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    Saturday
    Aug212010

    pay now or pay a lot more later

    As my partner is a teacher, I know a lot of teachers. Most are acquaintances, some are family and some are good friends, but all -- and I do mean all, regardless of experience or age or interest -- could learn many things from this woman:

    Jane Schaffer was my English teacher. Is, if you didn't know, kind of THE English teacher. She has legitimized my lazy ass to professors. She has given me something to talk about with educators. She has developed a writing program so genius that a Google search of her name will yield, among other things, lots and lots of bitching and teenagers' fervent demands such as, "WHO IS THIS JANE SCHAFFER, ANYWAY?!"
    She is also about to die from an inoperable brain tumor.
    The injustice of this situation is monumental.
    Ms. Schaffer terrified me. Her corrections were blunt and her criticisms biting. Her tolerance for the half-assed, the rude or foolish, the less-than-best was nil. She and I played chicken for nearly a year -- me phoning it in and her handing back Ds -- until finally I gave in, did my best, and she won. When she returned my first A paper, she asked me to stay after class and scolded me for wasting her time in the past. From that point forward, and to this day, she has been my audience. If it doesn't pass her muster in my mind, it doesn't go on the page, on the screen, to the printer, to the publisher. Period. She is my Jiminy Cricket in high top Doc Martens, writing a big red "DUH" next to anything less than insightful, a "What's your point?" when I fall off the rails. Jane forced me, and all of her students, to be the most authentic version of ourselves. Poses and affectations abounding during adolescence were seen through in short order, exposed and undone to your betterment or humiliation -- she didn't seem to mind which. If only all, or even a portion of high school teachers could cut through the bullshit so effectively. Her classroom was safe. It was smart and she was smart; her disapprovals were plain and her approval sincere, fact-based. I never questioned her praise because I never questioned her (very, very... very liberal) panning.
    When I graduated from high school, she took me by the shoulders and insisted, "You are a writer. WRITE." This, said so matter-of-factly, is at the top of my life's list of affirmations. One of the kindest things ever said to me.
    Several years after high school, when she and I had had no contact save a few, brief chance meetings at the airport, my ex-father-in-law attended one of her workshops. I came up in conversation and she sent him home with regards, told him I was one of her most talented former students. Years passed again and we found each other on Facebook. We exchanged weeks' worth of emails wherein she berated me for a few life choices and asked why she hadn't seen my name on the NY Times Bestseller List before she told me about her deteriorating health. She may as well have punched me in the stomach. Repeatedly. I told her that death was simply not an option. Unfortunately, it seems that she didn't listen.

    So, Ms. S., Jane, as you insisted I call you, there you are as old as I was when we met. To imagine you unconscious, sapped of your snappiness, your vim, your immense intelligence crowded by sick is just too unpleasant. Here's to your stories of sex after 50, to making a name for yourself, to unsolicited but necessary advice, to being so fucking real. To sayings like "pay now or pay a lot more later" and "it will be revealed." Your run hasn't been long enough, but it's certainly been good and I hope you know how dearly I love you.
    Friday
    Aug132010

    love letters home

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q4foLKDlcE]
    Today, after a thoroughly nice first birthday party for a very sweet, toothy little boy, my own fell asleep in the car -- something he hardly ever does, but has done twice in the past week. I decided to drive and let him sleep; it had been a long day, and he'd certainly wake up in transfer from seat to house. The light, the rare heat, the sleepy calm all made me homesick. It was a perfect day for driving to LA, for pointing out to George the signs depicting fleeing families, the top of the Matterhorn, the graffiti. For driving with the windows rolled down and cursing the traffic, for meandering those wide, smooth freeways that intersect and loop above. The comfort of the road beneath you, so well planned.
    I sometimes think about George's future, the childhood he'll have versus the one he won't. He will not have the luxury of avoiding Mission Beach for its tourist traps and dirty sand. Or the tamarind and chili paste to hate and eat anyway and learn to love. He won't have the top of the Matterhorn to look out for.
    California, its sunshine and lilting speech, its monuments to Mexico, to excess, to sentimentalism, its burritos, late hours and mall manicures are home to me as much as my own furniture. But my son was born here, with the potable water, the performance fleece. That a-preceding-g combination that sounds, to my ears, like drowning cats. His roadtrip won't be Los Angeles but down the Mt. Baker Highway, past free manure signs and collapsed barns, a countryside you can almost hear sighing with self-satisfaction as you pass at 55 mph. So we drove it today, as he slept, as consolation. His first summertime, dusky hot and daydreamy car ride.
    Later, though, we'll do the real one together.
    Wednesday
    Aug112010

