Santa Doctrine

Another Christmas come and gone. I have to say, it's just not as much fun since the boys got older and Santa stopped dropping by.

I didn't grow up with Santa. None of my friends believed in Santa. Santa and the reindeer belonged to the wider secular society against which our Dutch immigrant Calvinist sub-culture defined itself. Plus, Mom always said that if she was going to do all the work of buying and wrapping presents, she was going to get the credit.

Thus, when I had kids and wanted them to grow up with the magic of Santa Claus, I didn't quite know how to do it. I mean, I understood the basics: hanging up stockings, leaving out cookies and milk, listening for hoofs on the roof after we said nighttime prayers. But, I asked a group of friends one night at a church buffet, what about the hard questions? What about when Owen asks why some kids get more and better gifts than other kids? My friends all laughed at me. "Kids don't think like that," they assured me. "They're really not interested in the finer doctrinal points of Santa theology."

Uh huh. So where were they, these laughing friends, when Owen at age 3 1/2 asked me why all poor children were bad? Surprised and disturbed, I assured him poor children were no worse than other children. He frowned.
"But we bought that truck for that poor boy." Yes, yes, we had. Every year our church received a list of names of children whose parents were in prison. We'd selected the name of a boy Owen's age, and together we'd chosen and wrapped a gift for him.
"You said he wouldn't have any presents so we needed to buy him one." Yes, but--
"You said we needed to think about the poor children who wouldn't have presents." Yes, that's--
"So the poor children must be bad 'cos Santa doesn't leave them presents."
Impeccable logic. Impossible questions.

A Prayer; Occasioned by Three Days at Home with My Mom and My Mother-In-Law

Dear God,

As I move into the Aging Decades, please:

Let Yes outweigh No in my vocabulary;

Let me ask questions that do not demand certain answers;

Let the words "That's not the way I like it" never pass my lips;

Let "I've never done that" lead to "Show me how."

Pull me into the new.

Shower me with strangeness.

Pour change down upon me.

Forever and ever,

Amen

Mistakes

After my surgery last week, the nurse sent me home with this strap-on plastic bootie, a bottle of pain pills, and a routine list of instructions that included the order to "walk to comfort." So, I figured, boot thing + pain meds + weird instructions = walk until it really hurts and then take drugs. I was never very good at math. Plus today I went for my post-surgery check-up and discovered that the nurse had forgotten to give me a pair of crutches and strict instructions to bear no weight on my foot. Oops. No wonder the damn thing has hurt so much.

Fine, then. I'm actually pretty good on the crutches, at least in short spurts, tho' I think perhaps watching my wine intake might be a good idea. And then there's the dog, who's terrified of folks with large stick-like objects in their hands, particularly large swinging stick-like objects that go Tha-ump!. It's so sad to see him so conflicted: "Danger! Danger! Enemy with Stick!" "No, no! That one gives Food. And Car Rides!" "But she has Stick!" Poor darlin'. Maybe I should rub the crutches with chicken broth or pork skin. He's used to me walking him every night, and now as night after night goes by, and Keith or Owen pull down the leash, I can see him looking at me and wondering where it all went wrong between us.

Meanwhile, Hugh has decided that he doesn't like the new Invalid Mom at all. At least the old Headachey Mom could drive him places and did her own laundry and vacuuming. This new version just has no point, no point whatsoever.

It's an unfortunate coincidence, then, that right before my surgery Owen convinced me to buy the new(ish) Morrissey album, which comprises nothing but Morrissey misanthropy. When facing sullen son who simply cannot believe you were so selfish as to have surgery and so ensure that you cannot drive him to the mall when you knew you knew you totally knew he needed to be driven to the mall and so you planned it this way because it is always about you and you rejoice in making his life hell and never never thinking about him, well, it's probably not the best idea to have these lyrics running through your head:

You hiss and groan and you constantly moan
But you don't ever go away
That's because
All you need is me

You don't like me, but you love me
Either way you're wrong
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone

No, really, it would be much better if you had the lyrics to "O Holy Night" or "I'm a Little Teapot" running through your head. Or even the Stones' "Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown."
But Morrissey + horrid child + post-op = parental disaster.

Doing Something Important

Day 5 in Post-Old-Lady-Foot-Surgery World. I had planned to spend my time on the sofa accomplishing all kinds of Important Things: finishing off a review, devising syllabi, writing a book proposal, drafting two sample chapters for other book proposals, and most important, revising chapters of my Damn Jesus book.

Oh. Perhaps that last one needs a bit of explaining. See, I've been working on a book about images (visual, theological, literary) of Jesus in British popular and intellectual culture since 1850. The problem is, I've been working on this project since, well, it seems since 1850; certainly my sons have never known life without it, and as a result the entire family calls it the Damn Jesus book. Not that we have anything against Jesus. Not at all. Jesus is good.

Anyway, I planned this totally laid-back but completely productive on-the-sofa recovery period. But, to quote a line from Terry Pratchett's Night Watch, "A plan is what you have when you don't think." I forgot to factor into my brilliant plan one very important, uh, factor: Pain. I do have these really groovy pain-relieving drugs, but said drugs are, it must be admitted, more appropriate for watching Ghostbusters than for constructing brilliant and logical historical arguments that will convince committees made up of grumpy over-educated white men that they should promote me and pay me more. Leave out the drugs and one is left with, well, plain ol' pain.

And here again, I realize what a Bad Academic I am. A Good Academic would soldier on through the pain. I would like to think, I choose to think, I must think, that if I had to Do Something Important, if I had to, say, finish an article on which the future of a decent, affordable education for all residents of the state of Louisiana rested, or testify before Congress on the need for universal health care, or I dunno, geez, what vitally important thing could an historian of modern Britain actually do???

Which of course is the point. I love my job. But I made sure that my surgery did not conflict with the socially crucial part of it (i.e. the teaching part). And gritting my teeth and working through tears so that the few interested cultural and religious historians can read what I have to say about changes in the British image of Jesus. . . . umm, it ain't happenin'.

Instead, I've used up my few pain-free and lucid moments to write my Christmas cards, talk to my guys, read Terry Pratchett, and watch Doctor Who. But wait--those last two are British, and in fact not just British but Modern British. Eh voila, I've been working through the pain. Gosh. Someone ought to promote me.

Foot Surgery

I had my old-lady foot surgery this past Thursday.

Pain sucks.

Drugs rock.

Christmas Sanity

I'm sitting on the sofa, comfortably ensconced in Christmas. Colored lights--which the British call "fairy lights--twinkle like, umm, little fairies and the various miniature Nativity scenes (most of them Mexican, testimonies to Keith's many spring break trips to Mexico with college students when he was a university chaplain) and Santas and Christmas-themed Beanie Babies and nutcracker soldiers and snowmen and angels all jostle together in a glorious mishmash of folk art and children's drawings and drugstore tacky.

Over it all glows the 8 1/2 -foot tree. I suggested maybe a table-top tree this year as I'm having foot surgery in a couple of days. . . Hugh reacted as if I'd proposed that we cancel Christmas and spend a week digging latrines in Somalia. Needless to say, Hugh won; Hugh always wins--and this time, at least, I'm glad; it's a beautiful tree. Like the rest of the decorations, it's far from elegant or tasteful, just a jumble of clashing ornaments: here a ceramic Snoopy that I bought in high school, there a silver penguin that Hugh and I picked up last year in Sea World, San Antonio; on a branch below sits an olive-wood manger scene that a friend bought for me in Bethlehem while I was lying, feverish and stricken with debilitating diarrhea, in a nun-run traveler's hostel in Jerusalem, and just above it perches the glass bird my mom brought me from her trip to Austria when I was in junior high. And over there, see, by the real-life-size glass McDonald's French Fries ornament? Next to the picture of Owen in day care, wreathed in glitter glue? That's a clay Viking, bought during one of our many family trips to York when we lived just a short train ride away in Manchester. And on and it goes. No overall design, no aesthetically pleasing pattern, just the haphazard relics of our haphazard lives.

(In contrast, Hugh tells me that his girlfriend's family's tree is black. With all-white ornaments. In an all-white living room. Poor Hugh. Once again his slovenly, academically-inclined, fashion-challenged, interior-design-handicapped family fails to measure up.)

I genuinely do enjoy Christmas and all that goes with it. It strikes me as odd and fundamentally sad that the most common interchange with casual acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors, and so forth is something along these lines: "How ya doin? All ready for the holidays?" "[groan] Oh lord, no. I can't believe how much I have to do. [roll of the eyes] Ho ho ho, right?" And then will come the competitive listing of how much must be done and what a drag it is to do it.

I don't get it. There are no Christmas police. No one is going to come fine you or arrest you for failing to ice the cookies or not sending out cards or deciding against populating your front lawn with gigantic inflatable snowmen. I am not really a very laid-back person (to put it mildly). Maybe it's because I'm so neurotic, almost professional in my neuroticism, really, that I regard Christmas anxiety as purely for amateurs. It's a bit bizarre: The one time of the year when everyone else goes slightly crazy, I feel somewhat sane. Kinda nice. I can see the appeal of this sanity thing.

Border Lands

Oh dear. Fall lectures finished, final grades almost finally calculated, department and college meetings all wrapped up. . . we now enter that in-between-time, the liminal zone, the border land that lies north of the first semester and south of the second, the period that Ordinary People regard as the ridiculously long vacation in which wastrel academics (all inveterate liberals, needless to say) sit around and drink sherry. Actually, it's the time in which Real Academics do what they, and the people who determine their incomes, regard as their Real Work. This is the thing that students (and their parents) never quite get--that actually, they and their interests and needs and ambitions and, well, their education, are utterly secondary to the university system.

The problem is--ok, let's face it, there are lots of problems with it--but, on a totally selfish level, the main problem, for me, as an Academic who aspires toward being Real, is that once I've submitted my final grades, all I want to do is, well, you know, Do Christmas. I want to bake Christmas cookies, hundreds of thousands of cookies in various shapes and sugars. I want to wrap every box in the house. I want to sniff cinnamon and mainline eggnog. I want to recite the second chapter of Luke and read A Christmas Carol out loud and listen to seven different recordings of The Night before Christmas. I want to play every Christmas cd we have and watch every Christmas tv special.

