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.