more than anything was envy and more than a healthy dose of pure loathing.

Last night, I parted ways with my youngest child on a steamy street corner in New Orleans. She and her roommate headed back to their dorm, I headed back to my hotel. We had spent the day unpacking and organizing and figuring out how to maximize every inch of space in her half of a very narrow room. As it turned out, for a change, I had miscalculated and she had been right. The clothing, the shoes, the toiletries, the boxes and bags of stuff I felt certain would never fit into the confines of her dorm room somehow fit with room to spare. Even the seven thick sweatshirts she will probably never remove from the drawer.

She knows she doesn't need the sweatshirts. Or the dozens of pairs of shoes. At least not in the traditional sense. But she is astute enough to know she does need those things if she is to turn this tiny half rectangle into "home." Living in a place for an extended period simply does not make it so. Only nine months ago, when we moved from a large suburban house to a small townhouse one suburb over, she wasted no time setting up her new room with her things, turning it into home. I did the same with the rest of the house. Nine months ago, though, the transition was smoother; our pillows moved, but the people -- and  the dog -- remained the same. For this move, she needed to bring in the big guns; not just the sweats and the shoes, but piles of photos documenting her journey so far. There is still some empty space on the walls, room for the photographic journey to continue.

Three kids, three sets of milestones, each one different from the others. But the last one always packs an extra punch. It conjures up memories of doing similar things at different times, always when I was younger. Having a baby at thirty-six was a lot different from having a baby at twenty-nine or thirty. Launching a child at fifty-four was a lot different from launching a child at forty-seven or forty-eight. And not just because I fell asleep on the trolley and missed my stop, not just because I fell flat on my face while trying to text my daughter and explain where I had ended up and why. I know from experience how quickly these four years will pass, and how few chances I have left to enjoy milk and cookies after school with my child. I know from experience that it doesn't matter so much where she goes to school or what classes she takes or even how much she studies. What matters is that she does it on her own terms, and stays safe and reasonably happy as she morphs into the adult she will become by the time she leaves this place. As inevitable and unimaginable as it seems.

I had painted my fingernails green for the move, in honor of the school colors. It seemed fitting that when I said goodbye I would be giving her a green wave, a nod to the school's sports teams. Yes, with a wave of my sea foam tipped hand, this disbelieving mother gave herself a brief glimpse into what is still, even the third time around, an unimaginable future.

The Deer Days of August

These days, I watch the progression of summer from the seat of my bike. It's been an unseasonable season, often fall-like, offering up no more than a handful of dog days so far. The calendar says it is August, yet I have barely broken a sweat. Still, Mother Nature perseveres, and the foliage on both sides of the bike path has grown as thick as it always does this time of year. The trees bend toward each other with the weight of summer leaves, forming an opaque canopy overhead.

Nature's sun screen, nature's umbrella, nature's blind spot. The weather outside may be frightful, or not, but the trees are thriving, right on schedule. The other day, with the lushness of summer growth blocking my view, I didn't see the tiny family of deer at the edge of the bike path until I was staring at point blank range right into the large watchful eyes of the doe. She stood perfectly still, her right foreleg slightly bent, her two babies like statues only inches behind her. Mother Nature's performance art. I tightened my fingers around my brakes and slowed my pedaling, poised to stop if a child lurched forward. The doe remained calm, but her eyes followed me as I passed. We were two moms, suspicious and protective, both seemingly in control.

We moms have a lot in common. We are tenacious, we stick to the schedule, we make sure our babies grow and thrive. I wonder whether the doe, or Mother Nature for that matter, doubt themselves the way we human moms tend to do. I met someone this week, a mom. A human one, my young neighbor's mom. She is visiting from out of town, helping one daughter move in with the other, spending her days caring for all the dogs and unpacking and breaking down empty boxes and organizing so the new living arrangement will be as perfect as it can be. She is about my age; we spoke across our backyard fences the other day, and all I saw, really, was a doe, doing what does do, without really thinking about it. She was taking care of business.

This morning, we spoke, face to face. We were both bleary eyed, wearing sweats, dragging garbage to the curb. Within minutes, we bonded, in a way that only women who have been daughters and sisters and wives and mothers can bond. We have both experienced great joy and suffered great loss. We are both, for a variety of reasons,

in a place now of change and uncertainty, and we are both trying to find our way. She is upset with herself in ways I have been upset, and I am scared in ways she has been scared. Her story is not mine to tell, and so I won't tell it, but we both saw our meeting as a gift. In some way or another, we each offered the other something that would carry us through, that helped answer some nagging question. She is leaving soon, as soon as her work here is done, but we have promised to keep in touch. I hope we do.