In other words, I don't want to work. I want to do anything but work. Even hanging out with red-nosed reindeers or ringing jingle bells incessantly seems preferable to work. I have three book proposals to draft and a book chapter to write and a long overdue book review to submit. I should be excited. No students! No lectures! No grading! For almost six weeks! Just me and Ideas. Real Academics just love that stuff.

I think I'm a Quasi-Academic. A Quasi-Academic slacker Christmas addict. Has anyone seen the fruitcake?

"And there were in the same country. . . "

So, we've become Gleeks. ("Gleeks," oh unknowing folks, are followers of "Glee," the stylized humorous-satirical-musical drama about a totally unreal, utterly mesmerizing high school.) You know you're a Gleek when you choose the Christmas episode of "Glee" over "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

I do feel guilty though. I'm not sure one can actually truly really deeply celebrate Christmas without "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

Yes, yes, I do know one can purchase the dvd and watch it any ol' time, even in July, but that's no good whatsoever. One must watch it on tv at the proper time, as determined by The Network. It's like, well, not really, but just sort of, a bit, kind of like (I'm not trying to be blasphemous here, just you know, metaphorical), one doesn't just eat a cracker and drink some grape juice in the kitchen and declare it Holy Communion.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" debuted in 1965, when I was 5. I watched it. I've watched it almost every December since. My mom hated tv, but even she loved "A Charlie Brown Christmas." After all, it gets Christmas right: Linus quotes Luke 2; there's no Kris Kringle or puppet elves or animated red-nosed reindeer accompanied by damaged toys. And there's that fantastic jazz score and there's Snoopy, truly one of the 20th century's most brilliant fictional characters.

Oh damn. Fuck "Glee." I should have watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas." One should never mess with Truth. Or Snoopy.

Unclear on the Concept

I.
Last night was downtown Baton Rouge's Winter Fest Celebration of Lights --a huge success (apparently--we didn't make it), in large part because of the crowd-pleasing 70-degree weather. In contrast, last year's Winter Fest was postponed and curtailed because of "the threat of snow." Really.
II.
It's a nippy morning, temperatures hovering in the upper 50s. A student slumps into my office. He clutches his windbreaker around him and scowls. He says angrily, "They should heat the walkways between the buildings, you know."
III.
Older couple, interviewed in the local paper: they'd decided to retire here in Baton Rouge "to escape the harsh winters in North Carolina."

Hair Ball

This morning I sat and watched my kitty cough up a hair ball. If you're not a cat owner, you may not be familiar with this extraordinary sight. The cat freezes, makes a series of other-planetary sounds, extends her neck so that she looks like some sort of creature out of Dr. Seuss, coughs, gags, coughs, gags, and then convulses. Rewind. Repeat until hair ball (one of life's more disgusting byproducts) appears.

As I watched, this overwhelming sense of deja vu enveloped me. I dismissed it: of course I've been here before; I've had cats for years. But then I realized it wasn't deja vu, actually, but more that sense of being reminded, of parallels pushing you toward a memory not of what was in front of you but of something else, something sort of similar but really very different. And slowly, fitfully--rather like coughing up a hair ball, actually--I recognized the memory evoked by my gagging kitty: therapy.

My kitty contorting herself to produce this mass of indigestible, glutinous gunk perfectly embodied the process of undergoing therapy (when the therapy is working, that is). You sit there and at first you freeze but eventually these noises emerge and then you find yourself coughing and gagging and over many many sessions and much more emotional coughing and mental gagging, you find yourself stretching and straining and it's not right and you weren't meant to feel this way and you want it to stop but it doesn't, you don't, and then, and then, and then, eventually, maybe, there's the hair ball. But it's not over, because now you and the therapist have to dissect the hair ball, and seeing what's in the thing is almost as bad as coughing it up in the first place.

Curled up like a fossilized ammonite, my kitty sleeps on the wooly blanket atop the sofa. She clearly has no memory of and no interest in her hair balls. She wretches them up and moves on, unaware.

I gotta say, measure me against my kitty on the scale of emotional wellbeing and the kitty wins, hands (paws) down. Self-awareness is just not all it's cracked up to be.

Winter Lust

It's that time of year. Nope, not almost Christmas, tho' I guess it is that, actually. But, like everyone else whose life is constrained and sustained by the academic calendar, I do not acknowledge Christmas until after the final exams are graded. Nope, by "that time of year" I mean: 'tis the season for porn. Oh, not that kind. I'm talking catalogue porn. Specifically winter clothing catalogue porn. Temperatures today here in balmy Baton Rouge are in the high 70s. Humidity hovers at 90%. My students came to class, as always, in shorts and flip-flops. And I, I sit on the sofa with my Eddie Bauer and my L.L. Bean and my J. Jill catalogues, and I linger lovingly, lustfully, longingly on the full-page, color photos of thigh-length chunky wool sweaters and thick velvet leggings, down parkas and polartec ski jackets, matching fluffy hat and mittens sets. It is not healthy for me, I know. But damn, it feels good.

Rejuvenation

I've gotten my period. Not exactly headline news for any female over the age of 12, except I'm 50, and haven't had my period for two years. So, quite frankly, I'm shocked. And perturbed. I'm doing my best, fighting hard to settle into my new identity as Crazy Menopausal Woman, and suddenly here I am, fecund, gushing blood. Is this fair? Two years of sweat springing forth from my pores as if I were some kind of garden fountain; two years of reduced sexual drive to the point where "drive" is hardly the right word, more like "slight inclination now and then"; two years of mood swings and weight gain and hair loss. . . . and now I have my freaking (downright freaky) period??

Acupuncture Guy tells me it could be the result of my thrice-weekly, oh-so-expensive needle sessions plus herbal regimen. I'm restoring my "chi". Hmm. It seems to me--I dunno, I'm just sayin'-- that if this rather well-known thousands-year-old treatment could actually reverse menopause, well, wouldn't women have cottoned onto this by now? Wouldn't all of us over-40-ish female types be getting little needles stuck into us regularly? But then again, maybe not. Who, after all, wants periods forever? I, for one, think fecundity may be over-rated.

Still, Acupuncture Guy's assistant told me in my last session that I had the best-looking tongue she'd seen all day. Sadly, I felt quite pleased.

Disconnected

In the wake of almost 16-year-old Hugh's disastrous report card, we've implemented a number of "Get Serious" strategies, including close supervision of all homework and confiscation of his cell phone during study time. (By the way, "his cell phone" is not exactly correct, as we pay for the damn thing.) Yesterday, when I put both mandates into effect, Hugh went ballistic. He actually threw his phone on the table and thundered, "If you touch it, I swear to God, I'll punch you in the face!" Amazing Supermom that I am, I remained calm and later informed him, in a my Total Zennish yet serious and authoritative voice, that I was confiscating his phone for a week. He cried. Sobbed, actually.

I struggled with myself, unsure if such a slight punishment fit the seriousness of the offense.

And then, later that day, I told the story to Nail Lady. She gasped, horrified, and exclaimed, "You're not really going to keep his phone for an entire week, are you?"

Needing Dumbledore on Thanksgiving

Watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (as one does on Thanksgiving night). The inferi have grabbed him; they've pulled him into the water; he's drowning.

Stuffed with Thanksgiving food and family, Keith and Hugh recline on their respective sofas (we are a two-sofa family), caught up in Harry's travails, yet utterly relaxed. But I, feeling somewhat alienated as usual by the whole ordeal of "Thanksgiving at the In-Laws' [who are supposed to be my family but let's face it, they're not], I find myself utterly transfixed by this scene, which so perfectly, horribly, accurately embodies the experience of chronic depression, the lifelong fight against those creatures who pull you in and suck you under.

Harry's now been saved by Dumbledore and his wand. I could use a Dumbledore right now. Or even just a Hermione and a Ron, to walk with me past the Whomping Willow and through the Forbidden Forest, til we find ourselves safe at Hagrid's cottage, in front of a roaring fire.

Why I am for gun control

Yesterday I met with Hugh's geometry teacher to discuss Hugh's performance (or lack thereof) in his class. Young, laid-back, sporting a cool little beard, Geometry Guy is a nice man and, I imagine, a good teacher. He carefully explained to me that he had no doubt that Hugh was capable of doing the work. I pointed out that Hugh's grades made that clear: 0, 0, 100, 0, 0, 0, 0, 100, 100, 0, 0, 100 . . . . (you get the idea). I articulated my frustration: What do you do with a child who can do the work but simply doesn't?

Geometry Guy leans forward and says, "Have you thought about an incentive program?"

I don't think I'm a violent person, but if I had had a handgun in my purse (as is my legal right here in Louisiana), I would have shot him dead.

"Have you thought about an incentive program?" Excuse me. We're middle-class over-educated parents with a "problem child." You want to talk about incentive programs? Oh, the charts and stickers. The tickets. The points. The marbles in the jars. The coupon books. We have an entire bookshelf filled with titles like Transforming the Difficult Child. "Have you thought about an incentive program?" Why, golly gosh, no, what a novel idea! Thank you so much, Mr. Geometry Guy.

We received Hugh's grade report this week. Two Fs, a D, and a bunch of Cs (plus an A in P.E.; it's important not to forget the A in P.E.). We grounded him. He immediately went and Googled the subject of child discipline, and a few hours later presented us with a well-reasoned argument, backed with research, on why grounding is an ineffective method of behavior management.

A handgun would be a terrible idea.

Dutch Treat

I.
The setting: last August. Owen is home for a short interlude between his cross-country bike trip and his D.C. internship. (Ah, the glamour of youth.) It's mid-morning. I've been doing errands and am now heading into the office. Must. Write. Damn. Book. Must. Get. Promoted. I pass by Owen, who has just put in a dvd and is now settling down on the sofa.
"Hey, Mom. Where ya goin'?"
"Work."
"Oh, don't do that. Watch Season 2 of Robin Hood with me. We can bond."
"Umm. OK."
I flop onto the sofa. Owen bursts out laughing. "You know, you're the reason I have no work ethic!" He sees the look on my face. "No, no--it's great! All my life, whenever you have to choose between family and work, friends and work, you always choose family and friends. And I think that's great."
So do I. It was one of the nicest things he could have ever said to me.
We settled down on the sofa, two satisfied slackers.

