serendipity

This is Not a Test

She's been taking test flights out of the nest ever since she was 10. Want to be an exchange student on another continent in 5th grade? "Yes."

Want to fly - alone - to France - to visit family - alone - in 7th grade? "Yes." Did I mention you'd be going alone? "Yes."

Want to go on the 8th grade school trip to DC? "Will we meet Obama? Let's go! Let's go right now."

So you see, she's been ready to go for a while. Out into the world. To college. By herself with a few hundred fellow-stranger undergrads (and one friend). And yes, we are proud and happysad and anxious and happysad and excited and happysad. They love her so much, that school. They wrote her a personal letter praising her writing. They gave her money. They recruited her like crazy. Which helped us believe we were sending her to the right place, even if it felt very far away.

Cue scene: Husband and wife pep talk.

Him: "She'll come back." 

Me: "Are you sure?"

Him: "Yes."

Me: "How can you be sure?"

Him: "She'll come back."

Me: "But how do you KNOW?"

Him: "I know her. She'll come back."

Me: "You didn't go back to France."

Him, after a pause: "That was different."

End scene of (unsuccessful) pep talk.

This is a girl who is fluent in three languages and about to undertake a 4th (Arabic). A girl who, for giggles, taught herself Swahili over a summer and Japanese over the next (but had no one to talk to in either language). A girl who says she wants to be a polyglot - and who has set the bar at four or more languages even though technically she already qualifies. Polyglot. One of the first words she used where I was the one who had to look in the dictionary.

This is a girl who won't stay home, no matter where she settles down. A girl who dreams of backpacking across Thailand, or is it Vietnam? A girl whose summer tour of Europe took her to  Berlin, Holland, Hungary and Croatia.  A California girl who only applied to colleges that were far from home in cold places that snow. She did not listen, or did not care to hear about her mother's experiences growing up in New Jersey. A place where the snow is beautiful as it falls from the night sky, bringing perpetual hope for a "snow day." Then, with only rare exceptions, we would awake to a crystal clear, snow-blindingly sunny day. By the time we'd come home from the "what snow?" school day, the pillows of white had turned into black and slushy curb mountains. Snow-plowed glaciers topped with crusts of ice that crunched and caved in as you climbed over. I remember snow boots. Soggy gloves. Layers of sweaters. Layers of socks. Static electricity. By the time you got dressed you were too hot and exhausted to go anywhere. Oh, and it was cold. Every year some genius would accept a dare to lick a street sign, just to see if it would stick. It would.

But California Girl, now College Girl, knows nothing of this and so she's gone to Chicago.

Already the house feels different. At first her little sister covered up her sorrow by asking if it was okay for her to refer to herself as the "Only Child." (No.) She reclaimed the bathroom, cleaned up her room and resolved to "never have a mess again." Her room will be repainted because pink is for little girls and she is 13 (and yes, I'm very happy that she is choosing blue paint instead of black). Her bunkbeds have been dismantled and sent away. She needs a real bed now.

Only Child was quick to blame her sister (accurately, as it turns out) for the beetles that moved into the bathroom over the summer. Cloth eating beetles. Cloth eating beetles that fly. So horrible that she often took College Girl's name in vain and introduced the acronym "WTF" to her vocabulary. I have a strict rule about cursing: you can only do it after you know ALL of the other words and can't find one suitable to your purpose. (There is, however, an exception given for music, because there is no way to sing Beyonce's Sorry (current favorite song) without singing some very bad words. I call this "The Hip Hop Exception" because the rule started with the Black Eyed Peas.) Moreover, WTF is probably the right choice of words when you're talking about flying, cloth-eating beetles in your bathroom.

Ten days gone and College Girl is off to a great start with great classes, a great job and great roommates, while Only Child is singing a slightly different tune. There is no one to steal makeup from and no one to blame when things go wrong. No one to complain to when Mom gets all unreasonable. All the chores that were previously shared are now hers alone. Bedtime is the worst, she hears noises that she used to blame on her sister. Now we have ghosts. My phone is full of text messages at midnight "Mom. I'm hearing something. Mom. It's right outside my door. Mom. Please come to my room. Mom. Mom!!"

During the day the family vibe is a little quieter. Only Child gets to make decisions about what we eat, what we'll buy at Target and can she get that new matte lipgloss we saw? 

In College Girl's absence, some of the great mysteries of our lives are being answered with a simple "check her room." The electric tea kettle? Under her bed. Every. Single. White. Towel. (Check for beetles.) All of the screwdrivers, manual and electric (no charger, though). My running shoes, worn through at the toe but not from running. Wrapping paper. Twinkle lights. Non-college branded water bottles (useless). Clothing that didn't make the cut.

I'm pretty sure College Girl left key items at home just so she could get new stuff. Everything about the college experience is new and she wanted it to come with new stuff - even everyday items like moisturizer (found: two full bottles in her bedroom). New bed size means new special twin XL bedding ("Dear parents, our dormitory beds are extra long and will not fit your sheets, here is a link to buy..."). Storage containers to hold new stuff under her twin XL bed. A shower caddy for new wet stuff. A fan that clips on to anything. A bedside lamp that is not a desk lamp. A furry pillow to match the furry blanket she brought from home. A fresh bottle of ibuprofen NOT from Costco. School hoody, standard issue.

