I Hide My Chocolate

Midlife observations

Category: Parenting

January 4, 2014

Choosing Laughter

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Choosing to be Happy

I embrace the austere clarity and hope that is January.  I long ago gave up impossible-to-achieve, all-or-nothing New Year’s resolutions (Stop picking cuticles!  Ashtanga every day!  No meat!  and my annual favorite:  Stop procrastinating!)  in favor of gentler incremental changes working towards unmasking my true self and living authentically.  My disciplined, achievement-oriented self finds it impossible to refrain from setting goals.  Indeed, goals and dreams are valuable for staying focused on what matters to you and not getting side-tracked by what matters to someone else.  As I reflected on last year’s goals and my genuine progress towards realizing them, I deliberated on where to focus my heart this year.  Last year’s list still resonates – how shall I deepen it?  After trying on several goals, I settled on one guiding intention for my year:  choose laughter.

At first, it was “laugh more.”  But this seemed vague and not really representative of my intention, and so I added the word “choose.”  To choose to laugh means to pause before reacting in order to decide to respond with thought and purpose.  It is a habit for me to complain, to worry, to be tired, to feel overwhelmed and anxious.  The mind can choose to be happy.  Can I break out of my old patterns and choose to laugh and be happy?

When heavy snow arrives, preventing my obligatory on-site presence in the office, can I choose to be grateful for the day at home with my family instead of worrying that I “should” be in the office?  My children are thrilled with the surprise of nature and laugh joyfully.  How can I learn from them?

When a colleague shows up at my office door, can I choose to smile at them welcomingly instead of scowling at them with how busy I am? 

When it’s time to undecorate from Christmas, can I choose to reflect on what a warm and relaxing holiday it was instead of feeling burdened by the work of cleaning up and depressed about the work of returning to work?

When several newbie yoga students show up to class in January, as part of their new year’s resolutions, can I make them feel comfortable instead of worrying about whether I can modify my class properly for a larger group?

When my children suggest an activity, can I say “Yes!” instead of “Not now, I need to do the laundry.”

My inclination toward laughter and delight has been suppressed all my life.  By a mother who hovered and worried, pegging me as sensitive and shy.  By a father who judged and withheld love and praise in favor of intellect and duty.  Resulting in an anxious perfectionist who chose solitary achievement over social laughter.

No more.

Choosing laughter means changing habitual behavior that no longer serves me.  Choosing to embrace what is and not wishing for it to be different.  Choosing a lighter response over a darker heavier, more judgmental emotion.  Choosing to be social.  After all, you need other people to really laugh out loud. 

My family has rallied behind this “resolution” with great zeal.  We’ve decided to have family joke night at our family dinner on Sundays where each person tells a joke.  I love this because I realize that women historically have not been encouraged to be joke-tellers resulting in the stereotype of the woman who can’t remember the punchline or tell a joke well.  I will pick one joke a week that makes me laugh out loud (no judgment!) and share it with my family (and tweet it that evening).

When my daughter cracks up uncontrollably, she closes her eyes and is overcome with the funniness.  She’s been sharing this side of herself more and nothing makes me happier than seeing her laugh.  Perhaps if I laugh more, she will too.

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December 23, 2013

Dear Santa

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The List

Around about now, my gift-buying panic sets in.  I didn’t buy enough stuff!  I got more fun stuff for my son…my daughter will be disappointed!  I got more expensive stuff for my daughter…my son will be disappointed!  Somehow, in the chaotic peak of the Christmas rush, being judged a good gift-giver is a referendum on my self as a mother.  I didn’t get everything on their list. 

The list.

After Thanksgiving, my kids write to Santa with their list of what they want for Christmas.  My daughter is pretty good at coming up with a quantity and a variety of realistic and shoppable girly items, acceptance into college notwithstanding.  My son has one thing on his list, year after year.  A dog.  (Actually, a dog is on my daughter’s list every year as well, but somehow we have keyed in on the dog being more of my son’s desire.  That is because she, like girls everywhere, is more accommodating and adds other items to the list.  He is single-focused, dare-we-say-it … stubborn.)  He’s resigned himself to the fact that we are not going to get a dog because our lifestyle is not compatible with having a dog.  Besides, he’s grown attached to our dog surrogates:  two beloved parakeets named Cooper and Ginger – both Christmas presents from the last 2 years.   With two birds already and no dog in sight, his realistic and shoppable list is bare bones this year. 

The list ensures that everyone gets stuff that they want and Santa doesn’t waste time and money on stuff that people don’t want.  This is an expedient way of dealing with the chore of gift-giving that I learned from my parents.  New pajamas.  Check.  Esoteric book from the top 10 list.  Check.  God forbid you should deviate from the list.  The gloves need to be black not brown.  The slippers can’t be too firm nor too slippery.  And the hand knit scarf that took weeks to design and create?  Too long.  Too thin.  A strange color.   It’s languishing unused in the back of the shelf in the closet.

Gift-giving was a very transactional process when I was growing up.  There was little room to surprise and delight.  As for Sheldon, in my son’s favorite show The Big Bang Theory, gifts (and friends) are an anxiety-producing obligation.  When Penny tells Sheldon she has a wonderful gift for him, he rushes out and buys a gift basket in every size and value so he can immediately reciprocate with exactly the right basket.  She surprises him with a napkin autographed by his hero, Leonard Nemoy.  Sheldon is so overcome with surprise and delight that, after dumping all the gift baskets on Penny, he realizes that he can’t possibly reciprocate such a meaningful gift and does the unthinkable.  He hugs her. 

The combination of a spiritually bereft upbringing with an obligatory approach to gift-giving has made me approach the holidays quite Scrooge-like.  Don’t give me another chotchke!  When will the parties be over so I can get back to my disciplined routine?  Bring on the new year’s resolutions!   It is with effort that I create a holiday with my family that is more than a realistic and shoppable list.  A holy day that is about love.

