How to Totally Ruin a 50-Year-Old's Day

When she comes into your store professionally dressed in a cornflower blue suede blazer, classic white silk blouse and black dress pants, with clean, professionally styled and colored hair and with just a tad of appropriately applied make-up, ask her whether she qualifies for a senior citizen discount.

When she's temporarily dumbfounded and then says, "Excuse me?" hoping she heard you wrong, increase the decimal level of your inquiry so that everyone waiting in line behind her hears you this time:

"Ma'am, do you qualify for our senior citizen discount?"

If she begins to tear up, apologize profusely, saying that the light (or your eye sight, or your headache or your glasses) must be really bad today, then hand her a tissue. If she passes out from shock, call 911.

An Open Letter to My ADULT CHILDREN

Hey guys, remember this? Way back last February, when you were oh so much much younger than you are now, I nicely requested that you go easy with the towels -- meaning that you don't use a new one for each and every shower, dumping it on the floor of your room while it's wet, until there's eventually a pile of wet, mildewed towels in your room and none left in the linen cabinet.

Remember that?

Obviously NOT, because this is what I gathered from your rooms this morning:

(And Elisabeth, lest you think you're exempt because you don't officially live here... how wrong you are! You're among the worst offenders, insisting that it's "gross" to dry your clean body with a dry, clean towel that's been set aside for you only!)

Ya know what, guys? You're awesome regarding the BIG things that matter, like working hard at school and being good friends and living your lives with maturity and responsibility. Really, in those areas I have no complaints. You truly ROCK and I am well aware how lucky we all are to get along so well, to laugh together so often, and to be able to be so open and honest with each other about things that many families can't even begin to talk about. And I love the fact that tonight, for example, all eight of us (Peter and Elisabeth with SOs) will be together for an impromptu pot roast dinner.

But please! Please, please, please guys -- make some concerted effort to conserve towels (and thus gas and electricity, not to mention my time and energy) so we don't have this once a week:

(That's a photo of 26 -- count 'em, TWENTY-frikkin-SIX washed, dried and folded towels!)

And since begging and pleading obviously hasn't worked, Mom has decided to institute a new RULE (yeah, I know -- you thought my only two rules were never drink and drive and if you're gonna have sex, have responsible sex):

From now on, no towels are to be taken from the bathroom. You can bring clothes or a robe into the bathroom with you, or you can run back to your room stark naked for all I care, but from now on NO towels are to leave any bathroom! EVER!

(And should you assume that there will be an endless supply of towels in the linen closet from now on, as there has been until now, how very wrong you are!)

I don't care if you're all over 18. If you break my new rule I will... um, I will GROUND YOU! (I'm still your mom, even if you're adults, so I reserve the right to discipline as I see appropriate.) And if your friends ask why you're grounded, you won't be telling them anything about a curfew or lying to your parents or about some dire run-in with the cops.

Oh no. Instead you'll hang your head in shame and tell your friends that your mama grounded you because you didn't respect her rule about the towels!

And really, is that a shame that you're ready and willing to face?

Codornices Dreaming

There's a space between awake and asleep where thoughts dance lightly in my head, tingling and teasing like pixie dust and then blowing away into nothingness. Sometimes I'm able to force awareness just long enough to grasp onto an elusive thought before it disappears, but most of the time I'm left only with a sensation and, if I'm lucky, an accompanying emotion.

This morning, as I drifted in and out of sleep, I dreamed of holding my breath so as not to scatter the pixie dust. And maybe because it was morning and I was closer to consciousness anyway, I was able to not only be present in my dream, but to remember it.

I was at Codonices Park in Berkeley, a park I loved as a child. I was five. And I was 45. I was both five and 45 in my dream. At the same time. I know this because I was aware of both my physical presence and my deepest emotions being both very childlike and very womanly.

Codonices Park has an amazing concrete slide that's built into the hillside. It's been there for at least 60 years, perhaps longer, and I can promise you that just about every child who has grown up in Berkeley for the past six decades knows what it means to tear a flap off a cardboard box, lay it flat at the top of the cold, gray slide, hold onto it with one hand while positioning themselves on it for maximum speed, and then pushing off for the long curvy ride to the bottom. And I'll bet that every child knows the tunnel that runs under Euclid Street from Codonices Park to the Berkeley Rose Garden on the other side of the street.