Before we spoke, this other mom struck me as so sure of herself, so completely in charge. Like Mother Nature, who keeps the leaves growing in spite of the cool and sometimes gray days. Like the mother deer, who silently watches out for her babies, wordlessly keeping them out of harm's way. Do they wonder, as we do, whether they are doing enough, whether they are doing it right? I don't know for sure, but I doubt it.

We human moms can learn a lot from those other moms. And, as luck and fate will have it, we can learn a lot from each other.

Falling in Like

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away (and by that I mean not just suburbia, but the heart of Gentile suburbia), a friend offered up words of parenting wisdom I will never forget: "You don't have to like your children; all you have to do is love them."

I was a young mother of only two back then, still living in the city; my friend was a seasoned mom, a veteran, with three kids, a large dog, and something called a mud room. I grew up in an apartment with barely enough room for two kids; if we wanted to run around, we took the stairs instead of the elevator. I had two gerbils, but no dog. My mom could occupy herself for hours picking up lint from the carpet; had there been something called a mud room, she would have burned it.

My friend in Gentile suburbia was my guru on child rearing in post Levittown America. She was older and wiser, the one from whom I often sought guidance, the one in whose presence I often felt grossly inadequate. She embraced chaos, seemed to know how to handle it on her own terms. She was a natural mother, as comfortable with the unpredictability of life with small children as I was uncomfortable on a quiet suburban street about to be festooned with Christmas lights. Still living in the city, with only two childbirths under my belt, I was a bumbling idiot.

In suburbia, as far as I could tell, everything was super sized. The houses, the families, the dogs. Lucas, the slobbery boxer (I think) who was the official greeter at my friend's suburban Shangri-La, could easily eat kibble off the top of my head when standing on his two hind legs. Since I generally did not arrive with kibble on my head, he was content to stand with his massive paws resting on my shoulders and lick my face. I grew up with gerbils. I was unaccustomed to such enthusiastic greetings, and I kind of liked the way Lucas made me feel so welcome. 

Lucas liked to make everyone feel welcome, though, including my two and a half year old daughter toddling behind me. Lucas didn't even need to rise up on his hind legs to eat kibble off her head, but Lucas, being a dog, was very much into equal opportunity unconditional affection. Lucas, being a dog, was also not incredibly bright. Which meant that when he rose up on his hind legs to his full height to greet my daughter he found no shoulders to grab onto. He did, however, find a small pair of shoulders to grab onto on his way down, which, much to both dog's and child's surprise, were unable to support the weight of a descending hundred forty pound canine.

The good news was that Lucas could improvise, and he adjusted fairly quickly to licking a face that happened to be staring up at him from the floor. He was unfazed by the screaming, and the salty tears added flavor. Better, as far as he was concerned, than most hostess gifts. The bad news was .... well, you can guess the bad news. So, to make a long story a little less long, my daughter continued to scream, even after Lucas was banished to the place called the mud room, even after my exasperated friend had tried, without success, to explain to my ill-behaved child that poor Lucas had meant well.

The mom part of my brain wanted to turn back time and erase all the pain and suffering that horrid creature had inflicted upon my child. The ever shrinking intelligent part of my brain wanted to politely grab my screaming daughter and my confused son (still hanging precariously from my left arm while I tried desperately to calm his sister with one hand) and leave the land of the giant families and houses and dogs and head back to the comfortably stifling confines of our place in the city. The overbearing pleaser part of my brain, though, chose to stay, to pretend not to notice the writhing and the screaming, to act as if I was as comfortable with the super sized unpredictability of suburbia as my friend was uncomfortable with my inadequacy as a parent.

My annoyed but unflappable friend seized upon the teachable moment, offering up that sage advice that I have always carried with me in the dark recesses of my brain, the part that reserves cold, hard truths for extreme emergencies. I suppose I have called upon those words on occasion, reassuring myself that I did not have to like my children, I only had to love them. And loving them, I have found over the course of over twenty-five years, is the easiest thing in the world to do. We are hard wired to do that, to love each of them with all our heart. Contrary to what children typically believe, that our capacity for love is finite, and our hearts are inevitably divided among them in unequal parts, we (and I think I speak for most of us parents here) love each of them with every cubic centimeter of our heart, totally and unconditionally. And liking them, I have found over the course of over twenty-five years, can be the hardest thing in the world to do sometimes, sometimes even for extended periods.

