About Me

Woman, reader, writer, wife, mother of two sons, sister, daughter, aunt, friend, state university professor, historian, Midwesterner by birth but marooned in the South, Chicago Cubs fan, Anglophile, devotee of Bruce Springsteen and the 10th Doctor Who, lover of chocolate and marzipan, registered Democrat, practicing Christian (must practice--can't quite get the hang of it)--and menopausal.
Names have been changed to protect the teenagers. As if.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Hurricane

Hunkered down, waiting for the hurricane. Got our coolers of ice, flashlights and batteries, candles and cans of tuna. Got Hugh home from his school since it sits right on the Gulf. Got the radio on with all the usual reports of storm surges and downed power lines and flash flood alerts.

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I love hurricanes. Not the actual hurricane, not the danger and the destruction, but this part, the waiting part. Each hurricane is different, but The Wait is always the same. Preparation rituals replace the ordinary rules. The suspension of normal work and school routines infuses The Wait with holiday flavors. A beer at 10 am? Why not? Better use up the meat in the freezer and the leftovers in the fridge—so everyone gathers for an impromptu party. Even the last-minute scramble for batteries and ice becomes something of a game as we pass on tips, exchange horror stories, and share our loot —“The Home Depot on Airline still has D-batteries!” “Four hours in line for ice!” “We picked up flashlights for you guys.” The sky is clear; it’s still hot; the whole idea of a storm seems unreal. I hit the sale at Talbot’s, buy Hugh a sweatshirt at the Gap, weed the back flower bed. But then the wind begins to pick up and the temperatures to inch down. We secure our lawn furniture, take in the potted plants, make sure we’ve ground the coffee beans, debate which car gets to take shelter under the carport. We wake in the middle of the night to the whoosh of wind and snuggle under the sheets. In the morning we sit at the window and watch the trees sway and bow and bend, crazed dancers at a rave, flinging their limbs about with abandon.

I think, “I should get some work done.” But I know I won’t. It’s a hurricane. Ordinary life on hold. I just love this bit.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

#2

I pooped in my pants today. Not a lot, but still. . . .

I'm checking my email and I'm aware suddenly that my tummy has gone all rumbly-tumbly topsy-turvy. "Whoa," I realize, "I need to go to the bathroom." And I head on down the hall and then I get distracted. I stop to pick up those shoes that I meant to put in the bedroom and there's Hugh's shirt on the floor and dang, thought I had stowed away that cat toy. . . and before I know it, well, fuck.

Is it blasphemous to think God might speak through bathroom accidents? Because as I sat there, humiliated, I could hear Her voice: "Stay focused on what matters, ya moron." She said it with a lot of love.

But She was laughing at me, no doubt about it.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

The New Rules

So at what point does one get to check out from, well, new stuff? When does one get to say, no more, sorry, enough already, brain's tired, spirit's sapped, just can't any longer?

I had a disastrous class on Friday with a lecture I'd given with great success a couple times before--but that's never a guarantee. The students change, the class time changes, I change. And technologies change. Part of this lecture involves a film clip (from Mary Poppins--never let it be said that I do not challenge my students) and my copy is on VHS. Yes, a videocassette. But we no longer have a VCR at home so I could not cue up the scene in advance and my effort to do so in class set into motion an entire series of technological mishaps, all with the students glaring at me in obvious contempt. Because of course the scene is on Youtube and of course one can embed the scene in one's Powerpoint--if one is not me, that is. Tired old me with Mary Poppins in its gargantuan plastic rectangle, a relic of my children's childhoods.

But you know, if the problem were confined to technology, I could cope. You 're mystified, you fail, you whine and moan, and then you go find someone young who shows you how. I get that. Plus it's every generation's right to immiserate the last with new technology. I get that too.

It's the new rules that are driving me nuts.

