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Posts Tagged ‘Family’

What Was at Stake

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on June 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Some of you may be watching the Belmont Stakes, but I’ve been texting with my brother-in-law Charlie.
He’s in DC with his Dad, Hudson Favell, a WWII vet making his first pilgrimage to the Washington memorials.

Townships in NJ redirected traffic and stood at attention to salute the vets traveling South today. Bus loads of octogenarians who signed up as teenagers to fight for freedom and democracy on foreign shores.

On this D Day weekend we thank these brave men for their courage.

And I particularly want to thank you Hudson, for serving on the Zaniah, and for being the best Grandfather my children could ever dream of – for loving them, carving them beautiful wooden blocks, officiating at the Bride’s wedding, and taking care of Grandma Ada! You are the best of the greatest generation!

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The Best Defense

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on June 5, 2014| 2 Comments »

Before we moved into our NJ home on a tributary of the Shrewsbury River, we naturally had to do some a lot of renovating. This was our modus operendi – take whatever style we get and transform it into our own; you give me a Jetson, mid-century modern house, and I give you a touch of French Country home. But unlike scraping a tacky, Roman wallpaper mural off a dining room wall, this job surprised us since it had been hidden during each inspection. Underneath (or above) every ceiling were wires that stretched into infinity.

The wires belonged to some intricate, ancient security system the previous owner felt moved to install for some inexplicable reason. There was a moment of deliberation. Should we try and retain or revamp this system? I wanted to keep the 60s doorbell after all, and Bob drew the line at the front door. The faux-Chinese door with its handle in the middle was going to stay! But the wires had to go. While the contractor was wrestling with its tendrils, Bob said to me, “Honey, the best defense is a dog!”

At the time we had a pair of dogs our Vet called “The beautiful and the sublime,” or was it “The ridiculous and the sublime?” Bones was our proud, old German Shepherd, our first married dog. He slept under the Bride’s crib and kept her safe at all costs. He also kept UPS and other invaders at bay. Then there was the ridiculously young Tootsie Roll, a Cardigan Welsh Corgi, the Bride’s first dog. She picked her out amidst other Corgis without tails insisting that a dog needed a tail! If Bones’ bark didn’t keep a home intruder out, Toots would chomp on their heels and drive them into the river for sure.

So you see we didn’t have security systems, we didn’t hunt deer or shoot skeet, and so we had no need to hide firearms in our dashboard or keep handguns in our nightside table or rifles under our bed. We felt pretty secure living in our little hamlet with our dogs. Certainly Bob had pulled many a bullet out of a patient on the wrong end of a gun over his years as an Emergency Physician. He even pulled nail gun nails out of a poor guy, and stitched up many a knife wound. But guns were by far the worst offenders. And I know lots of Americans who own guns just love them.

They clean them well and keep them locked up and stored away so their kids can’t fiddle with them. They even teach these kids how to handle them properly, which is fine when you live in a rural environment and part of what your family eats is actually game meat. I don’t want to change your culture, even if sometimes a child might accidentally shoot his best friend while playing around with a firearm.

The Safest Home

Just please don’t call up all your gun carrying buddies and decide to open-carry your guns around Target…or Starbucks or any university, or any public place really. Because the rest of us, the other 50% or maybe more of Americans don’t want to see your legal rifles slung over your shoulders while we’re buying diapers, or coffee. And we certainly don’t want to see a posse of gun toting white guys sashaying around the next corner. In fact I’m surprised the Supreme Court hasn’t taken up this issue, cause it’s kind of like yelling fire in a crowded building isn’t it. “Look at me, I could blow you all away with one little squeeze of my finger!”