This year, I was determined to be joyful.  To look at the work involved with Christmas as a labor of love, not of duty and obligation.  My husband and my children love Christmas.  We’ve worked hard to make it a special and magical time.  We maintained the myth of Santa so well that neither child figured it out until each was 12 and in 6th grade, when my daughter overheard two careless moms discussing it at the bus stop and my son burst into tears when we took him aside and revealed the truth – afraid he was getting to be so old that his peers would make fun of him.  To deal with the end of the Santa era, we spent the following Christmas on a sailboat with almost no vestige of our usual traditions.  It didn’t feel like Christmas.  Last year, I breathed a sigh of relief as the effort to maintain the myth was gone.  But then, my children complained that the appearance of the gifts under the tree was no longer a magical surprise.  They begged us to do it after they were asleep on Christmas Eve.  Even though they’ve been inducted into the secret of Santa, they (and I) want to hang onto childhood secrets just a little bit longer.

So, this year, my daughter’s last Christmas before college, we set up our tree earlier than usual.  I did not complain about schlepping down the ornaments from the attic.  Well, that’s not true.  I did catch myself yelling at my son, as he brought down all the Other decorations from the attic, “Do we really need all that stuff?!” He calmly looked at me and said, “Yeah, Mom, we do.”  He proceeded to decorate the mantle and then put back the boxes.  I breathed and remembered my intention to be joyful and tried not to anticipate the chore of undecorating.

This weekend, I decided to tackle the stores one more time, because even though I got most of the stuff on their list, I did not get enough, equating quantity of gifts with quantity of love, never a successful equation.  I found myself braving the traffic, the parking lot, the lines, the people.  I went over the lists one more time.  And then, I stopped.  What can I give them that will be a delightful surprise?  What can I give them that will show them that I have listened to them?  That I care about making them happy?  That I love them?  Instead of diligently crossing items off the lists, I opened my eyes and found a few funny and sweet things that are not on their list.  Nothing big.  Nothing expensive.  Just something that I know they will appreciate.  After all, isn’t that what Christmas is all about?  Finding light in the darkness, giving love to family and friends.  Creating traditions.  Sharing celebrations.  Honoring what is magical.  Even, perhaps, awesome.

I am going to set my alarm for 3 am, my usual pee-in-the-middle-of-the-night time, and sneak downstairs.  Stealthily filling the stockings and placing the gifts under the tree.  I’ll move the fireplace screen, to look like Santa’s been there.  I’ll make sure we leave Santa some incredible bitterdark chocolate as a special 3 am treat for myself.  I’ll sit and gaze at our beautiful tree that we decorated, together, with love.  I’ll sneak back into bed for a nap before magical, awesome Christmas morning.

Merry Christmas.

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November 17, 2013

10 Questions

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Conversations with the Mother of a 12th Grader

When I was a new mother, it seemed like there was a finite timeline placed on the parenting experience, concluding decisively 18 years later with COLLEGE.  At the time, that seemed like an eternity away.  Now that it’s quite suddenly here, I am deeply aware that motherhood does not end when they leave for college, nor do I want it to end.  As I sort through how best to help my daughter navigate the college application process, I find that the well-meaning curiosity of the people in my life tends to heighten my anxiety and, frankly, my anger at the process.  On a daily basis, the questions go kind of like this:

  1. So, got those applications in?
  2. No?!  She’s not applying Early Action?
  3. Isn’t the deadline soon?
  4. Where does she want to go?
  5. Oh.  Pause.  So, she decided not to apply to Harvard?
  6. Or:  Oh.  Pause.  Wow.  What’s her safety school?
  7. Where are her friends applying?
  8. How’d she do on her SAT’s?
  9. What does she want to major in?
  10. Somehow we all manage to pay for college!

They are not satisfactory conversations, and I don’t help.  I put on my cheerful and confident persona – making jokes or giving curt answers – masking the intense anxiety I have and minimizing the potential for a genuine conversation that is honest and connecting.  My anxiety prevents me from revealing how I really feel, which goes kind of like this:

  1. How much should I help?  Should I sit down next to her until she’s done and presses the submit button or should I let her struggle with completing the applications on her own?
  2. How high should she reach?  There’s so much pressure to apply to top tier schools, but what if she doesn’t get in?  Or worse, what if she does get in, but we can’t afford it?  I am jealous of and angry at the more affluent families who are legacy’d in to the top tier schools and have the money to pay for it.
  3. Where will she be happy?  What if, like me, she has trouble adjusting and her confidence wavers?
  4. What if she has little trouble adjusting and doesn’t miss me?
  5. What if she gets in somewhere far away and wants to go?  Do we let her?  I am going to miss her.  Should I tell her how much I am going to miss her?
  6. Should I advise her to be pragmatic and follow a path that pays well or should I advise her to follow her heart?  Can one do both?
  7. How are we going to pay for college?  When do I get to start working less hard?
  8. I’ve go to do this again with my son in 3 years?!
  9. I can’t believe 18 years have gone by.  I am afraid I have squandered these years with my own career ambition, short-changing my children and my time with them.
  10. When I left home for college, I never returned.  What if she never returns?  May she and I do a better job at creating a loving and connected adult mother-daughter bond.

If I were more open with how I feel about the college application process, I imagine that the questions could go more like this:

  1. Hey, how are you and your daughter handling the stress of applying to college?
  2. It’s okay that she has no idea where she wants to go what she wants to do.  She’s only 17!
  3. You must be so proud and excited for her!
  4. How’s your husband doing?  This must be hard for him too.  Are you able to take advantage of the opportunity to spend more time together and reestablish some closeness in your marriage now that it’s not all about the kids?
  5. Yeah, finding the balance between letting her do it at her pace and nagging her is challenging.
  6. It’s hard to let them go.  I cried a lot too.
  7. You’ve raised an amazing girl.  You are a good mom.  She is happy and will do well.
  8. She still needs you and loves you.  Your relationship will evolve to a new place.  You are not your parents.
  9. Your son is different and you will be different when he goes through the process.
  10. What a time of transition!  What next?!