These were places I played as a child, and in my almost-asleep-almost-awake morning dream, these were places I played as an almost-adult-almost-child. I was phenomenally happy in my dream, as children so often are, feeling playful and carefree, feeling love and loved, and being completely in the moment. In my dream, I flew down the slide, becoming airborne, and floating as if my ripped cardboard had become a magic carpet. In my dream I discovered jewels that lined the walls of the tunnel, jewels that were warm to the touch, so I held my child-and-woman skin against them, feeling magic -- and magical -- as they warmed me. And in my dream the Rose Garden bloomed every color of the rainbow and the flowers that grew tall all around me felt like a velvet blanket enveloping me.

But in my dream I had the district feeling, as adults so often do, of impending and crushing reality and of very grown-up responsibilities. In my dream, the responsible adult in me was imploring the carefree child in me to "wake up," and the carefree child in me was begging to the responsible adult in me to just let me play for "a few more minutes" before I had to go. Please don't make me step off the magic carpet and let go of the warm, magic jewels and take leave of the garden of a million colors! Please don't make me leave this magic place where I feel so loved and safe. Don't make me wake up!

But I did wake up, jolted out of my blissful dream by the grown-up life that I live. If I'm very still next time and I beckon the pixie dust back some morning, maybe I can go back to my child-woman self and stay and play for a while.

I'm Apparently a Bit Odd

Claire at Cheeseburgers and Sauerkraut tagged me to participate in the "Seven Random or Weird Things About Me" meme. Since I can't think of a single weird or random thing about me (pffffft!), and since my family and my brother, Michael (who paid us a surprise visit from the Bay Area this weekend) were chillin' as I was pondering how to complete this exercise, I asked them to make a few suggestions. Here's what they came up with:

1.) I apparently flap my hands when I'm excited or exuberant about something. (Danelle)
2.) I apparently give my kids' friends relationship advice. (Kat)
3.) I apparently love having my hair gently pulled and my forearms scratched. (Tom)
4.) I apparently get drunk off beer vapors or just from looking at a photo of alcohol... in other words, I'm a lightweight. (Peter)
5.) I apparently ate gum off the street when I was a little kid. (Michael. See? He's always teeeeasing me!)
6.) "You're just weird, Mom!" (Aleks)
7.) I've apparently taken over 15,000 photos in a year -- over half of them of CATS! (Peter)

Gee -- not the stuff I would have mentioned, but whateveR! :-)

18 Years Ago Today

Aleks and Kat officially become ADULTS today! My babies are 18 whole years old! They are adults, fergoodnessake! When on earth did this happen?! How did time past so incredibly quickly? I swear, it was just yesterday that...



Seventeen weeks and a few days into my third pregnancy, I brought 5-year-old Erin (as Elisabeth was known then -- her actual first name) and two-year-old Peter to my neighbor's house and headed to my obstetrician's office where Tom would meet me and we'd see the images of our child on the ultrasound screen. The doctor felt that I was a bit large for 17-weeks and wanted to do an ultrasound just to be sure that there was only one baby in my belly. Because I had been large with both of my other children, I had no reason to believe that I was carrying more than one baby, but I was always thrilled to see the images of our moving, "breathing" child inside me so I was more than happy to oblige.

The doctor moved the wand back and forth slowly over my belly. "Well, " he said, "this is indeed interesting!"

"What is?" I inquired.

"This septum here."

"A septum?" I'd never heard of a septum in regards to pregnancy before. "What's a septum?"

The doctor smiled. "The septum in your nose separates your nostrils," he said. "And this septum actually separates your twins!"

I'm pretty sure I tried to speak at that point, but could not. In fact, that's when things went all white and starry. I heard Tom's voice, as if he were on the other side of a long tunnel. "Twins?" he asked. "Are you serious?"

"Oh, quite! Look for yourself!" And there they were: two tiny and very distinct babies, floating peacefully on the screen. No... floating peacefully inside me!

I was pregnant with TWINS! This was no Game of Life; this was REAL! We were going to have twins! The timing couldn't have been better, actually. I was no longer working, we already had the mini-van and the house with the bonus room. Our lives were already completely child-focused. The only adjustment we'd have to make was taking care of two more babies instead of one.

That proved to be much more work that we'd anticipated!

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

At about 28 weeks into the pregnancy, I was put on modified bed rest. That meant mostly lying down, mostly not moving around a lot, mostly not cleaning or cooking or climbing up and down the steps a hundred times a day. And I knew I'd be mostly kidding myself if I thought there was any way I could curb my activity. I was, after all, a mother of two active young children.

