I have survived 14 1/2 continuous hours in an aged Honda Civic with my 16-year-old son. Sounds like a reality show, but no, no show, just reality. The secrets to my survival? A constant stream of junk food, an iPad, and headphones. For him, that is, not for me: Numb the hulk with electronic stimuli, stopper his mouth with copious quantities of saturated fat and an alarming abundance of sodium, and all is well.
I used to aspire to be a Good Mom. Now I just hope to make it through til morning.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Mold Removal
Thanksgiving Eve Day. A beautiful cold Chicago morning, with a pale blue cloudless sky. I love cold. I love trees stripped of leaves and lawns turning brown and flower beds dug up and hunkered down, waiting for snow. I love chunky sweaters and thick socks and lined boots and puffy ski jackets.
It was 80 degrees in Baton Rouge when we drove away. I should never come north during the winter. Denied long enough, my winter soul ices over, settles down in a hard lump, kicked into a forgotten corner of Me. But back up here, that lump expands and explodes; icycles sliver through and shred all the bits of southernness that stick and cling, like mold, building up over time and distorting the shape of Me.
It hurts.
And what's the use of getting Me all clear and uncovered, when we're heading back south on Sunday? Easier and less painful to stay moldy.
It was 80 degrees in Baton Rouge when we drove away. I should never come north during the winter. Denied long enough, my winter soul ices over, settles down in a hard lump, kicked into a forgotten corner of Me. But back up here, that lump expands and explodes; icycles sliver through and shred all the bits of southernness that stick and cling, like mold, building up over time and distorting the shape of Me.
It hurts.
And what's the use of getting Me all clear and uncovered, when we're heading back south on Sunday? Easier and less painful to stay moldy.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Vibrators et. al.
I like to think, despite having hit the Big 50, that I'm not totally out of it. But maybe I'm deluded. I subscribe to fab.com: daily email alerts to specials on groovy independent design items. Mostly funky kitchen stuff, tee shirts, jewelry, furnishings. But yesterday's selection included a firm specializing in beautiful vibrators. Okey dokey. No problem. Except there was this vibrator that I just did not get. Meaning, no, I didn't buy it, but also, I just didn't understand it. It was shaped like the profile of a hand flashing the peace sign. So, umm, two fingers. . . I dunno. . . I"m so confused.
Vibrators in general confuse me. Does that make me a Bad Person? A Failed Sexual Being? Uptight? Clueless? See, a mechanical thing is, well, mechanical. Uniform. Constant. These qualities do not seem to me to be the best suited for physical pleasure. Maybe I'm weird, but the thing is. . . . I vary. Sometimes a slow gentle touch, sometimes a vigorous approach . . . the days change, the moods change, the needs change. So . . . a responsive human finger seems much more efficient.
All of which has gotten me to thinking about masturbation. Would I be a different person had my mother not assured me that masturbation was sinful and that God frowned on it? If I hadn't sat in church and when Rev. Witte said that on Judgment Day all our secret sins would exposed--like a movie running in front of the world--I just died inside, thinking of me and my pillow, on this giant global screen?
I was determined not to do that to my kids. When Owen was little, he liked to wear these colored long underwear sets that I got from some organic kids catalog (when you called to place an order, there'd be all these babies crying and half the time the woman taking the info--yes, yes, this was Way Back Then Before Online Shopping--would say, "oh wait a sec, have to switch to the other breast;" it was a Very organic baby catalog company). Owen liked these sets because they were soft and comfy, no itchy seams or tags, and he could pull them on himself and, best of all, he could be Robin Hood in green, the Red Power Ranger in red, a Ninja in black, etc etc etc.
All of which was fine and fairly cheap and Owen was adorable; the only problem was that the long underwear did allow him very easy access to Down There. And goodness, he enjoyed getting to know Down There. So I developed this mantra: "That is a Bed and Bathroom Activity." See? No judgment, but also doing my job to socialize my kid: Look, baby, you can't be doing this in public.