Indeed, what next?  I will tell her I am going to miss her.  I will help her as much as she will let me.  Together, as a family, we will find a school that makes sense for her.  We will help her leave home.  And we will welcome her back home when she needs, or just wants, our love.

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November 3, 2013

“Spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits”

Shrinking Women, by Lily Myers – a Mother’s Perspective

A young and pretty, seemingly gentle and polite, college-aged woman steps up to the microphone.   She is slender, wearing a dress.  She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.  Preparing herself to take up space and say what few dare to say.  I listen, transfixed, as the words calmly, rhythmically, insistently pour out from her.  This brilliantly crafted slam poem, Shrinking Women by Lily Myers, captures women’s conflicted relationship with food (and men) and the role that our mothers (and fathers) play in passing down attitudes and behavior towards food.  We are, like her mother, “… a fugitive / stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled.  / Deciding how many bites is too many / How much space she deserves to occupy.”

Our obsession with thoughts of food takes up space in our brain that could be used to greater purpose, or at least another purpose.  Like the important details she missed in a school meeting when wondering whether or not she could have another slice of pizza, I too have sat in important business meetings and focused more on the plate of gooey, rich, delicious brownies in the center of the conference table than on what is being said or what I could be saying.  (Is the brownie worth the calories?  How many calories is it anyway?  If I eat only half a sandwich, then I can have half a brownie.)  Have we women missed chances for greatness because we were too busy wondering what, if anything, we could eat?

My obsession with thoughts of food has receded as I’ve gotten older and become less interested in quantities of food, more uncomfortable when I overeat, and a master at orchestrating my disciplined repertoire of regular meals while accommodating the rest of my family’s appetites.  It was different when I was younger, regularly swinging between eating a lot of “bad” food and then punishing my over-indulgence with an abstemious diet and a lot of exercise.

When I discovered I was pregnant with my daughter, 18 years ago, I vowed to raise a girl with a healthy relationship to food and a proud enjoyment of her body.  I fear I have failed.  In my desire to model “normal” food behavior, here is what I fear I have taught my daughter instead.

  1. Bye, I’m going to yoga now!  = Thin and fit is good.  Prioritize eating healthy food and exercising over other activities and even people.
  2. How do I look? = Looking good is important in order for people to think well of you, even if you have to shop beyond your means.
  3. Breakfast is ready!  = Don’t skip meals, especially not breakfast.  But don’t eat too much!  Control your appetite!
  4. Quinoa and chick peas for lunch.  = Be self-deprecating about your healthy food choices, relegating them to breakfast and lunch while enabling men and others to make fun of you while they opt for larger portions, red meat, and, of course, dessert.
  5. I’ll just have a bite of yours.  =  Dessert is forbidden.  Control your appetite!
  6. I prefer 85%.  = Hide your chocolate so you can enjoy it in private without revealing that you do love and desire deliciousness after all and are not always in control.

No wonder my daughter long ago declared that breakfast made her nauseous and irregular meals have become her norm.  Like Lily, she has been taught accommodation.  Tired of my judgement, but too obedient to rebel, she also swings between respectful mimicry and impatient hatred, as she explores just how much space she is entitled to take up.

I hope that she cherry-picks what she has inherited from my food habits, taking what is constructive and enjoyable while discarding what is destructive about my obsessive control over nutrition and portion sizes as she finds her own way.

And that she never apologizes for asking a question…or for taking up space.

Here is the full text of the poem.  I encourage you to watch the video of her powerful performance.

Shrinking Women

By Lily Myers

Credit:  Button Poetry

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that

she drinks out of a measuring glass.

She says she doesn’t deprive herself,

but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork.

In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her

plate.

I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it.

I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so.

Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s

proportional.

As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast.

She wanes while my father waxes.  His stomach has grown round with

wine, late nights, oysters, poetry.  A new girlfriend who was overweight as a

teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit.”

It was the same with his parents;

as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red

round cheeks, round stomach

and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking

making space for the entrance of men into their lives

not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave.

I have been taught accommodation.

My brother never thinks before he speaks.

I have been taught to filter.

“How can anyone have a relationship to food?” He asks, laughing, as I eat

the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs.

I want to say: we come from difference, Jonas,

you have been taught to grow out

I have been taught to grow in

you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each

thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every

other week from shouting so much

I learned to absorb

I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself

I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for

oysters

And I never meant to replicate her, but

spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their

habits.

That’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades.

We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next

How to knit

weaving silence in between the threads

which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house,

skin itching,

picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of

crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to

kitchen to bedroom again.

nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive

stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled.

Deciding how many bites is too many

How much space she deserves to occupy.

Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her,

And I don’t want to do either anymore

but the burden of this house has followed me across the country

I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with

the word “sorry”.

I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the

entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza

a circular obsession I never wanted but

inheritance is accidental

still staring at me with wine-stained lips from across the kitchen table.

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September 17, 2013

When Backpacks Made The Outfit

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Now We Are Seventeen (and a Half)

Now We Are Six

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.

– A. A. Milne, 1927

Ah! The first day of school!  So full of promise.  Remember?  This year, I will be organized and brilliant.  This year I will be friendly and popular, a role model.  This year I will be new and different, the amazing me I aspire to be.

When you are a 17-year-old girl entering your senior year of high school, the stakes are high.  Where else to play out your dreams of being a better, bolder you than with your outfit?  The first day of school outfit.  Remember?

It was simpler when a cute backpack gave her all the confidence she needed.

I should have asked her what she was going to wear.  But I didn’t want to attach too much importance to The Outfit.  I’ve spent my life thinking that if I looked right, then I would be successful and people would like me.  I imbued my outfits with so much importance.  I don’t want that for my daughter.  I want her to know she is beautiful, completely and thoroughly, inside and out, regardless of what she wears.  I want her to know she is loved, completely and thoroughly, regardless of what she wears.

Besides, she is more creative with fashion than I ever have been.  She watches fashion in music and entertainment and is keenly aware of who is wearing what and what looks stylish and flattering.  She is my style consultant these days, not vice versa.  (Though she cares what I think.  Still.  Thank God.)