Thank goodness for my mother, who flew to San Diego (where we lived) to stay with us until the babies were born. We anticipated a premature birth, but tried to hold on until about 36 or 37 weeks. Once I reached 37 weeks, we were thrilled, knowing that the babies were now big and strong enough to be born. Bring it on!

But nothing happened. I did laundry. I cooked. I climbed steps. And I reached 38 weeks. No babies. I walked (very slowly and wobbly) around the block, I did more vigorous housework. No babies. I reached 39 weeks. Reaching thirty-nine weeks with twins is very rare, and I knew that the babies were benefiting from staying in utero for so long. But I was miserable, and absolutely HUGE.

Finally, just days before I hit 40 weeks -- full-term for a singleton pregnancy, but unusually long for a twin pregnancy -- I began to have some contractions. They were barely perceptible, but they were there. We called the doctor and he told us to head to the hospital. Of course, now I realize that there was probably no need for us to head to the hospital so soon -- and actually, had we waited, I would have probably needed less intervention, but a twin pregnancy and birth are high-risk situations and doctors tend to want to manage them instead of monitor and observe them.

Once we got to the hospital, I was immediately hooked-up (IV, blood pressure, etc.) and put to bed. (Of course, I should have walked the halls to stimulate labor and help the babies settle into my pelvis, but did I mention that this was a high-risk situation that needed close management?!) Not long after I was in bed and lying flat, sounds began to seem muffled and the room became very far away, and I realized that was just about to...

I woke up to a flurry of activity around me. Oxygen, bed adjustment, and being moved quickly to my left side. It turns out that the weight of my belly had crushed my vena ceva and caused me to pass out. There was no way I'd be getting up to walk now!

At about this time, a nurse came into the room and announced that huge things were happening in Berlin -- that Germans had pretty much taken over the wall, with no strong military intervention! Could it be that the border between East and West Germany would be opened? The doctors and nurses could be seen watching the breaking news on the TV in the break room, and there was great excitement brewing, but at that point I was focused on one thing and one thing only -- birthing my twins.

I labored for a few hours in increasing discomfort, but wasn't making much progress at all. There was some concern that my uterus had been so stretched out that it couldn't work efficiently, and before long a C-section was recommended. Again, had I known then what I know now, I might have asked to walk a bit first, but at that point I was happy to do whatever it took to birth these babies, and the sooner the better!

I will never forget the party atmosphere that followed. The sheer number of people -- various nurses for each baby, attending physicians, etc. -- contributed to the party atmosphere. The babies were doing well and not in any distress, so the birth was going quite well so far, in spite of my uncooperative uterus. But it was the news from Germany that really dominated the mood in the room. The wall was coming down! And more significantly, for us at least, the wall was coming down in the land of my children's Opa!

My dad grew up in Chemnitz, Germany -- or, as it was known post-1945, Karl-Marx Stadt. He had not been able to go back home since a bomb had landed directly on his house just a few months before the end of the war, killing his father. And now the walls were coming down -- on the day of his grandchildren's birth! It was perfect!

Kat was born first, at 6:15 PM and weighed a healthy 7 pounds, 1 ounce. She had a head of thick black hair and she was adorable. Her legs were bowed, probably from being wrapped around her brother for months. Her cry was sweet and only lasted a few seconds before she settled down, opened her eyes, and looked around in quiet wonder.

Three minutes later Aleks (then spelled Alex, before he changed the spelling in 7th grade), weighing a whopping 7 pounds, 6 ounces, was born -- reluctantly, furiously, defiantly. 'Put me BACK!' his loud wail seemed to insist, and he held on to the doctor's clamps with such fervor that the doctor laughed as moved the clamps like the top stick of a marionette puppet, with Aleks dangling from them, wailing... seeming to chastise and challenge the poor doctor!

Ah, inborn temperament! What a wonderful thing!

And now... today, 18 years later, my babies are adults! And what amazingly wonderful grown-up people they are! They are best of friends to each other and they each have good friends of their own. They are independent and successful students who are working hard on their college applications (both focusing on UW, it seems). They are both funny, happy, and full of life, and I am so amazingly privileged to call myself their mother.

And a mother is always a mother, no matter HOW old her "babies" are! Right??

My Worst Habit

I have bitten my fingernails since I can remember. And there are photos of me from even before I have memories, gnawing away at my tiny little fingernails as if they were teething toys.