Other mysteries have surfaced, like why am I still finding long tendrils of her hair in my clean laundry? And why do those strands, that used to annoy this short haired girl, make me feel so wistful? And what am I supposed to do with the laundry College Girl left behind? Wash it? Ship it? Oh look! There's my blue sweater! 

This is the beginning phase of the new normal. College Girl away, Only Child drying her wings, putting on matte lipstick and getting ready for her test flight to DC.

Cue scene: 

Me: "What will we do after they're both gone from home?"

Him: "We'll be fine."

Me: "We'll be alone. Will you still cook for me?"

Him: "We'll be together. And we were married for 10 years before we had kids, didn't I cook for you then?"

Me: "Yes, but now we'll be lonely, only cooking for two."

Him: "Don't worry, I will still cook for you."

Me: "Before we had them we couldn't miss them. Now we won't be a couple without children, we'll be a couple whose children have grown up and moved away. It feels different."

Him: "...Have you booked College Girl's flight home for Thanksgiving?"

My BFF says I need to "take back" College Girl's room. Turn it into something else, like a guest room, or a room for myself. She thinks I should do it soon because, I suspect, she is worried that I will preserve it like a shrine, beetles and all (Okay, not the beetles, ew). I have a sentimental side and don't want to change College Girl's room because of what it will signify. And College Girl definitely doesn't want me in her room. Not just because of what I'll find (a beetle invasion of privacy), but because anything I do will make the room feel less hers. And while she's ready to fly, she's not ready to give up the nest. 

And neither am I.

Doctor My Eyes

I'm the perfect house sitter, although no one ever asks me to do it. My perfection stems not from a good and reliable character, although I think I have some of that, but more from not wanting to know too much about my friends. In short, I don't snoop.

I won't go through your cabinets, I won't know where you keep your sex toys, and I won't discover your totally legitimate prescription for percocet. Because I don't want to know that about you. Not unless you want to tell me. 

When I was 13 my grandfather died and my mother and I went to Alabama to support my grandmother. I never saw so many casseroles in my life. Piled up on counters, stacked in the fridge with no more room in the freezer. Most were not to my taste (at 13 I'm pretty sure I referred to them as "inedible"), being variants of recipes that called for Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, potato chips, chicken and celery. We ate them because no one wants to cook at a time like this. Even the "lemon" Jello molds with pineapple, carrots and Miracle Whip. (I'm pretty sure that's what they serve in prison and that alone would deter me from a life of crime.)

The thing I remember most is that everyone was chain smoking. My grandmother had a thing called a "silent butler" and it became my job (because "I'm bored") to go around the house emptying the overflowing ashtrays before they started a house fire. I liked that job. The silent butler was cool, you pressed a tab to open the lid, poured the ashes and butts into the bowl and plop! Dropped the top to conceal the ashes. The ashes would make a fine dust in the air as they tumbled into the bowl and a small mushroom cloud would appear, then vanish as I dropped the lid closed. Ah the 70s. 

I would make a tour around the house several times a day, and a shortcut into the family room required me to pass through my grandfather's room and his private bathroom. It was a little creepy so I would always rush through it, but since everyone was so solemn and tearful, I would rush as quietly as possible. 

I should have stomped my feet because on one of my rounds I surprised an old aunt rummaging through my dead grandfather's medicine cabinet. As I entered the bathroom, fully expecting to find it empty, I startled her. She had pill bottles arranged around the sink and was pulling more down from the cabinet, looking at the labels. Something about it felt criminally wrong (13 is the perfect age for making extreme judgements), and I ran out of the room and told my mother. It was a quiet scandal, a tempest in a teapot, or a silent butler if you will. I could never look at my great aunt the same way again and she didn't much like me either. (Bratty kids. Should mind their own damn business.) I'll never forget the way she looked at me, not directly, but reversed in the bathroom mirror like Medusa. The mirror probably saved my life.

It was a life-changing event. 

Seeing someone rifling through the medicine cabinet of a dead person felt like a gross invasion of privacy and it didn't matter that the person being invaded wasn't around to care. I cared on his behalf. As a 13 year old, I had no real idea what could be in those pill bottles. I didn't know that people could or would use prescription medicine for anything other than illness, which made her behavior bewildering. What could she want in there? Why would she do something like that? 

In the years since I have visited friends and lived with roommates. Never have I gone through their cabinets or personal stuff. I figure if they want me to know something, they will tell me. And if they don't want to tell me, chances are good I don't want to know. That might seem funny to you, because I am generally a curious person and I care about you. But just think about what's lurking in those private places: wart removal pads, yeast infection cream, bipolar medication, Polaroids and Rogaine. Or, um, that's what I've heard is in there. That's not what's in my cabinet. Let's go back to the kitchen and finish this story over a cocktail, shall we?

Today I read Dear Prudence, Slate's version of Dear Abby, only more savvy and just as practical, and there were several letters from women who had looked up email addresses to see if they had accounts on Ashley Madison. 

I knew someone eventually would dump the hacked data into a searchable database for everyone to see and I knew there would be plenty of people who would start investigating. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but be surprised at people's reactions. What did they think they would find? If you're putting in his address, it's because you already have an inkling that something is wrong. Are you sure you want to know?