Besides, I believe that at 17 you should be trying on different looks, different personas.  You don’t know who you are at 17.  Now is the time to practice being independent and grown up, especially during your senior year of high school when you have the safety net of a home base.   I purposefully did not ask her what she was going to wear.

When she came downstairs that morning, I paused.  Long enough to think.  But I didn’t think.  I went to blurt-out mode instead.  In my sternest MOM voice, I proclaimed:  “You can NOT wear that to school.  Those are hooker stockings.”  Really.  I said that.  “Hooker” is hardly even in my vocabulary but it poured out of my mouth.  (Ironically, they are my stockings.)  Who was that woman I turned into in that moment?  What happened to all the wisdom I’ve accrued over the years?  What happened to putting myself in her shoes and gently suggesting that her outfit was not appropriate for daytime nor for school?

I don’t want to face the fact that my little girl is beautiful and sexy and ready for a boyfriend, or at least a date.  I don’t want to remember some of the outfits I wore to high school that make me cringe now.  I remember, at the height of my thinness, wearing skinny jeans and stiletto mules.  I wanted to look sexy.  My mother said I looked cute.  I didn’t want to be the mom who was clueless about her own daughter, the way my mom was.  I want to give my daughter support and freedom to explore.  And yet…I lashed out.  Frightened, embarrassed, protective.  Don’t make the same mistakes I made!  Don’t be too sexy!

Don’t be too sexy.  Ah, that is the crux of it.  The judgment about looking too sexy.  Smart girls use their heads, not their bodies.  The judgment about being too sexy.  Good girls have more worthy activities to pursue than dating boys.  The fear.  The fear inherited from my mother’s stabbing.  The fear I’ve buried from my own murky memories.  Did that really happen?  I am not sure.  But judgment and fear – of sex, of food, of all things pleasurable and delicious – is not what I want to pass on to my daughter.

My nasty, thoughtless judgment merely solidified her own uncertainty about her outfit, her anxiety about the day and the upcoming year.  She didn’t defy me.  Another 17-year-old daughter might have said, “You can’t tell me what to wear!”  My 17-year-old rushed upstairs in tears and changed her clothes (to an amazing, adorable, and appropriate outfit, by the way).  I apologized.  She apologized.  We gave each other space.  But there’s no taking those words back.  No getting that day back.

How many days, how many years would I like to get back and do over?  We don’t get them back and we can’t do them over, but we can learn from them so that the next day, the next year, is better than the last one.

When we circled back to speak about the day, it was her half-birthday.  I gave her Rosemary Wells’ Voyage to the Bunny Planet (thank you my friend for the suggestion), where the day that “should have been” gets reimagined.  She said that she was sad that she would never have that day back, the happy and confident first day she had dreamed of and hoped to memorialize with a photo.  She shared her dreams for a fun and social senior year, in spite of the rigors of an AP-heavy workload and the anxiety of applying to colleges.  And then she confided that she wishes she could hang on to being 17 forever.  I too want this time to last forever.  To hold my girl close.  To magically turn the bad days into good ones.  But it is her time.  Her time to grow up, to become a woman, to figure out what makes her happy, what interests her, who she is.  Fly, beautiful girl!  Find your passion.  Live your life.  Don’t let me hold you back.

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September 7, 2013

I Know Where The Girls Are

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Proud To Be A Nerd?  Shhh, Don’t Tell Anyone.

I am a nerd.  I am the daughter of nerds.  I am married to a nerd.  A nerd is one who probes an esoteric subject deeply and values quiet alone time to pursue intellectual endeavors over social, athletic, or more popular mainstream pursuits.  The derogatory interpretation of a nerd is someone who is on the fringe, socially, and who is athletically inept.  With the rise of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and The Big Bang Theory, nerds everywhere have come out of the woodwork proclaiming their virtues with pride.

Along with the upward trending of nerdiness, there has been a significant increase in girls excelling at math and science.  Natalie Angier reports that girls now make up an equal percentage of applicants to a math/science magnet school and nearly an equal percentage of girls get accepted into the program.  This is fantastic progress!  BUT, a much lower percentage of the accepted girls actually attend than of the accepted boys – thus perpetuating the disparity between girls and boys who pursue an academic program and later a professional career in math and science.

Angier and many others wonder why, despite their clear aptitude for and interest in math, more girls don’t continue along the math and science path.  Really, this is a mystery?  I know where the girls are.  They are socializing.  (As they should be!)  When the social pressures kick in to high gear in the teen years, the girls are busy sorting through how to be young women.  They want to fit in.  While they remain smart and ambitious, their interests expand.  Girls tend to be equally good at “verbal” subjects as they are at math and science and frequently gravitate toward paths that overtly help people, like healthcare and education.

To fit in, there is much more encouragement for girls and pressure on girls to be attractive and social.  It takes a lot of time and money to learn how to do this well.  You have to be connected into popular culture, watching television, videos, the internet.  You have to shop and experiment with your look.  You have to hang with your friends, either in person or virtually.  Being social significantly cuts into the 10,000 hours it takes to become great at a subject or activity.

There is much more prestige accrued to a girl for being attractive and likeable than for being a math nerd.  Indeed, a female math nerd still is likely to be looked on as an anomaly.  She may be liked and respected more than in my generation, but she is still a bit weird.  Just look at Amy on The Big Bang Theory.  Who would you rather be:  nerdy awkward Amy or sexy funny Penny?  Exactly.  Even Amy wants Penny.

My father was a physicist and I did everything I could to feign disinterest and lack of aptitude.  The math and science teachers in my day were beyond boring and dry and there was absolutely nothing cool about continuing with math and science.  So I didn’t.  Even though I was good at math and science, it was easy to follow a different path.  I was a reader and a writer and became an English major.  It wasn’t until I took Calculus for non-math majors in college with an electrifying professor who made math fun and relevant that I wondered if maybe I hadn’t been snookered down the wrong rabbit hole.  I would have been a wonderful scientist.  Quiet, patient, creative, and insightful.  (Ah, the path not taken.)  Even my mother, a scientist, discouraged me from a scientific career, arguing that it was hard to balance family while running experiments.  Well, it’s hard to balance family with any demanding career.  Sadly.

