The Family Thing

Facebook drama: My aunt tells my brother she doesn't argue politics with people she loves. Then she posts, "Nah nah nah nah boo boo."

Such a great aunt.

Family is so weird, you know? And social technologies make the whole Family Thing even weirder. The vagaries of Facebook--who friends me, who posts, who comments--have a huge impact on which members of my family I keep in touch with and care about. One niece doesn't post at all, no problem, except I do end up feeling so much more involved with the families of the nieces who post regular updates and pictures. I comment, they reply, I answer back; heck, it's not like meeting up for dinner every Sunday, but it IS something. And so Facebook works its weird magic, skewing relationships, shaping the emotional dynamics of this totally weird, slippy, slurpy, can't-pin-it-down thing called Family. 

But it isn't just Facebook. There's also The Phone. As in the Weird Messages Family Members Will Leave on One's Cellphone When They Should Know One Rarely Checks One's Cellphone Messages. A few days ago I listened to (God knows how long it had been there, lurking)  a slurred, incoherent, drunken message from Cousin A, expressing his concern about the drinking habits of Cousin B. Ah, the ironies abound. So much so I had to go pour a second glass of wine, just to be able to cope with the whole Family Thing.

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.

Bitter Woman

Keith is watching football. LSU vs. West Virginia. God. I hate football.

I shouldn't be bitter.

I'm not. I Am Not A Bitter Woman.

The thing is, we had a very short courtship. So it came as something of a surprise that I found myself married to a sports fanatic. Somehow, this fanaticism just hadn't really surfaced in the months, umm, weeks, of our pre-marriage romance.

You might think that as the younger sister of five older brothers, I was prepared for Sports Fanaticism. But my big brothers were more into cars and cigarettes and beer and drugs. We were Cubs fans, because my much-loved grandma was a Cubs fan. And being a Cubs fan went well with beer and cigarettes, frankly-- add a hotdog with mustard and relish, and Life Is Good. But football?? Dad watched the Bears on Sundays in the depth of winter when he could laugh at "those idiots" floundering in the snow. And my brothers were far too stoned to care.

So, here I sit, with this man who cares intensely. Who actually just now said, as he moved the chair so he could be right in  front of our rather small tv, "Can you see?"--as if I cared. But he can't imagine I don't care. Which is so sweet. And just so damn weird.

Weird as it is, I'd be ok with it, if it were just LSU football. I mean, I get obsession. Obsession is ok. I have my obsessions. Doctor Who. Bruce Springsteen. And everything Paul Newman has ever done. And I ritualistically, fatalistically, follow the Cubs, as part of my birthright. So, if Keith were simply obsessed with LSU football, really, I'd be ok with that. But, here's the deal: I thought The Game was this afternoon. Because Keith spent the entire friggin' afternoon watching football. But that was other football. Gettin' ready football. Preparatory football.  Foreplay football.

Keith is watching football. LSU vs. West Virginia. God. I hate football.

And yes. I Am A Bitter Woman.

Ordinary People

September 11, 2011. Listening to the memorial service at Ground Zero. Former President Bush reads from a letter Abraham Lincoln wrote to a woman whose several sons died in the Union army: he has no words to comfort her in her loss but  he hopes she will accept the gratitude of the Republic that her sons died trying to save.

Bush reads this letter to an audience consisting of the family members of individuals who died in the Twin Towers on 9/11. Presumably they are to infer their loved ones died to save the Republic.

But, umm, is that what they were doing? Saving the Republic? I thought they were getting coffee, settling down to another day at the desk, riding the elevator, leaving the train, reading the paper, making a phone call, checking their email. . . just doing the ordinary things that ordinary people do in their ordinary lives.
Not the Republic's Saviors. Just ordinary people going about their ordinary business on what they assumed would be an ordinary day. Isn't that the tragedy? the horror? the crime? That they weren't soldiers on a tour of duty, let alone knights on a quest? They were just Jean and Bill and Pablo and Irina and Melissa and Miguel and Tony and Noreen. Just folks. Secretaries and janitors and clerks and salesmen and brokers. 

