The Gift of Al

On Saturday, I spoke at the memorial service for Allen R. Krueger in Oberlin, Ohio. Al was married to my mother's sister, Aunt Sue. It was a later marriage for both of them, so it was not really an issue that they were actually first cousins - and it made for an interesting and often very lovely interweaving of families. I was touched and honored that Al's daughters (my second cousins) asked me to speak at the service.

~~~~~

I have not known Al all my life, as many of you have. But I know the many gifts he brought to my beloved Aunt Sue. His love, of course, which we could all see. His company and the many experiences they shared with so much joy and appreciation. The art and opera, the walking trips, travel around the world, the time with family.

Many of Al's gifts were things I know my aunt wanted very deeply. Some things maybe she didn't want quite so much - but with someone like Al, you have to take it all, and it all is a gift.

Al's gift to me above all was his welcome, in the warm and beautiful home he and Sue made together. He also brought my daughter Laura and me the gift of extending our family. Cousins we we barely knew we had are now friends.

And we have objects large and small in our home that he made for us. The largest is our kitchen pantry, an open shelving unit with pullout drawers and adjustable shelves that he designed especially for us. He built it to fit in a particular spot in the apartment that Laura and I moved into when I separated from my ex-husband. Aunt Sue brought it to Oak Park in her daughter Kathy's mini-van. We unloaded it and bolted it together, and it was perfect. It was Al's blessing for the heart of our new home. And it is a marvel of design and function.

So Al, thank you for all the marvels. We will miss you, and it will be our joy to remember you.

Snow Boots

Laura called me on her cell phone from a shop right down the street where she had stopped in because she needed winter boots. She knew... she knew... she knew she was in over her head - she knew I was going to be uncomfortable with the boots the lovely ladies were showing her... cute fashion boots that really have nothing to do with snow, slush, or warm feet. So I invaded this adorably cozy retail environment with my practical-mom energy, and one lady actually tried to look up some cute little boots on the manufacturer's web site to see if they were waterproof.... Sure they are waterproof, lovely lady, kind of like your head is waterproof... it will dry, but you'll walk around with wet hair for quite a while.

I struggled to handle it right, to not completely humiliate my poor teenage daughter, who would like to vaporize in a huffle-puff of Harry-Potteresque magical mist in moments like these. I could see that these lovely ladies wanted to help my daughter. And I like this shop - I have been in there before, and they carry very nice shoes that are meant for women to have fun and be comfortable and feel good, and you know I'm all about that.

Finally, completely blundering, at some point I loudly blurted out the obvious : "But you need SNOW boots!!"

Abracadabra: I had said the magic words. (Huh??) A lovely lady instantly said, "We have snow boots!", and produced - yes, actual snow boots, made of sturdy practical materials, insulated, and - actually, incredibly - kind of cute. There were two versions. Laura tried them on. She liked them. The style she liked better, they had in her size. The lovely lady gave me a 10% discount. I think she was trying to make up for the misunderstanding.

When in doubt, Mom, just make sure you have really asked for the thing you really need.

~~~~~

http://www.yelp.com/biz/shoe-soko-oak-park

The Mom-ment

I'd like to coin a new word. It's a play on the word moment, combined with Mom. The meaning is "a moment of experience, particularly a small victory or sign of hope, made possible by having or being a Mom." It's pronounced MAH-ment.

Here is the example that made me think of it.

Laura recently took her driver's permit test and did extremely well even though she did not really study. So I teased her that she must have been listening during all the impromptu driving lectures I have been giving her whenever we are in the car together - I have been pointing out all kinds of issues about traffic, decision-making, technical issues about turns and lanes, etc.

To my surprise and pleasure, she said, "Mom, I really have been listening!!" and proceeded to give me a very accurate explanation of how she answered a question about hydroplaning correctly - based on a lesson I gave her last summer as we drove through sheets of rain in the mountains in Kentucky.

It was a Mom-ment.

Summer Reading 2010

A lot of people ask me for book recommendations. My taste is very idiosyncratic, but here you go.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. This book is getting a LOT of well-deserved attention. It's so popular that I probably don't even have to tell you about it at all, but I definitely recommend this page-turner historical novel about the parallel worlds of privileged white women and their black maids in Mississippi during the civil rights movement.

Consenting Adult, by Laura Z. Hobson. This is a fascinating window into social and personal change. The novel is set at the time when homosexuality was just starting to be a topic of public discussion in the U.S. and psychiatrists were debating whether it should be un-classified as a mental illness. The story is told from the point of view of a mother, socially progressive and introspective, whose teenage son comes out to her. Hobson openly admits in her memoirs that she relies almost completely on her own life for the topics of her fiction, and this novel painstakingly and honestly documents the way that people struggle to come to terms with things that change them forever. It's a little hard to get into at first because it seems so dated, but it's really a rewarding book.