My daughter is a nerd.  She excels at math and science.  Her father is an engineer.  We have championed her interest in math and science.  She had a terrific female math teacher in 8th grade who was a wonderful role model and her Physics teachers are young and hip.  She likes Physics!  Can you believe it?  Physics!  Her math teacher wants her to take a computer programming course.  Yes!  Go for it girl!

She has dutifully started the groundwork for the college application process, declaring her interest in a math major.  Recently, however, she whispered to me, “But Mom, what I really want to be when I grow up is Guiliana Rancic.  How does being a math major prepare me for that career?”  How indeed?  I swallowed my gut reaction, “Stop watching stupid fucking television!”  and tried to put myself in her shoes.  Guiliana is adorable, if too thin (geesh there I go with the weight judgement again), and she has a great job.  Hey, I want to be Guiliana.  Why wouldn’t my 17-year-old want her job?

How do I convey to her that there is only one Guiliana and that there are many intriguing and challenging opportunities in math and science?  How do I tell her that as a journalism and communications major, she’ll be one of a bazillion girls who wants a job in fashion, entertainment, and media?  How do I convince her that she’ll make more money and have more professional prestige in math and science?  How do I reassure her that she will be more likely to meet an intelligent and respectful partner who values her intellectual capabilities and her personality, as well as her beauty?  How do I encourage her to see the potential to help many people in a meaningful scientific career?  How do I help her identify her dreams and realize them in a rewarding way?

In spite of the tremendous strides women have made and society has made in embracing and celebrating women, their interests and their achievements, I believe that women still need money and a room of their own to be freer from chores and to have the space and quiet, the support and security, to pursue their intellectual ambitions.  To be proud nerds.  As long as popular culture glamorizes fashionistas and housewives instead of mathletes and scientistas, we will all be shortchanged.

Photo is from a fansite for The Big Bang Theory.

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August 22, 2013

To Do: Be Here Now

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 My List

  1. Yearbooks
  2. Old Navy
  3. Haircut
  4. Key
  5. College prep
  6. Black bean chili
  7. Aspirin

Scrounging for a scrap of paper to write down a few things we need at our vacation house this week, I found this list crumpled in the corner of the purse I brought.  Normally, in my frantic rush to get things done, I would have glossed over this list and just started my new one.  I reuse paper for list-writing with the absurd notion that my attempt to be frugal with bits of paper will help the planet.  But, right now, I am on vacation and I am trying to live in the present moment and to pay attention.  To hear the end of summer crickets, to feel the temperature in the air and the wind on my face, to smell the road-kill on my morning walk, to see – really see – what my eyes are looking at, as Rodney Yee instructed us in the serendipitous yoga class he taught on Tuesday.  It’s just about impossible for me to stay in the present moment.  This week, as my friends with children one year older than mine are dropping them off at college, I am already jumping to a year from now when we will be taking my daughter to college.  I look at the list.  It brings me to a moment in time in my recent past.  When did I write this list?  What was going on?

1.  Yearbooks.  That was a note to myself to order yearbooks for the kids before the deadline.  The year before, when my daughter was in 10th grade, I missed the deadline.  I push everything to the deadline and even then assume I can eek past the deadline and still get by.  Not this time.  There were no yearbooks left.  My daughter’s face crashed with disappointment.  I apologized with shame at my carelessness.  “It’s okay Mom,” she gently but sadly reassured me.  What kind of mom neglects to order yearbooks for their kid?  As usual, I was self-absorbed.  As usual, she pretended not to mind.  I was not going to make that mistake again.

2.  Old Navy.  I needed to order jeans for my son.  Old Navy has the only pair that fits him.  Regular Style Husky.  He is growing but is not tall yet.  He is at that awkward stage where he is stoking up for his big growth spurt.  Most brands are too long and too tight in the waist.  He will be big.  He’s grown a lot this summer, stretching out a bit.  Like a puppy, his feet are now enormous, but his body hasn’t caught up yet.  He’s already outgrown the jeans I ordered for him from that to-do reminder.

3.  Haircut.  The only item on the list that’s about me.  It must have been time for my every 7 weeks trim – my personal hygiene errand.  I can’t even remember to make a haircut appointment any more.  I have to write everything down.  Otherwise I get closed out of the Saturday timeslots at the salon.

4.  Key.  Key?  What was this?  Had we used the spare key and not put it back in its hiding place?  Was it when we replaced the front door and needed to get new keys made?  Were we taking care of my sister-in-law’s dog?  Why did I need a key?  Key to my heart?  Key to my soul?  What mystery was locked away?  Why can’t I remember anything anymore?

5.  College Prep.  Phew, this is a loaded item.  Like I could just check this off as another item on my to-do list.  Get her ready for college.  Check.  No problem!  Her friend’s mother found an SAT/ACT prep class and I jumped on it.  I was grateful that another mom had done the research and found the perfect thing:  5 Sunday afternoons that would focus her productively with test preparation skills, with a friend.  Done!  If only it were that easy.

6.  Black Bean Chili.  This pinpoints the time for me.  The weekend prior to Monday January 14th.  I had signed up on the neighborhood meal train to make dinner for my friend Agnes who lost her husband, suddenly, so sadly, on November 6th.  She was eating more vegetarian choices and so was I.  This was the perfect meal.  Easy, keeps well, and I could make enough for both her family and my family.  I was struggling with how to be a good friend to her.  This was the least I could do.

7.  Aspirin.  My husband does not like to talk about his health.  Whenever I come up with my latest and greatest thought about being healthy, he is quite interested if it is abstract, mildly interested if it is an initiative I am undertaking for my health (Yoga!  Meatless!), and aggressively disinterested if it is an initiative I demand he should undertake for his health.  I haven’t completely cracked this code.  If I can present the concept lightly as something he can opt in to, as opposed to a didactic “You need to do X” he is more amenable.  And so it has been with aspirin.  He has read the evidence that aspirin is an anti-inflammatory that may prevent heart attacks, stroke, and even cancer.  So, we started taking baby aspirin this year.