Maybe one, maybe several, maybe several hundreds of those that died that strange, horrible morning died thinking of the Republic. But I doubt it. I'll bet the last thing every one of those folks in the Towers thought of was incredibly ordinary--maybe a husband of average looks, intelligence, and prospects; a child not destined for greatness; a mom who looks just like countless other old ladies; a set of memories of a life filled with the mundane. But the mundane is where we, the ordinary people, live. Add up the mundane and it's our lives. And by God, dear God, please God, in all the mundane there is so much that matters. Why, then, reach for rhetorical abstractions, why disguise ordinary people as willing warriors in some kind of national crusade?

I haven't a clue what "the Republic" means. But an ordinary day in an ordinary place with an ordinary family and ordinary and friends? Oh, yes, I know what that means. It's worth all the world.

Hisses and Yowls

We got a new kitty. I thought Wimsey was lonely and needed a playmate, now that the Peeing Kitty has been banished to the outdoors, and there at the vet's was this tiny, friendly, adorable orange tabby. So I brought Marple home.

Total disaster. Unlike Wimsey, tiny, friendly, adorable Marple comes equipped with rapier-sharp claws which he has yet to learn how to retract. He frenetically, ceaselessly, desperately pounces on Wimsey--playwithme comeoncomeon playwithmeplaywithmeeeee. Wimsey loathes him and our household now pulsates with hisses and yowls.

I watch them and I remember the summer I was ten, when we took a family vacation to the Ozarks. My two oldest brothers had grown out of such trips but my parents insisted that the third in the line-up, 16-year-old Jeff, come along. It was of course the Dark Ages of family travel, long before mini-vans or house-sized SUVs, with no in-car video players or headphones or iPods. Jeff just had to sit and endure us all, two younger brothers and two younger sisters and of course Mom and Dad, for the entire two-day trip down from Chicago. I don't think he ever spoke. He certainly never smiled. Once in the Ozarks, we settled into two adjoining hotel rooms on the second floor overlooking the outdoor pool--the three boys in one room, 7-year-old Cheryl and me and my parents next door--and several days of morning jaunts and afternoons playing in the pool. Except for Jeff, who hunkered down in the hotel room, where he read Popular Mechanics and engaged in lengthy masturbation sessions. (The automobile obsession I knew about at the time; I only learned about the autoeroticism much much later.) Jeff's sullen refusal to join in the family fun drove us younger kids crazy; we'd periodically pounce on him--playwithusplaywithuspleeeese-- but no matter how hard we tried, all we got was a bunch of  hisses and yowls.

16-year-old Hugh is home from school for the weekend. He arrived at 5:00 pm Friday night, put down his dirty laundry, picked up the car keys, and headed out to hang out with friends. We agreed he could spend the night at a friend's house--with Tropical Storm Lee bucketing down on us, it seemed a sensible plan. Except he didn't come home til 6 pm the next day, and only when we called and insisted he do so.  "We want to see you," we said. "We want to have dinner with you, talk with you, spend some time with you." Much hissing and yowling on his side; increasingly desperate pouncing on ours: Playwithus playwithus comeoncomeon itwillbefun you'llseeyou'llseeee. . .

Sabbath

When I remember, I tune into WGN at 9:00 pm. The wonders of cable tv: I sit in my south Louisiana living room and watch the local Chicago news. It tickles me every time. (I'm a simple soul, obviously.)

This past Wednesday, Keith was on the couch as well, so we both had a good chuckle when one of Chicagoland's ace reporters told us that because Easter is late this year, Lent is longer than usual: 46 rather than 40 days. Ummm. If Easter is late, so is Ash Wednesday and there are always 46 days between: 40 days of Lenten observance and the six Sundays which are Feast Days, and therefore not part of Lent. But you knew that already.

Sundays are Feast Days.

