Recognized and Unnamed

I've been swimming at the local county pool since before my children were born. It's good exercise, but for lap swimmers it's rather solitary, which suits me fine. I want to go, get in my mile, and head to work. I use the time to let my mind wander as I go back and forth across the pool; I sort out problems or come up with new ideas to make the time seem more productive.

The other half of the pool not sectioned off into lanes by ropes is the social side. It's where the aqua-aerobics people meet in the mornings, and kids play in the afternoons. The people over there chat as they are led through different routines.

There is a core group of regulars at the pool in the morning. The aqua-aerobics classes are mostly women, and lap swimmers tend to be men, although there are obviously exceptions. Few people cross from one side to the other. Everyone recognizes who goes where.

Here is the thing I've been thinking about lately as I cross the pool 64 times in a row: When we think of people in our lives, we think of friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances. We don't think as often of the vast number of people who populate our days whom we recognize but can't even name.

So Close, and Yet....

This year's BlogHer convention is happening down in Chicago.  I've been waiting for it to be held somewhere accessible for years, but now that it's within driving distance I just can't.  I have a ton of work at the violin store, and it's the week of String Camp at the Conservatory.  Not only am I teaching at String Camp again, but it's the first year one of my own kids is playing in it.

I'm not sure specifically what I would get out of a blogging convention since writing on this blog is not a commercial venture for me.  All I know is there are many bloggers I admire who will be there, and the idea of meeting any of them in real life I think would be wonderful, and it seems like a great environment to find inspiration.

Even though I'm not attending the convention, I will get to drive down on Saturday night to meet a blogger whose writing I have enjoyed for years.  She was kind enough to include me in a group dinner invitation and I'm really looking forward to it.  The funny thing is I'm already worried about meeting so many new people.  Will I talk too much or have nothing to say?  Do I have anything to wear for an evening out with grown-ups or that isn't covered with glue and varnish?  What if people who like me in blog form don't like me in person?  Which all makes me wonder why I think I would survive an actual convention in the first place.  I'd probably be a self-conscious wreck the whole time.

This is definitely one area where I would do well to learn from my daughter.

Virtually Friends

I am very saddened by the recent death of Roger Ebert.  He may have been famous for his movie reviews, but in my mind he was a blogger.  When cancer stole his ability to speak he turned not just to writing, but to an internet community.  There is a difference between putting your writing out there, and being willing to make that an interactive experience with your readers.  It creates a connection that doesn't exist purely in a single direction.  It's one thing to read an excerpt like the one he wrote about his love for his wife in his memoir, but another to have it posted on his blog where people can comment.  My 'Happy Anniversary' wish may not have been memorable, but it was sincere, and there is something about knowing he saw it.  I will miss his writing.

Mr Ebert certainly never read my blog, and I'm not pretending he had any real connection to me at all, but on a smaller scale I frequently connect to others through blogging in a more mutual way.  There is a capacity to get to know people through this medium that to my mind is unique.

I read a post recently by one of my favorite bloggers that has stayed with me.  She announced that she and the father of her children were breaking up.  I am genuinely sad about it.

What surprises me a little, however, is that it hit me about as hard as similar announcements by people I actually know.  I've never met this blogger, but I feel I know her through her writing.  I know more details about her opinions and beliefs and what her kids are up to than I do about many people I see face to face who supposedly count as real friends by comparison.

The Fun and Frustrations of Facebook

Facebook is a treacherous place sometimes.

I follow about a dozen blogs, but I don't do anything with my Twitter account (other than occasionally check in on Horse eBooks because it's hilarious), and I put up three lizard related images on Pinterest and I was done with that.  I'm online most of the day with email and Hulu as I work, but it's more in the background.  I can't even imagine how many other social media things there are that I've never even heard of that I'm not doing.  Then there's Facebook.

Initially I joined Facebook simply to see what my brother's page looked like.  He has a vast network of friends and colleagues spread across the globe and it made sense to me why he would use it.  But I didn't think I had any use for such a thing and decided it would be funny to have a Facebook page with just one 'friend' on it.

But anyone who has ever used Facebook knows that's not how it works.  Everyone else who might know you is instantly alerted you are there, and there are friend requests that seem impolite to turn down, and Facebook scours the far reaches of itself even for people with names like yours to offer up as potential 'friends' you should connect with.  Eventually you end up with weird strangers in your news feed who you can't imagine how they got there, and on occasion post in a language you don't even recognize.  It's bizarre.

And beyond that there are moments when Facebook is downright creepy.

The Return of Neighborhood Recess (Babble)

Last summer some socially adept neighbors invited us to join their Neighborhood Recess gathering in the field behind our house.  It was a wonderful idea, and Aden enjoyed it a great deal, but I usually had to stay behind with Quinn who found it intimidating, and sometimes Mona if she wasn’t feeling up to it.  When Ian returned from Iraq he was able to enjoy a few rounds of Neighborhood Recess before it ended in the fall.

About a week ago Aden and I were talking about it, and wondering if we should take up the initiative ourselves this year to get Neighborhood Recess going again because we missed it.  But as it happens, the neighbors who put it together before emailed me the next day saying they were ready to do it again, and did we want to join them?  Of course we did!

Neighborhood Recess is a gathering of kids and their parents to play games in the field behind our house for an hour in the evening once a week.  Anyone can join, even kids who happen to be wandering by and just think it looks fun.  It’s informal and silly and a nice way to get to know other families in the neighborhood.