II.
Yesterday, Owen sent me the following link: http://www.slate.com/id/2274736. If you do not want to bother reading the article, the following excerpt pretty much sums it up: "Dutch women . . . take a lackadaisical approach to their careers. They work half days, meet their friends for coffee at 2 p.m., and pity their male colleagues who are stuck in the office all day. . . . 'We look at the world of management—and it is a man's world—and we think, oh I could do that if I wanted,' says Maaike van Lunberg, an editor at De Stentor newspaper. 'But I'd rather enjoy my life.'"
Owen added the message: "I knew you were born in the wrong country."

Damn straight. Plus, if I were Dutch, I could smoke weed to relieve my headaches. And eat really good Gouda and that amazing chewy salty rye bread.

Actually, I'm 100% ethnically Dutch. I could have been genuinely Dutch, right now, had my great-grandparents not been completely selfish and decided to leave all they knew and emigrate in search of a better life for themselves and their descendants. Damn you, you work-ethic-burdened ancestors. Why couldn't you have just have toked up and chilled out?

Where's the knife?

I'm in Hour 26 of a Really Bad Headache. Almost 20 years ago, I was in Hour 26 of utterly fruitless labor when the doctor came in and informed me he was doing a C-section. I gotta admit, I thought, "Oh, thank God." So now I'm trying to figure out what's the headache-fixing version of a C-section. All I can come up with is a lobotomy. Which would be just fine, really.

The Middle Age

Many of our friends find themselves in the "Middle Age," as the self-help books label it, caught in the middle between high-demand teenage kids and high-maintenance aging parents. While we have the high-demand teenage kids, Keith and I are lucky: our dads died when we were young.

Wait. That didn't come out right.

Umm, I just mean, we don't have aging dads. And our moms. Gosh, our moms. Incredible women, they live active, productive, energetic lives. My mom roller skates. Keith's mom smokes meat and cans veggies that she grows in a garden the size of New Hampshire. The moms are fine.

But we haven't quite escaped the squeeze between demanding kids and aging loved ones. It's just that our aging loved one is a dog. Rowan is aging--and not at all gracefully. He's a dog. A big furry lumbering slobbering dog. He doesn't do graceful. But he does do age. Every night. In our bedroom. Where he sleeps. Loudly. He snorts. He snores. He coughs. He sighs. He mutters. And then he wakes up and wanders. We have wood floors. Bracken has nails. He goes clickclickclickclick back and forth back and forth back and forth. It's like having the River Dance troupe in your bedroom in the middle of the night. And then all those clicking dancers suddenly throw themselves on the floor with a loud THUMP and begin to lick their genitals with great slurpy gusto.

I keep fantasizing about a pair of youthful West Highland terriers. I will call them Campion and Comfrey. They will not sleep in our bedroom. They will wear little terrier mittens so they will not click. And they will be de-tongued. . . or de-genitalled. . . anyway, they will not slurp.

Clearly I am not a Good Person. A Good Person does not fantasize about replacing her loyal and affectionate dog with a younger model. I wonder if this means that when we come to the point where we are caring for our aged, ailing moms, I'll daydream about substitutes,you know, like perhaps one of those wealthy old moms with a great summer house by the beach and a small collection of paintings by early Abstract Expressionists and a voracious appetite for world affairs.

Oh dear.

Pale Tongue

I have a pale tongue. I didn't know that my tongue was paler than most; I guess I haven't paid much attention to tongue coloration. I know now about my pale tongue because my acupuncturist told me so. Yes, my acupuncturist. I now have an acupuncturist. And I am now ingesting massive quantities of Chinese herbs. I feel so totally alternative, like I should dress in flowy, ankle-long, brightly colored skirts and hiking boots while I grind my own flour. This plunge into alternativity is motivated by my never-ending quest for relief from chronic daily headaches. Western medicine has failed me; I turn to the East.

But back to the tongue. Turns out possession of a pale tongue is Bad. So Acupuncturist Guy is hopeful that sticking me with needles and plying me with herbal concoctions will help with not only the headaches but also clogged sinuses, insomnia, menopause, depression, and my inability to understand football. OK, not the last one.

Am I hopeful? Hmm. Over the last several years I have worked with many a hopeful medical-type person, ranging from the Svaroopa yoga therapist to the neurologist, the sleep specialist to the TMJ dentist to the chiropractor, the osteopath, and the deep-tissue masseuse. I have learned much. I have spent much. And still I am more of a Headache with a person, than a Person with a headache. "Hopeful" means "full of hope" and I can't say hope is sloshing over my brim, but still, yep, there's a bit of it swirling around in the bottom of the cup.

Bad Mom

So am I a Bad Mom? Hugh was singing this chirpy, get-inside-your-head-forever chorus that pretty much goes "Fuck you, fuck you very much." So, aspiring to be a Good Mom, I'm all set to throttle him. Then he shows me the video on Youtube, and it's the British singer Lily Allen, and the song goes back to the Bush years:

Look inside, look inside your tiny mind
and look a bit harder
cause we’re so uninspired
so sick and tired
of all the hatred you harbor
CHORUS: Fuck you etc. etc. etc. [But truly, it's very catchy. . . ]

Am I a Bad Mom because I laughed and joined in singing? Surely a Good Mom would gently remind her adolescent son, as he struggles to find his way in this world, that we must love our enemies, even when it's really hard? Surely a Good Mom would point to the importance of civility, not only in dealing with neighbors and family members, but in political discourse as well? Surely a Good Mom would suggest that such a song divides us rather than helps us move forward toward responsible solutions to the vast problems that we all face?

But today is Friday, November 5th, 2010. And three days ago, on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2010, well, we all know what happened three days ago. My soul is tired. My spirit is shattered. I am well and truly depressed.

The victors keep talking about "taking the country back." Back? Back from whom? Me, I guess. Evidently I don't belong here. And honestly, I would emigrate, but what country wants an overeducated, underskilled, middle-aged historian? We're not all that useful, really.

Certainly not here in Tea Party Land, this strange sordid place where I suddenly find myself living. And then along comes my beautiful boy singing this catchy song in this lovely British accent. We sang. We laughed. I'm a Bad Mom . . . but damn, Hugh and I, we were Good.

Job Satisfaction; or, Potato Pride

I know that to normal people, the job of a history professor must seem a tad boring. Reading, writing, grading, more reading, writing, grading, and then some more of the same. But actually, my job means that I get paid to read books that include marvelous sentences like this one:

"In June 2005, representatives from the British Potato Council demonstrated outside the offices of Oxford University Press and in London's Parliament Square, campaigning for the use of the word 'couch slouch' instead of 'couch potato', which they claimed was insulting to potatoes."*

I love my job.
___________

*Joe Moran, Queuing for Beginnners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime (2007), p. 169.

Further Adventures in Yoga

Return to gentle old-lady yoga. Substitute teacher. Looks about 13 years old.

Tonight I am to "honor my body's own unique rhythms." But what if my body marches to the beat of chocolate cupcakes and epic stretches of watching British television series on dvd? A problem.

Even more problematic, as always, is the end-of-class relaxation/meditation session. Gentle Substitute dictates, "Breathe into any place in your body still holding tension and create a bubble of warmth around that place." Oh dear. Desperately try to figure out how to breathe into the nape of my neck and my forehead and my jaw line and my knees and my arthritic foot. Haven't even approached the matter of creating warm bubbles around all those spots, when Substitute Teacher demands--gently-- that we now extend that warm bubble all around the entire body. Mad scramble to create warm bubbles and then somehow meld them into one all-embracing bubble--without, obviously, popping any bubbles. Difficult. No warm bubbles anywhere. Ruthless Gentle Substitute presses on. "Now extend that bubble outward; let your aura touch your neighbor's." Ahh. Enlightenment. "Warm bubble" = Aura. Not that this particular enlightenment has any practical application, as my Aura and I are on distant terms, at best. And now things get really sticky, because my yoga neighbor happens to be someone I know and like very much from my church. I want my Aura to touch hers; I really do.

I fail.

Somehow I always come out of yoga class feeling like I did in junior high when I'd join my group of ostensible friends at breaktime, and gradually realize I didn't get any of the jokes or references because I hadn't been invited to the party they'd had over the weekend. I bet if I'd had an Aura they'd have invited me. Geez. I probably would have been a cheerleader.

Return to Heloiseland

I've posted before about my favorite newspaper column, "Hints from Heloise." I do love Heloiseland in all its order and enthusiasm and problem-solving spirit. This week, however, was truly a highpoint for Heloise lovers.

First came Cindy H. from Baytown, Texas. Cindy, weighed down with those "older bottles of spray perfume that [she] no longer liked or that, with age, had become too strong," has found a creative solution. "I now give a few squirts of spray to the inside of my cardboard toilet-paper rolls so that, with each use, a nice scent is released."

And just like that, we enter the threshold of an alternative universe: Heloiseland, where so little goes awry that its inhabitants have time and energy to fret over excess perfume spray bottles and where now, thanks to Cindy H. of Baytown, Heloiselanders can enjoy the fragrance of old perfume with every wipe.

But it got better.

Betty Hill, of Grove City, Iowa, wrote in to tell us, "After washing and drying sweaters, blue jeans, hooded sweats, etc., remove lint from the inside of all pockets by turning wrong-side out and rubbing briskly with an emery board. This works like a charm."

Gosh. I didn't even know about the problem of pocket lint! I will confess, that in a shocking reversion to traditional gender roles, I am the household laundress--ok, actually, I only do Keith's and my laundry; as soon as the boys entered middle school, I introduced them to the wonders of the washer & dryer, and insisted they take charge of their dirty clothes--which means that to get into bed every night, Hugh has to wade through a knee-high "clothesdrift" (it truly does resemble a snowdrift, except it's a lot more colorful and it smells much, much worse, but hey, that's his problem)--and I admit I'm a laundry "lay-about," as the British would say: the journey from dirty clothes hamper through washer/dryer onto the folding table (aka the dining room table) and into drawers and closets can take weeks, yea, even months. Occasionally, Keith will casually inquire, in his best "I'm a feminist and I am in no way implying you should be delivering clean clothes to my wardrobe" tone, "Umm, have you by any chance seen my khakis?" I ponder and then reply, "Oh right. They're in the dryer"--where they've been for six days.

All of which may help explain my reaction to Betty Hill of Grove City, Iowa.

Betty Hill, I am in awe. I mean, I'm scrambling through the dirty clothes hamper to find my no-line panty that I wore three days ago but haven't washed yet and now need because I'm going to wear my tight skirt, and you, you, oh amazing Betty Hill, you are filing--or perhaps buffing is the correct word-- the inside-out pockets of blue jeans and hooded sweats with your emery board.