Sometimes people ask me why I bite my nails, as if they expect a well organized list of psychologically sound reasons (I'm insecure; I had a traumatic childhood; I'm orally fixated -- none of which I believe are actually true), but I really don't know why I bite my nails. I'm driven to it by forces that I just don't really understand except to say that, even when it hurts, it feels good. Or at least it feels purposeful, as if some odd resolution or goal has been reached.

I did stop biting my nails (well, nine of them anyway; I always allowed myself my thumb) twice in my life, once when I went to Germany in 1980 and once for my wedding, but it's one of the hardest things I've ever done, largely because I don't even realize when I'm biting and just being cognizant of it proved to be a lot of work! Like losing weight, it took awareness and consistent work, and (again, like losing weight) as much as I loved the result, I just went back to my bad habits over time anyway.

Some people believe that fingernail biting is a form of self-injury, just as cutting is. The fact that I sometimes chew until it hurts gives credence to this view. These people also believe that cutting presents an immediate release of tension and anxiety, and even though I might dispute this by saying that I simply chew when a ridge forms, they might have a point. I do tend to chew more when I'm anxious. During my recent trip to the Bay Area which was, since you must know (or rather, since I apparently must tell you) to interview for an Executive Producer job with Leapfrog toys (!), I not only bit my nails to the quick, but chewed the skin around them too. Why would I do that, if not to deal with nervous anxiety and tension?

On the other hand, some believe that nail biting is simply innate and instinctual self-grooming behavior, like claw-sharpening, readying one for fight and/or flight. I kind of like this stance because... well, because it doesn't make me look so psychologically impoverished and abnormal! But if this were the case, we'd all chew our nails -- and we wouldn't chew them until they hurt; we'd only chew them until they didn't get in the way.

What do you think? What's your worst habit? What drives you toward it? How do you deal with it?

Dawn in India

My niece, Dawn (that's her in the picture, below), has been on a journey -- and what a journey -- in India during the past few months.

I received this e-mail from her this evening, accompanied by these beautiful photos that she took. I am just in awe of Dawn's adventurous spirit, her quest for self-knowledge, her maturity and her wonderful perspective. Can you imagine having the chance to do this at 23?

And her writing!! Oh, to be able to write like this:

Namaste (literally "I recognize the divine within you"),

I unmistakably find that the longer I am in India the more I can ultimately take in. Perhaps this is why I still find myself mesmerized in utter disbelief by the impenetrable realism that is so boldly India. As a general rule I think it is safe to say that our eyes open with our hearts. I am finding that I see and feel India today differently than I saw it my first week and it is increasingly obvious to me that I couldn't have picked a better place to spend these months.

Lets see…

My back hurts from sleeping on stiff, lumpy, S shaped beds. My feet hurt from walking on unstable ground. My head hurts from the constant cycling of ideas about the world and who I am and what it all means. My stomach hurts for reasons I wont even get into. My body is swollen from heat, samosas and chipati. My heart hurts because it has a huge, gaping crack in it where my ignorance used to live. My eyes burn from the desert dust, simmering plastic and diesel fumes. My lungs are struggling to bring in each breath, as the air here tops the world pollution charts. It is amazing how much pain can live inside a body that also houses so much happiness.

The flight to Jodhpur, Rajasthan, was a trip unto itself. Two hours late, like most other flights I have taken in India thus far, tiny, unstable and unpredictable. Survived the flight I may have, but as I took my first few steps on new earth I wondered to myself if I felt like starting India Experience #21,837. Not that anyone is counting. Each state, each city, each meal and each train, plane or bus is its own mini-adventure capsuled in this escapade of India, further crammed into this mega-adventure of life. Rajasthan is a whole new state. This newness sparks a mini-chain of combustion of more and more newness in my life. It means a whole new language, new food, new dress, new people, new turbans, new mustaches, new colors, new climate, new animals, new smells, new rules, new body language, new art and new customs. You name it, all around me there is new everything, again.

I have been in India six weeks. Six weeks is such a short amount of time that I cannot even think of anything that you can do (I mean truly accomplish from start to finish) in six weeks. I feel like I have lived a life, here in India in these last six weeks, longer than I could have imagined any life, even if I had all the time in the world to dream it up. Within these weeks each day, each minute, each breath, each second is a complete experience in itself. Communicating one word can mean a half hour jumbled debate spanning many languages, getting lunch can be an all day endeavor, and any random thought can take your mind wheeling one hundred miles an hour in some world where time is completely irrelevant and you don't know how long you have been off thinking when a truck two meters away honks, you jump, and all of the sudden you are pulled back to this reality. This reality of India.