The field isn’t directly behind our house, it just seems that way.  There is a parking lot between us and the field, but since nothing obstructs our view it feels like it’s right outside the back gate.  Here’s the view from the terrace outside my girls’ room.

That’s our garage with our ‘Welcome Home’ mural (for when Ian came back from the second deployment), and beyond that is the field.

And here’s a (not great) zoom in on the crazy game of “Bear, Salmon, Mosquito” going on.  I love games that don’t take any equipment or props, but simply people willing to move.  One of my favorites (and a good way to wear kids out before bedtime) is called “Everybody’s It.”  Just like it sounds, everybody is it.  When the game starts you try to tag as many people as you can.  If you get tagged you sit down, but anyone else who feels like it can tag you again and get you back up.  The game continues until either there is one person left standing or everyone gets too tired to play anymore (which is usually what happens).

We also played a name game, animal races, and poison dart frog.  That one was new to me, and it’s kind of like ‘Murder!’ for the kid crowd.  A detective stands in the middle of the circle of players and tries to figure out the identity of the poison dart frog.  The poison dart frog is a person who sticks his or her tongue out at other people in the circle causing them to fall over dead.  (The best moment was when the little boy chosen to be the frog announced loudly to a kid across the circle, “I killed you!” which made the detective’s job that round rather easy.)

Last year Neighborhood Recess was primarily Aden’s thing.  Mona was nervous about it and just skirted the edges of the activity, and Quinn wanted nothing to do with it.  This year at the first gathering Mona was all over everything right along with her sister, and Quinn, after initially staying glued to one of my legs, eventually warmed up and let go of me long enough to do the animal races.  He was always the last one to get across the field moving like a frog or a kangaroo or a salamander, but he was happy.  Quinn’s a shy little fellow, so I was glad to see him throwing himself into the crowd for a change, even if that crowd was pretending to be monkeys.

I admire people who are able to organize successful events.  We get so wrapped up in all of the activities in our own house we have trouble remembering to look up and invite others in as often as we should.  Things like Neighborhood Recess make me glad I live where I do, and that we were able to move into a larger house without changing who our neighbors are, because we are surrounded by awfully nice people.  I’m glad Neighborhood Recess is back.

Not Fair (Babble)

I don’t mean for my blog to seem like a constant litany of posts on death, but we don’t get to choose what life hands us, and lately it’s just the topic that seems to rear its head too often to be ignored.

Today one of my dearest friends in the world lost her younger brother. He’d been fighting a brain tumor for awhile, and recently stopped chemo to die at home. He leaves behind a wife and two small children. It’s just wrong. I felt inadequate as I called my friend to give her my condolences.

I didn’t want the day to pass without getting up on my tiny soapbox in this corner of the internet to say that Natan will be missed. Alit, I am so sorry your brother is gone. I love you and wish there were something I could do.

Friendship Auditions (Babble)

When Aden was little, maybe right around when she turned three, she became very interested in making friends.  As our first born she didn’t have built in playmates at home yet, and she was intrigued and excited by any interaction she had with other children.  But she was shy.  Until one day her dad, sitting with her on the edge of the busy playground, said, “Do you know who all these kids are?”  Aden shook her head.  “They’re all friends.”  She turned to see all the children on the playground in a new light, and ran off to play with them.

Aden still has moments of shyness, as do many of us, but for the most part she is a master of making new friends.  She likes to lead games and she’s popular at school.  I’ve watched her strike up conversations with new children dozens of times, and she has a natural way of making them feel at ease.  She forms attachments quickly and is a loyal and engaged friend.  She is far more advanced in these skills than I am.

But the rules of friendship are simpler the younger you are.

As toddlers, children just playing near each other can get labeled as friends.  As an older child or teenager the politics of who is your friend can be contentious and complex territory.  Friendships can become obsolete over time and dissolve with distance or circumstance.  I am lucky enough to have friends that I’ve stayed connected to since I was a child, despite multiple moves and changes.  The world would be a harsher place without them.



As an adult I don’t like to swing the word ‘friend’ around too loosely.  I’ve lived long enough that the word is precious.  My true and dear friends are as important to me as any family and I feel committed to them in the same way.  This is part of why I don’t think I’ve been good about embracing Facebook, because I don’t like referring to anybody who wants to link to my page as a friend.  ‘Contact’ I could see (or ‘fan’ or ‘well-wisher’ or in my opinion ‘eavesdropper’ would be good), but ‘friend?’   I originally went on Facebook just because I wanted to see my brother’s page.  I kind of liked that first day where I had only one friend.  But then requests came in and at first I was picky–again because of the use of the word ‘friend.’  ‘Friending’ people I actually knew was one thing, but I remember turning down the request of my friend’s husband’s sister because she wasn’t someone I would recognize in a crowd and why on earth did she want to be on my friend list?  I’ve come to terms with the Facebook thing and anyone who wants on can be there, but I still don’t like the watering down of the word friend to something so casual.  Real friends are rare.