And on the whole, it worked. Owen's all grown up and he does not pleasure himself in public. But there was this one day . . . my then 16-year-old niece Anne was living with us for the summer and serving as our summertime nanny. She had taken Owen to the video store (remember those? before Netflix? you'd wander around and around and around, and there's be all these movies, and you couldn't find anything you hadn't seen or he hadn't seen or that you both wanted to see?). There they were, little Owen, teenaged Anne, in line. Anne looks up and the two guys about Anne's age at the cash register are giggling and snorting. Nothing too unusual in that, but then one of the boys looks right at Owen and say, "Go for it, man!" Anne looks down and there's Owen with his hands in his pants. Without missing a beat, she says in a loud, firm, loving voice, "Owen, that is a Bed and Bathroom Activity!" At which point the boys behind the counter practically pass out with laughter and Anne turns brilliant red and wonders how many different ways she can make me suffer.
Vibrators in general confuse me. Does that make me a Bad Person? A Failed Sexual Being? Uptight? Clueless? See, a mechanical thing is, well, mechanical. Uniform. Constant. These qualities do not seem to me to be the best suited for physical pleasure. Maybe I'm weird, but the thing is. . . . I vary. Sometimes a slow gentle touch, sometimes a vigorous approach . . . the days change, the moods change, the needs change. So . . . a responsive human finger seems much more efficient.
All of which has gotten me to thinking about masturbation. Would I be a different person had my mother not assured me that masturbation was sinful and that God frowned on it? If I hadn't sat in church and when Rev. Witte said that on Judgment Day all our secret sins would exposed--like a movie running in front of the world--I just died inside, thinking of me and my pillow, on this giant global screen?
I was determined not to do that to my kids. When Owen was little, he liked to wear these colored long underwear sets that I got from some organic kids catalog (when you called to place an order, there'd be all these babies crying and half the time the woman taking the info--yes, yes, this was Way Back Then Before Online Shopping--would say, "oh wait a sec, have to switch to the other breast;" it was a Very organic baby catalog company). Owen liked these sets because they were soft and comfy, no itchy seams or tags, and he could pull them on himself and, best of all, he could be Robin Hood in green, the Red Power Ranger in red, a Ninja in black, etc etc etc.
All of which was fine and fairly cheap and Owen was adorable; the only problem was that the long underwear did allow him very easy access to Down There. And goodness, he enjoyed getting to know Down There. So I developed this mantra: "That is a Bed and Bathroom Activity." See? No judgment, but also doing my job to socialize my kid: Look, baby, you can't be doing this in public.
And on the whole, it worked. Owen's all grown up and he does not pleasure himself in public. But there was this one day . . . my then 16-year-old niece Anne was living with us for the summer and serving as our summertime nanny. She had taken Owen to the video store (remember those? before Netflix? you'd wander around and around and around, and there's be all these movies, and you couldn't find anything you hadn't seen or he hadn't seen or that you both wanted to see?). There they were, little Owen, teenaged Anne, in line. Anne looks up and the two guys about Anne's age at the cash register are giggling and snorting. Nothing too unusual in that, but then one of the boys looks right at Owen and say, "Go for it, man!" Anne looks down and there's Owen with his hands in his pants. Without missing a beat, she says in a loud, firm, loving voice, "Owen, that is a Bed and Bathroom Activity!" At which point the boys behind the counter practically pass out with laughter and Anne turns brilliant red and wonders how many different ways she can make me suffer.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Big Foot
I read once that the only two body parts that keep growing throughout one's entire life (apart from parts that grow due to weight gain, that is) are the nose and the feet. Could this be true? Surely not. Wouldn't all old people have humongous noses and gargantuan feet? And yet. . . I swear my nose is expanding at an exponential rate. And my feet. . . well, I used to be a 6 1/2 or a 7, depending on the style and brand. Then I moved into a 7 1/2. OK, I thought, sizes shift. I mean, I used to be a 6 in clothes but now I'm a 4, even tho' I'm almost 20 pounds heavier, so umm, maybe shoe sizes went the opposite direction. Could be. It's possible. But yesterday $500 worth of Zappo's boots arrived at my door. How I love Zappo's. You go click click click on your laptop, and a couple of days later, there it is, this enormous box filled with gorgeous boots. Except in this case, the box bore a bounty of absolutely gorgeous boots sized 7 1/2 that are all too damned small.