Take the Matchy-Matchy Rule. I went home in July for a wedding and accompanied my 14-year-old niece as she hunted for shoes to wear with her silver-and-black dress. I suggested a silver-and-black pair of heels and she shot me a look somewhere between sorrow and pity: "I don't want to be Matchy-Matchy," she explained. Oh. Right. I nod like I have a clue but inside I'm asking, "Wait, when did matching become a problem? Who changed the rules? Why wasn't I notified?" And now it's a Sunday morning in August and I am wearing a new black-and-white polka-dotted sundress and I have a pair of adorable black-and-white polka-dotted earrings. . .  but Hugh says no, too Matchy-Matchy. Well, dang.

Or then there's the Trim-Your-Bush Rule. Keith and I went to see Your Sister's Sister (a terrific film, by the way) and in one hilarious scene, Rosemarie DeWitt's character reveals that her half-sister (played by Emily Blunt) once came home from a date all embarrassed because the guy had laughed at the bulge in her underwear created by her pubic hair: "She didn't know she was supposed to trim her bush!" And the Emily Blunt character is cringing and everyone in the theater is roaring and I'm laughing too but I'm also thinking, "Well, damn, so you are supposed to do that." Was this always a rule that somehow Mom forgot to inculcate? Or is it a new rule and once again, I missed the memo?

Where does one pick up these memos? When are they delivered? And really, when is it ok just to chuck them in the trash and trip along unawares, earrings matchy-matching one's sundress, bush pooching out from one's underwear, videocassette of Mary Poppins firmly in hand?

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

A Very Weird Mother

I wonder sometimes what it would be like to be normal, you know, as in "mainstream," part of the general current, floating in the middle with everyone else. I don't think of myself as a contrarian and I'm certainly not much of an original thinker and I really rather like feeling like I belong.  And yet it so rarely works out that way. Maybe it's the consequence of being the first daughter after five sons; maybe that experience of being the outlier just got woven into the fabric of my being. More likely it's just happenstance, the random throw of the dice. But somehow I ended up a political and theological liberal and an impractical humanities grad in a family of fundamentalist Republican moneymakers, a Midwesterner in the Deep South, a city lover submerged in strip malls and subdivisions, a sports agnostic in a universe of football fanatics, a European with an American accent.

And, evidently, a Very Weird Mother.

I have just begun a new position as the sort of academic head honcho of a residential college at my university ("head honcho," that is, in the sense of "the person in charge of making lots of phone calls and begging people to do stuff," not, mind you, "the person with power or prestige"). Now, if you're my age, and you attended an American college or university, you probably lived in a dorm. You are old. Dorms are no more. Now we have residential communities, or if you're really cutting-edge in the student services industry (and yes, oh yes, what an industry it is), residential colleges. Which is all well and good, and if you're really interested, go Google it, but the point is, I now have more exposure to the parents of university freshmen than I've ever had before. And I've come to realize that I am not a normal mother.

Normal Mothers--or perhaps, given the range of my data, I should say "Normal Mothers of Freshmen Attending Public Universities in the Deep South" but then again it's an Election Year when we're all used to general conclusions based on the flimsiest bits of anecdotal evidence so hell, let's just go with "Normal Mothers"--Normal Mothers accompany their children on Move-In Day.  They come in with enormous refrigerators and microwaves and flatscreen tvs and they demand to know when Brittni's WiFi will be available. They storm down from the room with long lists of Things That Must Be Repaired Immediately. They stand in the various dining hall/mailbox/rec center lines in loco offspring-is so that their children can be free to do whatever it is such children do. Normal Mothers know their children's course schedules by heart--they know course titles, times, classroom assignments, professors, the required book lists, the tentative dates of the midterm and final, and the various ways these courses fulfill the General Education requirements. They say things like "We're thinking about Engineering. Or maybe Interior Design. We're not sure yet."

Weird moms like me? We stick the kid on the plane with a suitcase, $50, and a big hug. And then we wait for him to call. And when he doesn't, we figure he's doing ok or he'd call. And we avoid looking at his baby picture or that beautiful painting he did when he was ten and we let him be.