I was thinking, the other day, about what my wise friend said so long ago. I remember resigning myself, back on that day, to the fact that I was probably destined to dislike my daughter, this rude child who could not accept a dog's friendly hello with grace. Since that day, I have become angry with her and her siblings, even disliked them intensely. But despite those moments (even the lengthy ones), despite my friend's advice, I like them. A lot. They all piss me off from time to time, and will no doubt continue to do so as long as I am still breathing. But I like them all as much as I could like anyone, would choose each of them as a treasured friend if I could.

They are entitled to my love. My like, though, that is something they have earned.

Fifty-five -- Love

Jeez, that went by fast.

By "that" I mean the last decade. And the one before that. And the one before that. Like the tennis ball that kept whizzing by me in a match recently, passing before my eyes in a blur. My legs could still get me there, but I could barely see it.

When I was forty-five, my eyesight began to decline. Overnight, I found I could not see the words on a page held close to my face, and began to do all the things I once mocked. I held my arm out ramrod straight to help bring text into focus. I sought out better light to distinguish between blue and black socks. I cursed drug manufacturers for printing dosage instructions in such ridiculously minute font. I  cursed drug manufacturers for inventing child resistant caps that could only be opened by children or mechanical engineers.

When I was thirty-five, I became pregnant with my third and final child. Twenty weeks into it, I showed up at my doctor's office for what had become, if not mandatory, routine prenatal testing for older mothers. "What's the reason for the testing?" the lady at the front desk asked me. Wasn't it obvious? I glanced down at my protruding belly. She glanced at my chart. "Ah, advanced maternal age," she said. Your eggs are rotten, is what I heard. Your child could have two heads, is what I knew she was thinking. Even if she's healthy, everyone will think you're her grandmother. As it turned out, nobody ever claimed to think I was her grandmother, at least not to my face; occasionally, though, when I held her close, her soft, pale cheek next to my darkened summer skin, I was mistaken for her babysitter. A babysitter of advanced age, of course.

When I was twenty-five, I packed my bags and left New York for Chicago, engaged (on and off) to the man without whom I could not breathe. My eggs were not yet rotten, my eyes worked (although I may not have been seeing things all that clearly). I knew nobody in Chicago other than the man without whom I could not breathe and a handful of his relatively new friends. He became my husband, they became my friends. We stumbled around in the light, trying to find our way as we started our new life. We were young, we could handle child resistant caps, we knew the color of our socks. Everything seemed clear, black and white. We hadn't anticipated all the shades of gray.

By the time I turn fifty-five in a few months, my three children will have all packed their bags and left Chicago for places in all different directions. I have been without the man without whom I could not breathe for quite a while now, and I am still breathing. I know lots of people in Chicago, have lots of friends, but nothing seems black and white. I had anticipated all the shades of gray, but I will still be stumbling around in the light. Nothing will seem clear.

By the time I turn fifty-five in a few months, any eggs I still have will most certainly be rotten, and the next time I hold a pale infant cheek next to mine nobody will think I am her mother. Unless, of course, the child has two heads. When I sit in the doctor's waiting room, I will glance at the thirty-five and forty year olds with protruding bellies and wonder whether they are there because they are of "advanced maternal age." To me, they don't look old enough to have babies or to know much of anything. They probably know how to open child resistant caps though.

By the time I turn fifty-five in a few months, my arms will not be anywhere near long enough to help me read the fine print. Just as well, I suppose, because at this point I already know that paralysis and death are always potential side effects. I won't care if my socks match, and I will just leave the caps off the pill bottles because there won't be any children or mechanical engineers around to help me. Tennis balls will continue to whiz by me, not only because I can barely see them but because my legs won't get me there in time. My world will still be filled with shades of gray, and even though nothing is ever black and white and the font on pill bottles will seem even smaller and nothing will seem clear, I will continue to see things more clearly than I did when I was twenty-five.

Except the tennis balls.