If yes, then you better get ready for the reaction that comes from this surreptitious lookup. One woman who wrote to Prudence was able to log into her husband's obviously abandoned account and then was surprised when he got angry at her for invading his privacy. Another person was running a personal investigation on her colleagues and wanted to know if she should report her discoveries to her boss. (No.) Emily Yoffe, AKA Dear Prudence, gave them good advice, mostly telling them to mind their own business and forget about it.

As you might guess, I totally agree with this. 

Here's the thing: even if someone you know is in that database, you and I have no right to know about it. Because it's not our account. Your spouse may be in there, browsing pictures, daydreaming about affairs, but it doesn't mean he's cheating (especially if the data about the low number of actual women registered at Ashley Madison is true.) Your loving spouse is, after all, a human being and all of us humans have been known to daydream from time to time.

In the same way that you don't want anyone going through your medicine chest (or underwear drawer), you don't want to  force someone you love to explain the private and unexplainable. Porn is an industry for a reason. Sites like Ashley Madison exist for a reason. They are symptoms of feelings you probably already know about. ("We're going through a dry period"...  "we're staying together for the kids," or money, or through inertia.)

Or, more likely, everything is fine and he was just curious.

At the end of the day, you don't really want to know if he is in that database because you know it's a quintessential case of curiosity killing the cat. Until or unless you're ready to deal with the reasons why your partner might want to daydream or even experiment with cheating, back away from that database as quietly as possible.

There is nothing in the Ashley Madison data for you, unless you have an account.  And if that is the case my friend, I'm afraid you are screwed. You can stay at my house for a while. I won't go through your stuff.

The List (Everything Happens at Once)

1. Ensure that everyone who is supposed to deliver important assisting equipment to my mother's apartment, does. Again. For the third time. Because three's the charm and the first two times they came they got it 50% wrong. How does someone get a 4-item list 50% wrong TWICE?

2. Ensure that the people who are supposed to visit her, advise her, give her therapy, do.

✔️ Get 17 year old beloved daughter's braces removed before she does it herself with pliers.

✔️ Corale 17 year old beloved daughter's besties for a surprise birthday lunch without blowing the surprise (do-over from last-weekend's fail).

5. Refrain from shaking the shoulders of the teenagers who were mean to the beloved 17 year old daughter for her birthday. Don't give them a good talking to either. Even though I really, really want to.

6. Ensure that the equally beloved 12 year old daughter's birthday doesn't suck in comparison to the over-compensating I might be doing for the beloved 17 year old's birthday.

7. Find out why the dog is trying, unsuccessfully, to cough up his own lungs. That cough sounds bad, like pneumonia bad. That needs to be higher on the list.

✔️ Find a new vet to save the life of the dog. Try Yelp. Ugh, I know. Try Yelp anyway.

9. Try not to over medicate the dog while saving his life. Yes, there are three meds. Yes two of them are controlled substances. No, you can't take them yourself because they are for your DOG.

11. Write stern letter to Stanford Valet (AKA City Park) refuting their claim of no "damage to my car" since I do consider the theft of my Kindle and charger while visiting their Emergency Room to be damage. 

12. Draft Yelp review for City Park warning potential future victims to keep their valuables secure while trying to also secure the health of their loved ones at Stanford's Emergency room. 

13. Stop mourning the Kindle. It's a device, you can buy another one with all of your books restored. It will look exactly the same. Yes it will. Yes, it will. No it won't. Anyway, get over it.

14. Ditto iPhone charger. Yes, it's $30 for a damn charger and it totally sucks that you have to buy another one. Remembering to charge your phone everyday is taking up space you need for other items on this list, so get over it.

15. Get your work done. No, not this work, but your real work. Like QuickBooks and eBay and web updates! Oh my. 

16. Make plans to fly to Utah to say goodbye to your grandmother, again. Accept that this is not a drill. No, it's not.

No, it's not.

Playing Doctor

My mother's recent hospital stay, for a severe allergic reaction and medication interaction, was nothing short of terrifying. She was so far from acting like herself that at times I wondered if she would ever be herself again. Things are better now, but she is still not what I would call Mom 1.0. She's more like Mom .9

Almost Mom. Not quite Mom.

The experience, though not over, has already taught me some valuable lessons about how to care for someone who cannot care for herself, a lesson I will no doubt be honing into a skill over time. My parents, my children and I, we are all of us getting older. So in no particular order, this is what I've learned so far:

1. Show up at the hospital every day. With HIPPA laws and shift changes, this is the only way you will truly know what's going on. Nurses and doctors will tell you everything they know face to face, and very little over the phone. 

2. Show up at the hospital every day. It's the only way you'll be able to tell hospital staff critical information about your loved one and know that it is actually shared with the right people - because you shared it.  Hospital care is a deadly game of telephone: you tell the doctor, they tell the nurse, the nurse tells the assistant and the physical therapist and so on...TODAY. Then, tomorrow, when there is a new doctor, new nurse, new assistant, new therapist, etc., they learn everything they know from the chart. So if that person is busy, or interrupted or simply scanning the chart, they might miss something important, like oxygen.

My mother needs oxygen 24/7. It's not recommended, it's not simply a good idea, it's mandatory. But several times - including today when she's been in the hospital for a week -  I entered her room to find that the nurse/assistant/therapist/whathaveyou didn't know that oxygen was required and had let her fall asleep, do physical therapy or GO FOR A WALK without oxygen. And sometimes she can do this and still have reasonable vital signs, other times her pulse ox measurement plummets from 95 to 80. This can lead to hypoxia and is very dangerous. 