Gosh. Not quite the way I was raised. Certainly the Christian Reformed Church regarded Sundays as special but its interpretation and enforcement of that specialness translated not into festivity but rather into tedium: two lengthy somber church services (no children's sermons or any such levity), compulsory afternoon naps (required for everyone, adult and child; we took "Day of Rest" literally), and a variety of bizarre prohibitions. These prohibitions varied by family. My family was on the liberal end--unlike many in our church, we could watch tv and do homework on Sundays. But the list of what we could not do was still lengthy. Most importantly, we could not earn money (I still remember the face of the "Hickory Farms" manager at the mall when she asked my 15-year-old self if I could work on Sunday in an emergency and I replied, in utter and absolute sincerity, "Well, yes, but I couldn't accept payment for it."). But we could also not spend money (no shopping, no movie-going, no dining out), do housework or laundry or yardwork (not a much resented prohibition, actually), or join in any neighborhood activities (definitely no Little League or any kind of organized sports). More confusingly, we could not play catch or ride bikes or jump rope but it was ok to play inside with paper dolls or stuffed animals or board games or even consumerist secular fashion-obsessed Barbie and Ken. In other families, the prohibitions were similarly odd: one friend could not use scissors.

Things got really bizarre, however, during summer vacations. There we'd be, at the cottage--no air conditioning, sweltering heat, the lake glistening before us. But swimming on Sunday was forbidden. Unless, that is, the temperatures rose above 90 degrees. Then we could swim; evidently heat wiped out the sin. So we'd cluster, sweaty and forlorn, around the outside thermometer, desperately willing the mercury to climb. My friend Cindy had a different Sunday swimming rule. No matter what the temperature, they could swim out to the floating deck and lie down there. But no splashing or jumping or overt enjoyment. Just, you know, sober reverent holy swimming.

Slowly, gradually, the prohibitions lifted. My mom began buying the Sunday paper at the White Hen Pantry (but not from the White Hen just down the block from the church, in case a church member saw her). We stopped going to the cottage and started taking hotel vacations that required us to use restaurants on Sundays. I went off to college and--even tho' it was Calvin College, where the library was closed on Sundays and where we all got up and went to church, even without our parents' presence, and then went back to the dorms and took naps--we quickly grew used to Sunday laundry stints and pancake suppers out at the IHOP. By the time I graduated, even my grandmother was ok with buying a nice dinner out at a nice restaurant after church. God seemed ok with it too.

But, you know, it's a slippery slope. We're a church-going family, but the rest of Sunday is just like the rest of the week: hectic, disheveled, crammed with the detritus of daily living. No rest, nothing special, nothing sacred.

Still no Feast.

Early signs of genius

I have a nephew, Teddy. Actually, he's my grand-nephew, and also my godson.

He's two and he's brilliant. And, I think, a budding surrealist:

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Interrupting fish with a gun.

How bizarrely wonderful is that?

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

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.

Younger Brothers

Last night I went to a pub and watched the World Cup semi-final between Spain and Germany--hardly my usual choice of activity. But I was hanging out with two colleagues who are teaching with me here in Ireland, it was what they wanted to do, and I tagged along. Dan and Joe are in their 30s. Relaxed, witty, and smart, they're fun travel companions. (Except when I start talking about things that happened at LSU in the early 90s and they smile politely and I remember, oh right, they were, what, 12 years old when that happened, and then feel old and feeble-minded.)

I imagine that having younger brothers is like the last few weeks with Joe and Dan--hanging out, having a drink, watching sports, laughing a lot. I've never had younger brothers, but they strike me as far preferable to older brothers. They don't hang you upside down and dunk your head in the toilet. They don't nail you inside the clubhouse. They don't tie you to the bedpost with a belt and then leave you there while they go out with friends. They don't tell you that their friends say you're fat. They don't sit you down before your first day of high school and advise you to do with boys whatever boys want you to do so that you'll be popular. Often, when people learn that I grew up with five older brothers, they coo, "Oh, you must have felt so protected." I can only conclude that such people have no experience with older brothers, or at least not with mine.