I guess I'd thought that was the whole point. Raising him, releasing him, letting him be. Except it's so damned hard. And now I find out it's just weird.

Well, shit. Can we rewind?

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Geology at Work

I was prepared for the wrinkles.

Well, ok, not actually. But I at least knew in my head they were coming, even if my heart assured me that as long as I drank lots of water and found just the right moisturizer, all would be well. (My heart lives in La La Land.)

The bumps, however. I had no idea about the bumps. And so, oh youthful reader, let me warn you: Age Bringeth Bumps.

I'm not talking about rolls here--yes, age brings rolls that spill over one's waistband and slurp over one's bra straps. But there again--one was warned.

I am talking bumps. Like the tiny bumps on the inside of my knees that are now spreading down my calves and migrating to my upper arms.  "The technical term for that is 'chicken skin,'" my doctor said. "So what do I do about it?" I asked. "Oh, put on moisturizer. It won't actually help, but that's what you do." She smiled brightly. She's young. But soon she will be old and bumpy. May she be afflicted with chicken skin.

The worst, though, are my bumpy feet. There is, for example, the bump on the joint of my second toe--remember back when we wrote with pencils in school? And your middle finger on your writing hand would get that lump on the top from holding your pencil? Just like that. And then there's the perfectly circular bump on my right foot, just at the base of the little toe--looks like someone inserted a little ball bearing in there. All of this culminates in the really big bumps bursting from the bones under the big toes, the harbingers of arthritis and old-lady afflictions like corns.

So here's my theory. It's about geology as much as biology. As crevasses and caverns cut their way through a plateau, they push out and upward elsewhere, producing cliffs and mountains.  With valleys come hills. With wrinkles come bumps. My body is a geological demonstration.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

You Can't Go Home Again

Of course you can go home again. It's just that it will make you feel like shit.

Just back from Chicago and a family wedding. Took Owen on the Chicago Architectural Society Boat Tour--as fabulous, with views as breath-taking and guide as witty and knowledgeable as I remembered--except that most of the buildings that dominate the river tour rose up long after I left the city. Damn. Nothing like a couple of spectacular skyscrapers to make you feel your age.

Then we were on the El. And as soon as we boarded, a young woman popped up and gestured to her seat. Poor child. Raised well, she was just doing as she'd been taught, offering up her seat to elderly passengers. Except that said elderly--Keith and I-- were horrified.

The trauma of Lutz's brought the message home. I was first introduced to Lutz's by my beloved Gram V. It was quite a trek from the suburbs, driving in on the tollway and down crowded Montrose Avenue, but well worth it: this little slice of Vienna, transported to the Midwest. A plush dining area that evoked the parlor of the early 20th-century bourgoisie, cakes so rich and ornate that you felt they'd have satisfied even Mozart, coffee served in fancy little pots with real whipped cream on the side, buxom waitresses with their hair in buns and pronounced German accents, and--an essential part of every visit--the most elaborate women's restroom I have ever encountered. When I grew up enough to live in Chicago, my roommate and I would regularly set aside several hours for a trip to Lutz's: a walk to the bus stop, a long bus ride, a walk to another bus stop, another long bus ride. . . but all worth it. One memorable day, we stayed in the Lutz's patio garden for several hours, consuming several slices of cake and plates of cookies and quaffing countless pots of whipped-cream-laced coffee in the process. Amazing we didn't launch ourselves into a diabetic coma then and there.

So when Keith and I married in my mother's backyard in the western suburbs of Chicago, of course Lutz's cakes bedecked the festivities. And of course I dragged Keith and Owen to Lutz's this trip. Except all was changed. Shrunken. Literally shrunken--the dining area halved, stripped of its plushness, just a set of utilitarian diner chairs and tables on linoleum; the wait staff now a couple of adolescent girls; and, horrors, no women's restrooms, just a single unisex toilet. And the cakes? Fine, but not fabulous. "It's ok," shrugged Owen. OK. A part of me died inside. Lutz's was never "ok."

So, yes, you can go home again. But maybe you shouldn't.