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Archive for the ‘Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country’ Category

Technicolor Stars

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 4, 2013| 3 Comments »

A poet I’m not. But listening to Maya Angelou read from her latest book, Mom, and Me, and Mom, made me wish I could craft words of poetry. She writes about her “terrible wonderful” mother who shipped her off to her grandmother at the age of 3 after a divorce. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/30/maya-angelou-terrible-wonderful-mother They were reunited when she became a teen, and she learned to love and respect her mother, particularly after becoming a mother herself. I must read this book, because I can identify with being separated from my birth mother, and reuniting later in life. The Flapper let me go to live with her friends, because she was alone, widowed and finally crippled in that car accident, in our Year of Living Dangerously. It’s hard to imagine now, but a woman alone was not expected to work and raise a family in the middle of the 20th Century. There were no social safety nets at the time. If family or friends didn’t step in to help, often children would end up in an orphanage.

Still, Angelou called babies “Technicolor Stars.”

Yesterday I met the latest star in one of the sweetest young families in the Old Dominion. Born at 9 minutes after midnight, not even 24 hours old, MP’s mom asked me if I’d like to hold him. He had golden brown duck fuzz hair, his pink legs were still pulled up into his time-tested fetal position, and his umbilicus announced his newness to the world. He made little baby sounds that only angels can decipher, and his big dimple stamped his face with undeniable cuteness. I fell in love. 7 lbs, 7 oz. He’ll be going home today to meet his big brother and sister, and his grandmother and great grandmother from California. MP’s mom is an outstanding NICU nurse who is working toward her doctorate at UVA. She is a natural with a baby, and the dad is an ER doc who trained with the Bride. Lucky baby.

Between the polar opposite parenting types – the overly-attachment type vs the free ranging type – there is a happy medium. A sweet spot of consideration and caring. I’m thinking our friends could write a book, or a baby blog? How not to worry yourself sick with a newborn and prevent unnecessary food allergies! Believe me, with all the noise out there in parenthood land, a sensible, sane voice would be helpful. My friend Kath, although primarily a food blogger, does a good job with her baby blog. She has been my go-to for researching baby products and baby nutrition. Her son Maze is the same age as the Love Bug.
http://www.babykerf.com

Welcome home MP! Next stop on your technicolor journey, maybe the Saturday Morning City Market?
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Digital Natives

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 2, 2013| 2 Comments »

Walk with me down this little essay about technology and its effects on children. I just read an Atlantic article titled “The Touch-Screen Generation,” by Hanna Rosin. The subtitle was “What’s this technology doing to our toddlers’ brains?”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/the-touch-screen-generation/309250/

Like any good journalist, she tries not to take a side, good or bad, she presents us with the facts, the research. And just as I saw the Love Bug reaching for my iPhone, that magical thing where pictures pop up and familiar voices captivate mommy’s attention, I understood immediately how tablets like iPads, with their instant interactivity, would delight a child.

In the five years between my children’s birth, a lot happened. The Rocker was sitting on his father’s knee at the computer, he had computers in school, he was designing web pages for his buddies in middle school. For his older sister the Bride, life was different. In fact, she was the only toddler in her preschool who didn’t know who Big Bird was; our Windsor Mountain TV could only catch one Albany channel, at night, sometimes. We read Good Night Moon, we sang songs. Like “Little House on the Prairie,” it was a simple life, and one I would dream of years later. It’s where I first started writing for a newspaper…you remember those.

Still, my children didn’t grow up with a touch screen.

“Norman Rockwell never painted Boy Swiping Finger on Screen, and our own vision of a perfect childhood has never adjusted to accommodate that now-common tableau…To date, no body of research has definitively proved that the iPad will make your preschooler smarter …or rust her neural circuity – the device has been out for only 3 years.”