My sister's husband once asked, after hearing her recount the toilet dunking story (which I confess happened to her rather than to me: I was a chunk of a child whereas she was one of those skinny kids with bones jutting out all over, the perfect size and shape for a quick grab, flip, and dunk),"Where in the world was your mom?" Such a strange question. My mom fed and clothed us. She made sure we caught the school bus. She washed out our mouths with soap if we swore and she slapped us if we spoke disrespectfully to an adult. She tucked us in at night and heard our prayers. She helped us memorize the books of the Bible. She bought our Christmas and birthday presents. She drove us to our various school and church activities. It never occurred to us, or to her, I am quite sure, that she was supposed to do anything more. Making it through the day, surviving the torments that older brothers devised, that was up to us.

I got back at them, of course. I turned to the time-honored survival strategies of the weak: I became a world-class eavesdropper and snitch. I suppose I should thank my brothers for teaching me that words have power and that information, when wielded well, is a powerful weapon. Right after I find some really big guy with experience in toilet dunking.

But that's dangerous!

I'm a pretty cautious person, rule-oriented, inclined to consider worst-case scenarios. A timid, tepid sort of soul, really. Yet in the eyes of my mother-in-law, I'm an adventurer.

The oldest child in a poor but upwardly aspiring Southern rural family, Marilyn married young. Her husband, Keith's father, was a schoolteacher, so there never was much money, yet Marilyn never worked outside the home. Scrimping is thus bred into her bones; it structures her approach not just to money matters but to life. Holding back, being careful, regarding the world as hostile and unpredictable--these are attitudes that have served Marilyn well. "But that's dangerous!" is her mantra. (You have to imagine this voiced plaintively in the country accent of central Louisiana to get the full effect.)

Compared to Marilyn, I'm a wanton, and Keith and I live lives of great recklessness. We're buccaneers, willing to place even our children in peril. We let them them lick the batter from the bowl (raw eggs!), bicycle around the neighborhood (cars!), fly across the Atlantic alone at age 8 (hijackings!), and, in then-15-year-old Owen's case, spend six months in South Africa (too many dangers to put between parentheses!).

I love it. When I'm with Marilyn, when I see myself through Marilyn's eyes, I'm transfigured. I'm no longer a menopausal mom with a stagnant academic career and a cat litter box in need of cleaning and a lawn in need of mowing. Instead, I'm Marion careening through Egypt on a jeep with Indiana Jones. I'm Rose saving the Doctor. I'm Princess Leia leading the rebellion. I'm Katherine Hepburn braving the snakes and leeches with Humphrey Bogart on the African Queen.

Actually, I hate leeches. I rarely exceed the speed limit. I've never shot a gun. I read warning labels. In times of crisis, I sit down and cry.

Maybe I should ask my mother-in-law to visit more often.

DNA

This weekend we celebrated my mom's 80th birthday with a weekend of family frivolity. "We" meant 5 of my mom's 6 surviving kids, 22 of her 24 grandchildren, all 15 of her great-grandchildren (as well as the 2 in utero), plus assorted spouses and partners. My family has always taken the "be fruitful and multiply" commandment very seriously.

Owen was one of the 2 absent grandchildren. It was an excused absence: he's bicycling across the country with a homeless advocacy group. Travel and volunteer work for a worthy cause--Mom wholeheartedly approves of both.

I missed him. Especially since I kept seeing him, various versions of him, bits and pieces of him. There he was at age 2, in the chubby cheeks and legs of my godson. And see, there, his thick and unruly blonde hair, on the head of my nephew's middle boy. And over there, there's his smile on another nephew. And my brother's face, a glimpse of the Owen yet to come.

In big family gatherings, the laws of time and space fall apart. I'm holding a baby, and it's me at 17, holding my very first niece or is it that niece at 17, holding baby Owen, or is it me again, holding my niece's first son? This stocky Tom Sawyer look-alike with freckles and a gap-toothed grin, it's my oldest nephew and yet it's his son. My second oldest brother's been dead for 37 years, but there's his walk, his stance, the way he wrinkled up his nose. All these strands, these fragments, tossed together, rearranged, updated, resurrected.