Funny how this arrangement of seven words sums up so much.  Update this list to now – the present moment – and my list becomes:

1a. Take care of business before the deadline is upon me.  Procrastination cultivates stress and is selfish when other people are affected.

1b. Pay attention to my daughter.  Just because she says it’s okay doesn’t mean it is.  Value what is important to her and try to make it happen when possible.  Don’t be careless.

2.   Buy clothes for my son that fit him properly.  Just because he doesn’t care what he wears doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t help him find clothes that make him feel good about his body and how he looks, especially as he enters high school with some anxiety and curiosity about girls.

3.  Take care of me.  No need to be a martyr.  It’s okay to develop a personal style that doesn’t require a fortune and a lot of professional help.  Enjoy my longer, softer, less edgy hair.

4.  Trust my children with their own key.  Be proud of their increasing independence as they take bigger steps away from me.  Welcome them home with a good night kiss when they come back safe and sound.

5.  Be there for my daughter as she dives into this exciting time, trying on who she might want to be when she grows up.  May she have fun with her friends, enjoy her senior year as a leader in the school, and explore her many options for college next year.

6.  Sustain my friendships.  When I am busy busy busy, I am not good at doing the everyday things that keep a friendship going.  Make time to care.

7.  Tell my husband that the reason I care about his health is because I love him.  I want him around to enjoy our life together as we launch our wonderful children further and further into their own lives.

As for the rest of the list, created at different times on this mini time capsule, the middle set of ingredients (with the exception of shrimp, which was for another dinner) is for my husband’s Veal Bolognese Sauce (adapted from a recipe of Mario Batali’s).  It is delicious.  My husband makes it regularly.  (On the weekends, I go grocery shopping and he cooks at least one sauce that provides leftovers.)  It just so happens that we have leftover Bolognese Sauce waiting for us for when we return from vacation.  But I am getting ahead of myself, as usual.  Right now, I need to buy some coffee for the vacation house and some udder cream (a wonderful moisturizer for sensitive skin) for my husband’s skin which is taking a beating away from home.  After I pause and appreciate the moment.

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August 18, 2013

What Does It Take to be a Champion?

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Good Luck Marion!

When I heard that Marion Bartoli had announced her retirement, tearfully, after losing last week in the second round in Cincinnati, citing constant pain in her body, I sighed.  I get it.  Totally.  I am so glad she won Wimbledon in July!  The pinnacle of a demanding career, she did it!  Nothing left to prove, she’s done.  Just like that, she’s walking away.  Is it an impulsive decision?  Will she come back after taking a well-deserved break?  Who knows?  At 28, highly intelligent, she can do anything she wants.  What an amazing opportunity to forge a new life for herself.

Marion was never the classic tennis superstar everyone wanted to watch because she could be counted on to win.  No, her appeal was in her driven and fierce bulldog approach to tennis.  She was in perpetual motion on the court, bouncing nervously on her toes.  She charged the ball with her two-handed groundstrokes, placing the ball where her opponent was not.  Her service motion was weird, unconventionally reaching her racquet in an awkward motion to the side and back before striking the ball.  Her nerdy, intellectual father-coach hovered in the background, a constant presence.  She was an emotional, smart, and determined player with peaks and valleys of wins and losses.

I was glad to see her play a year ago at the U.S. Open.  She wasn’t one of the superstars who got to play inside Arthur Ashe stadium that day.  She was on Court 11 and that was fine with me.  I prefer the outer courts anyway. You can sit up close on the bleachers and see every tic and every grimace and hear the curses and the self-talk.  It’s like sitting in the front row at the ballet and watching the sweat drops fly during the pirouettes and the effortful lifts that look effortless from afar.  Sometimes I even spy the entourage and scootch to a seat near them to hear the behind-the-scenes chatter that goes on, off-screen.  It makes the sport so much more real.  This intimacy is impossible in the touch-the-blimp seats inside Arthur Ashe where we usually sit.  How do you get good seats anyway?  I guess you have to be wealthy and connected and be willing to use your connections.  Oh well, I’ll stick with the outer courts.

At Wimbledon, Marion showed a new side to her personality.  She overthrew her father as coach.  The announcement in early 2013 said it was a mutual decision.  Maybe.  I suspect it was a painful decision that was all hers.  My god, Marion, that took guts!  What were those conversations like?  How much therapy did you require to tell your father to leave you alone?  To tell him “Hey Dad, it’s my life and I’m going to do it my way now.”  Kudos.  She was on a high of exuberant confidence at Wimbledon.  She had a new and supportive entourage.  She was participating in the community of tennis instead of keeping to herself under her father’s watch.  She looked like she was having fun!  Albeit with even more of her usual intensity, focus, and drive.  And she won!  Without her father, she won!

Was that the problem?  She couldn’t sustain her new-found bold independence from her father, her new-found sense of belonging to a larger community of friends and supporters?  It’s hard for us introverts to transition to a more social role, isn’t it?  It’s hard for us good girls to defy our fathers and go our own way, isn’t it?  Especially if there is parental judgment hovering in the background.  Did you feel compelled to be not successful without him?