What’s the right answer? We (meaning people age 4 and above) are called “digital immigrants,” still learning to navigate the touch-screen universe. Rosin admits to having a 4 year old who feels digitally deprived. After all, you’re out for a nice dinner, toddler in hand, and instead of toting coloring books and small animals for some creative play at the table, how much easier would it be to mollify a cranky child with a movie or game App? The Love Bug is a digital native, she watches mom carefully summoning music from the great iPad, her dad reading research papers. It won’t be long now before her long fingers will demand the latest “Talking Baby Hippo” or “Toca Tea Party.” Yes, even 18 month olds can follow patterns and pay attention to a logical sequence in an interactive media format!

I came away from the article with this little nugget – however the parents use their tablet, children will naturally follow. It’s called “modeling” and it’s not really a new concept. Some allow free and constant access to an iPad, some allow one hour on the weekend. The funny thing was that when Rosin was trying out the unlimited time-frame idea, her child gave it up to the toy heap after about 10 days! The iPad became just another toy in the box.

So, just like TV and video games, parents have a right to be scared of the latest gizmo. Nothing really can beat one to one face-time with a parent, cooking together, reading an old-fashioned book. How we approach using the iPad sends myriad signals to our children. Do we stare at it ad nauseum? Do we reach for it before the baby? Are we addicted to touching its magical screen? The Rocker once said he was happy he didn’t have cell phones in middle school. Touche!
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Practicing her pincer grasp, getting ready to swipe.

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An Easter Miracle

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on March 31, 2013| 5 Comments »

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all biblical on you. I have my fond memories of Sacred Heart Church shrouded in purple, singing in the choir, fake green grass in a basket, biting off the head of a chocolate Easter bunny. And later, hiding colored eggs and candy around my friend’s yard so all our friends’ children could come in their little Wellies and hunt for treasure. Spring is in the air, robins are bobbing their heads.

And hospital and health and safety workers are on the job year round, 24 hours a day. For them, pausing for a big family dinner, let alone searching for jelly beans, doesn’t really happen. What happens is saltines and peanut butter at the nurse’s station. The Bride is working, and so is Bob. And here’s what happened at my daughter’s ER.

A man in his 30s walked into the waiting room and promptly collapsed in a chair. He lost consciousness, nobody even heard a chief complaint. When they hooked him up to an EKG it was obvious he was having a major heart attack; I think they call it Vfib? My doctor daughter had the biggest guy in the room, a tech, pound on his chest while she got the paddles ready. The pounding didn’t help, so she shocked him with the paddles, and he converted but unfortunately he got belligerent and pulled everything out, then passed out. She shocked him again.

And he came back to life. He was discharged from the hospital yesterday.

He has a wife and 3 children and probably will never meet my daughter. And it made me think of the husband of a friend of mine in Pittsfield, MA. In his 30s too, he woke up one July 4th morning sweating, and instead of going to the ER, he took a shower. That is where he died, while his wife tried calling his doctor and finally called an ambulance, before 911. She had a new baby and a toddler so I made baked ziti for the shiva. And I helped her collect pictures of her husband for her children, because i know what it’s like to lose a father so young.

On this Easter morning, Christianity teaches that rebirth can happen to all those who seek God, who walk humbly. As my dear friend Eve quotes:

“I cannot help but think, on this Easter morning, of how many times I have been resurrected. Like so many others, I have known moments when I thought my life had entered a tomb. I saw that great stone rolling between me and the hope of any future I could imagine. But then, through God’s grace and healing, I emerged into a garden to find people who cared for me waiting, waiting for me to return to life. I pray, therefore, for all of those who have been resurrected like me. I celebrate this new life with all of you who have stepped out of the grave into the light of Easter.” S. Charleston

Many thanks to all those emergency personnel who are working today, and just a little note to the Easter bunny – really, you need a break?
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A Musical Mission

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2013| 2 Comments »

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Why is it I’m always drawn to any story about reinvention, or finding your purpose? The woman who worked in a cubicle for years, is now selling goat cheese she makes on her farm. The ex-Governor of NJ, Jim McGreevey, is now advocating for lost women in the prison system and trying to be ordained a priest. For some of us, it’s that small intuitive voice we’ve been ignoring for so long that just has to surface. We’ve been devalued, ignored, unfulfilled. For others, the change doesn’t start within, but comes as a shock, maybe through loss or circumstance. In every life we hit a crossroad, what will you do now?