Except here is Hugh. No strands cling to him, no fragments of uncles or cousins reappear in the shape of his calves or the way he cocks his head. Cut from the biological web by adoption, Hugh stands free in his Hughness.

And yet. Love has its own biology and life in a family seems to produce its own genetic code. In Hugh's wicked sense of fun, his infectious personality and love of the outrageous, my dad comes back to life. Just like the grandpa he never knew, Hugh enjoys lobbing incendiary comments across the table and then sitting back to enjoy the fireworks. Deeper than DNA, somehow, love and life form their own thick web.

And, as it happens, my brown adopted baby fits into my extended family much better than my biological son--or me. Hugh prefers the vast houses, manicured lawns, and backyard swimming pools of suburbia; Hugh longs for an SUV; Hugh has a need for order and absolute rules that my family's political and religious conservatism fulfills. Desperate to hunt and fish and tinker with machines, Hugh suffocates in our book-lined house. But here, in the western suburbs of Chicago, Republicanville, the Land Beyond O'Hare, here Hugh comes into his own.

With his own family.

Hatchets

My kids were still quite small when I realized that the only way that I would have the time and energy to be the sort of mother than I wanted to be was to get rid of my children. Otherwise I was bound to make a hatchet job of it.

Interesting phrase: "hatchet job." I guess the idea is that if you use a big ol' hatchet instead of the precision blade that the task requires, the process will be messy. Works for me. Me as mother, I mean.

I watch my niece with her two little boys and she's an artist, a sculptor, carefully trimming here, delicately carving there, using her exacting tools with such grace and attention to detail. Whereas I, I was more like Lizzie Borden than Michelangelo, or maybe just a rusty tin woodsman, hacking and gouging, wood chips flying, splinters everywhere.

Which is not to say that the end products necessarily reflect my lack of skill. Turns out children are less like blocks of wood than those antibiotic-resistant superviruses. Thank God.

Look before you leap

So I've gotten a really short disastrous haircut and the rats have returned. There's a causal connection there somewhere.

Hair first. I was in need of a trim. It was a lovely spring morning, cool, the hint of the warmth to come, flowers ablaze in aching glory, the last day of spring break--a time for leaping. And New Haircutter Guy was in the mood for radical cutting. So, I leapt. He cut. I now look like an old lady with an erratic perm. Liberated by the short cut, my hair is doing what comes naturally: sprouting in odd curly combinations here, sulking in a fit of straights there, sticking out at random points in anarchic conviction throughout. It is not an attractive look. It does not bespeak the playful promise of springtime that New Haircutter Guy dangled in front of me like a chocolate cupcake.

What it evokes, nay, what it uncannily duplicates, is my grandmother the morning that I surprised her with a visit. Turned out it was her cleaning morning. When I sprung upon her, she was on her hands and knees dusting the crevices of an upturned kitchen chair. Usually immaculately coiffed, rouge carefully applied, pearls resting gently on her Marshall Field's blouse, Gram was in a duster, with bare legs and ankle socks, and her hair--her hair looked just like mine right now. She was horrified to see me seeing her crouching in that kitchen. Much like I am horrified to see me seeing me right now.

Much like the rats, actually. I thought we had defeated the rats some months ago, using a combination of poison, rat traps, glue trays, and, I dunno, human resolve, esprit, determination. But no. Putting away some suitcases in the attic late yesterday afternoon, I heard the telltale rustling and the rhythmic tat-tat-tat of little feet. And today, when I went down to the basement to get a packet of veggie burgers, I was stopped short by the sight of a rat, stuck in glue, right in front of the freezer.

It's all our neighbor's fault. He chopped down an ailing tree that, it turns out, housed an entire city of rats. But these rats do not act like poor refugees. No, they are rodent Republicans. They have Made It and moved to the suburbs. Freed from the packed confines of urban tree living, they embrace the wide open spaces of our human houses with great gusto. I keep expecting to find rat-sized Weber grills and built-in swimming pools, rat-marketed cul-de-sacs with names like Little Gnawing, rat versions of the tennis club. Big and sleek and well-fed, these are rats with really good health insurance plans. They Have Arrived. And they do not intend to leave.