    unscathed...sort of

    One of my greatest fears in raising my son and any future children we might have is passing on my (many) neuroses. I inherited so many of my parents' problems. So many undesirable familial traits that our blue eyes and thin wrists are, in the cafe of genetics, drowned out by the din of phobia, depression, addiction, walls built so high and thick that the few who tunnel in are usually sorry they did.
    One of the things that's struck me about having a child is that my personal attachment to these neuroses is waning. I have identified, for better or worse, with my eccentricities for as long as I've had them. People could take me or leave me and I was always relatively unmoved by their decision. Dorkily, I realized this had changed while listening to Bjork's song Hyperballad, the lyrics of which I had never given much thought:

    We live on a mountain
    Right at the top
    There's a beautiful view
    From the top of the mountain
    Every morning I walk towards the edge
    And throw little things off
    Like:
    Car parts, bottles and cutlery
    Or whatever I find lying around
    ...
    I go through all this
    Before you wake up
    So I can feel happier
    To be safe up here with you

    (lyrics posted entirely without permission)
    Besides our fantastical, magical wardrobes, Bjork and I apparently have something in common. We psych ourselves up for the day with our kids. We shake off the nasties and pull ourselves up by the old bootstraps because nobody wants a crazy mama despite how appealing her craziness made her to boys at nineteen.
    I feel that I usually do a pretty good job of this. The fact of the matter is: I am not one of those cooing, adorable moms who revels in playgroup and shopping at Gymboree. I hope George loves me for these characteristics and not in spite of them, but if he doesn't, you know, kind of oh well.
    On the other hand, there are still problems I just can't get in front of. They outpace me or circumstance renders me somewhat helpless and I'm suddenly that crazy lady with a baby on a plane who's crying over the number of seats across the aisle and the fact that the customer service representative lied about KLM Royal Dutch Airlines because why the fuck would a European affiliate be flying from Dallas to Atlanta? Yeah. That was me.
    post-freak out
    I made it through a week of mother-in-love being all shifty-eyed at my hippy parenting and father-in-love pretending he wasn't going to AA meetings and sister-in-love getting unceremoniously dumped and sorta-neice eating nothing but shit carbs to my shock and horror and my stinking phobia fells me in the final seconds. True to form, you all might be amused to know, I was thinking for the entirety of the flight that when we crashed I would be vindicated. I just love being right, even hypothetically, posthumously. That's commitment to the cause.
    This was our first Family Vacation. We flew in a plane, we had a destination where we stayed for a week. We saw people to whom George is related but with whom he has nothing else in common. I did not grow up going on these kinds of vacations. I was sent alone to see foreign family or was drug to conferences where I fell in love with hotel living, the fluffy robes, the over-chlorinated pools, the familiar strangers and the approximated comforts of home. All involved, primarily, time alone. Predictability. The things I used to thrive on. Those days are most definitely behind me. And I think that's okay.
    Sunday
    Aug082010

    authenticity

    So far in my parenting experience, I haven't spent much time around people whose parenting styles differ greatly from mine. Of course -- we find people who validate what we know. Or "know." Whatever. I knew ("knew") that our trip to see Nathan's family would bring about the first situation where our choices would be repeatedly questioned, albeit in what I anticipated would be tolerable ways. We are raising George, communicating with George, even being around George in ways very different than Nathan's family are used to seeing, let alone doing. I can handle it; I am confident in my choices. Right? RIGHT.
    Cue the "tips," on the way home from the airport. Poor George was overtired from his long day of charming everyone half to death and trying to discern if that bizarre smile plastered on his mother's face was genuine or meant "I am trying not to give you the impression that I am waiting for our impending grisly death." He needed to sleep. And oh, George's attributes are many and varied but his sleeping habits are not exactly a selling point if we're being honest.
    "He might surprise you," Nathan's mom kept saying, suggesting repeatedly that we just buckle the poor kid back into the carseat that held him captive all day. The thing is, he might've -- sure. He also might've chosen to, rather than sleep, start reciting Shakespeare while strapped into said carseat on the ride home. I didn't care to test my child one more time on what had already been a very long and very stressful day for all of us.
    "I think he might surprise you," she said one last time. "You would be wrong," Nathan replied, and we went to Target while Nathan slung George for a nap. Go team.