Bar Stool Samples

Early in my post-marriage computer dating career, I learned to expect that the person I was about to meet in the flesh would bear little resemblance to the photo I had seen on line. I discovered, pretty much on date number one, that contrary to popular belief, the camera subtracts twenty pounds and adds ten inches in height.

On one such date, after I had been sitting for what seemed like an eternity on a bar stool facing a guy who appeared to have both the inner and outer beauty of a gnome, the waiter stopped by and asked if I would like a drink. I nodded vigorously, too vigorously perhaps -- so vigorously, in fact, my neck hurt for days afterward. At least I got some exercise.

As time went on, I became a bit more savvy and a lot more selective, which meant I spent a lot of Saturday nights cuddling on the couch with a shedding and smelly dog. I did my fair share of heavy petting, he did a lot of drooling, we both ate a lot of cookies (our own version of bending an elbow).  Sometimes I never even made it up to my own bed, unable to muster up the strength to untangle my scrunched and oddly bent limbs. In the wee hours of the morning, still wearing my clothes from the day before, I would do the equivalent of a walk of shame as I stumbled up the stairs, trying to see through my mascara caked eyes.

Life has improved greatly since those early days. At least for me and the dog. We rarely even bother with the pretense of a date on the couch now; we just start off in bed. I resist the urge to put on mascara during the day, so my morning vision has drastically improved. Which will be useful if I decide to venture onto a dating site again -- I will be able to read between the lines, recognize the telltale signs of photo shop. I can barely remember the last time I sat on a bar stool nodding and drooling as if my life depended on it when the waiter asks if I want a drink. My neck doesn't hurt; I have found other ways to burn calories. The only one drooling these days is the dog.

I ran into someone the other day who had dated a friend of mine after his first marriage had failed. The last time I saw him -- more than a few years ago -- he was giddy, about to remarry. I remember thinking how nice it was that he had found Mrs. Right. "You're married again, aren't you?" I asked him the other day as we made conversation in the Starbucks line.

"Yes, just recently as a matter of fact," he responded. I cocked my head (yes, I've started to look like my dog and have acquired his mannerisms). "For the second time," he explained. "The first one was a psycho."

I've heard that a lot. About the actual first one, and then again about the first second one. Yet he, like so many other men I have met, has gone for the second second one, or, by my count, marriage number three. Who's the psycho? You tell me. If I were a betting woman, I'd wager the next time I run into this guy, he will be telling me about the short lived marriage to psycho number three.

Okay, so maybe I sound a little cynical, but, rest assured, I remain open minded. I still consider myself a dog person, for example, but I have not ruled out the possibility of one day becoming an eccentric and socially isolated old woman who lives with -- and for -- her cats.

Just a Spoonful of Jelly

It's funny, sometimes, how we gauge our wealth. For some of us, it's the difference between driving a Lexus and a Pontiac. Or the ornateness of our bathroom faucets, or whether we jet off to the Alps or pack up the van for a road trip to the Appalachians. Or, worse still, go nowhere.

Recently, a friend described what it was like to grow up poor. For him, it was all about the jelly. For years, when he wanted jelly on his toast, he did it just as his parents had taught him. He would dip a knife into the jelly jar, and spread whatever modest amount of deep purple goo he dug out into a thin, virtually transparent film of the palest violet on top of the bread.

Years later, when he was already well into young adulthood, he was amazed to see a spoon in the jelly jar at the home of a wealthy friend. He watched in awe as each person at the table took a turn with the spoon, excavating overflowing dollops of the viscous delicacy and slopping it on as if it were something you could come by easily. Like everyone else, he used the spoon, trying -- without much success -- to spread the jelly into the practically invisible film to which he had become accustomed. Not wanting to be rude, he prepared to choke it down. Sometimes, less is more. That day, he discovered, more can be more, and sometimes you just cannot have too much of a good thing. It was the best toast he had ever tasted.

Old habits die hard though, and when he is at home, alone, he still uses a knife for his jelly, and still limits himself as if the stuff were pure gold. He still thinks of himself as poor, or certainly less privileged than a lot of the people who surround him. In his circle, nobody thinks twice about grabbing a spoonful of anything, or, worse still, letting their kids stack the precious (and, oddly, free) rectangular packets of jelly on a restaurant table and then leave the unopened containers on dirty dishes, destined for disposal.