So, I'm an old lady with crazy hair and rats. I always knew it would come to this.

Grounding and Garbage

Hugh is grounded. Again. "Can't you think of a different punishment for once?" Hugh demanded. Dweeb parents that we are, we can't.

Could be worse, I tell him. My brother J.T. was grounded for his entire senior year of high school--and even into that summer. It didn't initially start out as a year-long grounding. I think first he faced a month-long detention, but just as the month was ending, he snuck out of the house. And got caught. So the month became three months. And then, just as the end of his purgatory was drawing nigh, yes, out he snuck again. And got caught again. Poor J.T. He really really wanted to be a Bad Kid, but he just wasn't very good at it. Anyway, on it went, for his entire senior year.

We kid my mom now, about the endless grounding. It's not really fair as she was generally quite creative in the punishment department. Take the time she found some pornographic magazine--not Playboy, not Penthouse, far beyond that--that J.T. had tucked in amidst the towels in the bathroom. (Like I said, he was really very bad at being bad.) Mom didn't say a word. But that night, when we sat down for dinner, there was no plate at J.T.'s place. "I've made something special just for you," she explained to him. Cheryl and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes; it wasn't out of the ordinary for my mother to cook just for one of the boys. In fact, once there was no longer a boy at home, Mom simply stopped cooking altogether. The fact that Cheryl and I were there, well, that didn't count. But--I digress. Back to the fateful dinner. So daughters roll their eyes, son anticipates a treat, we all say grace. And then my mom gets up, pulls a plate out of the warm oven, and sets it in front of J.T. On it sat a pile of garbage, an oozing glop of gunk from the trash can. And then, very calmly, she said, "If you're going to put garbage in your mind, you'll put it in your body."

I was totally impressed.

I was even more impressed by what she said next: "If you ever show such disrespect to me or your sisters again, you'll eat nothing but garbage at my table." I was 15. I had never thought of myself as someone to be respected. I certainly had never dared to think that any one of my five older brothers was supposed to respect me. I rather liked the idea.

Hugh hasn't a clue how lucky he is that I failed Creative Punishments.

When we can do nothing

On the night of Clinton's re-election in November 1996, my niece Anne lost our car. These things happen.

In 1995 Anne was a freshman here at the university--like me, Anne was a Chicagoan in exile, tho' unlike me, by choice. She'd chosen to come down, to escape Family, yet to be with Extended Family (me). Naturally, I'd invited her to join us for our election-watch party that, given the results, turned into Quite The Celebration. At which my then-18-year-old niece got rather drunk. I figured it was ok. A learning experience. A Teaching Moment. She was spending the night. She wasn't driving. I'd be able to hand her Tylenol, hold her hair back while she vomited, and offer gentle, non-mom-like-but-totally-cool-aunt-like advice as she showered.

I was an idiot.

The next morning I awoke, as usual, to baby Hugh's cries. Plucking Hugh out of his crib and Owen from his bunk, I headed with my two pajama-clad little guys toward the kitchen. I turned on the light. Oh sweet Jesus. Something Gone Awry. A chair on its side. A couple of overturned bottles of red wine. Broken glass everywhere.

I did what I always do in a crisis: I shrieked, "KEITH!!" Said hero came running, well, stumbling, really, out of bed. "Geez," he said. We looked at each other and then, as one, went running toward the guest room where Anne was supposed to be sleeping. She wasn't there. She wasn't there. We ran outside. Neither was our Toyota Tercel. Anne, our regular babysitter, had her own set of keys to our house and the Tercel.

The next few hours were truly, tremendously, terrifying. When I was 13, my 20-year-old brother had died when his car crashed into a culvert as he was driving home late one night. A few years later, my sister was in a serious car accident. A year later, another brother was injured in another car accident. And then, a few years after that, that same brother. plus another and his two sons, my oldest nephews, were in a serious car crash that left two of them in comas. So--Anne, lots of red wine, our car--the possibilities were horrifying.