Oh Marion, I don’t know you.  I can only imagine the years of one-on-one constant, grinding, tennis practice with your father and his intense insistence on your success at tennis.  I can only imagine how you absorbed his dream such that you could no longer distinguish between what was your father’s dream and what was your dream.  Of course you wanted to please him and be a good daughter.  Of course you wanted to win Wimbledon.  You did it!  You won Wimbledon!  It’s completely amazing!  Congratulations!  Are you afraid that you are not a good daughter?  Believe me, you are a good person.  That is all a parent really wants.  For their child to be happy, independent, and a good person.  You can choose to live your own life and still be a loving daughter.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, my husband would lay his head on my belly and whisper to her, “Hit the ball down the line, sweetheart.”  Certainly, he would have loved to have a child who was a tennis champion.  But it is too much.  Constant and grueling, day after day.  The tennis lessons, the discipline, the travel, the expense, the pressure, the competition, the complete focus on tennis, the stress of the tournament circuit.  For everyone in the family.  It’s not just the child’s pursuit, but it is the child’s life that is most affected.  The child has to want to do it.  But how can a child know what they want to do?  It’s the rare child who is truly happy and naturally gifted and who has the ambition and discipline and family support to put 10,000 hours in to become a tennis phenom or a prima ballerina or whatever dream s/he chooses to pursue.  We did not insist on pursuing a tennis life for our children and our children did not choose such a life.  All we want is for them to be happy, independent, good people.  (Bonus, they are pretty good tennis players.)

I watch tennis because I have personal familiarity with the sport.  I enjoy watching tennis because I am fascinated by the stories behind the players.  What drives these players to compete?  Who has the mental capability to win?  They almost all have the physical capability at this level.  It’s the mental focus and ambition, flexibility and intelligence that separate the winners.  What did it take for the players to get here?  What was the parents’ role?  What if my child played at this level?  Would they be happy?  Would I?  And when it’s all over, at such a young age, what next?  Tennis pro?  Tennis commentator?  Or back to school to start a new career?  How do you integrate tennis into your post-tennis life?  Or do you just walk away?

Marion, I wish you well as you navigate your next steps.  I hope that you will own your win at Wimbledon and thoroughly take pride in that achievement.  I hope that you will continue to forge your own path and live your life, independent from your father and supported by your deepening circle of friends and supporters who you are tentatively welcoming into your life.  You have so much to offer, I hope that you will be just as bold and fierce off the tennis court.  Share your passion.  It’s your turn to reflect on what your dreams are now and to go after them in your way.  Good luck.  I am cheering you on.

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July 31, 2013

August

August photo at the beach

Anticipation

The shift happened.  Did you notice?

After the heat wave where it took energy just to go out and pick up the newspaper.

(Yes, I proudly read and relish my physical copy of the newspaper.  Saving longer articles to read later.  Bringing recipes home, so sure I will be inspired to try something new over the weekend.   Lugging entire sections around in my chaotic bag for days to share with anyone who is in synch with my sensibility:  You have to read this – it’s funny, fascinating, horrifying!  My energetic optimism for potential reading eventually ends up in recycling.  Besides, I can always find it online.)

After the days and days of drenching rain where I actually took the subway across town (something I never do, preferring to walk), multiple times, because I was fed up with soaking my sandaled feet in the puddles and fighting with the other umbrellas.

After the June first-burst of roses faded and the black-eyed susans took over, the shift happened.

The sound changed.  Did you notice?  Last week.  The cicadas are brurzing.  (One of my father’s invented words.)  The tree frogs are singing.  I heard geese honking the other day.  Flying south already?  Too soon!  I am not ready for September!  It can’t be!

You see, I love August and can’t stand the thought of it ending.  It hasn’t begun yet, but I am already preparing myself for August to be over.  For the Summer to be over.  Kind of like how I both love and dread Sundays.  Or life.  Instead of living it and loving it, I am anticipating my sadness at being at the end of it.

I love August.  The anxious transition to Summer is behind us.  The kids are settled into their Summer.  There is no homework.  Unless you count Summer Reading.

(Who thought Atlas Shrugged was a good choice for Summer Reading anyway?  I am encouraging my daughter to read the Cliffs Notes and don’t care if anyone accuses me of being a bad mother and a defiant English Lit major who should be ostracized for disrespecting the canon!)

The days are still blissfully long.  Minimal clothes.  No shoes.  (Well, I go barefoot year-round.  Thank you Yoga.)  Work slows, a touch.  And we have our vacation week on the horizon.  Resting, reading, writing, walking, cooking, connecting with my family and friends at the beach, free from routine.  I can’t wait.

Then it is over.  September.  The relentless pace will be back.  School, activities, deadlines, pressure to perform.  The kids are in the next grade.  I am another year older.

I get depressed in August.

Last year, I forbade myself to get depressed.  As if by sheer force of will, I could control my mood.  Deny my mood.  Instead, I launched full tilt into two enormously demanding, challenging, and creative projects.  I began teaching yoga consistently once a week.  I started my blog, writing consistently once a week.  (More or less.)  Determined to not quit, I persevered even when my confidence waned and my enthusiasm was shaky.  I find myself looking back on those early yoga classes, those early blog posts, with a blushing mixture of pride and embarrassment at their amateur quality.  Because, you know, I am so sophisticated now.  Beware the sophomore year.  Beware the pressure to perform at a higher level.  Hang on to beginner mind.  I teach because I love sharing yoga and how it makes me and my students feel happy.  I write because it is my way of understanding and revealing who I am in a way I have never had the guts to do before.  It is not about how many students I have, how many followers I have.  Process not results.

This year.  What?  What shall I do with this seasonal pause?  The sabbatical before September.  How can I stay in the present moment and enjoy every minute of this long wonderful month?  I do think one can make choices about ones’ mood, or at least how one reacts.  I can choose to be sad about Summer ending or I can choose to be grateful that my favorite month is here.  I choose to be grateful.  To live and love my life.  Every moment of it.  Every person in it.

It is tempting to set myself an assignment.  To get through August with GOALS.  I will begin to meditate!  That’s it!  I will meditate EVERY DAY in August.  I will post something I am grateful about EVERY DAY in August.  I will connect with one friend EVERY DAY in August.  I will look at the moon EVERY NIGHT in August.

All worthy ideas, but the pressure to perform them makes me feel depressed.  And anxious.  Well, to be honest, the ideas kind of jazz me up to a manic achievement-oriented state.  YES!  That’s how I am going to handle August!  I am going to do ALL of those things!  The depression comes later.  Either when I’ve done all those things and still feel sad or I haven’t done all those things and berate myself for failing.  And still feel sad.