As far as I could tell, when my friend discovered how the rich treat their jelly, he was oblivious to what must have been expensive silver flatware and imported china, the crystal juice goblets, the elegant tapestries half covering the lovingly maintained wooden floors. Or, if he noticed these things, he did not say. Surrounded by all the trappings of wealth, he felt cheated only because of an outrageously conspicuous consumption of, of all things, jelly.

My friend told me this story as we sat outside, on a cool June evening, eating ice cream. We were at one of what would be many Chicago summer street fairs, enjoying the music of local bands, inhaling the incomparable aroma of ethnic foods being grilled to order behind makeshift counters, still nursing our cheap drinks, enjoying the parading mosaic of people

. Something made us laugh, uncontrollably. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was, but I remember thinking, as I sat eating ice cream with a friend on a gritty street in the city, that life should always be like this.

If wealth is to be measured by the preciousness of the flatware or the ornateness of the fixtures or the distance travelled, I should have felt as poor as a kid who knows nothing other than a thin film of jelly. But on that perfect early summer evening, the richness was laid on pretty thick.

Orientation and All That Jazz

A few weeks ago, I arrived at my Starbucks at five in the morning to find it had been invaded by clusters of strange beings, out of bed before the crack of dawn yet without so much as a dark circle under an eye. They all looked fit and energetic in their coordinated workout outfits.At first I thought they were high school girls up a little early for their graduation rehearsal. Unlikely, but then again, life is full of surprises.

Not high school girls, as it turned out, but mothers, full blown women who looked way too young to have borne children, much less raise them. I sat a table away, not meaning to eavesdrop -- well, maybe just a little -- but unable to shut out the din of their lively chatter. Carpools, dance recitals, getting through the gap days between school and camp. All the stuff that once seemed to swallow up my days and my energy, the stuff that added up to a royal pain in the ass. I wondered what they were doing up and out so early.

This morning, my youngest child will wake up, for the first time, in a college dorm room. We are here for two days of Orientation. The second bed in my hotel room taunts me with its emptiness. Only 24 hours earlier, I had glanced over to see her tousled hair spread over her face, the rest of her tangled up in a mess of twisted sheets. She will register for classes today. I will only know what she registers for if I remember to ask. I won't know (or care, really) about the days or the times, and I won't be driving her there. I won't be filling any more crisp brown paper bags with peanut butter and banana sandwiches and Skinny Pop and fat chocolate chip cookies and honey crisp apples. The dog will be disappointed and confused. I will just be confused. Disoriented, I suppose, for a while.

The last few weeks have been filled with "lasts." Her last high school sporting event, her last high school class, her last high school dance, her last upload into her Facebook senior year album. She turned eighteen. Birthday cards and gift bags filled with candy and empty gift boxes and certificates and pins and awards and, yes, a diploma still lay scattered atop our dining room table. Her older sister took days off from work to join in the celebrations. Her older brother, too far away to be here, wrote her what she described as the most beautiful and eloquent letter of love and advice. Significantly older than their little sister, these siblings offer a unique perspective. They are old enough to get the significance of the day, and they are young enough to get the significance of the day. The memories of what comes next -- good, bad, and ugly -- are still fresh in their mind.

The young moms, as it turns out, were coming in shifts to Starbucks while others held their places in a line of folding chairs that stretched around the block by the dance studio their children attend. They were registering for fall dance classes, hoping they had not blown the chance to get their daughters (and the occasional son) into the right class at the right time with the right friends. So complicated. So stressful. Such a royal pain in the ass. They seemed downright giddy, though, and I felt a small pang of nostalgic envy. For at least another few years, they will always know where those children are. For the next few years, at best, I will know (with at least a fair amount of certainty, most of the time) what city my youngest child is in. Beyond that, I will not have a clue.

Just before we moved a few months ago, I came across my daughter's old jazz shoes. For a few moments, I held onto them, running my fingers over the smooth leather, turning them over in my hands, marveling at how tiny they were. Reluctantly, I let them go. I gave them to a little girl whose family cannot afford such small luxuries.

I hope my daughter gets into the classes she wants. I wish I could help, but, like most things, it's out of my hands. 

Manifest Destinations. Not.

Your destination is on your left. She never loses her self-assured monotone. Even when she is wrong. I ignore her and keep driving.