Maybe sizes shifted downward again.
Or maybe I'm suffering from some sort of menopausal or seasonal foot swelling disorder thing.
Or maybe it really is true. One's feet do keep growing. One will soon have to walk like a clown, flipping and flopping in one's boat-like feet.
Better order a bunch of size 8 boots and enjoy normal (ish)-sized feet while I can.
Maybe sizes shifted downward again.
Or maybe I'm suffering from some sort of menopausal or seasonal foot swelling disorder thing.
Or maybe it really is true. One's feet do keep growing. One will soon have to walk like a clown, flipping and flopping in one's boat-like feet.
Better order a bunch of size 8 boots and enjoy normal (ish)-sized feet while I can.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Into the Gap
I just realized that today is Nov. 6, which means yesterday was Nov. 5. (See, I may be in menopause, but I'm still as sharp as ever.)
The Fifth of November--how could I have forgotten? I feel like I've betrayed a fundamental part of my family's history. Not "my family" as in "my lineage." We're all Dutch, nothing to do with Guy Fawkes Day or the Gunpowder Plot, nothing interesting or important in my family lineup, just a bunch of impoverished Calvinist mud farmers from Drenthe. No, by "my family," I mean my real family: Keith and Owen and Hugh. And by "history," I mean our history, our past, our life in England.
Our first Guy Fawkes Day, or "Bonfire Night" as most people in Manchester called it, was quite a revelation. I had lived in London in November and so expected something along London lines--a few firecrackers, some film clips of bonfires in vacant lots on the evening news. But Bonfire Night in our working-class neighborhood turned out to be something more akin to a night in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion. The explosions began early and just did not stop. At one point, a cascade of bottle rockets came whizzing into our back garden (aka back yard) and slammed into the kitchen door, but that was small beer compared to the bombs detonating all around us. To my utter amazement, this society--which did not allow anyone to purchase a 12-capsule pack of ibuprofen without first listening to a lengthy lecture about the proper use of painkillers, which had banned lice-killing shampoo because of the damage it could do if overused, which did not have Jungle Gyms in its school playgrounds because of the potential danger--this society allowed the purchase and recreational use of major explosives without any apparent control or limit.
By sunset, when we were supposed to show up in a neighbor's back garden for a genuine bonfire and BBQ, four-year-old Hugh was as close to catatonic as one can be without being thrown into a hospital bed. At this point in his young life, he was acutely frightened of loud, sudden noises (so strange, given his own capacity for noise-making). If a balloon popped in Hugh's vicinity, he would go silent and freeze, his body rigid, his big dark eyes staring fixedly ahead. Even the possibility of such a noise reduced him to rigidity: the mere sight of a balloon or a party popper was enough to transmogrify all his liveliness and curiosity and endless chatter into something closer to severe autism.
Owen so desperately wanted to attend the bonfire. On the whole, life in England was just one long misery for him, so desperately, stupidly, I tried.
--Where was Keith? Usually, at this point in our lives, at some church meeting or service or event, given his position as pastor of four Methodist congregations in Manchester, but surely not on Bonfire Night? No, definitely not, and yet. . . he's not there. In these memories, he's not there. Maybe I'm transferring all those times in Manchester that he wasn't there to this particular night. I honestly can't say. But in my memory, Keith is nowhere to be found.--
All on my own, then, I jollied poor Hugh along. There must have been a hiatus in the bombing, because he did walk over to the neighbor's, and Owen was so thrilled, so enchanted with the darkness and the sense of rules being broken and the utter edginess of the night. But almost immediately the whistles and bangs began again and Hugh couldn't cope. Our accommodating, if puzzled, hosts had no problem with keeping Owen but he pleaded with me to stay; only eight, he still wanted/needed/flourished in my company. When I headed out the gate with Hugh in my arms, Owen just stared at the ground and refused to say goodbye.