So for me making new ones is hard.  At my age the most daunting part is getting through all the background information because there is so much of it.  To have a meaningful conversation with someone about my life he or she needs to know the cast of characters and the back story that goes with them.  There have been times I’ve wanted to talk about something important with a newer friend, but thinking about all the background necessary to get to the part that currently interests me seems exhausting.  It’s easier to just call a friend back home or one of my brothers and get right to the point.  For my kids a long history of shared experience to base a friendship on isn’t even possible because they don’t have much history period.  Both parties liking the color pink is good enough.

I don’t often hear discussions about strategies for making friends as an adult.  I give my kids ideas about how to make and keep friends when they need it, but offering to share sidewalk chalk isn’t as natural a plan past a certain age.  As a parent you don’t often choose the people you spend time with because they just happen to be the parents of the kids with whom your own children want to play.  Sometimes that works well, and sometimes it doesn’t (and I must say, I’ve been particularly lucky in that regard that my kids’ friends seem to consistently have very nice parents). 

But trying to forge new, close relationships like the ones I enjoyed in my hometown is difficult.  I remember when we first moved to Milwaukee I was so desperate for friends that when I exchanged a nice moment in a checkout line at the grocery store with a woman about my age I almost blurted out, “Will you be my friend?!”  I eventually did do that with someone who is still my friend when I met her behind the scenes of a museum tour, but that was after slightly more interaction than saying, “Hey, you dropped that.”

I’ve been giving all of this a lot of thought lately for two reasons.  The first is that Quinn is turning four and he gets to have his own little party where he can choose the guests for once.  He picked a couple of people from school to invite over for pizza and cake, but I don’t know what criteria he used for labeling those people his friends.  The first couple of weeks of school I asked him if he’d made any friends yet and he said no.  Aden would have simply labeled the whole class her friends.  Quinn’s approach is different, but I’m not sure what it is.  It’s just kind of fascinating to watch.  I want all my kids to enjoy having wonderful friends, but it’s one of those things I can’t control, and that’s never easy.

The other reason is I have a new friend named Lauren.  She’s a talented local writer who makes me laugh, and she’s agreed to a friendship building plan that gets through all the background work more efficiently.  We’re taking turns on email asking each other to share information about important things like best friends, fathers, preference for plain or peanut M&Ms….  It’s fun.  I feel like we could come up with a handbook at some point about what are good questions to ask new friends to speed up the process.  That’s the thing about being older, is there is more to cover but less time in which to do it.  A comprehensive checklist could be just the thing.

Auditioning for a new friend is such a strange, awkward phase.  Too much dependence or information too soon can feel inappropriate or a little crazy.  The nice thing about Lauren is she seems the same amount of inappropriate and crazy as myself.  I think we’re both looking for someone to have in town with whom we can talk about anything and laugh until it hurts.  It’s finding a match that works and being willing to put in the effort to get that off the ground that’s hard.  But it’s worth it, because, really?  What’s better than having good friends?  (And Lauren, you’ve now been officially declared my friend on the internet, and I’m sure that’s legally binding so you’re stuck with me.  Unless that sounded creepy instead of funny in which case I’m sorry.  Agh!  Stupid early awkward phase….)

A Mew-Mew By Any Other Name... (Babble)

For anyone interested in the outcome of our recent kitty drama, please read on….
After two weeks of pondering what to do with Mew-Mew Lilly we decided to try passing her on to a good friend of ours.

Mew-Mew had been straying farther and farther from our yard and I was getting really worried about her.  There were a couple of nights we even put out food where we didn’t see her at all, and then we caught a different neighborhood cat eating out of her dish.  I was giving up hope that her owner was ever going to appear, so we decided to invite her into the back room of our house for an afternoon and let her meet my friend Bonnie Jean.  Bonnie Jean is one of the kindest people I know and she has been wanting a pet, so it seemed perfect; my friend could have a pet, the cat would have a loving home, and we would still get to visit her.

It was so sweet for that couple of hours that the cat was in the house.  I promised Ian I would keep her in the back few rooms and then vacuum everything so it wouldn’t affect his allergies.  The cat was nervous at first, but trusted us, and eventually settled into a spot on the love seat where Aden petted her while watching TV.  It was very comfortable and natural having a cat lounging around.  If we ever find one as friendly as Mew-Mew that doesn’t make my husband sick I want it.

Anyway, Bonnie Jean was also taken with the cat, and after putting her in a pet carrier without a struggle, loaded her into the car and off they went.  The next report we got was that Mew-Mew was going by Caramel Cashew and doing fine.



Then Bonnie Jean took her to the vet where they discovered the chip in her ear which said she was registered under the name Toffee and lived a block away from us.  I felt like we’d done some cruel trick on my friend, dangling a sweet pet in front of her like that.   To all the people who commented that I should have the cat checked for a chip, apparently that was excellent advice and next time that’s the first thing we’ll do.  I was reluctant because I knew if we took her to the vet and there were no chip we would still probably have her checked out or possibly spayed and then she would suddenly be ours, and we weren’t ready for that.

The real owners were happy to get their cat back and reimbursed Bonnie Jean for the vet bill, and told her the cat’s name was actually Admiral.  (After running through so many names for the cat I keep thinking of the joke, “I don’t care what you call me just as long as you don’t call me late for dinner.”)

The kids still haven’t gotten around to removing the ‘Found!’ posters of the cat from our block, although it is truth in advertising.

So that was our brief experiment with quasi-pet ownership.  It’s got me thinking about real pets one day.

Oh, and unrelated to this post but worth mentioning:  Mona lost yet another tooth in front! She’s going to look like her baby pictures soon.