To hell with good intentions and impossible-to-achieve resolutions.  Perhaps I should take a cue from the seasonal pause of nature.  And let myself pause.  Pause and breathe.

And maybe, just maybe, do something completely out of character, like watch Sharknado, with laughter instead of my customary derisive judgment.  Laughter with my family.

August with my family.  I can’t wait for it to begin.

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July 27, 2013

You Will Go To Summer Camp Dammit!

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Happy at Home 

I have decided my 14-year-old son should go to sleep-away summer camp.

It’s a little late for me to have decided this.

Especially since he is completely appalled at the prospect.

Which is why I’ve decided it would be “good” for him.

Forget that it’s the end of July. Forget that the kids who go to sleep-away camp have been going since they were 10 or younger.   I actually have found a camp for teens that has a one week option that sounds idyllic.  To me.  Hiking, Swimming, Yoga, Creative Writing.  I want to go.

How could he not want to go?  Why doesn’t he want to go?  How much should I worry that he doesn’t want to go?  Should I force him to go?  Would it be like the time I forced him to go to yoga?  Which turned out to have been not very yogic.  Recalcitrant-son-determined-to-be-miserable prodded by frustrated-type A-mother.  You Will Go To Yoga Dammit.

He seems to be happy.  He plays tennis three mornings a week.  I enrolled him in swimming lessons, much to his annoyance.  A crucial life-survival skill, I told him.  Non-negotiable.  When the teacher said he was doing so well he should join the swimming team, my son told me he was kind of enjoying it after all and might want to continue.  Aha!  See?  I should push him more!

The rest of the time, he pads around the house watching television, checking on his basil and tomato plants, playing with our beloved parakeets, lying on his bed daydreaming.  He’ll practice his guitar and do his summer reading with some nagging.  He’ll even do some chores around the house – though it takes some pleading followed by a stern threat that tv-watching privileges will be revoked.  Occasionally a neighborhood friend of his will stop by, grateful for the tranquility of our house compared to the rambunctiousness of his house filled with siblings.  But mostly my son is alone.  Or leading a parallel life with big sister in another room.  Seemingly happy.

For me, his quiet aloneness raises the specter of my lonely only child summers.  Where watching television meant watching whatever was on one of the main channels at the time:  All My Children, Let’s Make A Deal, or Star Trek.  I renounced television as a pitiful waste of time.  Why watch game shows when I could be Achieving Something Great?  I am still quite disdainful of tv-watching, which means I am regularly condescending to my family because they are quite content planted in front of the television.  While they are, god-forbid, relaxing, I busy myself with whatever it is I busy myself with.  Busy Busy Busy.  Achieving Something Great.  I think they are the wiser ones.  Besides, the offerings on television are now so incredibly varied and sophisticated that getting lost-in-tv is way more entertaining and culturally acceptable than 40 years ago.  Indeed, I am beginning to appreciate getting lost-in-tv and am convinced I am going to wish I had figured this out about 20 years ago instead of now.  I am not sure that my son’s multiple viewings of every episode of The Big Bang Theory count though.  Or my daughter’s obsession with The Royal Baby.  Or my husband’s inexplicable fascination with Pirates of the Carribbean, over and over again.

I am coming to the realization that I am quite possibly the most extroverted, sociable, and exploratory person in my family.  Well, perhaps it is more accurate to claim I am the most neurotically driven one.  To say I am an extrovert is saying a lot, because it is with intentional effort that I have overcome shyness to meet new people and try new things.  I have tested, firmly and on multiple occasions, as an INFP on the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory test.  The “I” stands for Introversion and means I am someone who is happy alone and prefers to think through things myself without a lot of input on others.  Check.  The “N” stands for Intuitive and means I am someone who is creative and can spend a great deal of time imagining and dreaming in my mind.  Check.  The F stands for Feeling and means that I am eager to please and very influenced by the desire to connect with others.  Check.  The J stands for Judging and means I am someone who is measured, planful, disciplined.  Oh yeah, that’s me.  Check.

In retrospect, however, I enjoy meeting people and trying new things and have regularly challenged myself to do so all of my life.  At least as soon as I could break free from my over-protective and risk-averse parents.   It was a badge of honor to push myself to do something new.  In ninth grade, I auditioned for the school musical, alone.  A non-singer, I croaked “Happy Birthday” to Mr. Duncan, the most open and supportive teacher EVER.  I never did get a singing role in high school, but I danced and acted and worked backstage.  Being involved with theater is one of the happiest and most fun things I’ve done in my life.  And all because I felt in my gut that I had to audition on that fateful September afternoon in 9th grade.

As my son pauses this summer before entering 9th grade, I panic.  Will he be okay?  Have I done enough for him?  Shouldn’t he have more friends?  Shouldn’t he be doing more?  Shouldn’t he be busy busy busy?  Do the kids who go to sleep-away have a leg up on him?  Should I force him to do more?  Should I let him be?  Where is the balance?  The balance between pushing him and letting him be.  What will be the feeling in his gut that compels him to take a risk?

When we had a family meeting to discuss how much structure to enforce on our kids’ summer schedule for the rest of the summer, my son reiterated that he did not want to go to sleep-away camp and was terrified I would come home one day and gleefully announce that I had enrolled him.  Yep, that is something I would do.  My husband asked him to articulate why he didn’t want to go.

“Why would I want to leave my comfort zone?” he replied, stating what was obvious to him.

Why indeed.  He has a beautiful life.  Loved and safe.  I spent my life fighting against getting too comfortable because I wanted to Achieve Something Great.  I spent my life avoiding my childhood home because it was an unhappy hide-out for me, not a happy cocoon.  We have created a happy life for our children.  A happy life they are not rebelling very hard against.  At least not yet.  Perhaps that is a Great Achievement I should be proud of.

The desire for him to go to camp is my need, not his, based on my fear that he needs to escape the confines of shyness that I struggled against.  I will honor who he is.  Nurture.  Push gently.  Balance opportunities for exploration with time in his comfort zone.  And I will be happy that he is happy at home in his comfort zone.

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