Your destination is on your left. She is insistent. It is pointless to argue with her, counterproductive to smash her into the dashboard. She persists. Make a u-turn, she says, still in that annoying self-righteous monotone. Ha! Obviously she missed the "no u-turn" sign on the side of the road. She somehow knows there's a Mobil station on the corner, but she's clueless when it comes to the rules of the road.

I turn around -- legally -- and head back in the other direction. I expect her to call me a wimp for not making a u-turn, but she's too busy feeling smug. Your destination is on your right, she says, not betraying one bit of the I told you so running through her circuits. I shout obscenities at her and keep driving, but she is unfazed. Your destination is on your right. 

Eventually, I turn around again and park across the street from my destination, which is now, as she cannot resist pointing out, on my left again. It is a house, definitely not the sprawling high school I was looking for. The street name is the same, as is the address, but it is not what I am looking for.

Frankly, the house looks as confused as I feel. Its dingy white facade and unkempt front lawn are at odds with the brightly painted white picket fence that encircles it. The fence tells one story, the house another. This is only temporary, the house tells me; this is only a pit stop, not a final destination. We have not even bothered to unpack. The fresh paint on the fence, though, that tells me the folks inside intend to stay awhile. Our destination is right here, it tells me. We care; we are digging in. I consider the possibility that both narratives can be true.

It occurred to me the other day that, come September, all three of my children will be living somewhere else. Somewhere away from Chicago, the city they have always known as home. The city where I have lived for more than half my life but where I still consider myself to be a visitor. My address has changed several times here; I've packed and unpacked many boxes, but I have never fully unpacked my soul.
It's not that I have ever felt unwelcome here, certainly not that I don't have cherished friends. I have amassed more than half a lifetime's worth of memories, some good, some not. Come to think of it, I don't even dislike it here. Far from it. Still, when people I meet ask me where I'm from, my first instinct is always to say Brooklyn. I am from Brooklyn, but I live in Chicago now, I tell them. As if it were nothing more than a stopover.

I wonder if my children feel as I do, no matter where they are, that a piece of their soul resides in the place where they began their journey. That if a destination appears to be on the right, all you need to do is wait and it's somewhere else. Ironically, my oldest will be living in New York soon, a stone's throw from where I grew up, but I know she will not -- now or ever --  consider herself a New Yorker. No matter how adept she has or will become at navigating the subway system or weaving through crowded sidewalks or spending lots of money to live in cramped spaces, she will always be a Chicagoan. An avid Cubs fan, accustomed to running along the shore of a crystal blue lake as opposed to the gritty banks of a murky river, expecting prime time television to begin at seven, not eight. The same, I think, is true of my other two children. As comfortable and settled as they might feel wherever they are at the moment, like it or not Chicago is in their blood.

And one day, if I somehow end up back where I started, in Brooklyn (as many have predicted), I will never be able to fully unpack the piece of my soul that is now occupied by Chicago. Brooklyn will be a far different place. Not geographically, of course, but because I will be a far different person, much farther along in my journey. We are all, I think, a bit like that dingy house encircled by the freshly painted white picket fence. We pretend to have arrived, and we settle in, at least for the moment. We build our fences and feel secure, relieved to not be on the move. We never unpack everything though, knowing, deep down, that destinations may come and go -- or even remain the same -- but there isn't a GPS in the world that can tell us, with any degree of certainty, when and where our destiny is.

Your destination is on the right. Your destination is on the left. I consider doing a few 360's just to piss her off; maybe, eventually, she will realize she just doesn't know where I am headed. How could she, when I don't even have a clue.

Singing Off Key

In the months before I left home for college, my mother and I did a lot of shopping. We loaded up on loose fitting but neat crew neck Shetland sweaters, baggy Levi's jeans from the boys' department, and khaki pants that accentuated, um, nothing. It was bad enough that I was only sixteen; worse, still, that I looked as if I were twelve.

My choice of school was in no small measure influenced by my mother's opinions, which were, in no small measure, based upon, well, I'm not exactly sure. I was taught early on that mother knows best -- with father coming in at a close second, if only because he usually backed mother up. I assumed, as I always had, that I was woefully unqualified to make major life decisions about my own life, an assumption that carries with it the perk of never making your own mistakes.