Neighborhood Recess (Babble)

You wouldn’t think too much would change in terms of life in the neighborhood when you move across the street.  I mean, we moved a matter of feet away from where we lived for ten years, so the joke for awhile was about getting to know the new neighbors, which (except for the people who bought our old house) are obviously all the same neighbors as before.  But, weirdly enough, we do interact with different people on the new side of the street.

The first time I noticed this was when the girls were still in school and Quinn wanted to take his trike around the block.  When you have really small children it’s convenient to stick close to home, and where we live that means usually not leaving our specific block.  Crossing the street can be hazardous, so it’s less stressful to just go round and round the same sidewalk trail again and again which always leads us back to our house. 

We knew every inch of the old block.  Which houses had dogs, which ones had wind chimes in the garden to ring, which ones had friends we could visit.  The new block is, well…new.  And it’s a different kind of block because the whole back half of it is an apartment building and directly behind us is its parking lot.  It’s one big building whose inhabitants are mysterious to us still.  Even houses where you don’t personally know the people have a personality and you can figure out at least little things about the owners.  But the apartment building doesn’t offer many clues, other than the cigarette butts outside and an occasional abandoned beer or pop can.

In any case, when you travel around the same block a hundred times in a week you run into other people tethered to small children traveling the same path.  This was how I came to know a new collection of parents in the neighborhood, and it’s been the start of something really nice, namely Neighborhood Recess.


Neighborhood Recess was the brainchild of a couple down the street from us with two small boys.  After chatting with me a few times when I was out with Quinn, a dad from around the corner stopped by one evening with his kids and asked if my girls would like to come play kickball for an hour.  I couldn’t go with them because Quinn was asleep, but I told Aden and Mona they could go with the man with the baby strapped to his chest if they wanted to.  They were hesitant since this wasn’t someone they knew yet, but at some point you have to start trusting people, and the guy with the contented eight month old snoozing on his chest seemed like a safe bet.

It’s hard to let your kids venture into the world without you, but I think it’s important.  I know I keep a tighter leash on my kids than my parents kept on me when I was a child, but I get nervous.  And it’s not that I think I live in more dangerous times.  I grew up in the era of the Oakland County Child Killer, and my best friend lived not too far from where one little girl was snatched, and we still all just roamed the neighborhood and made our way home at dinnertime. 

But it’s harder nowadays when you can go online and find the addresses of all the registered sex offenders in your neighborhood to feel as trusting of the people around you.  When news stations replay scary stories about bad things happening to children again and again, it feels like it’s actually happening again and again.  I remember how much more fearful my grandmother got in the last few years in her house when she was in front of the TV too much.  I would remind her that if she only had what she could see for herself outside her own window to go on, she’d be convinced nothing ever happened besides the grass growing and the sun rising and setting.  We let other people define reality for us too often.  We need to be informed, but we also need to trust our own senses.  And my senses tell me that as far as keeping my kids safe, I trust my neighbors.

So back to Neighborhood Recess….  I mentioned there is a parking lot directly behind our house.  On the next block behind us, past the parking lot, is an empty field.  Because I can stand in my kitchen or yard and look directly over the parking lot to the field, it feels like the field is directly behind our house.  The street to cross to get to it isn’t busy, so I have no problem sending the girls out the back door to play in the field without me.  There are about three or four other couples who gather in the field with their kids one set evening a week for an hour and organize a game or two.  It’s a blast.  Any kids who wander by are encouraged to join in, and often they do.  Sometimes it’s kickball, sometimes soccer, sometimes freeze tag…. 

The best new game I learned was ‘Bear, Salmon, Mosquito’ which is kind of like a tag version of ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors.’  (There are two teams, and each team decides as a group what they will all be when they turn around and face the other team.  Bears eat Salmon, Salmon eat Mosquitoes, and Mosquitoes eat Bears, so if one team turns around and pretends to be Bears and the other team turns around at the same time and pretends to be Salmon, the team of Bears gets to chase the Salmon and see how many they can tag to join their team, and then both teams pick something new and do it again.  Crazy fun.)  It’s nice because the parents are all clever about finding ways to include everyone, so babies get paired up with adults and toddlers always get a shot at the ball, and older kids like mine still get to play a real game.

Aden loves it and has made several friends.  Mona thinks she loves it until she gets there and then she gets shy.  Sometimes she participates, and sometimes she just gets her scooter and glides along the sidewalk on the fringe of the action.  Quinn, despite some nice experiences when I coaxed him out to the field with the rest of us, preferes to play in the sandbox in our yard, so I don’t get to go play as often as I’d like.  Most of the time I end up pushing Quinn on the swing and peeking my head over the fence every few minutes to catch a glimpse of Aden running up and down the field and laughing with the neighborhood kids.  It’s such a lovely idea, and I’m so glad someone was inspired enough to literally get the ball rolling.  When Ian comes home it will be a nice way for him to get to know some of the new people I’ve met since he left while getting some exercise with our own kids.

Neighborhood Recess has become another one of the those routines set in stone for my children that they look forward to every week (like Friday Night Movie Night).  Even Quinn who doesn’t participate very often thinks it’s important that we be home for Neighborhood Recess.  I wonder if everyone will be up to a snowsuit version come November….