Betty Hill of Grove City, Iowa: Can I come live with you? Will you buff away my pocket lint? And maybe squirt aged perfume on my toilet rolls so that when I poop, all I smell is ancient Charlie or Estee Lauder White Linen? And I know you keep Heloise's Always-Ready Basic Muffin Mix on hand, so that when unexpected guests drop in, you can quickly blend in an egg and a half-cup of milk, and voila! produce home-baked muffins in ten minutes. Betty, I could use a muffin. Please, can I come stay with you in Heloiseland?

Extraordinary Day

So I woke up the other day and it seemed like it would be a plain ol' ordinary day. Not a Bad Day, mind you, just a regular, run-of-the-mill day. And then, in the course of this generic, average day, my 19-year-old son sent me a hastily composed message that contained this sentence: "This tattoed boy loves you more than youll ever know." And with a click of a mouse, ordinary became extraordinary.

Motherhood. What a kick.

Old Lady Yoga

Today I returned to yoga class after a long hiatus. This is not tone-your-butt and streamline-your-thighs yoga but rather gentle yoga. Stretch and be at peace yoga. Old lady yoga.

Even so, I'm really bad at it. I have never been flexible--physically, I mean. (OK, right, probably any other way either.) When you sit on your mat with your feet straight in front of you and the instructor says to fold forward as far as is comfortable, well, my torso remains at a 90 degree angle to my feet. Everyone else, even the actually old old ladies, collapse on themselves, nose to knees, like living dinner napkins. Me, I'm like a textbook illustration of a right triangle.

But I'm also really bad at the mental/spiritual part of yoga. I'd like to be a good, deep-breathing, at-peace-with-my-innerness yogi; I really would. I do regard our materialist, empirical way of looking at the world as limiting and impoverished and I do absolutely believe that meditation and yogic practice and mindfulness would enrich my life. It's just that I fail so completely. I try, I really do, but when my yoga instructor, a petite cutie with a headful of dark curls and the right blend of intensity and laid-backedness, tells us to look through our third eye, I'm sorry, I'm blind. I'd settle for third eye near-sightedness, but no, I appear doomed to total blindness in my third eye. And when she instructs us to breathe into that space we've created between ourselves and the breath around us, there I am, floundering, peering wildly to my left and to my right, trying desperately to find that space I've created but, damn, it's just not there. And at the end, when we lie in our savasana pose and she guides us through relaxation imagery, and I'm supposed to be floating through the cosmos, sigh, I'll admit it, I'm composing my grocery list or trying to figure out what went wrong with that lecture this morning.

I wish I could leap unreservedly into the yoga pool of bliss. But that means letting go of the mind and honestly, there's not a chance. The life of the mind--I didn't know those words but good lord, I knew the reality, the exhilaration, the incredible possibility and power of it from the day I read my first book. all on my own: Ballerina Bess, a cardboard-covered book from the racks in the grocery store checkout line that, amazingly, I convinced my mom to buy for me one day early in the fall of my first grade. "I want to jump, said Bess. I want to dance, said Bess. I want to be a ballerina, said Bess." And damn, so did I. Because I was Bess, there, in my mind and I knew, I absolutely knew, standing there in the checkout line, that reading on my own meant I could be and do so much more.

And yet now I know, I do absolutely know, that the inability to shut off the mind explains so much of my insomnia, my anxiety, my limitations as a sexual partner, and yes, my failure at yoga. I would like to be transcendent. And deep-breathing. And able to fold up like a dinner napkin and see through my third eye. And oh, I really would love to float through the cosmos, a tiny speck-- but a totally balanced, mindful speck, a speck that is at peace with one's speckedness and at one with all that is and was and will be.

But really, cosmically, that's as likely as a toned butt and stream-lined thighs.

Junior League

Perusing the Sunday paper, cruising through the People section, skimming along past "Out and About" --and there they were, a set of photographs of Junior League's "Ho Ho Hollydays." I try to just flip on by but no, no, I can't. The pull is too powerful, the addiction--once again-confirmed. I turn back and stare at the photographs for a long, long time.

I'm not addicted to Hollydays. I'm not even sure what it is, actually, just that it happens every year in Baton Rouge. I think it has something to do with shopping and fundraising--and lots of thin white women with expensive haircuts in tasteful sheath dresses. They are my addiction--the women in the photos, the Junior Leaguers. They're so completely outside my experience, so utterly foreign, that I find them fascinating. See, I've never met a Junior Leaguer.

Oh dear. I sound like my mother, saying she's never known anyone who is gay.

I suppose, like my mom and gay folks, that over the years I've been introduced to many a Junior Leaguer, and just not realized the JL thing going on. I mean, there must be closeted Junior Leaguers, women who don't usually dress like Jackie Kennedy, women whose hair is a mass of frizz, women who fantasize about chucking their hummus-dipped pita triangles at the tv screenwhenever Glenn Beck comes on. (but don't actually do it because they know they're the ones who will be stuck scraping the hummus off the screen). And then trip on over to Ho-Ho-Hollydays and smile for the camera.

I guess. But I don't know. And that's the source of my fascination--that I don't know. I stare at the photos and I wonder, "Who are you?" They all look like they've just left the set of Mad Men--but it's 2010. I suppose it's the same reason I stare at the Amish. (I know, I know; it's really ignorant and rude and I do try to be discreet. . . but come on, 'fess up, don't you find yourself peering over as well?) Here are these people, from another time, except no, they're here, in our time--and historian that I am, I'm mesmerized.

Besides, I keep wondering, what happens when these women age? Why is there no Senior League?

In a funk

I'm in a funk.

Could be a menopausal funk--the gloom brought on by increasing quantities of facial fur--matched only by the decreasing volume of head hair--and the pounds that seem to fly on and stick to my stomach like flies on a dead squirrel and the ever-decreasing libido that makes me feel like the Frigid Bitch of the North.

Could be a generational funk--the fear that I've failed to realize my potential as a scholar, the sense that my students regard me as this sometimes amusing historical relic, my longing to Do Something or Be Someone Important.

Could be an existential funk--the doubts about meaning and truth and purpose, the growing restlessness with going through the motions,the impatience with answers that used to satisfy and arguments that once seemed convincing.

Dunno.

Just know that I lay in bed last night and thought, "Life is just a bunch of orifices, just a matter of in and out." You eat, you drink, you poop, you pee, you have sex, you listen, you repeat, you smell, you sneeze. . . hydration, consumption, defecation, urination, copulation, communication, organization. . . all just a matter of in and out in and out in and out. . .

in and out in and out again and again on and on and on just life in the lower-case no capitals no highlights no need for punctuation and the more you go on the more the highs and lows level out and it's just this vast plain this tundra and the colors all fade and the whites turn dingy and the blacks lose their vibrancy so it's all the same dreary grey grizzle and you can't hear the laughter or the screams just the low ceaseless moan and the monotonous buzz buzz buzz of fake lighting and soon itjustallcollapsesinonandtheresnothingintheuniversebutfakepolitepeopleataneternal cocktailpartywithwatereddowndrinksandpackagedtastelesssnacksandsoyoubegintowonderififif

So. I'm thinking, brownies.

The Old Lady Gig

I let down my guard over the last couple of weeks and ate whatever I felt like. Nothing extreme, just a biscotti with my mid-morning coffee, a couple of low-fat Oreos after lunch, a round of pita bread and hummus when I got home from work. Got on the scale today and discovered I gained four pounds. Good lord. Getting old really sucks.

Meanwhile I've scheduled my first old lady surgery. (I figure there will be many more.) Once the semester ends and I've filed my course grades, I'll limp on over to the hospital for foot surgery, with the aim of restoring "some mobility" to my left big toe. Amazing how much a toe matters. "Appreciate your toes while they are mobile," counsels the wizened old woman.

The surgery is scheduled for December 16, and then I'm to keep my foot up and my body prone for two weeks. If you do the math, you'll discover I've scheduled myself out of any meaningful role in Christmas celebrations. I hadn't really thought it through--I was focusing on limiting any interruption to my teaching schedule--but now I'm rather looking forward to reclining on the sofa like a Victorian invalid while the holiday festivities flow on around and about me. I figure I'll dip my toe in now and then. And maybe, occasionally, someone will have pity on me and will bring me a reindeer cookie. Except there won't be any, as I won't be able to make them. Hmm. Slight difficulty in the Victorian invalid scenario. Well, what the heck. Christmas will survive without reindeer cookies, and I need to lose four pounds anyway.

But the thing is, I remember my grandma sitting on the sofa while the holiday whirlwind rushed on and around her. With my first old lady surgery, have I somehow propelled myself precipitously into wholesale old ladydom? Am I doomed to early irrelevance? Will people whisper about me and instruct their children to be nice and say hello?

And yet. . . my gram was a clever woman. Maybe there's more enjoyment to be had on the sofa than, well, hustling in the kitchen or trying to pacify the warring tribes of children. . . Dunno. Maybe this old lady gig won't be so bad after all.

Living in Pier One

Yesterday I did something I try not to do. Ever.

I entered the doors of Pier One.

What can I say? It was a football day (see last posting). And I'd had a less-than-productive week, one in a sequence of less-than-productive weeks, stretching back, oh, well, let's see, Owen's 19 1/2 years old, so that would be 19.5 x 52--gah! advanced math--let's make it 20 x 52--so, ok, stretching back about 1040 weeks. Thus I was feeling a tad bummed. And I was looking for Halloween ornaments. And where else does one go for Halloween ornaments other than Pier One?

I suppose the Halloween ornaments might need explanation. It's my friend Karen's fault. She bought me this beautiful metal table-top tree. And in one of those rare but evidently inevitable Martha Stewart moments, I thought, "Oh, wouldn't it be fun to decorate my metal tree for various holidays?" Back when I was sane, that moment would have vanished almost immediately as I moved on to do important things. But it's been a long time since I've done anything important and even longer since I was sane, and so Saturday found me Halloween ornament shopping at Pier One.