Show up so you can play the hospital telephone game from scratch, with new players, every day.

3. Show up at the hospital every day, but don't stay there all day nor all night. Unless you have a real reason to believe she might die, you need to treat this care like a marathon, not a sprint. Being in the hospital, waiting for something to happen, is both physically tiring and emotionally draining. You need your strength to last so you can successfully take care of everyone and this includes you. Don't make yourself a prisoner of the hospital. You are free to go outside, eat non-cafeteria food and smell the proverbial roses. Which leads me to:

4. Take care of yourself. You already had a lot of responsibilities before this happened and you are probably feeling the weight of obligations left suddenly unattended while you protect her from the hospital. Eat well, sleep, go home and hug your children, dog, cat, or fish, super tight. Watch something you like on Netflix and for a good, long moment, pause to appreciate the fact that this is not happening to you, and to appreciate your good health. You are not in the hospital because you are ill, but you can make yourself ill if you insist on staying there night after night.

You are no good to anyone if you make yourself sick by over-caring for someone. As much as you feel like you have to stay with her all of the time, to make sure that everyone knows everything they should all of the time, you can't. There is usually a whiteboard in the room, use it to put your phone number and critical information like "Needs O2 24/7."

5. Trust the hospital to do the right thing. No, they aren't perfect and yes you do sometimes need to step in, to make decisions and share information and you're doing a great job of that. But you also need to realize that these caregivers are some of the smartest and most caring people you're going to find anywhere. Most of them are sincerely nice and all of them are working to make her better. Trust that they can do so.

6. Keep a diary of her symptoms and tests. After days of hospitalization, it can get hard to track what's important. If eating is an issue, log it. She's not sleeping? While that can be normal in hospitals, log that too.

7. Use the buddy system. If your sibling, like mine, lives far away, use Skype or FaceTime to include them. My sister and I did many meetings with Mom's care staff as a team. It made my sister feel less helpless, and me less alone. You may not realize it, but you need help to get through this in one piece. Accept the help that's offered and ask for it if it's not.

8. Be prepared for setbacks. People get better and then sometimes relapse. The relapse doesn't always mean they are getting worse, it just means they need more time to get better. Stay positive and strive for an even keel. This is a bumpy ride we're on and there can be ups and downs and sharp, unexpected turns.

9. Try not to read too much into any particular test result or even what happens on any given day. We're looking for trends, markers that show we're making progress in the right direction or that we're not getting anywhere. One of my mother's doctors explained the concept to me like this "Don't just do something, stand there!" The idea being that the feeling we should always be doing something, trying something to make something (anything?) happen, is ingrained into the American psyche. But the phrase "Time heals all wounds" is not just for heartbreak, it's also for being sick. And if you constantly do something (anything?), you interfere with Time As Healer. Worse, if you keep doing stuff, you may be interfering with the stuff you just did. Sometimes you just have to stand there and do nothing. 

10. Be sure to keep an eye on the big picture. If her test results are better overall, don't let the fact that she is still sick take away your optimism.

11. Celebrate the little improvements. 

12. There will be days when you just can't go to the hospital. Can't take another day. Need to run away or scream or have a massage or retail therapy or pound some sand. Do it.

This is hard work you're taking on. I know it feels like you're just sitting in the hospital, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the doctor to come, waiting for the nurse, waiting for lunch, waiting for her fever to drop. But it's more than that. Your butt may be in a chair, but your brain is pacing the floor. Cut yourself some slack. Yes you have to go to the hospital every day - unless you can send your sister/brother/trusted person who knows the critical information that must be shared. But you don't have to stay there. And as I said before, you are no good to anyone if you are at the end of your rope. So go for a half hour, then run away and do something that makes you happy. It's okay. She will be okay. You are not singlehandedly responsible for what happens next. She will not die because she woke up and you were not in the room. No, she won't.

And if pounding sand and all that jazz isn't enough help, find someone to talk to. This burden is too big to carry alone. If you don't have a buddy, ask the hospital for help. It doesn't mean you're crazy or failing, it means that what you're doing is hard. You need and deserve support. And since everyone else is thinking about the person in the bed, you have to make sure that you get the help you need yourself. We have a lesson in our house called "saving your own life." It means doing whatever you have to do to help yourself, instead of waiting for someone to notice you need help.

Remember that you can't do your job if you are overwrought and spent. This care you are giving, it is a good thing and you are a good person for doing it. Stop being hard on yourself because the rest of us think you are awesome. Eat something and get some sleep, you need your strength. 

Because tomorrow you're going to have to wake up and do it all again.

Flutter

She sits in bed and scratches her shoulder. Scratches her face. The top of her head. Her knee. Her ankle. That hard-to-reach place between her shoulder blades. Ah, that's it. Everything itches.

A nurse says "Try not to itch that." I know she's just trying to be nice, to be supportive in that higher-than-dogs-can-hear-I'm-talking-to-an-impaired-person voice, but all I can think is that she's using the wrong word. Itching is the symptom, scratching is the thing my mother is not supposed to do. 

And if she were herself, my mother would not be able to resist correcting the nurse.

If she were herself.

But she is not herself. She is a shadow, a missing person. There she sits, scratching her itching skin, not actually present.

Where did she go?

On Monday she was fine.

On Tuesday she crashed the car.

On Wednesday she asked for help.