In fact, she was asleep in her dorm room. When we found her, well, we got the giggles. She was ok. Miserably hungover, but ok. And meanwhile, we couldn't find our car. Anne had no memory of the previous night. The car was nowhere to be found. We ended up having to call the campus police (Hello? Um, yes, we've lost our car. No, no, it hasn't been stolen. Just, um, well, misplaced). After several hours of searching thru the campus parking lots, we finally uncovered the Tercel. Parked perfectly. Anne turned out to be an amazingly capable drunk.

Flash forward to 2010. Owen is a freshman at a college far far away in Portland, Oregon. People say to me, "How can you stand him being so far away?" And I think, "He's 18. At least I have no idea what he's doing."

When Owen was 8, I took him for his second snow skiing trip to Colorado. Already attuned to All Things Cool, this time he wanted to try snow boarding, so I enrolled him in snowboard school. And, as it happened, I ended up on the chair lift just behind him as he headed up the mountain for his first snowboard run. Oh. Dear. God. Owen was in the middle of two bigger boys. The lift seat came around and up they jumped; he wasn't on properly, yet up the seat swung. So there I was behind him, watching my beautiful boy, the light of my life, the center of my existence, precariously dangling on this chair, while the two boys on both sides of him proceeded to kick their legs and swing the chair vigorously. I could do nothing. Cell phones had yet to be invented. I could do nothing. I could only watch my boy, his butt slowly slipping off the seat, as the chair moved higher and higher up. "It's ok, it's ok," I told myself, "no one dies slipping off a chair lift, right?"--in actual fact, a child died just that way at a ski resort in Colorado just a few months ago--while I watched, helpless, praying, praying, praying.

It really is best that we have no idea when they're dangling off the chair lift, when the seat is swinging and their butt is slipping off, when they're driving after drinking a couple of bottles of red wine, when they're 18, when we can do nothing.

Out of the Mouth of a Babe

Although the historians' universe remains largely male, in over 20 years of professional life, I've never actually experienced any direct discrimination and very little overt or intentional harassment. Historians are, on the whole, fairly decent folks. Not the best dressers, mind you, and hopeless at parties, but well-intentioned all the same. No, I have no complaints to make, no grievances to file against any individuals or offices. My frustrations focus rather on the systemic maleness of academia, the way the molds all seem to be designed for male bodies, attitudes, and ambitions.

Whenever my frustrations begin to boil over, I turn to the words of wisdom uttered by my niece Hannah in McDonald's when she was about four--

We were in McDonald's on my lunch break. During the summers throughout college and graduate school when I worked as a teller in my local community bank, my sister-in-law Nancy and her kids would often meet me for lunch. On this particular day, we were talking about how great the kids were doing in their music lessons. Pointing a French fry at each kid, Nancy said, "Alex, you can be a cellist in a symphony some day. Anne, you can be a violinist. And Hannah, you can be a concert pianist." At that point, Hannah, a deceptively sylph-like little blonde, gasped in horror, scrambled up so that she was standing on top of her plastic chair, and bellowed, "BUT I DON'T WANT TO BE A PENIS!"

Precisely.

Boot Gal

Once a week our local paper includes a feature called "Style File." The reporter stops a well-dressed woman, takes a photo, and interviews her about her clothing, with questions such as "Are you a shoe or handbag gal?" Shoe Gal replies with numbers, gobmacking numbers: "Oh, for me, it's shoes, definitely shoes. I have 253 pairs. . . no, make that 255," as she looks down at her shopping bags and gives a little tinkly laugh. Handbag Gal seems more interested in quality than quantity, rattling off the names of her handbags, kind of like my mom proudly reciting the names of her grandchildren. Even more amazing, all these women can identify everything on their body by name. Not, "umm, my sister gave me this sweater for Christmas awhile back," or "I bought these jeans on sale at Dillard's, I think, or wait, no, I guess it was Macy's." Nope, instead it's "Oh, I'm wearing my favorite Gino Leopardo boots with leggings by Mangia, a tunic by Shmoozer and a vest by La De Dah."