So if you feel the same way I do, about shopping with people who are openly carrying firearms, please let Target and your legislators know cause it’s a state’s rights thing of course. Even the NRA said these guys are nutso. But then, they backed down, admitting it was a mistake to call them “attention-hungry and weird.” http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jun/4/nra-backs-down-admits-it-was-a-mistake-to-shame-op/ I hope Target gets the message, #OffTarget

PETITION: http://every.tw/offtarget
TWITTER: @Target #OffTarget
PHONE: 612-304-6073; press 1 for guest relations
EMAIL: http://tinyurl.com/kd49bte
FAST TWEET: http://momsdemandaction.org/offtarget/

Buddha guarding Cait

 

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In Brief

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on June 2, 2014| 2 Comments »

The Briefing Room will be losing one of the sweetest White House Press Secretaries in recent years. Jay Carney, who btw looks like an altar boy I once knew, happens to be married to a fellow journalist, Claire Shipman. He told the morning news feed that he has two small children and he was missing too much of their lives! I almost spit up my coffee.

What a relief, to hear a man in a position of power say such a thing, proudly, bravely and without rancor. Is it just coincidence that Shipman and her co-author Katty Kay just published a book about the confidence gap between men and women? I recently wrote about “The Confidence Code” and a woman’s tendency to talk less in meetings and ruminate more; “tortured cycles of useless self-recrimination.” 

Reminds me of Josh Levs, a CNN reporter, who recently fought CNN’s parent company Time Warner for equal paternity leave. Moms and adoptive parents were allowed 10 weeks family leave whereas dads only got 2 weeks paid leave. “It can’t be a conversation by women about women,” Levs said of resolving family-work conflicts. “In a country that prides itself on family values, we need to do a much better job of valuing families … and that includes fathers.”

One of the best things we women of the 60s and 70s did was to raise our sons to expect to be involved in their children’s lives. Millennials today want to not just be in the birthing room, they want to be present in the sturm and drang of childhood. Hooray I say! Let’s all lift our coffee cups to men who change diapers.

And to my honey, who stuck by me for 35 years as of tomorrow, I’d like to say in brief, “Cheers!” Even if he did hang one piece of wallpaper upside down a long, long time ago, he proved to be the most loving father and supportive husband in the world. For sitting with me in the family room while “sleep training,” for teaching them how to ride bikes and drive cars, for telling me countless times that everything would be OK, even after endless days of toddler turmoil and teenage angst. I salute you dear partner in life. And I’d pick you again, in a heartbeat!    IMG_0073

 

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Beware of Angels

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 25, 2014| 4 Comments »

hr-angels-600x320“I think my guardian angel drinks.” This just popped up on my Facebook feed. It made me smile, not guffaw mind you, but it also made me think of Virginia Woolf’s famous advice to women writers. She instructed us to, “Kill the Angel in the House.”

By the Angel, Woolf meant the female — more specifically, the mother and wife — whose role in life was to be the gracious hostess-cook-and-mender, smoother-over of family tensions, and graceful supporter of the endeavors of husband and (male) children. Woolf had to kill the Angel, she said, because its top priority is self-suppression and conciliation, while to write one has to display “what you think to be the truth…” reblogged from “YeahWriters” on Tumblr

Granted Woolf was raised during the Victorian era, and started writing between the two great wars of the last century; and then there’s that messy part about her suicide at the age of 59 in 1941. When I was younger, I was slightly afraid of reading Woolf, like depression might be catchy and if I wasn’t strong enough… Still I often thought about her dictum to have a room of my own. In particular when I was trying to meet a deadline in the corner of my dining room with the Rocker’s band in the garage before the Bride had to be picked up from field hockey. Oh, and what would we do for supper?

Do women ever work – either inside or outside the home – without all those crazy household and childcare thoughts buzzing around in their heads? You know that men do not have those same thoughts while working; I dare you to find me the man who is wondering about his (insert anything we worry about here – child’s ear infection, dry cleaning, dog’s vet appointment, grocery shopping) while he is at work. When my wise mentor Great Grandma Ada headed off to get her Masters in Marriage and Family Counseling while her boys were still in school, I remember her telling me how she wished she could sit on the porch, like Lucy, her housekeeper/nanny, and snap peas with her youngest. But she had a Wild Heart, she cut her teeth on Betty Friedan, and so she left the Angel in the capable hands of Lucy. Ada was lucky, most women in the 60s didn’t have a surrogate homemaker.

Betty’s bible said, “Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women’s denigration of themselves.”