I found several, bought a few, bought lots of other stuff, too. . . had a delightful time. Left with great regret. See, here's the problem: I want to live in Pier One. I want to live the Pier One life. I want to change my dishes every season; I want wine glasses of every possible permutation; I want to dress in brightly colored Indian cottons and drift about my fully equipped, trendily furnished, patio-deck-back yard, glimmering with torch lights and seasonally colored little candles, while beautiful guests, accessorized with playfully themed cocktail glasses and party plates, mingle and reassemble in ever-changing, casual yet graceful groupings.Witty intellectual interchange abounds. We are Happy Multi-Cultural People. Partiers with a Purpose. We live the High Life, yet it is a Deep Life.

So, a couple of overpriced glass bats and skulls now hang from my metal tree. I drank my morning coffee from a new mug, my evening wine from a new glass. The High Deep Life eludes me. I'm thinking, maybe I should try Pottery Barn?

Playing the Game

It's football season.

Sigh.

Being a non-football fan in south Louisiana during football season is like being a non-gambler in a casino. Basically, you have no point. There is no reason for your existence. Why are you even here?

I should be used to this. Oh hell. I am used to this. The thing is, as used as I am to this, I should be better at this. I should be the world's foremost expert, frankly.

It's not just football. All of my life, I have walked out of step, never fit in, failed to find that common ground. And yet, I'm not weird. Truly. I'm just, I dunno, unfortunate. The first girl in the family, after five boys. An A student in a family of 'why-not-coast-by-with-Ds'. A humanist and pro-unionist surrounded by accountants and small business owners. By the time I was 5, I had embraced feminism (tho' I had no idea that was what it was called) and so guaranteed myself a life on the fringe of my immigrant subculture. By the time I was 14, I realized I was a progressive Democrat in a sea of rightwing Republicans. By the time I was 18, I knew I was a liberal Christian, at odds with the increasingly fundamentalist formulations of family and friends. A Chicagoan in every fiber of my being, I've ended up spending most of my adult life in the suburban Deep South. It's no coincidence, I do believe, that I feel most at home in England, an ipso facto foreign country.

So really, football season should just be same ol' same ol': I'm Here and the Rest of the World is Over There. And yet, it never gets easier: The fact that, come late August, I can no longer participate in or contribute to most general conversations in the supermarket check-out lane or in the church vestibule or in the departmental mailroom. That every time I turn around, the tv channel has been changed to one of a hundred football options (with the sound turned off, mind you--Keith truly makes an effort to respect my non-footballness, and I am grateful). That all the mannequins in the storefront windows suddenly sport purple and gold. That my students cannot be expected to focus in class on Mondays because they're rehashing Saturday's results and of course they can't be expected to show up on Fridays because they're preparing for the next day's game. That I can't even listen to my usual Saturday morning radio rhythm-and-blues buffet without having to endure more talk about "The Game." That I have to coordinate my Saturday shopping to coincide with the traffic patterns induced by said "Game." That even my nail lady can only talk football throughout the fall months.

By mid-October I feel like I'm in one of those old science fiction movies, where the heroine realizes that although everyone around her looks normal, they're actually creatures from another planet. I'm on my own in this town of lunatics, a city-wide insane asylum, yet I'm the one made to feel as if I'm crazy. Case in point: I know a lady, a respectable woman, who cannot pee if the LSU Tigers are playing that day. By late afternoon she's in actual pain but she cannot urinate until the game is over. I kid you not. And yet I'm considered the odd one.

No one else seems to notice that football subverts even the legendary Southern politeness. It's Sunday afternoon. We're sitting on a neighbor's porch, having drinks. "Did you see The Game?" asks my host. "Well, no--" reply I. "Boy, could you believe that pass/drive/tackle/ blahblahblah? I mean, I was saying, no way could they pull that one off, did ya think, and then," he's off and running, utterly oblivious to my muttered, "umm, no, no, didn't see that, didn't actually watch. . ."

Some day, I will snap. Instead of muttering quietly to myself, I will leap out of my seat and I will wrap my hands around my host's neck and I will thump his head against the concrete while shrieking, "NOOOOOO! I DID NOT SEE THE GAME! I do not--ever-- watch The Game! I . DO. NOT. CARE. ABOUT THE FRIGGIN' GAME!!!!" And when I am convicted for murder, folks will say, "Well, I always thought she was strange." "Mmm, hmm, I heard, once, she showed up for tailgating and she was wearing, can y'all believe it, a Chicago Cubs tee-shirt." "'Course, she was, you know, [whisper] from up North. . . "

Football season is such a lonely time.

Generation Gap

Hugh's phone got confiscated in school yesterday. "I was just getting my gym shorts and when I pulled them out of my backpack, my phone fell out, and I picked it up but my jeans are too tight so I couldn't put it in my pocket so I was leaning over to put it in my backpack and then . . . " Sigh. So he borrowed my cell phone as obviously he couldn't survive fifteen hours without texting.

A few minutes after said phone transfer: "Geez, Mom, you've got messages in here from last winter!"

Yes, yes I do. indeed. Because I get so few messages I don't bother to delete them. Because I don't give out my cell phone number. Because although I do usually carry my phone in my purse, I rarely remember to charge it. Because I'll admit it, I'm not ashamed, I'm a cell phone slacker.

In Hugh's world, a cell phone slacker is my world's equivalent of an historian who makes up documentary evidence. No, no, that's not it. Because such historians do exist. And the thing is, in Hugh's world, cell phone slackers simply cannot exist. Because why should they? How can they? On one side of Hugh's universe: phones. On the other side: people. People who want to text. And the two sides must come together. Why should they not? How can they not?

I try to explain to Hugh that I don't find "'how r u?' 'k'" a fulfilling, friendship-sustaining form of genuine communication. He just stares at me and sighs. He brings copious and well-researched evidence to support his case for family i-Phones. And I say, "But why would I want an i-Phone? What's the point?" He stares at me and sighs. "But Mom, you could read your email anywhere." "But why?" say I, confused. And I'm not being a bitch. I really am confused. I have a computer at work. I have a laptop at home. I check my email several times, most days. Why would I need to check it while thumping canteloupes for freshness in the supermarket?

OK, if I were President Obama, there'd be a point, tho' I doubt Barack has to buy his own canteloupe these days. At least I hope not. I'd like to think he's spending his time on more important things. But me? I teach European history. I doubt there will ever be an absolute emergency that demands my immediate response. "Ohmygod. You mean you can't remember why the Austrian-Hungarian Empire decided to declare war against Serbia in 1914?!!" Nah. I try to explain this to Hugh. He stares at me and sighs.

I remember being embarrassed by my mom. But, honestly, she never seemed a completely alien life form. Not completely.

Bizarro

Today's newspaper contained a great Bizarro comic: A couple walk on a deserted beach. She says to him, "I'm having such a great time that I must be in a pharmaceuticals commercial."

Baby Love

A couple of days ago, I found out that a friend of mine, who's older than I am, has just adopted a newborn baby. I'm happy for him and his partner. Really. So very very happy. Honestly.

Excuse me, it is possible for one to be be genuinely happy for someone while at the same time consumed with jealous rage. One is a complex being. One is capable of multi-tasking one's emotions.

One really wants a baby.

Ridiculous. One is a menopausal mother of two teenaged sons.

So--Babies? Done and dusted. Shoot, I've even done it both ways: the birth-via-my-body thing and the adoption-via-massive-bucks thing. (Tho'--full disclosure here--I didn't actually go thru with the entire birthing process. I tried. I did. 24 hours of labor before the doctors jumped in with great glee, wielded those knives, and C-sected that baby outa there.)

And I have so many friends who've been unable to have a baby either way. I've hoped with them, screamed with them, cried with them. And I've mourned with friends who have lost their babies and agonized with friends who struggle daily with the horror of watching disease devastate their kids. I know how very very lucky, blessed, rich I am. I know I've had my share, more than my share, of beautiful, healthy babies, gorgeous sons with the world wide open before them.

I know all this. But. Dammit. I. Want. A. Baby.

It's sick. I find myself in the wee hours of the morning secretly hoping one of my boys will knock up a lovely young girl who will bravely decide to have the baby but will recognize she/they can't provide the baby with all that she/they want for that baby, and so, yes, I will get the baby.

Part of it is that I just really enjoy babies. Some people like football. Or Coen Brother movies. Or Andy Warhol. Me, I like babies.

But there's also the sad and dirty fact that when I had my babies, my beautiful boys, I was fairly fucked up. To put it mildly. (Not on drugs, mind you. Never done those. OK, yes, I've done lots of drugs--for allergies and tummy disorders and headaches and vulvadynia and depression and anxiety and chronic strep throat and yeast infections. But none of the fun stuff. ) Nope, no drugs, not that much alcohol. Just, well, basically, back then I was a total wingnut. Torn apart by the demands of scholarship and teaching and motherhood and wifedom and sisterhood and friendship and daughterdom and sex and laundry and lawn care and the desire for a really good brownie. I do not regret, then, that I returned to work right after the boys came into the world. Had I stayed home with them, they'd have ended up fairly fucked-up little fellas as well. Instead, I gotta say--despite the fact that neither seems capable of shutting a cabinet door, closing a dresser drawer, hanging up a towel, or flushing a toilet; despite the march of tattoos across Owen's body; despite Hugh's Republican leanings-- my guys are all right.

And, even in the context of total wingnutdom, I enjoyed them as babies.

Most of the time.

Sometimes.

When I wasn't crying because I feared that any kid with a mom like me was doomed.

But these days, despite menopausal mania, I think it's fair to say my wingnuttiness has moderated. I'm no longer shredded by the various demands of my various roles. I've learned to say, oh, what the hell. I've accepted that I will never be a Scholar Star. And (most of the time), I'm ok with that. These days, I could and I would stay home with a baby. We'd hang out, chill in the mornings over Cheerios, nap on the sofa, watch some Baby Einstein, do some park swings, snort some formula, while Springsteen played in the background. I do know that you're supposed to flood a baby with Mozart if you want him or her to be a math wizard, but the world has plenty of quantitative geniuses. Me and the imaginary baby, we prefer quality--political passion, concern for the underdog, respect for the way words work, sound narrative sense, and thumping rock 'n' roll. So we'd scrap the Mozart and follow Scooter and the Big Man into the swamps of Jersey.

Instead, I'm heading to the mall. Gotta go buy a baby gift for my friend. Which I will send with lots of joy, much love, an abundance of good wishes, and a hearty helping of good, old-fashioned, deep dark green envy.