Triangle, by Katharine Weber. I found this on a "staff picks" shelf at the public library and remembered reading reviews of it a few years ago. The topic is very memorable - the plot revolves around the reconstructed memories of a survivor of the Triangle fire. There is a long-held secret, a historian who is trying to work out the truth, and sympathetic and textured portraits of a granddaughter and her husband who are the only remaining family. Definitely worth reading, with two caveats. First, you may guess the secret much too soon, as I did. Second, the historian character, who is meant to be annoying, is not as well written as the others - maybe the author had a personal vendetta against someone like her!

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte. I had never read this before. A fine moralistic Victorian read, including mysterious pasts, rakish drunken villains, repentance and reconciliation. Interesting genre-mixing of first person epistolary and journal writing. As predicted, I was inspired by my first book of the summer, the Sheila Kohler novel about Charlotte, to read more of the Brontes' novels.

Untold Millions, by Laura Z. Hobson. This rather old-fashioned, very readable novel is set in the 1920s world of advertising and copywriters. It was published in 1982 but I wonder if the author had written much or all of it earlier in her life, since it reads like something written in the 40s, at least to me. If you are one of the people who loves the Mad Men TV series, you will recognize some of the same themes/motifs although the time period is earlier. The novel focuses on the love affair between a young woman and a married man whose wife is living overseas. Hobson was a very progressive novelist/essayist/commentator who is not very well known anymore but well worth exploring. Now I want to read more about her. I have read several other of her novels: Gentleman's Agreement is her best known, probably, but Tenth Month is also a really good read.

This Body of Death, by Elizabeth George. I used to be completely addicted to mystery novels, and I had to give them up since they consumed months of my time. I kept only this one author. I love her characters. They develop so slowly over the course of the novels - you know them, and they are somewhat predictable because you know them, but you never know quite how she will take them to their next place. The plots are intricate and include good social commentary. Satisfyingly big long fat novels.

One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell. This is the Sex and the City author. Fun gossipy story, interesting characters - particularly the women. Not very flattering to either gender, some satisfying plot twists, art theft subplot, one subtly shocking "accident" - this was a terrific choice of audio book for a long car trip!

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, by Elyn R. Saks. An amazing, moving, and educational memoir of a woman who has schizophrenia and has been able to build a successful life with the help of medication and therapy. She has a career as a law professor and has published extensively on the law and mental illness, and she is married. I could not put this book down - I read it in two days.

Becoming Jane Eyre, by Sheila Kohler - my first book of summer reading, very good. It's fiction but clearly based on a lot of research on the Brontes. Don't read it unless you are willing to be tempted to go check a bunch of Bronte novels out of the library! Just in case you don't know, Charlotte's real masterpiece, Villette, is even better than Jane Eyre - which is saying a lot.

gathering strength

My daughter has been given a list of nutritional recommendations by her acupuncturist. Good luck to me in working to help a teenager change entrenched behaviors. Especially behaviors about food, and factoring in an eating disorder, and years of obesity and despair and pain.

This morning I walked through a doorway - literally, from the kitchen where I was making food according to the recommendations, to the dining room where the lists were spread out on the table - and I suddenly, piercingly, felt the presence of my mother and grandmother, and I instantly burst into tears. They are here, somehow. They are going to help me, I feel. Some mother-wisdom from the other side is going to toughen me up for this. I feel my determination taking form. I am preparing myself for a conversation with my daughter.

This is not just about food. This is about many interconnected things. First of all it's about her taking responsibility for herself, learning how to be healthy so she can take care of herself on her own as she matures. It's about her learning how satisfying it feels to not run excuses, to show up and step up instead of running away and hiding, not just about food but in all the ways she needs to take care of herself. It's about keeping the commitment she made to work with this practitioner, and honoring herself in that - and it's about allowing me to work with her and support her in that. She has to meet me. She doesn't get to just complain that she doesn't like oatmeal - she's gonna help me come with something she likes better.

I am going to tell her that it's her job to work with me cheerfully and creatively. It's my job to listen to her and remind her of her commitments. It's both our jobs to make it as much fun as we can, play music, share the good food, be there for each other. We can do this.

One for the money

During the holidays I often think about what it means to have enough money. I have enough money. I pay my bills every month. There is food in my fridge, gas in my car, clothing in my closet, and cash in my checking account. I have some investments. I have a pension (unless the state of IL goes so deeply bankrupt it defaults on the pension system).