Kindness Counts (Babble)

Telling people Ian is deployed in Iraq is odd because it isn’t simple.  It means different things to different people, even within our family.

Ian can’t stand it when people react to the news of his getting shipped out in a negative way, usually with what he calls ‘the cancer voice’–where people grimace a little and say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  It’s his job and he likes it.  It’s challenging and important.  He’s a Major, so it’s not what most people first picture when they imagine him ‘fighting.’  The work he’s doing over there right now involves tackling corruption and using his engineering skills to solve basic problems.  He’s perfectly suited to what he’s doing and he’s making a difference.  Whatever you think of the situation in Iraq right now (and personally I hate that we’re there at all), Ian is exactly the kind of person we are lucky to have there trying to fix things.  I’m sure if there were a magic way he could do his job and not be so far away from us he would be happier, but it is what it is.

I remind Ian, however, that the cancer voice sentiments apply to my part of the situation just fine.  There is no feeling of accomplishment at our end.  I’m trying to hold things together as best I can, but most of the time I’m stretched very thin, can’t get everything done that I need to, and I’m scared.  I try not to play what I think of as ‘the deployment card’ when dealing with people, but sometimes at work I need to let people know why my store doesn’t have normal hours.  I have to operate by appointment only in order to spread out the interactions with customers to a manageable level.  There is always at least one child with me which keeps things unpredictable, and rather than let people think I don’t have any sense of professionalism or that I don’t want their business, I explain that my husband is deployed but things should go back to normal in the fall.  Most people are pretty accommodating as long as there is a reason, and deployment is a pretty good reason.


In any case, as much as Ian would prefer not to look at his chance to do the work he’s trained for as bad news, from here it’s hard not to see it that way.  Most of the people I talk to understand it in that light, and when you tell people about your own misfortunes of any kind, they usually say, “If there is anything I can do….”  I know that’s what I say, and I know most of us mean it as we’re saying it.  But some people are profoundly better at following through with that idea than others.  I aspire to be one of those people when I’m in a better position to do so.

I do the best I can, snatching at small opportunities when they present themselves to help make someone’s day a little better or easier, but it’s hard when I’m always scrambling around just to keep my own family running.  I’m in awe of people who are truly prepared and willing to help when it’s needed even when they are obviously busy too, and there are more of them than I can believe sometimes.  I make mental notes of clever ways people can be helpful when I see them so I’ll have more to offer others sometime than the words, “If there is anything I can do….”  Here are some examples I’ve witnessed of kindness in action.

An experience that stays with me from back before I had children and was still commuting 40 miles away to violin making school every day, was witnessing an accident on the freeway.  I was driving behind an elderly man who passed out behind the wheel and crashed into a barricade and flipped his car over.  It was really frightening and my car wasn’t affected, but since I’d witnessed the accident I pulled over to tell any officials arriving at the scene what little I knew.  I didn’t think there was anything I could actually do to help and I didn’t want to be in the way, so I kept my distance for awhile. 

But I was stunned at how many other people did think of ways to help.  Several people pulled over just to offer some small service before continuing on their respective commutes.  One woman asked the old man, still hanging upside down in his car, if there was anyone she could call for him on her cell phone or anyone he wanted to talk to.  He had her call his wife.  Another man stopped simply to leave a blanket to keep the man warm if he went into shock.  I got to watch the paramedics do their jobs brilliantly.  The man who helped the elderly driver out of his car and onto a stretcher, checked him over carefully before smiling at his patient and saying in an amused voice, “What did you do?” which made the old guy relax and respond with a laugh saying, “I don’t know!”  Transportation department people efficiently blocked off the scene, the police gathered information….  It was a tremendous display of everyone doing everything they should have with care and I was deeply moved by the whole thing.  I don’t think enough of us appreciate just how often people do things right in the course of a typical day.  Since then I try to keep a blanket in my car that I can afford to spare should I happen upon someone who may really need it.

A fellow musician in town recently struggled with an ugly bout of breast cancer.  Her medical bills were going to be an increasing problem, so a few people organized a fundraising dinner.  It was a lovely event where we all contributed money and I know the musician was grateful, but it was the creative contributions I learned about while at that dinner that truly impressed me.  One person had volunteered to come out to her house and teach her violin students for her while she was sick.  That was a stroke of genius in my opinion, because I wouldn’t have thought of a way to apply the skill of teaching violin in a manner that was useful to someone fighting cancer, but it allowed her to keep her normal income and not disrupt her students’ schedules.  I love it when people find ways to use what they already do in a charitable capacity.

In my own life I am continually amazed by which people are the ones who step up to help.  Of course my mom will always help when she can because she’s my mom.  But my cousin out in Minnesota?  I’ve always loved and admired Ann, but when you ask for volunteers to help you move you don’t expect any of the out of state people to respond.  Ann immediately offered up her husband’s muscles and her own child entertaining abilities, and told me to pick a weekend and they would drive six hours with two small kids to come help.  That’s amazing and I will be forever grateful.  (Ann can have her pick of any organs I can spare should she ever need them.)