Indelible Ink

Owen now has three tattoos, with another one scheduled for November. These are not discreet tattoos; they do not nestle around his ankle bone and wink from behind his shoulderblades. These are more like Bette Midler. They strut across the stage and belt out brassy show tunes.

"Slow down," I tell him. "You're 19. You've got a lot of years left and only a finite amount of flesh."

He's 19. He ignores me.

I want to shake him. I want to make him see reason. I want him to think ahead. I want him to consider the consequences. But much of the time, I just want to be him.

Once when Owen was in middle school, he asked me to proofread an English paper he had just finished. It was a good paper, and I told him so. I also suggested a number of ways he could improve it. He looked hard at me.
"The paper's good, right?"
"Yes, absolutely, I'm just--"
"Good enough to get a B?"
"Yes, definitely, probably an A, in fact, but it wouldn't be that much more work to just--"
He grinned and shook his head.
"I'm good," he said, and turned back to the PETA website.
I wanted to shake him. I wanted to make him see reason, to think ahead, to consider the consequences, to understand the importance of pushing and striving and setting high goals and achieving excellence and. . . and. . . dammit, mostly I just wanted to be him. To be so comfortable in my own skin that I could take a B on something I didn't care much about so I could spend time on what I thought really mattered.

I cannot imagine being so comfortable in my own skin that I could decorate it with permanent ink. I have never been good with permanence. I hate making choices of any kind, let alone lasting ones. What if I get it wrong? And then it's permanently wrong? I need to know there's a way to erase or at least revise what I have done; I need a Plan B. When Owen was about two weeks old, it hit me that for the first time in my life, I had no Plan B, that no matter what happened to him, I would always be his mother. Always. I broke down sobbing. I sat in the tub, shaking and gasping and crying, knowing I was not good enough for this, terror-stricken that I had dared do something so indelible.

In the years since, motherhood has brought me great wonder and unmatchable pleasure and immense satisfaction. Yet that leap into permanence has not taught me to to embrace decision-making and lasting choices. The terror of getting it all wrong remains. And so, I watch enviously and Owen grins. The needle bites his skin and inscribes it with indelible ink. He says, "I'm good."

Driftwood

Once again, Keith and I are knowingly, willingly, even somewhat actively tossing ourselves into a situation that we 1) know we will hate, and 2) could easily avoid.

Nope, we're not having a third child.

Actually, I'd love to have a third child. . . yes, yes, I know I'm 50, but look at what's-her-name, you know, the blonde news anchor. But--me and Keith and the whole third child debate, oh, let's not go there. It's not, umm, scenic. . . .

So, we're having a garage sale. We've had garage sales before. We've sworn we would never, ever have garage sales again. Yet tomorrow morning we're having one.

Why do we do these things to ourselves? It's not like, say, indulging in a huge slice of German chocolate cake when you're on a diet, or having those last three glasses of wine when you promised you'd stop at one, or buying that oh-so-cool pair of boots when you had resolved to cut back on spending--I mean, with all those things, you get something you want. Yes, you do pay a price, and maybe it's not a price worth paying, but there is pleasure in there, fleeting tho' it may be.

Garage sales do not bring us pleasure. Not even flickery little fleeting bits.

First, garage sale people are--at least in our experience--strange. And not strange in funky, amusing, intriguing ways; no, this is the "ohmygoshsomeonegetmeoutofhere" sort of strangeness. (I do apologize to all you garage sale people readers. I'm sure you're the exception to the strangeness rule. The sort of people I'm talking about would not be reading a blog written by a menopausal liberal Christian history professor mom. Not a chance.)

Second, and far more fundamental, garage sales lead to existential angst. We're having a garage sale because we're drowning in all this crap, and--to give us our due--we don't want to just add it all to the landfill. We believe in "Reuse--Recycle--Re-" shoot--"re-something." Whatever it is, we believe in it and try to practice it. But from whence cometh all this crap? What sort of person am I, that I have accumulated, sought out, yea, even desired, such stuff? And more horrifying, what kind of Me do I project, who is the public persona I have created, that my beloved ones shower me with all this shit? And why have I saved it? What was it all for? Who was I hoping to become?

And what the hell was I trying to do to/for/with my kids? For so much of this junk testifies to parenting gone mad. The ridiculously expensive sewing machine, resting there like driftwood washed up from Hugh's brief fashion design phase. All the sports paraphernalia, the detritus of the various teams and lessons into which we jollied the boys. Spools of thread and glue bottles and felt squares and paint canisters and wood burning tools in an anarchic heap, leftovers from arts and crafts projects long abandoned. And the heaps of music books--cello and piano and drums and flute and harmonica and recorder and guitar (both rhythm and electric).

A bit here, some tat there. All these shabby remnants of dreams discarded and hopes shrugged off, of that horrible moment when vision confronts reality. All this waste.

Really. This whole garage sale thing. It's not a good idea.

It's really ok

The summer after my first year in graduate school I worked as a nanny for my brother and his wife. Nancy was a stay-at-home mom, heavily pregnant with Baby #5, and heavily weighed down with doctors' appointments and medical tests for Toddler 4, a charming, curly-haired, chubby little charmer born with a host of "issues," as we say when we can't figure out what's going on. (Like when the specialist told me I had what the experts call "sore arm syndrome." Seriously. That's what they call it. It means, as the specialist went on to explain, "we see there's a real problem and we haven't a clue how to help you." I liked this guy.)

Anyway, back to my shortlived nanny career: in the course of that summer, my sister-in-law Nancy said something really important: "I love all my children all of the time, but I don't always like all of them all of the time. Sometimes, you know, you just don't like a kid for awhile."

She said it casually, as we were scraping a concoction of melted Legos mixed with Skittles off the just-refinished wooden floor. But this casual comment has helped me immensely.

In the short term, it helped me see that no, I was not crazy, my mom really didn't like me, but that was ok, she loved me, which is all one can really expect, and hey, I didn't like her too much at that point either. And that was ok too.

[OK, Transparency Moment: it took me many exhausting hour-long sessions and many shredded Kleenexes in neutral-toned offices with neutral-faced therapists to be able to type "that was ok". ]

In the long term, damn, absolutely, you love your kid but holy cow, sometimes, you just don't like him (or her--but I never had a her, sadly) very much. Or at all.

Take the last two days, for example. I love Hugh absolutely and unconditionally. But over the last two days, I haven't liked him at all. Because he's been a colossal shit.

(I know, I know, he's 15 3/4; he's supposed to be a colossal shit. And I'm supposed to be colossally [is that a word? doesn't look like a word, does it?] annoyed. We're both playing our parts. But it's just that he's sooooo good at his part.)

Hugh was furious with me because I came home tired from work and wouldn't immediately jump in the car and drive him to the library (a 20-minute drive, btw). For the last few months, he's met once a week or so with some friends at the library to "study biology." And I've driven him there and Keith has picked him up. But Keith was out of town and I was tired and I wanted a glass of wine (ok, yes, several glasses of wine) and I didn't want to drive for 80 minutes back and forth, back and forth. So I said no. Am I a Bad Mom?

Personally, I think it's a structural/societal problem rather than a parental issue. Why do I have to drive this child to the library? Why can't he walk there or take a bus? Must I really shoulder the blame and the consequences for the many many many wrong-headed, wrong-hearted decisions made about taxation and urban planning and mass transit?

Hugh could care less about the societal/structural issues. He sees things simply and clearly. Simply and clearly, I'm a Bad Mom. And so his response to my "no, not this week, honey," was to punish me. Over the next two days, I became acquainted with my shortcomings as a housecleaner, a cook. a pet owner, a laundress, a driver, a gardener, a wife, a teacher, and a friend; I learned why my clothes, my hair, my jewelry, my toenail polish, and my taste in tv shows were not only inadequate but an insult to humankind; I was forced to see that the way I walk, blow my nose, sleep, remember family vacations, pronounce various words, and chop onions all threatened the future of civilization.

So, I'm grateful to Nancy. Because of her, I know it's ok not to like a kid for awhile. I'll always love him. And sometimes I like him. Some time soon, I'm sure, I'll like him. And that's ok. It's all one can expect. And really, it's ok. Really. OK.

Conferencing

Keith is gone to a conference for several days. This is good.

If you have a job that doesn't involve conferences, you should invent them. Not for the conferences themselves, mind you--it's astonishing how little of professional value actually occurs at the things. Other than getting to go out and have expensive food and drink lots and lots of alcohol in the company of people with similar interests or at least similar working lives. I suppose there's some value there, tho' I doubt it's really all that "professional."

But I'm thinking about the personal and familial benefits of conference-going. I'm thinking about the absolute bliss when you enter the hotel room and shut the door. And it's clean. And you are alone and you can watch any sort of tv any time you want and you can sleep in and there will be no crying child or grumpy spouse or kitchen full of dirty dishes to punish you afterwards. And you can stay out as late as you want and organize your schedule (apart from a conference duty here or there) as you want, and you can eat what and when and if you want (I suppose there are people to whom the "if" applies. . . ) . And it's all good. It restores your soul.

And meanwhile back at home--umm, that depends. When the boys were little, Keith seemed to view my conference absences as things to be endured. He'd go into boot camp mode, with a strict schedule and a checklist. I, however, I had a rather different approach. . .

Which is to say, the boys loved it when Keith left for a few days and, yes, so did I. It wasn't a matter of Keith, per se. I remember reading an article by a recently widowed woman with three young kids, and in this piece she noted, "It's amazing what counts as 'dinner' when you're the only grown-up around." That's it. Not just the dinners, tho' certainly those--we'd go out for at least one meal and for all the others we'd have TV or Movie Nights, with 'dinner' on a big blanket in the living room--but the overall freedom of being the only adult in the household. You can get away with stuff, plus there's no energy-draining resentment and repressed anger because Spouse is watching tv rather than playing with the kids or ignoring the dishes or leaving little beard hairs all over the bathroom sink. You're on your own.

So Keith would depart and the boys would immediately shift into my bed and we'd have tickly, giggly mornings, and there'd be bound to be baking of some sort, and probably a visit to the really good, really big, faraway park, the one with the stream and the great overhanging tree. I truly didn't set out to teach the boys to associate "Dad's absence" with "fun," tho' looking back, I realize that was what happened, and that was Not A Good Thing. It all comes down to Calvinist guilt, actually. I feel guilty all the time: I'm not a good enough wife, mother, neighbor, scholar, teacher, daughter, friend, etc. etc. etc. So take away the obligation to be a Good Wife for a few days, and well, I do believe the word is liberation. And what do you do when you're liberated from ordinary obligations, from the usual routine? You celebrate. You party. You go on holiday. Hence the Movie Nights and the giggly mornings and the park outings.