On Thursday she was admitted.

The doctors are mystified. Her symptoms do not add up and they are desperate for some easy math. A common denominator they can use to justify the wide array of disparate symptoms. Hives, but not hives. Caused by what, we don't know. Ameliorated only somewhat by strong doses of antihistamines. Hives that have been around for a week now. Hives that should go away but aren't. Let's call that Mystery Number 1. It's a physical mystery which everyone likes because it feels tangible. You can touch it but don't, 'cause it itches. And she will want to SCRATCH that. 

My sister and I are concerned about mystery number 1, but it's not what tortures us. We know the itching is awful, but it won't last. It will go away eventually, the skin will calm, the welts will vanish, the red skin will fade to pink, then white. No, what concerns us is our mother's mind, and why it has  suddenly gone AWOL.

Every time my mother wakes up she asks me where she is. She is surprised and dismayed to rediscover that she is in the hospital. How long has she been there? Three days. "No!" Yes. And then she forgets all over again. She awakes with a start and asks "where am I?"

Today she told me that she needed new clothes for the impending car ride from her hospital bed to the MRI room. We'll be taking the turnpike. She's worried that everyone in the hospital has seen these clothes already and will know they are the same ones she was wearing when she arrived at the hospital. She wants to look presentable. She wants her comb. 

She's talking to dead people. 

She'll start a sentence and be 100% herself. "I dreamt I was in school and I had to write a 100 page paper..." Then her voice changes, drops pitch and she'll start to mumble, unintelligibly. I wait, hoping for a return to lucidity. Sometimes she snaps to and sometimes she falls asleep, mid-sentence. Yesterday she fell asleep with a fork and knife in her hands. 

Her nurses keep asking me "Is this her baseline?" This is code for "is she always this disoriented?" No she is not. Please write this down: this confusion, this short-term memory loss, this falling asleep while talking, THIS is part of the problem. This is Mystery Number 2. But the nurses aren't good at the telephone game, and I have to tell each one in turn. No she is not normally confused, she is smarter than you; she proof-reads the New York Times and finds mistakes. She could kick your ass at Scrabble.

This is what you have to fix.

You have to bring my mother back.

When she falls asleep that way, so suddenly, her eyes roll back a little and her eyelids flutter gently, in the way I remember my children doing when they were so tired that sleep literally had to overcome them. My mother has been sleeping for days and she is still so tired. She literally cannot stay awake. Even though she wants to. Not even long enough to finish a sentence.

Every time she wakes up it's Groundhog Day. "You're in the hospital, mom. You've been here since Thursday. I don't know when you can go home. Not yet."

Not yet.

Walking the Talk

I've never been a fan of new year's resolutions. So many promises focused on health - really weight - and after a month of vigorous participation, most of us slide into sporadic attendance to be followed quickly by the familiar pattern of wishful thinking and guilt.

For many years I didn't set any resolutions, I simply welcomed the new year and hoped for the best. The past few years have been on the tough side, and I've decided to break some of my established patterns in an effort to control my destiny - at least the things that I can. Remember that episode of Seinfeld when George decided to act oppositely of every natural impulse he had? And remember how that worked out so well (mostly)? Well, that's kind of where I'm at right now.

I'm in a rut. Working all the time, but not necessarily working as smart as I could. Also, I'm not writing anymore, and I'm not exploring music the way I want to.

Part of the reason why I set my life/career in this direction was so that I could do more of the things I love and spend more time with the people I love. And while life in small business can be a series of pop quizzes, I have to acknowledge my own role in the cycle. (see definition: insanity)

For 2015 I'm making a few changes:

1. I'm going to write every day. I may not post every day, but I made a pact with my girl that we would both write for 15 minutes a day - posting at least 3 times a week. (Time: 6:51) She wants to be a journalist and I think she will benefit from more practice writing under pressure. I will benefit from getting back on the proverbial horse and trying to write a post that consists of less than 1000 words (word count: 286).

2. I going to do a better job of managing my job priorities and stop characterizing them in my head as "juggling. " I have a tendancy to focus on the fire burning closest to my body, which is not always, all urgent imagery aside, the most important thing. Related: I will stop setting fires.

3. I will be kinder to myself and to those around me by picking my words more carefully. I have been blessed with a large vocabulary, and sometimes I allow it to veer into the dramatic and/or negative. Not totally sure why that is (hmmm, could that be resolution #4?) but as I said above, I'm going to actively change "juggling" to "managing," "crazy busy" to "getting things done" etc. Words matter, as does positivity. I will also stop picking apart my writing, which has, over time, become a genuine obstacle to writing.

4. Positivity. In all things. As much as I can muster without feeling insincere nor putting on rose-colored glasses nor losing sight of what's important. I tell my youngest that happiness is a choice, that the glass is half-full. Now I'm looking in the mirror when I say that.

5. Health. I know, I know, it sounds like such a crock of shit to even put it on the list, and yet. My goal is not to get down to 140lbs, although that would be sweet. My goal is not to look good in a bathing suit or to wear tight-fitting clothes. My goal is to get outside, do a little cardio, breathe some fresh air, adjust my perspective, look for wildlife and maybe get a little fitter in the process. The Mister and I get along much better when we take a morning walk, talk about our kids, think about the day to come and strategize in general. It's good for him, it's good for me and it's on the list.

Time: 15:59 - 538 words (edited to 620 - totally the wrong direction).