I find it disheartening that in this day and age the Angel in the House is still so much a part of us. Women are asked interview questions that are never asked of men with families. Even the top CEOs in business will make only 69% of her male counterparts. “Low expectations based on external factors like gender or race, rather than on personal skill sets, are particularly pernicious. Ambition (that Wild Heart) depends on belief in oneself, which requires recognition and reinforcement by others.”

And there’s the rub, the problem that two journalists, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, tackled in a recent Atlantic article titled, “The Confidence Gap.” http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/the-confidence-gap/359815/ Why is it most women don’t believe in themselves, or they downplay their promotion by saying they were just lucky; while demonstrating competence, why do we lack confidence? OK, so if you went to Catholic school it was kind of a sin to be too full of yourself. Still, it’s impossible to sum up Kay and Shipman’s research, but let’s just say it’s a combination of nature and nurture.

And the Angel in the House. It’s hard to feel confident when you’re juggling a home with children and a full time job. When women my age were defying their mothers and entering the work force, I often heard them opine, reluctantly for a “wife.” Because they knew beyond all doubt that no one would pick up the slack of laundry, cooking, dishes, cleaning, getting up in the middle of the night with a sick child, nobody. If they wanted something done, they had to ask for it because it just wasn’t in a man’s sphere of thought. “Honey, you’ll be at such and such a place at 5, could you pick up the kid, please?”

This Angel was always in our head. I was taught my guardian angel lived on the tip of a pin, I had no idea it could fly right into my brain! It’s about time we banished her, make her a margarita and bid her “Adieu!”

It was she who bothered me and wasted my time and so tormented me that at last I killed her…And when I came to write I encountered her with the very first words. The shadow of her wings fell on my page; I heard the rustling of her skirts in the room. I turned upon her and caught her by the throat. I did my best to kill her. My excuse, if I were to be had up in a court of law, would be that I acted in self–defence. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing. Thus, whenever I felt the shadow of her wing or the radiance of her halo upon my page, I took up the inkpot and flung it at her. She died hard. Her fictitious nature was of great assistance to her. It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality…Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer. Virginia Woolf

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Transitions

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on May 20, 2014| 2 Comments »

“Would you eat them here or there? Would you eat them anywhere?” You may recognize the voice of Dr Seuss. His Cat is a master manipulator. You may think you don’t like green eggs and ham, but gosh darn it, you’re gonna like them eventually.

It’s a great book for a toddler, especially the Love Bug. She likes to tell me where to sit, “Nana, sit here!” She likes to tell me where to go, like when I told her that Mama would be home, she looked me right in the eyes and said “Nana go bye bye!” I told her my plan was to stick around for awhile and she smiled as if to say that would be just fine.

Transitions can be hard at every stage in life. Who knew that crossing the threshold of a door – from the world of the wind and the sun outside with popsicles on the porch and school crossing guards who wave “Hello,” to the world inside with high chairs you have to sit in and diapers that for some reason must be changed all the time. My Bug, like Jane Goodall in her new children’s book,”Me Jane,” loves to be outside!

So coaxing her to come in is a major challenge. In fact I’d forgotten this simple fact about toddlers – everything is a negotiation! Then I remembered that the Bride loved a good argument at this age too. I was convinced she was going to study law, that’s how good she was. I found myself saying my daughter’s name instead of the Bug’s, over and over again because her level of sophistication is equal to her mothers.

So last night I thought ahead. After dinner I sat the Bug down and said we needed to talk. I told her I would keep my promise and we would have popsicles on the porch, but then I expected her to be a BIG GIRL when it was time to come in and “Not Cry.” She said “Not cry.” And I said, “OK, big girl, do you want a strawberry or a grape popsicle?” And she said, “Strawberry.”

It worked!

Today was the best day ever. We spent the whole morning at the Nashville Zoo and topped it off with a wild animal carousel ride. She eagerly hopped on the painted kangaroo with me and we waved at Mama who is thankfully home and was waving to us miraculously every time we rode around in a circle.  And now that I’ve got this toddler transition thing down, from getting her into the car without a fuss to getting her out of the tub at night, I’ll be heading home. My husband tells me he’s missing me. But leaving her, will be the hardest transition of all.