People who help you move are in a special category anyway, but some of my newest friends were among the first to volunteer.  Moving is repetitive and rough and not easy, and all who have made themselves available to carry furniture across the street for me have been cheerful about it.  Again, several of them are not the people I would have expected to appear at my doorstep, but how wonderful to learn the circle of people you can count on is so wide?  Robyn got her exercise for the week moving all my books, her husband helped hoist furniture, Bonnie Jean and her hsuband found time to pitch in with lots of heavy lifting in the middle of their busy schedule, Kate moved the pachinko machine and children’s books among other things, Howard moved my bed and a ton of things from the garage, and my cousin’s husband Dave tirelessly made a million and a half trips with every heavy thing I own the whole weekend.  That’s above and beyond.

There is Laurie whom I know both through orchestra and mandolin rehearsals, who has started offering herself up at unexpected times to play with my kids so I can run away for a little while.  I’ve always liked Laurie, but I never would have guessed she might be someone to spontaneously offer help when I needed it.  I got to paint part of my new kitchen in peace thanks to Laurie when she called out of the blue and agreed to help Aden use her Easy Bake Oven for a couple of hours.  It’s hard to ask for help, so never underestimate the value of simply handing a busy parent a block of time.  That’s a lesson I’m keeping in my back pocket in order to help others.  I do take other people’s kids for a few hours when I’m able even now while I’m so busy, just because I know how much it helps sometimes.

Another cousin (of my mom’s gerneration), Carol, has made us dinner a couple of times.  Food always tastes better when you don’t have to make it yourself!  She’s cooked the food in our house and kept an eye on the kids while I taught, and she’s also sent along a casserole to make things easier.  (I would love to go cook for someone who could use it, but that will have to wait for a time when I’m not a traveling circus everywhere we go.)

My brother’s girlfriend down in Texas is flying up for a couple of weeks in March just to help.  I liked Kristie the first time I met her, but to find out the depth of her sincerity is amazing.  When we first got the news of Ian’s deployment her immediate reaction was, “I will go up and stay with them for a week to help,” and she’s actually doing it.  Having a second adult in the house is like suddenly being able to fly.  While Kristie is here I won’t have to take everyone with me on errands, I can go out for a walk alone when they are all asleep, and get some real work done in the new house.  That’s a huge gift, and from an unexpected place.  (Barrett, if you let this woman get away you’ll have some serious explaining to do.)

And there isn’t enough room on any blog to adequately thank my friends Carol and Chris.  There is no way I’d be actually moving into the new house anytime soon without their help.  It’s painful to sit in this house with the kids when I can practically see from my window all the work that needs to happen across the street.  I feel trapped some days, wishing I could go paint or organize something in the new house, but I can’t leave the kids alone.  (Occasionally I march them all over there with me, but the noise and running around drives me crazy, and one time Mona ended up in urgent care with a twisted ankle, so that backfired big time.)  I’ve done as many trips as I feel comfortable with, carrying boxes over while bringing along my cell phone in case during the minute and a half I’m gone something happens even though they are just playing with legos.  So Carol and Chris paint and clean when I can’t.  And the nice thing is that even though I can’t be doing all of this house preparation with my husband, it’s nice watching some husband and wife team working on it.  I watch the two of them tackling projects together and checking in on their own kids and wish so much I could have that again soon.

Between all my friends and relatives who have offered their time and effort, there is love going into the work on that house, and that will help make it a real home.  That means a lot to me.  They understand how hard it must be to do any of this alone and they’re doing something about it.  (If I ever run into someone insane enough to move with small children while his or her spouse is out of the country, I will know what kind of help to offer!)

This is the positive result of being willing to tell people about Ian’s deployment.  It’s the kind of situation that inspires certain people to action, and it’s incredible to see.  I met Carol initially because I was struggling during the last deployment with getting my daughter into the school building each morning.  She’s the kind of person who probably would have helped anyway, but she saw a mom in trouble and jumped in, and now I have one of the best friends anyone could ask for.  I don’t know how I’d be doing without the kindness of so many people both near and far.

I’m looking forward to a day, though, where I’m not the one who needs so much help.  I want to be the one who jumps in and rescues someone else for awhile.

Garden Fairies and Other Magical Beings (Babble)

The first few days of Ian’s deployment were surreal.  The first steps of a long journey don’t feel any different from the first steps of a walk around the block.  Everything felt normal with an underlying sense that it shouldn’t.

After a couple of weeks we were in a new and fairly predictable routine.  That felt good, like I was in control of things, and Ian being gone wasn’t going to be too disruptive.  We could miss Ian, but still lead our lives just fine.  It was inconvenient but doable.

Somewhere about a month in is when the true effects of having a deployed spouse start to hit.  Certain things began to get away from me at about the three week mark and I started to get frazzled.  I may have a handle on most things inside the house, but the outside is another story.  There is nowhere in my schedule to do anything with the yard.  I would make a mental note on the walk from the house to the car that the hedges looked awful and the peonies needed to be cut down and the mulberry tree that seemed to be growing right out of the foundation of the garage needed to be chopped back into submission.  But when?  Quinn is next to me practically every minute, and between shuttling girls around (to school and violin and choir and birthday parties) and running my business, there is just enough time left to go grocery shopping and do other basic errands.  Something had to give and that something was the yard.

Luckily, I know incredible people.  I think we all do, but most of us are never in a circumstance to call on them for anything.


My neighbor from across the street offered to mow my lawn, which he did on a Sunday morning and I was grateful.  When I came home with the kids later in the day, the hedges were also trimmed and the garden cleaned up and the pots overturned.  The house didn’t look abandoned anymore and I was really happy.  That bit of help came at a time when I really needed it, and I sent a note across the street with Aden to thank him for doing so much.  My neighbor called a minute later saying he couldn’t take credit for the additional yard work because he hadn’t been sure what he should touch in the garden.  It was Garden Fairies.