The Hardest Word

Someone owes me an apology. 

Someone I know socially and thought was a friend, in part because she is with someone who is a very good friend and partly because I've known her for a long time. We were never what you would call great friends, but we were friendly and she was nice to my kids (my soft spot). And it seemed like we should be friends, because we have things in common. Friends and interests in common. That's where friendship begins, right?

Flash back to several years ago: there was a party and a friend who was upset about something that, in the big picture doesn't really matter, but over breakfast the next day was annoying and confusing to everyone. I commiserated, in a way less vocal than what one might expect from me. In a way less vocal than I might expect from myself - I am not known for my suppressed opinions. But in a disagreement between friends I felt uncomfortable and kept mostly silent.

For all the good it did.

Because this "friend," this mutual someone, gossiped about me to others, attributing remarks to me that I never said, in a way that almost completely killed my friendship with one of the parties in the temporary annoyance. What she said was 90% untrue, and it was more than a little galling that any of our mutual friends would believe me capable of such bad faith. Yet here we are, years later, and one friend is only kind of over it. Part of him believes I said terrible things about him. So much so that when he and I finally discussed The Annoyance face to face, I could see in his eyes that he didn't completely believe me, and still today there is a rift in the treasured friendship. We stopped having dinner together, coffee together. I was heartbroken. It was like losing a family member. A godfather, actually.

And so, with a few casual lies over lunch, she destroyed a friendship of over 20 years, maybe forever.

But she is with my other friend, someone sweet, without guile and deserving of unconditional love. Someone who should be appreciated and cared for and whom I love like a brother.

I should try to get over it, right? For his sake. That is what Jesus would do. What the Dalai Lama would do. What Salvador Dali would do. This is what I told myself. Over and over again. But I was operating at a net loss, and it was hard to get over. 

It's one thing to have lost a friendship, it is quite another to have it stolen from you.

Eventually I was able to meet her socially without wanting to shake her by the shoulders (or punch her in the face). Eventually I mustered my inner bigger person and accepted the inevitability of her presence and moved on. I'm good at not remembering slights which is perfect for this kind of situation. I let it go, more or less. We had fewer invitations from the beloved friend she gossiped to, and that stung. But after a while one can be perceived as protesting too much. So I stopped talking about it and hoped for the best. Waited for time to heal. 

Years pass, and instead of healing, she inflicts a new injury, an obvious and public slight. Invited to dinner, then univited to dinner. Two hours before dinner, after we were dressed, before we actually left. After the kids knew of our plans. After we'd discussed the dinner with friends, what we would bring, what time we would be there, etc. Nothing important, simply another dinner where we would all be together. Except not.

A simple text to announce "Rain." And not enough room for us. Sorry. "We'll see you next time."

Everyone knew, but no one knew why. I still don't know why.

Reports back from the dinner were "everyone who is always there was there, except for you. Dinner as usual."

Friends who were aware of the slight were embarrassed and uneasy, they knew that something had happened,  a line had been drawn, but no one knew why. What had we done?

The best part of being me is that I almost always know when I've made someone upset and why. 

But not this time.

As far I knew, I was the injured party - from that time years ago, the thing she and I never talked about and no one apologized and we all just pretended had never happened.

So what could I have done except to ignore a grievous slight?

Here's the thing: for The Annoyance, 90% of the words attributed to me were untrue - but 10% was true. I was not blameless. So part of my getting over it was accepting my responsibility and moving forward. But for this dinner, this slight, I did nothing for which I can account. And still today, months later, I can't ignore the insult and I'm not getting over it. Even though a bigger person surely would.

What would Salvadore Dali do?

I'm sure I should forgive and forget and blah blah fucking blah. Suck it up. See the big picture. Ignore the smaller person who insists on making herself smaller at every opportunity.

But no. All I can see are melting clocks.

I'm owed an apology. A real one. Not a back-handed simper "I'm sorry you feel that I slighted you in front of your children and all of your friends." Kiss kiss.

The ironic part is that the universe keeps showing me articles written by other people about how to apologize. The best is this one, and it's one that I fully intend to incorporate into our family. But not for this event, because while there may be outstanding apologies for me to give, this is not one of them.

And while I hate to think of myself as unforgiving, I'm also starting to believe that if you turn the other cheek too many times in the face of obvious treachery, you are living the definition of insanity. Complete with melting clocks and crazy mustaches.

I look terrible in a mustache.

Death and Facebook

My friend Roy died last year. Only slightly older than me, we worked together at my very first, and most beloved startup, IntelliCorp. Roy was the older brother I always wanted and never got. He made me laugh and laugh and laugh, and then in the next breath he would make me so mad my ears would turn red. We shared cigarettes on the balcony and lunch in the kitchen. 

After eight years and an untold number of layoffs it was finally my turn to leave the IntelliCorp nest. I was sad and afraid to leave the friends who had become family, and I had a strong, unfounded sense that I was unqualified to work anywhere else. I had done so many different jobs over the eight years, what skills did I actually possess? Part of me believed they had kept me on at the company out of love. Today I know that this is a naive way to think, but back in the day it could have been true. Startups were different then.

In any case, Roy helped me to get over those feelings. By simply being a good friend who believed in me, he helped me to believe in myself. I gathered my courage and moved on to another startup. And through the inertia of benign neglect, we lost touch. 