And then came one of the most surreal walks of my entire life. Down this dark lane (was it dark? surely the streetlamps were on? yet I remember it as so dark) I carried my eerily silent Hugh, his body stiff, his eyes glassy, while all around us things zoomed and shrieked and zzzzed and banged and boomed.
Such a strange night. The next two Bonfire Nights were much the same: Owen eager to join the anarchy, Hugh driven deep within himself, while I sought somehow to encourage the one and comfort the other, and felt myself falling, slipping, tumbling down the gap between the two.
The Fifth of November--how could I have forgotten? I feel like I've betrayed a fundamental part of my family's history. Not "my family" as in "my lineage." We're all Dutch, nothing to do with Guy Fawkes Day or the Gunpowder Plot, nothing interesting or important in my family lineup, just a bunch of impoverished Calvinist mud farmers from Drenthe. No, by "my family," I mean my real family: Keith and Owen and Hugh. And by "history," I mean our history, our past, our life in England.
Our first Guy Fawkes Day, or "Bonfire Night" as most people in Manchester called it, was quite a revelation. I had lived in London in November and so expected something along London lines--a few firecrackers, some film clips of bonfires in vacant lots on the evening news. But Bonfire Night in our working-class neighborhood turned out to be something more akin to a night in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion. The explosions began early and just did not stop. At one point, a cascade of bottle rockets came whizzing into our back garden (aka back yard) and slammed into the kitchen door, but that was small beer compared to the bombs detonating all around us. To my utter amazement, this society--which did not allow anyone to purchase a 12-capsule pack of ibuprofen without first listening to a lengthy lecture about the proper use of painkillers, which had banned lice-killing shampoo because of the damage it could do if overused, which did not have Jungle Gyms in its school playgrounds because of the potential danger--this society allowed the purchase and recreational use of major explosives without any apparent control or limit.
By sunset, when we were supposed to show up in a neighbor's back garden for a genuine bonfire and BBQ, four-year-old Hugh was as close to catatonic as one can be without being thrown into a hospital bed. At this point in his young life, he was acutely frightened of loud, sudden noises (so strange, given his own capacity for noise-making). If a balloon popped in Hugh's vicinity, he would go silent and freeze, his body rigid, his big dark eyes staring fixedly ahead. Even the possibility of such a noise reduced him to rigidity: the mere sight of a balloon or a party popper was enough to transmogrify all his liveliness and curiosity and endless chatter into something closer to severe autism.
Owen so desperately wanted to attend the bonfire. On the whole, life in England was just one long misery for him, so desperately, stupidly, I tried.
--Where was Keith? Usually, at this point in our lives, at some church meeting or service or event, given his position as pastor of four Methodist congregations in Manchester, but surely not on Bonfire Night? No, definitely not, and yet. . . he's not there. In these memories, he's not there. Maybe I'm transferring all those times in Manchester that he wasn't there to this particular night. I honestly can't say. But in my memory, Keith is nowhere to be found.--
All on my own, then, I jollied poor Hugh along. There must have been a hiatus in the bombing, because he did walk over to the neighbor's, and Owen was so thrilled, so enchanted with the darkness and the sense of rules being broken and the utter edginess of the night. But almost immediately the whistles and bangs began again and Hugh couldn't cope. Our accommodating, if puzzled, hosts had no problem with keeping Owen but he pleaded with me to stay; only eight, he still wanted/needed/flourished in my company. When I headed out the gate with Hugh in my arms, Owen just stared at the ground and refused to say goodbye.