By virtue of either benign neglect or a lingering skepticism about my own judgment, I have allowed my  children to make their own major life choices and to risk making their own mistakes. In a few months, my youngest daughter and most of her friends will be off to the colleges they want to attend. Their suitcases  will be devoid of Shetland sweaters and boys' Levis and androgynous khakis, and filled with clothing that accentuates, um, pretty much everything. They are eighteen (or close to it) and look every bit their age, and then some. If they choose to get married one day, they would never be caught dead in one of the puffy sleeved wedding dresses their moms wore. As unprepared as we are for their departure, they are more ready than we could ever have been.

We celebrated Spring Break in the Bahamas together, five moms, six girls. At dinner one evening, we watched the girls pile onto the karaoke stage and deliver a vampy and painfully dissonant rendition of a Beyonce hit. The one or two who can actually carry a tune were drowned out by the others, trumped by the exuberance of singing off key. At once startled and impressed by their confidence, we moms watched, speechless, as we held up our iphones to videotape the spectacle. Our babies, all grown up, strutting around in outfits our own mothers would have burned. The shutters had been thrown wide open, at least for a moment, giving us a glimpse of the world inhabited by our little girls, the innocent and bleary eyed teens we think we know, the ones who shuffle around the house in old sweats, hair piled haphazardly on top of their heads. Talk about dissonant.

I had anticipated spring break with my daughter's friends and their moms, women whom I have only known in passing for years (except for the one I never knew at all) with a mix of dread and excitement. Okay, not so much excitement as cautious optimism, and that only because the winter had been so horrendous. Back in the planning stages, I had toyed with the idea of not going. My daughter would ignore me anyway, and I was terrified the moms would too. Schoolyard fears, at fifty-four. Shame on me. Ultimately, I decided to venture outside my bubble and at least try to enjoy some climate change -- the good kind -- and maybe even some quality sleep.

As it turns out, expectations were fairly low all around. Middle aged women, all as nervous about fitting in for five days as our daughters are about beginning a life outside the nest. Even the girls admitted to having low expectations for the trip. As confident as they all seemed masquerading as mysterious womanly creatures who can sway provocatively and belt out songs off key, they are still little girls, just like their moms. The truth is -- though some might not admit it -- we all had the most fun when we were doing little girl things: jumping through waves, marveling at the sight of tropical fish, screeching down water slides, eating ice cream cones. Our daughters came home with the security of old friendships still very much intact, and we moms came home with the promise of new friendships that might even help us through the emptying of our nests.

Five Bahama mamas, six girls on the threshold of life, all bound together by a brief adventure that helped us learn a lot about each other and ourselves. Nothing lost, and a paradise gained, all of us singing off key, together.

Waiting for the Easter Bunny

I went to Starbucks armed only with my laptop this morning. No legal pad. No stacks of cases or hearing transcripts. No New York Times crossword puzzle. It's been almost a month since I last visited my blog site, and I feel a bit disconnected. A ridiculously arduous winter seems to have rendered me speechless.

My fingers rested on the keyboard for quite some time, the cushiony tips melting into the recesses of the little squares. I am not just blocked; I am frozen. My body aches, my mind wanders, my hopes are dashed each morning the moment I check the local news to find the weather has still not improved. After twenty-nine years of Chicago winters, years during which I was often baffled by the folks who seemed surprised by the weather, I am, every day, surprised by the weather.

And still, come to think of it, surprised by what passes for serious news on morning television. I know most people watching the weather girl are focusing on her cleavage and don't really hear what she's saying, but I am a great multi-tasker. While my eyes go wide with awe at the unnaturally low cut of her pre-dawn dress -- maybe she came straight to work from, um, a party? -- my ears burn with puzzlement. "It will be a cool day," she says. Since when does eighteen degrees -- Fahrenheit, that is -- qualify as cool? "Cool," in my inexpert opinion, is the slight dip in temperature on a summer evening that reminds us to grab a light sweater. Maybe we're all just so sick of the cold we can't even say the word out loud. Maybe she was just overheated from her evening activities. 