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Wildfires

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on May 16, 2014| 4 Comments »

This is gonna hurt! You see I accidentally tripped over a big soft mat at a “Bounce House” the other day and managed to break my pinky finger…so…no worries though, the Love Bug was fine. Nana’s “Ouchie” is turning pretty shades of blue, and according to 3 Emergency Physician consultations – one in real time, one by email, and one by phone – there’s nothing to be done. “Ice, Advil, and Rest.” Which one forgot I’m caring for a toddler? We had to bake cookies!

My daughter has been sending me glowing reports about the West Coast. The weather, the people, the coastline! The Groom has a conference to attend and they are both visiting transplanted friends in LA. Then I turn on CNN this morning, while I’m listening for a few wake-up chirps from the nursery, and you’d think the whole of California is ablaze in wildfires and Santa Anna winds!

Of course my wisecrack comeback to her Cali salutations was to remark about earthquakes maybe being better than tornadoes. I can’t help it when a little Woody Allenesque just comes out. The truth is I love San Francisco, but haven’t seen the rest of the state. Would I miss the humidity? The Mountains? Would I have to get Botox? At some point I think we all get too old to move. Every house we owned I swore would be the last. But ER physicians like to roam, it’s part of their DNA, they carry their skills with them.

It’s almost been like being a military wife. Some people look at moving like it’s a thrilling wonderful adventure, and then there’s me. It was great for awhile, but at some point you wonder if you’re leaving your best friends behind you. The ones who know where the spoons are in your kitchen.

The Rocker and Ms Cait have been talking about a move out west. And the Groom will finish his fellowship soon and be looking for an academic position. If both my children and the Bug and future grandchildren end up out there would we pack it up again? It’s the Irish in me that loves to put down roots, to stay connected to family and friends. Still.

It would have to come with conditions; like moving to the Blue Ridge meant having a view, and building a house. If we do cross the country in the next couple of years there will be no more Bounce Housing! And only looking at earthquake-proof houses that are no where near a mudslide. Maybe we’d find a pony for the Bug, and name her Wildfire.         IMG_0520

 

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Momma Pajamma

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on May 11, 2014| 3 Comments »

Happy Mother’s Day to one and all. This post will have to be short since I’m busy being  a Nana currently. Nothing can prepare you for the look in your grand daughter’s eyes when she sees you again. It’s not heart warming, it’s heart melting – literally your heart just implodes inside itself. Kaboom, or “TaDa!” as we like to say.

I know I’ll never have to pick dozens of bees out of my son’s clothes again. Or sit in an ice cold skating rink and cheer him on to do ice hockey battle. I’m done sitting on the sidelines for my daughter’s cheerleading at Mini/Mighty/Football games. And I’m finished hosting sleepovers of girls doing their nails while watching Dirty Dancing. Teaching them to ride bikes and drive cars was mostly Bob’s job, but the rest of it – the messy, miraculous ritual, the day-in-and-day-out care, love, feeding, clothing, nursing and management job was the job I signed up for.

And I was just starting to realize that my job was done. That in fact, they wouldn’t really need me for the rest of their lives. Meaning that Bob and I could pat ourselves on the back; after all, we’d raised two, count ’em two, happy, confident, compassionate and fairly successful kids! Ahem, I meant adults.

But before we could get too comfortable in our new roles as parents of adult children, we became Grandparents. And now I know that all the miraculous love and bliss that babies bring into their new home, it just gets squared when you become the Nana. Because you realize it’s not the end of the world when they bruise their knee, or follow behind you cutting down all the perennials you’ve just finished planting. We take a longer view, we know this thing called childhood doesn’t last that long.

So when the Love Bug just spontaneously snuggles her damp head under my arm while I’m reading her a story about a monkey named George, I melt. Being a Grandmother is the reward for all those sleepless nights and teenage moments of angst. Grandparenting gives us another chance, to love unconditionally.