And then came one of the most surreal walks of my entire life. Down this dark lane (was it dark? surely the streetlamps were on? yet I remember it as so dark) I carried my eerily silent Hugh, his body stiff, his eyes glassy, while all around us things zoomed and shrieked and zzzzed and banged and boomed.
Such a strange night. The next two Bonfire Nights were much the same: Owen eager to join the anarchy, Hugh driven deep within himself, while I sought somehow to encourage the one and comfort the other, and felt myself falling, slipping, tumbling down the gap between the two.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
New Light
I've been looking for a new lamp for awhile and so was delighted to see that my niece today posted a link on her Facebook page to a real possibility: a vagina lamp. (Check it out: http://www.regretsy.com/2011/11/04/cervix-with-a-smile/). But what really tickled me about this lamp was the notation above the picture, which says "Filed in Decor, Vaginas." I had no idea there was an entire category of vagina decor. I guess I really don't get out enough because I thought my only option was a Georgia O'Keefe flower painting. After all these years of enduring phallic symbols everywhere (especially in Baton Rouge, where the state capital building really should have a condom put on it, it's such an obvious erect penis), I am delighted that vaginas are getting some, um, face time.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Human-Scale
As I mentioned in the last post, I had a family wedding in Atlanta last weekend. My first visit ever to Atlanta, if one doesn't count the airport, which of course one shouldn't. Gah--the idea that folks might mistake O'Hare for Chicago. . . Anyway, I have to say I was distinctly unimpressed. I did expect to be impressed, I really did. I mean Atlanta--home of the New South, an Olympics venue, the place where all the young movers and shakers seem to spend time. But the downtown was so dead, so utterly empty of people except for a few bewildered tourists like us, so lacking in urban edge, that I felt perfectly ok sending my really-not-much-to-be-trusted 16-year-old and his 13-year-old cousin off on their own. They had a great time getting sick after sampling 60 different kinds of Coke at the Coca-Cola Museum. As a result, Hugh is now a passionate wanna-be Atlantean. "We should move here!" he enthused.
Damn. One more thing dividing me from my son.
We made the mistake of staying in the Westin Peachtree--the highest hotel in the western hemisphere in "an iconic downtown location," according to the website (how weird is that? the hotel isn't "iconic," just the location?), but according to Wikipedia, actually only the second tallest all-hotel building in the western hemisphere. So who do you trust, Westin or Wikipedia? Ah, the dilemmas of life in the internet age. Designed by renowned Atlanta architect John Portman, the Westin Peachtree is the embodiment of modernist alienation and elitism. Now mind you, I love modernist architecture; I'm a Chicagoan, for pete's sake, and any Chicagoan worth her organic seasalt is a fan of modernist architecture--but the thing is, Chicago accustoms you to modernist architecture done well, done right, done with respect for the humans who will inhabit it and the society that will swirl around it. Ah, Mr. Portman. You should have spent more time in Chicago. Your hotel, Mr. Portman, sucks. Excuse the highly technical language there, but it just really sucks. Your hotel makes its guests feel they've just booked a weekend in a parking garage--except most parking garages are far more easy to find one's way around in and, frankly, far more attractive. Your hotel is cold and uncomfortable and dehumanizing and godawful ugly. It is staffed by fine and friendly people, all of whom wear a look of terror and doom. They know they cannot compensate for the physical ghastliness of the place and that their tips will reflect this fact. But at least they haven't absorbed the hard lines, the unforgiving nature, of all the concrete around them. Still, my tips were miserly. I couldn't help it. Everything around me demanded unkindness, a heart of stone, a heavy boot. Orwell, oh Mr. Portman, what Orwell could have written about your hotel.
And the thing is, Mr. Portman, you don't actually have to travel way up north to Chicago. Just go down the street to the High Museum of Modern Art. There's a splendid building, a wonderful example of modernist architecture done with feeling and sensibility and a basic humanity. Go wander around there for awhile. It will do you good. It certainly did me good after being subjected to the brutalism of your hotel.