This is not because I am particularly talented with money or because of any virtue on my part. I am just lucky. Born into the middle class and other lucky turns along the way. I suppose I could have ruined myself in any number of crazy or stupid ways, but overall I have just muddled along with what I've been given and managed not to screw things up too badly. One of the key bits of luck was that I happened to want to do graduate work in a field where people get good jobs. So I have a good job. It won't make me rich, but it makes me comfortable.

I know quite a few people who in the past decade have used the expression "when I(we) used to have money." Mostly these people have meant this a bit lightly. They had had high-flying jobs in the dot-com bubble, let's say, and their company went under or their stock options lost all their value. These people went from living in a world of inflated expectations and absurd corporate overspending, back to what is everyday reality for people like me. Modest vacations, realistic homes, jeans from Old Navy, a small car. Nothing wrong with that. It's a very nice reality. You pick and choose your luxuries. You don't expect to have everything, but you can have somethings. I have a gym membership. I love the gym. I would love to have a big fat digital cable TV subscription too, but I don't.

And really, most people I know are doing fine. Maybe they are making changes to reduce their debt or their discretionary spending, but probably they are working, and like me, they can see that they have enough. It seems like one of the blessings of the holidays is the opportunity to think about this a little bit more. So it wasn't a hugely extravagant Christmas. So what?? What did we really need, that we don't already have? Nuthin.

I made a donation to the local food pantry the week before Christmas and bought very modest gifts for my family. One of my brothers happened to decide to do the same sort of thing as well. It's nice to have some presents to open, to carry on the rituals of giving and receiving. It's sweet to think of small things that people I love might enjoy--a book, an unusual ornament for the tree, a bottle of wine. Maybe one of the things that makes me really lucky is that the rest of my family all seemed to think this was a fine way to do Christmas. The children did not seem to notice any difference. My own daughter is remarkably ungreedy about gifts and has been all her life: she loves whatever people give her and never seems to notice what she doesn't get.

May we who have enough remember this Recession Christmas for how it gently reminded us that we have enough. May we keep giving to charities like the food pantries on behalf of those who truly do not have enough. I think I will sign up to give a monthly donation. Maybe about the same amount that my gym membership costs, just to remind me.

Writing Facebook

Facebook is a dream come true for someone like me. All my life, I have been kind of narrating myself in my head. I have one friend who confessed to me once that she does this too. I suppose it’s a writer thing, although I’m pretty sure that not all writers do it. But now we have a program that encourages us to share this self-narration with everyone we know! An audience--for all the little pieces of writing that constantly float through my head--wow. Who could ask for anything more??

When Aunt Maggie, also a writer, was dying, I sent what I didn’t know at the time would be my last email to her. In it, I mentioned Facebook. I said that I found myself crafting the status messages like little poems. I’m sure I am not the only literary-minded Facebooker who sometimes deletes her own content because it’s not well written enough. I love status messages. Even when they’re not really poetry, they often are interesting little snatches of life as we know it. (Go to your own profile page and read back through some of your old ones, and see what comes back to you.... Notice what you noticed at the time, and what you notice now... if you dare.)

Maybe our images of ourselves through Facebook are impossibly distorted. I think about all the different levels of privacy and self-disclosure that people are comfortable with. But I wonder, does our Fb behavior pretty much mirror how we are anyway? I am careful with my Fb postings--I do have a sense of privacy, and I don’t really want to embarrass others (well, occasionally I give in to the temptation to embarrass Laura, but that is just so damn easy). I am also careful not to “friend” just anybody who comes along. Even people I really do know, never mind the fake ones. I like Facebook because it really does connect me with people I care about. Writing has always done that for me, although like lots of people, I have always written letters and even emails in fits and starts, long broken-up lines of communication with old friends, extended family--always feeling the struggle to keep up with everyone I do truly care about.

I’m not sayin’ that Facebook is perfect, and I have perfect sympathy for all my friends who say “NO WAY”--as well as for the ones (like my brother Tim and his wife, hey I miss you on there!) who start and then drop off. It can be a time suck. I admit it. There are days when I like it too much. But all in all, in the balance, as I look at my life as the New Year approaches, I think that Facebook has enriched my life. As a writer, as a friend--even as a mother. And hell, it’s FUN. We could all use more of that, right?

I spent today in airports and planes en route to Vermont, in a state of Internet deprivation, still narrating my life in my head as I have always done, but now I have the reflex of crafting status messages out of this mundane material. I can see why people post messages from their mobile phones. (Uh-oh.) Have fun out there, and happy new year.

P.S. Oh by the way--the first free airport wifi I found all day was here in Burlington. Vermont ROCKS.