Eventually Facebook and LinkedIn brought the IntelliCorp community together, in the virtual homeland of social media. I learned that Roy had moved to Thailand and that he had started his own company. That he was still passionate about politics and incapable of keeping his opinion to himself (a flaw we share).  It felt great to have him back in my life, even if it was virtual. It felt good to be connected again. 

And then, in a completely unexpected turn of events he was gone. A heart attack while riding his bike, he collapsed on a bench and never woke up.

He was 50. Healthy. Now non-smoking, bicycle riding, and fit. This was impossible.

Together the IntelliCorp family mourned the loss; quietly, in small, heartfelt posts, many with pictures.  And while I was sad, I was comforted by the images that showed him to be happy and surrounded by friends. This was the virtue of Facebook I thought. Social media had brought us together to share our farflung lives - with the happy, joyful, mundane, sad and horrible moments we all experience. This was a moment to be shared with friends. It was consoling to "be" with other people who cared about him.  

Then, four months later, Facebook notified me that it was Roy's birthday. I was taken aback by the wholly unexpected reminder. It was too soon.

I guess someone has to notify Facebook that a person is no longer alive before they take down his page. And I bet that's a hard thing to do if you're the family member who could do it.

Or maybe they never take it down.

Touched by the memory of Roy, I went to visit his page, to see who else missed him. Quite a few of us, it turned out. The community sentiment was wistful and sad and mirrored my own feelings.

Another shared moment. 

But then I started to see something that made me uneasy: there were posts from people wishing him a happy birthday as if he was still alive. Posts from friends and colleagues who didn't know; sales pitches from people who may never have met him. All leaving these greetings and messages on his wall. It felt inappropriate and unsettling. Like the defacing of a memorial. Like someone should say something to make them stop. 

Or perhaps Facebook could just stop sending out notifications to everyone in Roy's contact list.

Then, perhaps because I was overly sensitive to the idea of social media keeping Roy alive,  I noticed something else: whenever I invited people to our shop events, Roy was included in the list of people I could invite. I couldn't help but think "no, I can't invite him. I can never invite him again."  

Cue sound: ripped bandaid.

Today, almost a year later, Roy is still alive on Facebook. Working (present tense) for a technology company, living in Reno. Available for birthday greetings, invitations and sales calls. We share 34 friends.

That last part is still true. 

 

 

The Pitter Patter of Pointy Things

There are few things as mindlessly satisfying as vacuuming one's own house. The work isn't hard and you don't have to think. It doesn't take very long and the results, at least in my house, are immediately tangible. The air even smells better, thanks to my super duper hepa filter.

We have two kids and one dog and we never ask anyone to take off their shoes before coming inside the house. Mostly because we have two kids and one dog and they alone make the house unsafe for bare feet. 

Most of what I vacuum is dust and dog hair. Mostly. But sometimes I marvel at the mysterious noises I hear clanging up the vacuum hose. Oh, I know. When I hear that I'm supposed to turn off the vacuum, put my hands into the vile, though terribly efficient, vacuum bag and search for the culprit. Because that stuff, the stuff that makes noise, must be important. Or even precious.

But I don't do that.

Or rather I have only ever done that once: today. When I accidently vacuumed the adapter to the headphones I almost never wear (connecting small to large, or is it large to small? I forget. Which means I'll never remember to buy another one and I might as well throw the headphones away.) That adapter clang was too big to ignore and from a highly suspicious location - the electric keyboard. Why, you might ask, would I bother vacuuming the electronic keyboard? It's because of the spiders. We have a lot of spiders living in this house and, ironically enough, a lot of arachnophobes. I'm the only one who's not afraid of them and therefore I am the designated spider killer. And I won't relocate them although I will relocate grasshoppers, moths and crickets. All spiders bite except for daddy longlegs, which is ironic because their venom is just as toxic as any other spider. But for reasons we don't understand, maybe because they're sweet or simply too lazy to bother, they rarely puncture anything harder than an ant. But I kill them too. Not because I'm mean or scared but because those things reproduce like rabbits. I vacuumed at least a dozen of them today and I know that in a week an entire set of identical replacement daddy longlegs will have shacked up in my house. The smart ones live up high, out of reach of my vacuum attachments; the dumb ones live close to the ground, which is good for finding food and bad for avoiding the vacuum.

But the fact that my house is a spider house has to be our little secret. Because if my arachnophobic family had any idea that our house was a spider house, they'd never come home again. They can't handle the truth: that every house is a spider house. Just like every bed, every eyebrow has mites. Yes they do. Oh yes they do. Try not to go crazy with the idea while you look it up and whistle a happy tune instead. Anything from The Wizard of Oz will do, especially this version with Tom and Jerry.

But back to vacuuming: I think my kids think that when I hear the jingle jangle of pointy things going up the vacuum that I'll stop and see what has happened or even open the vacuum to discover which precious thing has gone to vacuum heaven. This, as you know is not true. The truth is that I have grown to like the pitter patter of children's toys as they fly up the vacuum. Earrings from Claires. Bobby pins. Flosspicks. Things that once were glued but are no longer. Money. (Okay, I do keep an eye open for that since it officially costs more to make pennies than they are worth and I feel it's my obligation to keep them in a big jug in my garage that will eventually collapse under its own weight and take part of the house with it.) Hair clips and Barbie shoes which are officially from the devil; they hide themselves during the day and then strategically scatter themselves underfoot in the middle of the only path through the clean and dirty clothes that is your safe passage to kiss the children goodnight. Ow. If by chance I happen to spy a Barbie shoe in its daytime hidey hole, I take special care to vacuum it up. Yes. This is why all Barbie clothing sets have only one shoe. The rest of them are in vacuum hell.