All of this to say, the last few weeks have been utterly and simply indescribably incredible, exhausting and enthrallingly inspiring. Every leg of this journey has revealed to me new layers of myself and of the world. The last few weeks and Varanasi in particular was so unique in its offerings that I have skipped writing about it all together. For me, the craziness and complicity of life can fall into writing, and so can be made orderly and somehow understandable. But some things cannot be written and so cannot be explained, at least not in their entirety. As writing seems to give me the ability to make sense of the insensible, and Varanasi was not exactly comprehensible, not even to myself, there is no need to try to write about it. What it all means is not certain yet, and I find gratitude in the amazement that I can write anything without writing it all, seeing as I have skipped over a major chapter. But now, it is all history, it is in the past and I am in Rajasthan, in India, on planet earth, with my mother, my dreams and camels – lots and lots of camels.

Rajasthan, amid its vast and dull desert background, is alive with color. Amongst buildings painted sky blue, brilliant lavender and grandmother pink, heads of scarlet red, sunburst yellow, ocean blue, deep fire orange, flamingo pink and emerald green saris, turbans and headscarves bob effortlessly through a sea of crowded streets, bazaars and shops. It is festival season here in India, and in three days time it will be Diwali, the festival of lights and unarguably the largest and brightest festival of the year. It is a bustle of preparation and celebration. Shops are piled four-feet deep with brightly colored fabric covering every inch of floor, shopkeepers taking prime position perched atop. Fabrics are piled so high and so thick that they literally overflow out the front of the shops and onto the filthy streets of Jodhpur. Women sit perfectly positioned atop the heaps, thoroughly searching through sprawls of fine fabric embellished with gold, silver and stone. A baby on hip, their beautiful faces veiled in vain revealing only colorful glimpses of their mysterious splendor, they amaze me with their reverence and poise. It is a scene like nothing I have experienced and I have to admit that I have found myself, once or twice, overwhelmed by the heat, noise, trash and sheer thickness of bodies, motorbikes, grimy air and complete, undisturbed chaos.

Nothing in India comes easily for me. Here, nothing is natural, nothing is simple and nothing is boring. Everything in India, for that matter, everything in life, is multiple levels deep and contains many, many lessons, rewards, pleasures and difficulties. For India makes anything else look simple. If I have survived this, I can survive it all. This, of course, is far too great of an overstatement, seeing as I have not endured much suffering in my life and, in all honesty, know nothing about what real pain is or how it must feel to suffer in great length. Not to mention the small fact that one-sixth of the world's population live here in India and seem to do just fine. But, nevertheless, the mentality comes in useful when thinking of life back home and when thinking about aspects of my reality that seem so big and intimidating. Any and every small endeavor I may ever come across in my measly little life cannot be that big of a deal. India is and will hopefully be forever, my reminder that I cannot take my life and all my meager issues too seriously. I will have this place to look upon when I meet an obstacle. Remembering that life is truly a gift and knowing that mine is particularly easy, in all relativity. Perhaps, even, it is this ease of life that has sent me whirling around India looking for some challenges, stumbling upon obstacles and literally tripping over my own two feet and falling head first into this world of realities, where so much of humanity lives, suffers and flourishes.

My mother is here now and the wind that filled my sails has shifted directions. My journey has changed, but the wind is still blowing and my ship is still sailing. Pulling my sails in and tightening the main line I have changed with the wind. It is a great joy and gift to have her here and I am constantly surprised by her strength and savvy travel knowledge. I don't know how, but somewhere along the line I had forgotten that I learned all of this travel lingo from my great traveling parents. We are proving to be a pretty good team and the swimming pools and cocktails are a very welcome change from the cold showers and squat toilets.

I send all my love and sincerely hope that this message reaches everyone in happiness, health and well being.

Love to you,

Dawn

Also, because of some special requests I have attached as many pictures as I could to this email. Keep in mind that most of these are from Varanasi, and where I am now, the desert, is the ultimate contrast to that serene land. Here, anyhow, is just a sample, there are about four thousand more.

--
Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. - Buddha

Posted with permission by Dawn. Please do not copy anything on this page, as both the words and the photos belong to Dawn!

PS: Dawn actually darkened her hair before she went to India, because she is naturally a blond-blond! This is her before she traveled.

As Seen From Our Front Door This Morning

Mom and her babes were out for a peaceful morning stroll in the sunshine.

(These are relatively small deer, as opposed to the "beast" that Aleks encountered the other night!)