To those of us who greet the new day with the afterglow of a hot flash (as opposed to the afterglow --and cleavage -- of a weekday morning walk of shame), it is not cool outside. It is not even just cold. It is Cold with a capital C, generally preceded by some profane adjective. Harbingers of spring, nevertheless, have teased me into a false sense of optimism. March came in like a lamb, relatively speaking anyway, if only because the sun was shining. Birds chirp their impatience outside my window, wishing, no doubt, they had not flown in early just to beat the springtime rush. The sun sets later, and looks to be higher in the sky. Awards season in Hollywood has come and gone, and there hasn't been a snow day in weeks. The rosy Olympic glow that had been cast over Russia has been replaced by the pall of brutality in the Ukraine. Fat Tuesday yesterday, Ash Wednesday today, Lent is upon us. I'm converting to Catholicism. I'm giving up shoveling. I hope the Easter bunny has a good pair of boots. 

My optimism knows no bounds. When I heard plows rumbling by in the middle of the night I chose to believe they were just low flying planes. When I woke and assessed the latest layer of snow blanketing my driveway I deemed it a mere dusting and convinced myself that giving up shoveling for Lent was a fabulous idea. The snow will melt, eventually. And if I toss any more snow on the thick piles closing in on my narrow drive my car will be stuck in the garage until May.

Let it snow. 

Life Outside the Bubble

A week ago, I missed a good friend's birthday. Not just a good friend. The kind of friend who gets excited about your birthday weeks before it arrives, the friend who takes charge of your celebration, the friend who sends cards at least a week early and would never find a stamped, un-mailed card buried beneath piles of crap on her desk. 

To make matters worse, it was a significant birthday. Not that every birthday isn't significant, particularly as we move through the AARP years, but let's face it, fifty-five, "double nickels," is a big deal. And, if my math is correct, I actually spoke to her that day. About me, about something going on in my life. Sigh. If I had only looked at a calendar, noticed that a new month had arrived. Actually, it's my daughter's fault. When I told her of my screw-up, she said she had considered reminding me, but she thought that would be unnecessary. It was uncharacteristic of her to overestimate me, she who worries constantly that she will be called upon sooner than most to care for her addle brained mother. She will, no doubt, never make such a mistake again. Yes, it's my daughter's fault. 

But she shares the blame. I think at least some of the fault lies with Facebook and that arrogant snot-nosed kid Mark Zuckerberg. I have, over the past year, wished countless happy birthdays to people I never see, folks whose lives are accessible to me only to the extent they post pictures on line. It's not that I regret having extended good wishes to them, and I certainly appreciated all the good wishes I received from them on my own big day. But I have come to rely upon Facebook to notify me when somebody is celebrating a special day, damn it; I have abdicated all personal responsibility for these matters. Yes, it's Zuckerberg's fault. If he accepts my friend request, I'm going to blast him.

And, while I'm pointing fingers, I think it's my friend's fault as well. Why the heck is she not on Facebook. Doesn't she know it's so much easier to keep in touch with thousands at once than maintain intimate relationships with the folks who make up your small inner circle? Why cultivate deep, meaningful friendships when, with a mere click of a mouse, you can stay in glorious superficial touch with every Tom, Dick, or Judy you have ever so much as rubbed up against in the past thirty years? How can anyone be expected to remember birthdays the old fashioned way. Like phone numbers; most of us would have no idea how to reach our own mother if our phone disappeared, contact list and all. Unless, of course, mom is hip and on Facebook.  Yes, it's my friend's fault. She is so early nineties.

I glide through my days in my new neighborhood in blissful obscurity. At best I have shared my first name with a few people. They know nothing else about me, have no basis upon which to form any opinions, good or bad, which works for me. When I am the first one out in the snow, I shovel the steps I share with a neighbor, and am extra meticulous with her half. I don't know if she notices, or cares. The other day, the guy two doors down came over to help me finish shoveling. He said it was too painful to watch me; as far as he knows (or cares), my inept shoveling technique is my worst flaw. I will never forget his birthday because I will never know it. Come to think of it, maybe it's his fault I was so negligent about my friend's birthday. Surely they bear some of the blame, he and all the other folks around here who are content to let me remain relatively anonymous, who unknowingly enable me to barricade myself inside a bubble.

Or maybe it's the endless days of bitter cold and snow; or the new job (which has yet to start) or the new house (which is not so new anymore); or my blind dog who likes to eat breakfast at three o'clock in the morning. Or, maybe, just maybe, it's me being an idiot. A completely self involved idiot, no less. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I realize that is the only logical explanation. 

It doesn't really matter whether the neighbors know it, because I do, and so does my friend. And she is far more generous -- and forgiving -- than I am. I have no doubt my Valentine's Day card is already in the mail.