You have probably done the math to realize that this is also where the socks go. When the girls were little I took great care to wash the socks, pair them and put them away in a drawer. Then they grew up and decided that matching socks were totally unnecessary, even unseemly. As were clean socks. Socks are now left to languish wherever they are left and paired randomly at the last minute, in great haste as their mother yells "I'm leaving without you!"

So if I happen to be a tiny bit distracted while vacuuming, and hear the gentle slurping sound that only a sock can make as it goes up the hose, well I have to smile a little. I understand now. I am a silent witness to a form of sock suicide: fed up with their own smelly existance, missing the mate they haven't seen since the day they came home from Target, they throw themselves at the vacuum, praying for some kind of escape. They don't know, and I can't tell them, that they've actually jumped into an alternate dimension, a smellier, dustier and darker version of our house – filled with all of the other things we no longer care to see nor step upon with our precious bare feet. But with any luck, these poor soles will finally find their long-lost mate. Those who escaped last week, to live forever, or at least until trash day, in the Vacuum Zone.

An Angry Teenager

At last, the moment I feared would one day come has finally arrived, albeit somewhat later than I expected. I was grateful for the delay – any delay really - because I dislike conflict with my kids. And she's so sweet and sensitive and smart; I don't want to wage battles that might crush her. And she's strong; I don't want to be crushed by her in battle. And we are entering a power shift where she has slightly more and I have slightly less. It's time to move more carefully and watch for the newly installed landmines that are a feature of Teenager v15.6.

I think the lateness of this stage encouraged me to hope that maybe this moment wouldn't come at all. That maybe we would be different. That we wouldn't have to go through what I went through with my parents. What he went through with his parents. What our parents went through with their parents. What a maroon.

It's silly to say but I thought that maybe, just maybe, I was so good at this parenting thing that we would be able to skip over the (seemingly) inevitable "I hate you" phase. Our girls would grow up, graduate, go to college, get jobs, move away – but not too far, and call us on the phone every day, loving us just as fiercely as the day we met.

Seriously, I was determined. My girl would not hate her parents.

On the one hand I know that pulling away from one's parents and rebelling is part of the process and it's important. Kids need to be able to engage in conflict in a safe space with safe authority figures so they can develop and practice skills needed for later, when the ones they will engage in conflict will be less unfailing in their affection.

On the other hand, it's soooo much nicer when we get along. When I don't have to nag about chores, healthy food, the state of the kitchen, the state of her room, etc.. When she sweetly tucks her head into the crook of my neck (my god, she is so tall) and coos "maman." This is much, much nicer.

So the tantrum, with its DefCon 2 levels of emotion, caught both him and me by surprise. And out of range of appropriate shelter, I might add.

We were in the car.

Trapped.

With a very angry teenager.

The reason she was angry is not important enough to share. It's not even a single reason. It's a virtual potpourri (emphasis on pourri) of reasons, some real, some manufactured and all thrown in to the pot for good measure. She actually yelled at us, which was impressive. Then she stopped yelling and stomped out of the car, having perhaps decided that she would create only a minor scene in front of the house (The neighbors!).

She did not back down from her father's scolding; she challenged it. Then she stormed up the stairs and shut her bedroom door with purpose –without actually slamming it. Smart. Called to dinner, she arrived but would not eat. She did not talk to us. She went to bed early and angry.

We let her, even though this is counter to our own "never go to bed when we're arguing" marriage philosophy. However, nothing we are saying was actually working, so maybe sleep would.

And it did...kind of.

She came downstairs the next morning wrapped in a blanket. She was sleepy-eyed and contrite and I gave her a big hug while waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hugs are great but I wasn't fooled, this skirmish wasn't over yet. This fury didn't come from nowhere, and one way or another we'd have to talk things through until we got to the source – even if that means going to Teenage Ground Zero (currently in beta, this level is tentatively scheduled for v16.8).

She doesn't want to talk about it anymore. She wants the whole thing to go away because she doesn't want to be mad, doesn't want me to be mad, is exhausted from the force of her emotions. But in no time the grievances start to seep out. Things I said that came across the wrong way. Perceived parental preferences that compared her – very unfairly – to her sister. Events and transgressions that seemed innocuous at the time, but which turned out to be greatly injurious to a girl who is less and less a child but not quite an adult. She had a pile of pourri to share with me.

Sincere apologies are issued on both sides. For a moment we understand each other and are back on level ground. Well, the version of level ground that has me with most of the power and her with somewhat less. Which is just how I like it. ;-)

But I can see the future, the one I'd been hoping to avoid. And I understand now, in a way I didn't before, all of the jokes about flash-freezing teenagers and thawing them out when they're 28. Just think of the money that would save.

Resistance is futile as they say, and before you know it we will battle again. And she will experiment with fighting back and hurting our feelings, not because she's mean, but because she has to see if she can do it. I only hope I can stand the auto-update version upgrades that will arrive every month until we get to Woman 1.0, when I feel certain she'll be a reasonable, strong and wonderful person. Who loves her parents again.