I thought I would share my son’s story this morning. If you’ve been following along on my journey from the Jersey Shore to the Blue Ridge, you know that we left my then 20 year old behind in college. I think in retrospect, he went to college to please his parents. It was an excellent program at The College of NJ (TCNJ), a new synthesis of computer engineering and design that was planning to include the music department in its curriculum. The Rocker had been in a band almost since he could stand. We insisted he study the violin for 2 years before he acquired his first Fender guitar, at the age of 9. It was the first thing he picked up in the morning, and the last thing he touched at night. He has perfect pitch, so if he heard a song he could play it. And we had wonderful neighbors in Rumson, band rehearsal was always in our garage.

One day when the Bride (who is 5 years older than her brother) came home from college, she sat out in the garage on an old couch and watched that first band. When she came back into the family room she was teary, she said she gets it now. The joy, the passion, the camaraderie. She had always excelled at everything she tried, but she still didn’t know what her major would be in college, what she wanted to be her life’s work. For her brother, there was no question. Music flowed through his fingers and possessed every fiber of his being. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he left TCNJ to play guitar with What About Frank. When the band changed their name to Parlor Mob, it was like a rocket ship took off from NJ and landed in LA at Capitol Records.

But the music business today is fickle. Labels have no time to nurture artists. When Capitol dropped their contract, Warner Brothers signed them to Roadrunner Records. More of a boutique operation, they thrived for years touring Europe twice. You can hear their music in TV shows and at professional sports arenas. We were so proud of the Rocker. We’d tell new friends our daughter was in med school, but the conversation shifted when they learned about our son the Rock Star. I went to some of their shows, and the vibe was amazing. Kids singing along to their songs, rapturous. Their last album “Dogs” was voted “Best Rock Album” in 2011 by iTunes. I was picking out my Grammy dress.

And then slowly, over the past year, the rocket ship paused. One of the guys got married, another wanted his own solo career, and Parlor Mob ended. Like any good mom, I worried, what’s next? Since the Rocker had always done session recordings with friends and performed live in other bands, I knew he had many contacts in the business.

Today my son the Rocker is composing music for film. It’s a new start, but in the same old business, where he can call the shots. His purpose was and always will be to make music, and his talent is celestial. Maybe I better start looking for an Oscar dress.
http://www.davidjamesrosen.com/#!about/mainPage

David is pictured above, looking ahead with Aunt Caitly

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As Old as Cell Phones

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on March 27, 2013| 1 Comment »

Remember those first cell phones? Clunky things you had to charge in your car. We had a friend, an orthopedist in Monmouth County, NJ, who would pace along the Sea Bright beach each summer over 20 years ago talking on his gigantic cell phone. The long antennae would wave at us in the sea breeze. We all thought he must be hugely important. When did we go from doctors trading in their pagers, to plumbers to housewives and now kids carrying their lives around in their hands? At our Seder on Monday night, a 90+ year old gentleman named Gene, a family friend forever who still goes into his office every day, fielded two cell phone calls in the midst of songs and Haggadah. I guess no one told him about cell etiquette, although we were all taking pictures with our cells.

Traveling back to the Blue Ridge, Bob and I were listening with one ear to some of SCOTUS’ arguments in the car about same-sex marriage. BTW, I so wish they would place cameras in the Supreme Court. The phrase that caught my ear and eye was Justice Samuel Alito saying, “Same-sex marriage is younger than cell phones or the Internet.” Well yes but…, the internet is even older than that, and we all know how old sex is, straight, gay or even slightly crooked. It’s about as old as the oldest profession. What’s new is trying to separate our civil society from biblical or religious laws of any kind. In fact, that’s about as new as our country!