But of course all of it depended on the fact--the absolute, never-doubted fact--that Keith would soon be home. Because the liberation rested utterly on the temporary nature of the whole thing. I was like one of those pretend hippies at Woodstock, the college students who jumped around in their fringe vests and tie-dyed tee-shirts, and then went back to writing papers and taking exams and beefing up their resume's. Had the situation ever become permanent, freedom would have quickly transformed into anarchy (think broken glass, burning cars, blood on the doorstep, shrieks and wails and the wah-wah-wah of sirens), and the sense of liberation would have become loneliness, total and complete and devastating loneliness.

Just like life alone in a hotel room would be an absolute horror.

But for a few days, once or twice a year, it's a fine and wonderful thing.

Postscripts

Just so you know, I'm quite enjoying being an Ornamental Pillow Person . Every morning I make a new and different pillow pyramid. It's very exciting.

Maybe I need to get out more.

Or maybe I really do need to start using marijuana. No, haven't yet, despite my every intention and my discovery that you can find this stuff in some pretty surprising places. The thing is, it's illegal. And I always always always get caught when I try to do something that everyone else does all the time. I must just exude guilt. So I want to be sure that when I am caught, I can mount a really convincing defence, buttressed by all kinds of evidence showing 1) my long history of chronic headaches, and 2) my equally lengthy list of attempts to find a legal remedy. Which means acupuncture. I keep talking about trying acupuncture but, apart from the expense--fairly hefty, tho' honestly, what does weed cost these days? --

--"these days, she writes, as if back in "other days" she knew the cost of marijuana--

there is the little matter of needles. Nevertheless, needles be damned, acupuncture it will be. And then I'll be able to say, "But your honor, it's the American medical system that should be on trial, not me."

I also, despite every good intention, haven't yet killed my cat. The peeing one. Instead, I have banished her to the outdoors. Well, duh, you say. No, dear reader, not duh. Peeing kitty has no claws and so little chance of defending herself against predators and competitors. Plus she's one of those long-haired kitties, meant to decorate the living room, not live in the wild. Entire ecosystems of fleas and tics could flourish in her fur; shoot, birds could nest in there and we'd never know it. But--I've put her out, and after a few days of adjustment (punctuated by much mewing), she seems to be having a good time. Actually, she seems to have gone feral already. I know that sooner or later she'll be run over by a car or mauled by a stray dog, and I'll feel terrible, but at least she'll have had these days of unrestrained beastiness while I soak the sofas in cheap vodka. (Kitty shrink tells us it neutralizes the cat pee smell--not sure yet--I do worry about, well, flammability. Combustibility. Someone lighting a match and our alcohol-laden furniture igniting. Could make our parties a bit more interesting, I guess.)

Give this woman an Oscar

Owen is spending the semester on an internship working with a homeless advocacy non-profit (guess that should be obvious--not a lot of profit in homeless advocacy) in Washington D.C. Urban lefty that he is, he's happy.

So I'm happy. This is the awful thing about parenthood. You have sex, you conceive (or, as in the case of our second child, you shell out thousands of dollars and you adopt), you have a baby--and that's it, you're like a video game, the kid controls the joy stick. "No one else is in charge of your happiness," my first therapist told me. Or was that a line from a Disney movie? Anyway, it's totally bogus, at least once you have kids.

So Owen called the other night. We chatted for a long time. And I was the Perfect Mom. First and most important, he called; I did not call him. And second, we chatted. I did not tell him I missed him. I did not break down sobbing and admit to him that I frequently dream of him as a baby; I did not reveal that sometimes I look into his bedroom and just stand there like a maternal zombie as I remember him giggling over Harry Potter; I did not confess that the sight of roller blades or Legos can reduce me to tears. Nope, I was the total "Hey-Buddy-I-Got-My-Life-to-Live" insouciant mom--you know: "you do your thing, I do my thing, and if by chance, we find each other, it's beautiful"--oh wait, that was the poster than hung on my closet door when I was 11. The point is, I was great. I should have won an Oscar or a Grammy or a Tony or whatever award given for the most astonishing dramatic performance on a telephone.

Mac-and-Cheese

I made macaroni and cheese last night, from a new Weightwatcher's recipe. (I know, "Weightwatcher's" and "mac-and-cheese"--something of a contradiction in terms.) And I've been mired in nostalgia ever since.

Nostalgic, but not for my mom's mac-and-cheese. She never made it, weirdly enough for a 1960s Midwestern suburban housewife. And not even for college, when my roommate Marcia would eat an entire box of Kraft's Mac-and-Cheese, and say brightly, "Just 39 cents! Can you believe it?!"

No, the nostalgia focused on the small dining area of a semi-detached house on a quiet horseshoe street off the main road of a slightly gritty working-class neighborhood in Manchester. England. That's the North of England, depressed, post-industrial England, not the thatched-roof, hobbit-y, touristed South.

There, for three years in a tiny kitchen, I made macaroni and cheese from an English newspaper recipe, not out of the box, not glow-in-the-dark orange, but homemade and healthy, appealing to both adults and children. (This, of course, was before Owen, inspired by the animal rights movement, became a vegan, and before Hugh, out of deep anti-parent principles, stopped eating anything prepared by his mother or father. ) We ate together, every night.

And Keith had to leave for a meeting, every night. And the boys fought each other, every night. And I fought against--and frequently lost the battle to--depression many nights. Not exactly Andy Griffith or Leave It to Beaver.

And yet--was it the dairy? the carbs? maybe the olive oil or the whole wheat breadcrumbs?-there were these mac-and-cheese moments, just moments, yes, just little parentheses inserted in some fairly bleak paragraphs, but good moments, nonetheless, powerful parentheses, glimpses of Mayberry and Mayfield in gritty, rainy Manchester. And I miss that.

Jim who?

It's a bad sign when one finds oneself confused by tv commercials.

There's this I-Pod Nano commercial in which the camera never moves from a close-up on a woman's torso, as her hands clip her Nano here and there, while this really quite interesting song plays. Something about "I want a girl with a something something and a long, looong. . . jacket." I like the song. But what I don't know is, is it really a song? Or is it just something made up for a cool I-Pod commercial? Who's singing? Should I know this? Does everyone know this--except elderly out-of-touch folks like me? Have I become the 21st century equivalent of that person who doesn't realize that the "I can see for miles and miles and miles" on the Windex commercial is actually a Who song? or the "Our house, is a very very very fine house" on the commercial for umm, something to do with houses, is really a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song? And is the fact that I remember those commercials--which probably haven't been on for years, now that I think about it--is that fact yet one more reason for despair?

And yet--I remember returning to Chicago from six months' Ph.D. research in London. 1985. I was 25--thin, fit, sexy, definitely not elderly or out of touch. This commercial for scooters--the Vespa type, not those metal kid things--came on and there was this guy, this really horrible actor, pitching the scooter. I turned to my then-boyfriend and complained, "Geez louise, what were they thinking when they hired that guy?" And Boyfriend stared at me in amazement, shook his head, and then said in this horribly patronizing tone (which really summed up the whole relationship but let's not go there), "My dear, you have got to be the only person in this entire city who doesn't recognize Jim McMahon." "Jim who?" I replied.
[In case you, like me, are clueless: In 1985, the Chicago Bears won the Superbowl. And Jim McMahon was The Quarterback. If that explanation doesn't help, if you don't understand the significance of the Superbowl and have no idea why a quarterback is important, well, hey, let's get together and can I marry and have babies with you?]

It helps to remember that I can't remember Jim McMahon. After all, I chalk up lots of things these days to menopause and aging, and get frustrated and anxious and angry. Which is pretty dopey because a. really, there's only one alternative to growing old, and really, is that what I want? and b. actually, I've been doing or not doing most of this stuff most of my life. As Keith has frequently reminded me, if I should be afflicted with Alzheimer's, who will notice?

Ornamental Pillow People

One might think that two relatively bright, aware, sensible people, married for 20 years and thus combining their relative brightness, awareness, and sensibility, would not repeat the same mistakes over and over and over. But we do.

We ordered a bed online. We know better. We have tried assembling furniture in the past. Many times--as our household interior bears witness, replete as it is with various wonky, wobbly chairs, desks, and tabletops. We are not handy people. We are not mechanically inclined. We have no practical function whatsoever.

We are now sleeping on a mattress on the floor.

Yet this return to a kind of grad student sparseness has occurred in tandem with a leap into bourgeois luxury. We have become Ornamental Pillow People.

It wasn't intentional. Keith, for one, hates ornamental pillows. Art is fine--he has no trouble spending money on paintings or photographs. Because art has a point--you look at it, you enjoy it, you're challenged by it, whatever. But the point of a pillow is to sleep on it. An ornamental pillow? No point.

I'm more ambivalent. I've always really been rather awe-struck by people with ornamental pillows on their beds. They're like the People Who Live in Our Magazines. But I dunno. Life seems complicated enough, without having to arrange a complicated tower of pillows on the bed every morning. Plus I nap most days. That means building the pillow pyramid twice every day.

But after two decades of connubial bliss, we decided to graduate to a queen-sized bed. (I worried about the implications of this move, I'll admit. Does it mean there's a growing distance between us? Are we no longer close? Actually, it just means we're both sick of being squished by the kitty.) Anyway, a new mattress means new bedding. And on overstock.com, I found this great deal on a rather attractive "12-piece bed-in-a-bag". I'll admit, I'm not a good shopper. I didn't really pay attention. I mean, 12 pieces. I just assumed, gotta include sheets, right? Comforter = 1. Blanket = 2. Sheets and pillowcases = 6. God knows what else = 12.

But no. No sheets. No pillowcases. Instead, lots and lots of Ornamental Pillows. I feel like a miner when I go to bed now--it requires much tunneling and shoveling just to find the sheets. Keith refuses to do the pillow mining. He just inserts himself into the mass--with the result that I come into the bedroom and it's like an episode of Doctor Who: alien pillow-shaped life forms have swallowed my husband's head and are munching their way down his torso.