The kids and I speculated at dinner about who could have done it.  “Sophia’s dad did it once, so maybe it was him!  Or Anna’s dad, or maybe Julie since she has to look at the garden from her window anyway…. ”  Between the girls and myself (with Quinn echoing everyone for good measure) we came up with several likely candidates for the Garden Fairy Brigade.  I pointed out to my kids how lucky we were to know so many nice people that an act of kindness toward us could even be a mystery.  We all smiled as we finished our dinner and as I went to bed I still couldn’t narrow down in my head who the Garden Fairies might be.

The very next day I found myself in a minor mini-crisis at the violin store.  I’ve been doing pretty well at spreading out the work I need to do so I don’t get overwhelmed, but a surprise rehair showed up.  (A rehair is when you put new horsehair on a bow.  Violinists need their bows reahaired every six weeks to two years depending on how much they play.)  It was an expensive cello bow that I’ve done before that takes a lot of concentration to do well, and I agreed to work on it because I’d just gotten back from the library with Quinn and he had a new movie to watch and a snack to eat.  I figured he would be distracted long enough for me to do the job even though I hadn’t planned for it.  Of course, the minute I cut the old hair and there was no turning back, Quinn had a meltdown.  He wanted to climb in my lap, and when I told him ‘no’ he turned into a wailing puddle.

After about ten minutes of Quinn thwarting any chance of my doing the rehair I was starting to feel panicky. I really wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do, and just then a friend walked into the store to buy new strings for her instrument.  It was my girls’ violin teacher, and I found myself telling her I was getting frustrated with Quinn keeping me from my work, and she offered to take him with her on some errands for a little while.  It was like a miracle.  Quinn was perfectly happy to take her hand and we put his booster seat in her car, and they went to the post office and the bank together.  He can be lovely company (if you’re not trying to rehair a bow), and he was happy to get a lollypop from the bank teller.  I was able to do the rehair in peace and get it done on time, and I felt so…light.  That half an hour of quiet exactly when I needed it gave me a whole new lease on life.  I was glad to have my son back again when they returned and he was glad to have a happier mommy.

The week before Halloween I was lucky enough to have my brother, Arno, and a friend of his, come visit for a few days after they attended a brain conference in Chicago.  Arno’s friend was one of the sweetest guests imaginable, and he fixed little things around the house for me and the kids.  His family was back in Boston, and that he was willing to take a little time away from his own daughter to play with my kids was incredibly nice.  (They miss you, Satra, if you happen to read this!)

But the reigning champion of selfless helpers these days has to be my brother, Arno.  The day his friend flew home we had a disaster involving something called the P-trap in our basement.  Sewage everywhere.  It even blew up out of the basement toilet.  Roto Rooter came and fixed it, but left us the mess to mop up, and there is something so impossibly disgusting about knowing it’s not just human waste you’re wading through, but other people’s waste, that it makes me gaggy just thinking about it again. 

I went out and bought a giant container of bleach and a couple of sets of disposable gloves, and I fully intended to spend some disgusting mopping time down in my basement, but Arno did it all.  I figured we’d feed the kids and put them to bed, and then the two of us could go at it, but Arno decided it couldn’t wait.  I made dinner while he went down with plastic bags wrapped around his shoes and cleaning tools we knew would have to be sacrificed to the cause.  He scoured everything and used up the entire container of bleach and made extra sure that the whole bathroom and the path to the washing machine in particular were CLEAN.  When he was done he threw away his pants and he headed straight for the shower.

The amazing thing about having my brother here is he actually made me laugh about the whole mess.   I love him so much.  And as much as I felt like the world’s worst hostess to have Arno clean up sewage on his visit, the truth is he was there to help.  I could not have needed it more!  If that had happened while I was alone with the kids I would have cried.  I’d have had to wait until the kids were asleep and stayed up all night alone mopping my basement, trying not to throw up and alternately weeping and cursing.  But instead I baked my brother pumpkin pies.  We laughed at the incredible grossness of the whole thing.  I made a joke about how he didn’t owe me presents ever again because he was good for all my birthdays, and he misunderstood and thought I meant I wouldn’t give him gifts anymore (since how do you top a sewage cleaning experience as a present?) and we laughed so hard I almost peed myself.  To top it off, after giving the kids a lecture about not using so much toilet paper (the likely cause of the disaster to begin with), Mona used the toilet and waved to the bowl after she flushed saying, “Bye bye!  See you again soon!”  Who knew sewage backup could be so funny?  (Says the woman who didn’t have to clean any of it.)

Oh, and the Garden Fairy?  Turned out to be my friend Carol who seems to be making a career out of saving my sanity on a regular basis.  She is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known and I’m so proud to be able to call her my firend.   Her husband recently fixed a door in my house.  I paid him in apple pie.

I went out and bought a supply of disposable pie pans this week.  I have a feeling if these first couple of months are any indication, before this deployment is over I’ll have a lot more baking to do.

Two Moms In Alaska (Babble)

I got to go to Alaska!