So now I'm home, in my 1930s Craftsman-inspired, Chicago-tinged, totally funky Baton Rouge house. It's crumbling around us, but it's a lovely house, a house for human beings. And when I go to work, it's in a crumbling 1930s building that is part of the original LSU campus--a lovely building, tho' slowly disintegratiing due to years of budget cuts and deferred maintenance. Despite the exposed asbestos and the paint shards that fall on my head, I love Himes Hall. Like my house, it was built to human scale. So, Atlanta, thank you. And thank you, too, Mr. Portman. Thank you for reminding me of what I have. Unlike so many people, I get to spend my days and my nights in physical environments that I find sustaining and restorative. And as I begin to realize that there really aren't all that many days and nights left, not in the big scheme of things, such things matter. Life is too short to be spent in concrete.
Damn. One more thing dividing me from my son.
We made the mistake of staying in the Westin Peachtree--the highest hotel in the western hemisphere in "an iconic downtown location," according to the website (how weird is that? the hotel isn't "iconic," just the location?), but according to Wikipedia, actually only the second tallest all-hotel building in the western hemisphere. So who do you trust, Westin or Wikipedia? Ah, the dilemmas of life in the internet age. Designed by renowned Atlanta architect John Portman, the Westin Peachtree is the embodiment of modernist alienation and elitism. Now mind you, I love modernist architecture; I'm a Chicagoan, for pete's sake, and any Chicagoan worth her organic seasalt is a fan of modernist architecture--but the thing is, Chicago accustoms you to modernist architecture done well, done right, done with respect for the humans who will inhabit it and the society that will swirl around it. Ah, Mr. Portman. You should have spent more time in Chicago. Your hotel, Mr. Portman, sucks. Excuse the highly technical language there, but it just really sucks. Your hotel makes its guests feel they've just booked a weekend in a parking garage--except most parking garages are far more easy to find one's way around in and, frankly, far more attractive. Your hotel is cold and uncomfortable and dehumanizing and godawful ugly. It is staffed by fine and friendly people, all of whom wear a look of terror and doom. They know they cannot compensate for the physical ghastliness of the place and that their tips will reflect this fact. But at least they haven't absorbed the hard lines, the unforgiving nature, of all the concrete around them. Still, my tips were miserly. I couldn't help it. Everything around me demanded unkindness, a heart of stone, a heavy boot. Orwell, oh Mr. Portman, what Orwell could have written about your hotel.
And the thing is, Mr. Portman, you don't actually have to travel way up north to Chicago. Just go down the street to the High Museum of Modern Art. There's a splendid building, a wonderful example of modernist architecture done with feeling and sensibility and a basic humanity. Go wander around there for awhile. It will do you good. It certainly did me good after being subjected to the brutalism of your hotel.
So now I'm home, in my 1930s Craftsman-inspired, Chicago-tinged, totally funky Baton Rouge house. It's crumbling around us, but it's a lovely house, a house for human beings. And when I go to work, it's in a crumbling 1930s building that is part of the original LSU campus--a lovely building, tho' slowly disintegratiing due to years of budget cuts and deferred maintenance. Despite the exposed asbestos and the paint shards that fall on my head, I love Himes Hall. Like my house, it was built to human scale. So, Atlanta, thank you. And thank you, too, Mr. Portman. Thank you for reminding me of what I have. Unlike so many people, I get to spend my days and my nights in physical environments that I find sustaining and restorative. And as I begin to realize that there really aren't all that many days and nights left, not in the big scheme of things, such things matter. Life is too short to be spent in concrete.
Longing for a lubricated life
I had a family wedding in Atlanta last weekend. Three days away from home, and then six days in recovery. It didn't used to be like this. I used to be able to break routine and then slide right back in. It's as if the post-menopausal vagina (dry as all get-out) becomes a metaphor for one's entire post-menopausal life. No easy sliding. No just slipping in and out. Sigh. I miss a lubricated life.
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