Watching Little League Baseball last night

Watching Little League Baseball last night

Well I’m on my way, I don’t know where I’m going
I’m on my way, I’m taking my time, but I don’t know where
Goodbye to Rosie, the queen of Corona

By Paul Simon, Me and Julio

 

 

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Abnormally Normal

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2014| 4 Comments »

Did you feel normal growing up? The Rocker’s friend back in Jersey, a guy from his early high school heavy metal band years, asked me this question the other day. He was writing a paper for his college upper-level Psych course and had to interview someone from another generation. By that I think he meant a “senior!” Why he picked the mom who served bagel dogs and root beer after school is beyond me. Needless to say, I was flattered.

“When you were growing up, did you ever think you were abnormal in any way?”

Doesn’t everybody? But that’s not what I said. I said “Yes,” and went on to try and explain how this could be a good thing. I knew I was abnormal because my name didn’t match my foster parents. First of all, I was the only kid I knew with foster parents. My last name belonged to a father who had died in Scranton and a mother who had been crippled in a head-on car crash. Having two moms in two different states wasn’t normal then. No matter how hard I tried, I could never really be their child.

I said that I also felt different because I had strawberry blond hair. But that’s not the same as saying that my signature mane turned almost white in the summer and got redder as the winter sun faded. That I felt like a too tall, skinny, scrawny kid. That my real (biologic) mom, the Flapper, said she could always find me in a crowd. That I made myself a bowl of spaghetti at night before bed to put on some weight. That I dreamed of having jet black hair just so I could fit in and not stand out. Later I would thank my Nana’s mahogany red hair and the Flapper’s platinum blond bob for bestowing their unique recessive genes on me; but as a kid, I was mortified.

“How have your own attitudes toward what’s normal and what’s abnormal changed over the course of your lifetime?”

Now that is a loaded question. First of all, what constitutes a “family” is very different. My hodge-podge of half/step/foster and biologic siblings is pretty tame, or normal today. Marriage equality has leveled the playing field. Growing up with a Jewish step-father in my teen years, with college educated brothers, I stepped out of the cocoon my foster parents had made for me. That little Catholic school girl became a child of the universe, with a rather striking liberal, progressive bent. Except for one thing, I’m pretty much in agreement with most of my current family’s attitudes.

That one thing is the death penalty. My step-father, who was a town judge, must have had some effect on me since even the Flapper was against the death penalty. For years I differed with the rest of my loved ones, like a lone wolf cast adrift whenever the subject came up. My reasoning was subjective; if somebody ever killed one of mine, I’d be the first to retaliate. There were, in my mind, circumstances that should relieve the taxpayer from paying for a monster’s life in prison…like killing a child, a police officer, or planning to ram planes into tall buildings etc.

But my philosophy about government-induced-death has been slowly changing. After reading about “false confessions” and mistaken convictions once DNA evidence was introduced. And knowing how the justice system is rigged toward the wealthy. After seeing how most of the civilized world has stopped killing its prisoners – so much so that the needed chemicals are hard to come by for a lethal injection. And this week, after hearing about the botched execution in Oklahoma, it became harder for me to justify my pro-death penalty stance. I could rant about pro-lifers not caring about the children born into poverty, and yet I found myself in their camp, a double paradox, when it came to the death sentence.

Then I read why those two prisoners were on death row. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/04/30/why-were-the-two-inmates-in-oklahoma-on-death-row-in-the-first-place/?tid=pm_national_pop And now I wonder why the gun lobby doesn’t try to bring back the firing squad. And I’m only half kidding.

The lone Conservative, surrounded by his Liberal sisters

The lone Conservative, surrounded by his Liberal sisters

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Carbon Bootprint

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Happy Earth Day everyone. I was reminded of my favorite psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s, saying this morning, “At any given moment we have two options; to step forward into growth, or to step back into safety.”  I loved his theories when I was an undergrad Psych major – only I’d add another option. We could also choose to stand still and do nothing.

Doing nothing is a choice. We all know these people. They are the ones who say, “Oh we tried that before and it didn’t work.” They are the self-involved, solipsistic loners. If they are not talking about themselves, well then what’s the point? Which is why a film about a young environmentalist falling for the middle-aged mom of a prescription-drug addicted daughter caught my attention.