Only ex-Solicitor General and conservative thinker Teddy Olson seemed to make any sense of it yesterday saying, “You could have said [of interracial marriage] — you can’t get married, but you can have an interracial union. Everyone would know that that was wrong.” Which begs the question, how is a same-sex legal union different from a marriage? Is a label really that important? Olson compares Prop 8 and all same-sex marriage laws to the civil rights struggle. After all, Lincoln DID free the slaves, but it wasn’t until we saw dogs attacking people on a bridge in Selma that America got the message – so saying one thing IS fundamentally different from doing another. And in my mind, saying California was wrong in imposing Prop 8, the ban on gay marriage, does not go far enough

“Homosexuality, Olson maintains, is much like race. It is not a matter of choice. ‘We are what we are,’ he says. Indeed, he likens the Proposition 8 case to Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case in which the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a law that made interracial marriage a crime.” http://www.npr.org/2010/12/06/131792296/ted-olson-gay-marriage-s-unlikely-legal-warrior

1967, the first year of college for me in Boston. 1968, the year I marched down Commonwealth Avenue in protest after Martin Luther King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. We all know what basic human rights are – the right to love and marry anyone we choose – someone of a different race, religion, clan or even sex is a fundamental right in this country, is it not? Do we have a Taliban telling us what to wear? Do our parents arrange our marriages? We can walk into a town hall or a church or a “chapel” in Vegas and walk out married. Half of us can choose to divorce, we have the right to try that wedding gown on again and again. I watched my step-father, a judge, marry people in our parlor! Love is Love and we are who we are. Cell phones have evolved, and so must we.
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This Night is Different

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on March 24, 2013| 5 Comments »

Why is tonight different from all other nights? This is one of the questions we must ponder at Great Grandma Ada’s Seder. Jewish people everywhere will recall their exodus from bondage in Egypt while eating matzoh and other ritualistic food. This holiday is equivalent to Christmas in terms of importance, only without all the gifts.

Since the dinner begins at sundown Monday night, we are traveling back to NJ today. In the past, I would drive up to help out early, being a kind of kosher sous chef to Ada and cousin Sue. We’d dice and slice, polish silver and set the tables. There were usually 30 odd family and friends expected.

I remember the first Seder with my baby Bride. It was her introduction to cousins that felt more like sisters over the years. Now it’s the Love Bug’s turn. She’ll meet her NY and CT family. Can we all sing The Circle of Life.

So tonight (Monday) will be different. Chopped chicken liver will probably be on your list of new foods to try baby girl. And Nana will make haroses just like I’ve been doing for 33 years. Maybe it won’t be so different after all.

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Lemons

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on March 21, 2013| 8 Comments »

Did you hear the horrible news? A famous high end retailer of yoga wear, Lululemon, a store I’ve visited in Green Hills once or twice with the Bride, is recalling its pants. It seems they are too see-through for the average yogini!

I’ve often felt like yoga pants aka sweat pants was my uniform of choice. I’m not proud. I like the elastic waistband – best invention since, or before, Velcro. They never require dry cleaning or ironing. They come in a wide range of dark colors. And most importantly, there’s a little spandex and something called dri-weave. Pants that stretch and breath, what liberated 21st century female would ask for more?

Yoga pants are equivalent to the perennial housecoat my foster mother Nell wore in the 50s. Made of cotton with maybe a touch of that newfangled polyester, with snaps up the front, what could be easier? Especially when you never learned to drive, so the “house” coat was aptly named. Still I always thought donning an apron on top of the housecoat was redundant.

I nominate yoga pants to be the official fashion statement for Women’s History Month! After all, you can always show up at a meeting, go to the grocery store or pop into a gym (or yoga studio) at anytime. It literally means freedom for millions of women around the world. Unless you’re French. Then you must dress on your way to and from the gym.

Here is the beautiful little Bug with her favorite toy right now. She is my workout this week; I lift her, I tote her, and get down on the floor and do yoga stretches with her. What would I do without my yoga pants? Which are thankfully not opaque. Vraiment.

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Spoil Alert

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on March 19, 2013| 7 Comments »

It’s all coming back to me now. You’ve managed to get your 6 month old on a pretty good schedule. She wakes up with the birds, breakfast nursing and then a seamless day of fun and learning with a scattering of naps in-between.

But wait, something happens; she gets a cold or maybe a grandparent comes to visit.

Bob tells me it’s my duty to spoil the Love Bug. I can play by the grandparent rule of non-stop indulgence. I remember when Grandma Ada would visit, or maybe we’d leave the Bride with her for a stolen weekend. It would always take a few days to get her back on that schedule.