Still, we're trying. Why can't we be Ornamental Pillow People? We're people. We like pillows. And heck, we're largely ornamental.

"Wha-a-a-at?"

9 am on a Saturday morning. Hugh is at the computer, music blaring. He likes to listen to whatever is his current favorite song over and over and over. This morning it's THUMP--THA--THA--THA--THUMP. . . with a constant refrain of "goddamn bitch."

Can't take it anymore. Demand that he change the song.

Sullen muttering. A moment of silence. Then THA-THA-THA-THUMP-dum-dum-THA-THA-THUMP-dum-dum. . . "Fuckin' nigga!" FUCKIN' NIGGA!"

I totally lose it. "HUGH!! That's it!" I shriek. "You are going to lose computer access for the entire weekend!"

He's dumbfounded. Complete innocence. Utter confusion. "Wha-a-at? I changed the song, just like you said."

I glare at my beautiful black son. "Oh right. As if Id find 'fuckin' nigga' more acceptable than 'goddamn bitch.'"

"Well, I didn't know THAT was your problem. Besides, if you'd just listen, it's a great song-- really socially responsible."

Damn, he's good.

I actually hesitate, doubting myself, for a moment. Then I regain my footing. "Not in THIS house. I will not have that word in this house."

He sighs, deeply, heavily, burdened by the weight of this crazed old lady, this lunatic white woman who dares to be his mother.

Cruel September

According to T. S. Eliot, "April is the cruellest month."

I think he was on drugs. I've spent several Aprils in Britain. It's not a bad month, not as good as May, admittedly; May is definitely the best month of the year to be anywhere in Britain, but still, in general, April is just fine.

As opposed to September in south Louisiana. A Deep South September is like the Abu Ghraib of the calendar. Total torture. Absolute horror. It's not like it's any hotter or more humid than July or August; it's just that it's friggin' September and that it's as hot and as humid as any day in July or any August evening. September. A month that's supposed to carry those hints of fall, those autumnal glimpses, the promise of cleansing cold. Wool sweaters, plaid skirts, thick tights, boots. Pumpkins and red leaves and the smell of wood smoke. Cinnamon-spiced apple bread and hot mugs of tea.

But when it's 98 degrees in the shade with 95% humidity, well, one sticks to iced tea, even if it is September.And one learns to toss all the L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer catalogs straight into the recycling bin. Autumn porn, I call it. All those woolen-clad models. All those down jackets and tall leather boots.

I step outside and the humidity surrounds me, squeezes me, suffocates me. It's like a Dementor, sucking out all enjoyment and energy and life. Except of course J.K. Rowling's Dementors bring with them a freezing cold; they turn all that they touch to ice. Never mind that. These are Gulf Coast dementors, partial to seafood gumbo and fried alligator, wary of hurricanes, glistening with spilled oil.

Dementors everywhere and no patronus charm. September in south Louisiana. Voldemort wins.

All's Well That Ends Well

The Daily Show is back on after a weeklong hiatus.

Thank God.

I'll admit it. I'm addicted. I need Jon Stewart. When he's not on, I'm confused and out of sorts. I feel isolated, out-of-touch, uninformed, alienated. Maybe it would be different if I lived in New York or San Francisco or Chicago. Or even New Orleans. But in Baton Rouge. . . I need my daily Daily Show fix.

I do find it somewhat troubling that the dominant voice of reason in our culture is a satirical comedian. But then I think about Shakespeare's comedies, and I figure maybe we're, well, pretty much as fucked up as we've always been. Which gives me hope.

Post-Girdlehood

I've been thinking about girdles. As one does.

Throughout most of my childhood, Mom wore a girdle for dress-up occasions, which pretty much meant weekends--Saturday night out to dinner with Dad, Sunday morning and evening to church. I was asleep when they returned late on Saturday nights so missed the de-girdling, but the Sunday process remains indelibly carved into my memory. Despite a myriad of Sunday dinner tasks demanding her attention, Mom would clomp upstairs in her high heels and she'd be hollering as she went, "I just have to get out of this girdle!" A little bit later we'd hear the shout of relief and downstairs Mom would trot as her hands massaged her stomach and hips.

I identified in many ways with my mother. She was a woman; I'd become one too. That was clear. Strangely, however, I understood implicitly and absolutely that I would never pass into the realm of girdledom. I don't recall ever thinking about it consciously, certainly not ever asking about it. I just knew: Mom and her friends wore girdles. I and my friends would not. This was A Fact.

Except it turns out that it wasn't. Isn't. Because now there are "body shapers." I thought I was living in the post-girdle world, but post-girdlehood was an illusion.

Kind of like the day of Obama's inauguration, when I thought that a majority of Americans were genuinely, truly embracing his vision of a globally aware, environmentally concerned, social democratic society. An illusion.

Guess I'd better just hike up the girdle--excuse me--body shaper. But someday, someday, change is gonna come.

The Potter and the Clay

I'm about to become a pot-smoking cat-killer.

The pot-smoking is fairly straightforward. My headaches get ever worse, which I really didn't think was possible, as they seemed pretty damned bad before. I have exhausted all the legal options and I have depleted my admittedly fairly scanty emotional and spiritual resources. That leaves medicinal marijuana.

Of course, it's not actually all that straightforward. I live in Louisiana, where pot in all its forms, medicinal or not, is illegal. And I've never smoked pot. I've never smoked anything, in fact (the result of growing up in a household of cigarette smokers--it was truly vile: one of my most vivid childhood memories is my disgust at having to wash dishes because my dad and brothers would stub out their dinnertime cigarettes on the plates. . . those crumpled butts, squished down into leftover puddles of ketchup and meatloaf grease. . . and then there was the horror of car rides in the winter, all the windows rolled up, the cigarette smoke swirling around my head like a thick woolen scarf). So, I don't know how to smoke. And I don't know how to get pot, other than to ask certain of my sons' friends, which of course I cannot do. Good lord. Can you imagine: "Hey dude, tell your mom I got a new supply in and it's really sweet"--??

But I will surmount these problems and I will score some medicinal marijuana and I will, at last, find relief from the pain. And I will live a happy and successful and productive life.

Except for the cat-killing.

I wrote in a previous post about our peeing cat. All cats pee, of course, but this one pees on the sofas and beds. Constantly. And I just can't take it anymore. I have tried everything. Really. Truly. I'm a historian. I research for a living. I have researched peeing cats. I do not believe in discarding animals because they are inconvenient, but. . . this is beyond "convenience." As Laurie, my very wise nail lady said to me on Saturday morning as she clipped away at my cuticles, "We're talking about your home here." And my home reeks of cat piss. But the cat has no claws and couldn't survive outside and is not exactly adoptable. Who wants an incontinent indoor kitty?

But if I have my cat "put down," aka killed, I will also become a liar of the worst kind. Because Cleaning Sarah, who has cleaned our house, babysat our kids, petsit our dogs and cats, and basically been a solid part of our family life for 20 years, will never speak to me again if she knows what I've done. So I will have to lie. A really Big Lie. One I will have to think about, concoct and then sustain for years to come. It will be like a Victorian novel. It will go on and on and on.

So the Scripture text in church this morning was the famous passage from Jeremiah about God sending the prophet to watch the potter at the wheel and saying, "Look, go tell Israel [or is it Judah?], you've all really fucked up and I'm going to throw you back on the wheel and start all over." (Yes, the "fucked up" is in the original Hebrew. . . OK, not really, but you know it's what God wanted to say except He/She/They knew there'd be all those kids listening in.) And I'm sitting there in the pew and I'm thinking, "Oh geez. I'm 50 and I've got a headache and do I really need to be reminded that I more and more resemble a lumpy, squishy, lopsided pile of clay?" And then there's this continual reshaping, this constantly-on-the-wheel thing, round and round and round and round. . . . I mean, no wonder I have headaches. But I gotta say, the shapes this funky cosmic Potter comes up with--well, they are surprising, to say the least. I truly never expected to be a middle-aged, weed-toking, cat-killing, cleaning-woman-deceiver. I mean, couldn't I be a nice, graceful salad bowl? Or perhaps a butter dish with pleasing lines? Or even a gravy boat?

I used to be better

Today I bought a Dyson. Vacuum cleaner, that is. Not the roller ball kind, as I couldn't justify the extra $100 just so I could zoom around corners. It's not a race car, for pete's sake.

Today I also purchased ridiculously expensive black jeans from J.Jill. And I got a pedicure and manicure.

Can you tell it's been a really bad week?

When did I become a person who indulges in Shopping Therapy? Good lord. I used to be better than this. I used to be, you know, sane.

Tax Holiday

So this Labor Day weekend is the "Second Amendment Tax Holiday" in Louisiana.

Yep. No state or local taxes on purchases of guns or gun accessories.

You couldn't make this stuff up. Tho' God knows why you'd want to.

Baghdad of the Heart

Owen left today for his second year of college. Of course, despite much parental encouragement and a healthy dose of maternal nagging, he left all his preparations til the last minute and so his room resembles a Baghdad marketplace after an insurgent bombing--I wouldn't be at all surprised to find a bloody limb or hunks of flesh somewhere amidst the debris.

He's planning to stay in Portland next summer and I figure that's it--he'll never again be at home for more than a week or so. Who can blame him? No sane person with an option elsewhere would stay in south Louisiana for the summer and besides that, Owen doesn't exactly fit into the culture of the Deep South. "You did this to yourself, you know," a friend of mine said. "You raised him this way." Hmm. It's true we raised him to question the parochialism, the endemic racism, the "oh what the hell" attitude toward the environment. But that doesn't mean we raised him to be a foreigner in the land of his birth. He was always that way. He never liked Mardi Gras, which is just plain weird and certainly not our fault. And when he was four, he asked for a sled for Christmas. We pointed out that 1) it never snows in Baton Rouge and 2) there are no hills. He replied, "That's ok. I just want to put it in the corner of the kitchen and look at it." When he was five, he packed mittens in his lunch box every schoolday, "just in case." By middle school, he had immersed himself in indie post-punk culture, completely at odds with Southern country. And in his early teens, he decided to be a vegan, which makes daily life in seafood-crazed Louisiana somewhat problematic.

So no, Owen won't live at "home" again. And yes. In the piles of musty clothes and torn receipts and broken cd cases that litter his abandoned bedroom, you probably won't see any severed limbs or mangled body parts, but without too much searching, you will find the pieces of my shattered heart.