I am not on a first-name basis with my clothes. We are just not that intimate. And I'm neither a Shoe Gal nor a Handbag Gal--and I'm afraid it shows.

For two days this week, however, I did have almost $1000 in new boots hanging out in my bedroom. I blame menopause. And my niece.

The menopause explains the sudden urge to acquire fashionable funky boots. At least that's my hypothesis. Actually it's more than a hypothesis; it's my new mantra: blame menopause. Besides, I'm getting old. Soon I'll be in those big clunky geriatric shoes with knee-high stockings puddling around my ankles. I need funky fashionable boots now.

Menopause and imminent old age explain the sudden compulsion to seek out boots, but not how $1000-worth of boots ended up in my bedroom. That was my niece's fault. She introduced me to the wonders of zappos.com. [Legal disclaimer: I am not an employee of Zappo's and I have never accepted any money from Zappo's. Which is not to say I wouldn't should the chance arise, oh amazing Zappo people.] Here's the deal: you place an order and shipping is FREE on both delivery and returns. So, as my niece pointed out, who needs the mall? You just go online, pick out bunches and bunches of shoes (or in my case, boots), wait a day, and then try them on at home. Then you put them all back in the box, print out the return label, tape it on the box, and send the whole shebang back--and you've PAID NOTHING. Unless, of course, you keep a pair. Or two.

Hey, Style File. Menopausal Boot Gal awaits.

Snow Day

Today I played in the snow.

I have always loved winter. It's not that I don't know winter. Growing up in Chicago, I had a lot of it. I know the 40-below-zero days when the world goes hazy the minute you step outside because your contact lenses have frozen to your eyes. I know the gray mornings on the el platform when the wind whips in across the lake and cuts through the thickest of down coats. I know the foot-deep puddles of icy slush that transform every intersection into a fiendish pedestrian's obstacle course. I know the annual and ultimately futile pursuit for stylish and sexy boots that are also warm, waterproof, snow-proof, salt-proof, and slip-proof. I know the traffic tie-ups and cancelled flights, the cars that won't start and the months looking like a Yeti. And yet I love winter. That first morning when you open the curtains and discover your world has gone white. The smell of snow in the air. The way packed-up snow crunches under foot. Snowmen and snow angels. Snow forts and snow slides. Wool sweaters. Fountains frozen mid-splash. Flannel-lined jeans. Stew simmering on the stovetop. Cheeks reddened by an afternoon sledding. Those amazing ultra-blue sky days when the sun transfigures a snowy field into the fantasy backdrop of one of those 1930s musicals. The sharp shock of a cold wind.

So yes, I am one of few individuals I know who genuinely loves winter. Winter for me has a sharpness, a precision, an icy hardness and cold clarity. The fates, however, have conspired to ensure that I am stuck in the misty moisty molding muddle of the Deep South. Where even the merest hint of snow means utter hysteria and the end of life as we know it.

But today I was back in Snowland. And today I went sledding. Today I introduced my 4-year-old nephew and my 2-year-old godson to the thrill of catapulting down a steep hillside, skidding across the flatland, and coasting to an all-tumble-out stop into powdery snow.

Today was a good day. Today was a snow day.

Perfection

My niece Anne's chiropractor/nutritionist/alternative health guru says that the state of one's bowel movements indicate one's overall bodily health. She says that said movements should be 1. odorless, 2. effortless, and 3. buoyant (that is, the final product should float). After many years of experience and observation, I have concluded that this medical mandate is the rather earthy counterpoint to Jesus' spiritual command: "Be ye perfect, even as I am perfect." Aspirational and inspirational, yes, but never to be achieved within this lifetime.

Which immediately and inevitably raises the question: What about Jesus' bowel movements? Oh, don't get all huffy on me. That's the scandal of the Incarnation: Jesus made flesh, God become Man. A man. A man who must have had to poop. So, did Jesus' poos stink? Did they sink? No, I imagine they floated effortlessly, joyously, playfully, smelling like apricots.