Cut to the year 2013. And I have morphed into my Mother-in-Law. Would you like to wake earlier, go to bed later, fine no problem. You want to be held ALL the time? Why not. It’s all become clear to me now. Ada was raised with a “governess.” That’s what we now call a nanny, although i always think of Julie Andrews when she talks about her childhood. The Sound of Music in Brooklyn.

Ada also had live-in help while raising her 3 young sons. So actually, she got to be the spoiler early on. She lived on an Army base in Alabama, all the officers’ wives lived a charmed life. Today, the charm lies in getting enough sleep.

This Tuesday the Bride is working a 9 to 5 shift. Highly unusual in the life of a young ER doc, a normal weekday shift. It’s her least favorite because it’s the one shift that equates to less time with her baby Bug. But that’s OK with me, more time to cuddle and sing, more time to play and try some more new foods. Like mashed potatoes and avocado!

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A Saint’s Day

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on March 17, 2013| 3 Comments »

May the wind be at your back, and all that. I’m keeping it short today since I’m back in the Music City. We’ve got our green on and I cooked up some corned beef and cabbage for the medical duo. Our mission for today is to find this little Love Bug a high chair. Could a baked potato be in her future?

The Flapper gave me many tips for baby care when she came to visit the newborn Bride. The one I took to heart was that you should feed a baby a potato a day. I figure that one got off the boat from County Mayo with an Irish ancestor.

So top ‘o the mornin to you and yours. It seems our little Bug is settling into a pair of big Irish green eyes, and her hair is turning copper if you ask me. We’re letting her Mama finish her charts from yesterday. Waiting patiently since we’re headed to brunch with the girls.

Happy Saint Paddy’s day! Go get your green on and do a little jig!

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Finding Peace in Fear

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on March 14, 2013| 5 Comments »

This may be hard for our Western minds to grasp, but in order to find our bliss we need to abandon hope. I know, it’s not very intuitive, not even very Obama-friendly, but this is what Pema Chodron, a famous American Buddhist nun has to say about it:

“Hope and fear is a feeling with two sides. As long as there’s one, there’s always the other. This is the root of our pain. In the world of hope and fear, we always have to change the channel, change the temperature, change the music, because something is getting uneasy, something is getting restless, something is beginning to hurt, and we keep looking for alternatives.”

This was the place I was stuck in for a year between the births of my two children. I experienced 3 miscarriages in 1 year, the last after 20 weeks. There is no real way to explain it, the feeling that your world has shifted, that your body can’t be trusted. I was adrift in a world of hope for a new baby, and the fear that I would lose another. I stopped driving over bridges.

Let me step back and explain. The Bride’s friend from medical school, married a woman who then decided to enter medical school; they are a lovely young couple with a new baby just a couple of month’s younger than the Bug. Anna started blogging about being a new mom in medical school, about her decision to start a family in order to get the jump on fertility. It’s a lively and compelling read. http://annainmedschool.com She was recently published in the New York Times – bravo Anna!

Now Anna has written about her friend Julie. Julie has also experienced 3 miscarriages, she writes eloquently about her decision to adopt here http://julienapearphotography.com/blog/?p=1126. She and her husband are sending the word out into the universe and I was humbled by her proactive and personal blog post:

They were told “…that the most successful way adoptive parents are matched with birth mothers is through word of mouth. So today’s post is my plea to you: please help us grow our family! We have been through hell, and have come back from it stronger and more capable than ever. Erik and I are madly in love (together eight years this month!), we have supportive families and friends, a beautiful home to grow in, and we’ve learned through brutal experience that we can make it through a crisis without completely falling apart.”

Between hope and fear is resilience, is never giving up. Julie has stepped bravely into that space. They will make wonderful parents one day. If you know of a woman who may be looking for a loving home for her unborn child, here is Julie’s contact info: erikandjulieadopt@gmail.com

My rabbi told me to imagine that I was a trapeze artist, and God was my net. He helped me to let go and abandon fear.
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