“Bottled Up” explores the life of an enabler. Melissa Leo plays the quirky, lovable mother who flirts with denial like a pro – because for any addicted child to continue to live at home in their childhood bedroom, they would need the full cooperation of someone, right? Getting this reclusive mom to stop doing what she’s always done, and open her heart to a little, light Indie film romance gives this timely, weighty topic a humorous edge.

This Earth Day, instead of committing to changing your light bulbs, or remembering your grocery totes, why not think about what parts of your psyche may need an overhaul. Throw out the cobwebs in your head that keep you stuck in a “monkey mind,” adrift in a sea of indecision and inertia.

Instead of worrying about your carbon footprint, today let’s pull on our work boots. Get out in the yard, make the choice to start living a more healthy life. To make a few small, incremental changes toward growth, thank you Dr Maslow! After all, if we heal ourselves, maybe the planet will have a chance? Our hydrangeas need pruning and food! I’ll  eat more oranges, walk more and complain less. Maybe try to avoid sick/germ carrying people – unless it’s my Love Bug, then all bets are off. I’ve been wondering if all the Puffs tissues I’ve been going through with my latest virus are biodegradable?!

Speaking of my little Easter bunny. This is what you get when your adult children have to work on Easter Sunday. The Bride, my Jewish ER doctor/daughter and her husband the Christian Groom, who was on call in the MICU, sent the Bug off to a day filled with chocolate and jelly beans courtesy of their wonderful Nanny Kristy and her son Caiden. And for this moment, I am eternally grateful.        10271536_10203190002052914_8222434554150655467_n

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A Family Tradition

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on April 6, 2014| 2 Comments »

Kugels are being frozen, matzoh balls rolled, and families are getting ready to gather again for their annual Seder. It’s been a rite of passage for me ever since I married into my husband’s huge Jewish family. Don’t get me wrong, my stepfather was Jewish, but the Irish Flapper didn’t do Passover. This holiday is unlike anything else, it can’t be compared to Easter, because Easter was a direct result of the Last Supper, which was a Passover Seder, if you get the drift. This is more like a Jewish Christmas. Everybody has got to get home for the Seder.

We sit around a large table and tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt and our path to freedom. There are prayers and songs and finally food. Every single Jewish family around the world is going to be doing this in eight days. My specialty, as you all know, is the haroses – a delicious condiment of apples and dried fruit meant to symbolize the bricks and the labor that was used while our people were slaves. It happens to be the star attraction on Grandma Ada’s Seder plate.

I remember my first Seder with the Baby Bride, 1980, like it was yesterday. Driving from the Berkshires back to NJ. All the relatives cooing over her, holding her, giving her presents. A great tradition was being passed down and I knew it was important to pay attention. Bob would one day lead the Seder, recline at the head of the table, and ask questions just to keep us on our toes. Last year the same rituals were repeated, only the Love Bug stole the show.

But this year we’ll be missing our north star. Judith married Ada’s nephew after a long and hard divorce. She brought him back to us, a happier healthy man. She was a counselor, whose smile could light up a room. A devout Jew, her parents had survived the Holocaust with numbers on their arms to prove it. It was the first time I had ever seen that horrific symbol, alive on a real person, not in a history book. And yet, somehow, they raised an angel of light.

Judith, the woman who brought a profound sense of meaning to our gathering every year, died yesterday. Her Hebrew kept Bob on track during the Seder, she would be the one to lead us through long passages, to sing without having to look at the words. Her Judaism was a living breathing tribute to her parents. Her loving spirit a balm to her husband and her son, her stepdaughters and her grandchildren. And I can’t tell you how many times she took me aside at the Seder to reassure me on my road through this long and winding family dynamic – to tell me that everything will be alright. These are just rough passages, we’ll plow through.

She battled cancer with the ferocity of her Biblical namesake. She was too young, too kind, it was too soon. And this Seder, along with all the rest to come when the Love Bug brings her baby to meet the  family, Judith will always be remembered.

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