    We did, however, have to get back in the car eventually, and he 25 minute nap at Target was so, SO insufficient. The whining let to hooting led to whimpering led to hey-I-really-mean-it-I'm-about-to-cry. So I shushed. Nathan's mom kept saying, "He'll be fine." (Like, I am sitting 3 inches away but I should just let him cry?)
    But I shushed him and shushed and shushed until long after everyone had decided I was annoying and crazy and George was finally asleep, having been put in that state as gently as I could put him while seatbelted, myself. I was proud of my authenticity, my commitment to my child in that moment, glad to have chosen caring for him over convenience or the culture of the car or suggestion or self-consciousness. Us:2 World:0


    Monday
    Jul262010

    summer son

    Has anyone gone shopping for sunblock lately? Specifically for sunblock for their baby? I am the fairest of the fair -- and I don't mean pretty. I am white. White as white can be. If my skin were smoother, some might call it porcelain, but really, I'm just pale. Some of this is by design; I have embraced my skin color and decided to allow it to remain in its natural state rather than burn it repeatedly into a tan (that, let's be honest, probably would never get past the pink stage anyway). My best friend recently gifted me the most beautiful sunhat with the widest imaginable brim and I enjoy wearing it so immensely that I've been trying to figure out how to pack it for our upcoming vacation though such a thing would be entirely impractical (stuff socks in it? I don't wear socks, though). George has sunhats and a sunshade for his stroller, which, in addition to the already kind of huge sunshade that came on said stroller, keeps him nice and shady. But. That sun, man. He sneaks in through cracks and past fabric to burn you. My kid's first sunburn is not going to be at the hands of a lazy mother, but at a baseball game when he's 8 that I am unable to attend for some reason during which he doesn't REAPPLY like I will be instructing him from now until then.

    So, I am in the curious predicament of having read the Environmental Working Group's sunscreen guide and still needing to purchase some sunscreen. Even the highest-rated products include warnings about organ system toxicity and neurotoxicity and contamination concerns, bioaccumulation...I don't think I need to mention that the list goes on. I also don't know if I need to, but will mention that we cannot exactly afford $20 for less than two ounces of sunscreen, which is the going rate for the sort that won't, you know, KILL YOU SLOWLY.
    Nathan and I were talking this over in the car, and though I think this is a little hyperbolic, I compared the situation thusly: what if antibiotics were poisonous? Not, like, super duper kill you right away poisonous, but if they had more negative effects on your health than positive effects, while only being marginally effective for their stated purpose. Because this is exactly the case with most sunblocks sold in the US. They don't offer broad spectrum UV coverage and they have the NASTIEST SHIT in them. I'm referring to chemicals, not even, say, the mink oil in the Mustela crap that we bought and promptly returned today.
    What this comes down to, what bums me out SO intensely that I have to keep using capital letters, is that, with the exception of ONE Johnson & Johnson product that is rated with a mere "moderate" health concern, none of the acceptable sunblocks are affordable (read: less than $15) or offered by well-known, mainstream companies. What this means to me is that poor people are once again getting the shaft, because they are assumed to be uninformed. Worse, are they also assumed to be so value-less that their health isn't even a consideration? How much money have these companies made peddling ineffective, harmful products to people who are simply trying to protect their children?
    I have a love/hate relationship with the cosmetics database, the website on which the EWG catalogues the safety of pretty much every cosmetic available in the US. I love it for making me a knowledgable consumer, but I hate how few options I'm left with after trolling it for even a few minutes every couple of months. Diorshow mascara, you're incredible, but my eyelashes and I have left you to languish in your own immunotoxicity. Lorac tinted moisturizer, damn, you were non-greasy and just the right color, but my reproductive organs aren't quite finished working. And this brings me to what really gets my goat about sunblock. It's not what I consider to be a "cosmetic," as in, something you use out of vanity. It's a product meant to maintain our health. To protect us from something almost unavoidable. It's our body's last bastion once clothing, beautiful best friend hats and the indoors have failed. It shouldn't hurt us while claiming to help.

    ps. California Baby sunblock rules.