My best friend from high school, Gabby, and I started talking years ago about how when we turned forty we should take another trip together.  We had a wonderful time traveling for a month after college, well before husbands and kids and houses and real jobs.  We spent most of that month in national parks, doing our inept version of camping.  We were hungry and filthy but we laughed the whole time and had some great (although admittedly tame) adventures.

Last summer at her house while our kids all played together, I reminded her that we would actually, shockingly, finally be turning forty and needed to pick a place to go and a date to go there.  Open blocks of time along with a stash of disposable income don’t normally fall into the lap of the average parent, so it sounded like an impossible dream but one worth toying with for an afternoon.  We opened an atlas and traced our fingers over places both exotic and mundane, trying to imagine how we’d fare in places like Thailand or New Zealand or Saskatchewan.  And then we hit upon Alaska.

Who doesn’t want to see Alaska at some point in their lives?  It sounded adventurous without actually being so.  Far away, but no passport needed, different but still somehow the same…. One of the things that tends to happen when you’re raising small children is avoidance of major risks.  I have to be around to raise my kids so I won’t be experimenting with skydiving anytime soon.  My mom told me once when she was in the rain forest a couple of years ago with one of my brothers that she was supposed to climb a spindly observation tower with him, and she hesitated before having the revelation that she was no longer raising small children and she was free to risk her life for a change.  (I pointed out that if anything happened to her my dad would be dead in a week, so she’s still pondering that one.)  We decided Alaska, at least in our imaginations, would be the place.

Then we got the news Ian would be going back to Iraq.  Suddenly a trip away with my friend for a week didn’t sound so selfish or impossible.  It sounded like a reward in advance of a long haul raising the kids on my own again which I knew meant putting most of my interests aside for a year while being anxious and tired.  It also meant he’d be earning a steady income while away, and plane tickets to Alaska and a rental car weren’t looking as expensive.  Ian told me we should do it, that he and the kids would miss us for a week, but I should have a great time just being away from our day to day life for awhile.  That there was lots of day to day life in my future so I should do something I wanted just because it was fun.  My only restriction was we had to go before his deployment date in September.  Gabby had to do some fancier planning on her end so that her three kids were cared for while she was away, but we found a week that worked and off we went!

We had a travel agent up in Anchorage arrange some hotels and activities so we wouldn’t waste too much time simply hunting for a place to sleep every night and figuring out what was available to do.  It was such a grown up trip.  A far cry from sleeping in the car in hotel parking lots and munching on cold pop tarts.  That was fun, too, but showering is so nice.  Gabby’s husband was worried about us somehow wandering off into the wilderness and dying so he sent an emergency GPS tracking device along with us.  As we ate at a buffet of salmon and prime rib after a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords we debated if that was an appropriate time to hit the emergency distress beacon.  (What?  They are low on rice pilaf?  Hit 911!)

What an amazing time!  We saw grizzly bears in Denali Park (from a bus, thankfully):

And the dots in this picture are caribou:

We also saw bald eagles and humpback whales and an otter and sea lions and harbor seals and a trumpeter swan and puffins and a fox and a squirrel.  (If my kids had been there they would still be talking about the squirrel.)  In Seward there is a crazy population of puffy slow looking pet rabbits that someone set free years ago and somehow they survive and hop all over town.  We’ve had pet bunnies, and they are funny and fascinating, but they are not the brightest bulbs in the food chain bulb box if you know what I mean, so I’m stunned that any of them have found a way to survive the winters in a place that most of the people don’t even stick around for.

And there was dangerous mud (I had not heard of the dangerous mud in Anchorage but there was a lot of it and people were very very serious about the dangers of the mud):

And there were other hazards that almost caused us to push the emergency beacon but we ended up going to gift shops instead:

Things I didn’t know:  Alaska has an average of 14 earthquakes A DAY.  Bears just eat the brains out of the salmon they catch.  Salmon after they spawn don’t taste good.  Puffins are only colorfully cute when they are living on rocks during mating season–out at sea they are just brown and grey.  If you spot a moose you are supposed to run (away).

We ate Mexican food in Wasilla, we kayaked over salmon, we white-water rafted down eleven miles of the Nenana river, and we got to sit in a boat next to the end of a glacier for about half an hour and listen to it.  Glaciers sound like thunder and gunshots and shivering next to one with one of my oldest friends (she is forty, you know) for part of an afternoon is now one of my favorite memories.  It was a great trip and we even laughed some of the time.  (Okay, most of the time and so hard we almost missed the biggest wave on the rafting trip until the guide pointed it out and told us to hang on.)  It was awesome.

Where is the parenting element of all of this?  I think sometimes it’s healthy to miss your kids for a bit.  I enjoyed buying crackers and cheese from the store that they wouldn’t eat, and finishing not just sentences but whole conversations with an adult, and reading a book out loud about zombies instead of ponies, but by the end of the week I couldn’t wait to get back to my kids.  It was just the break I needed to appreciate how lucky I am to spend time with such sweet interesting people.  They all seemed so much older after a week away, and I felt like I’d missed out on a piece of their lives.  Instead of trepidation about becoming the full-time parent again, I’m actually a little excited.  It feels more like the privilege it should be rather than the chore it sometimes gets reduced to when life becomes an endless treadmill of laundry and dishes and cleaning.  It does help to step back in order to get perspective, and I got to step all the way back to Alaska.  I’ve had my break and I’m ready to hunker down for Ian’s year away.