Making a Leap

2011 was a doozy for most and I am no exception.  At the start of the year, I felt like I was going to lose my mind, stressed out to the max about whether we should stay in Ithaca or move back to La Jolla.  Mid-game changes are not my forte.  The Professor seems to thrive on them.  After much struggling, we came back to southern California last July and have been trying to settle back in to an old place with a new attitude.

The problem is I haven’t found the right set of new tools.  It’s very challenging to reinvent your lifestyle when you have the same old approach to doing things.  It’s like my wine habit.  Reading in a magazine how I can replace the wine with herbal tea or a bath in the evenings as a wind down method doesn’t help me.  I have my own style and I’m not really interested in boiling a kettle of water or filling up a tub when it’s 5:00pm and I want to uncork something to go with my dinner.  I am motivated to change in bigger ways. 

We are trying out new roles as teacher and writer instead of CEO and volunteer/housewife.  In order to make it work, we have to adjust the spending of our energy, time and money.  My habits are deeply ingrained and I find it difficult to stop behaving the way I used to. Last month I mindlessly bought a pair of $200 grey suede clogs (online because I gave up the mall), wore them around the house for 15 minutes, then got a hold of myself, put them back in their box and printed out the return label faster than I could say, “Please credit my account.”  After 20 years of making and spending money as a way to survive, I find myself slipping left and right as I try to reduce expenses and keep myself on the word document in front of me.  I end up jumping over to Firefox to shop, chat or spy, or worse, jumping out of my chair and heading out the door to waste energy, time and money on the avenues of La Jolla.

My best friend reminded me that change is not a perfect upward curve on a growth chart, but rather jagged, with ups and downs, set backs and if you’re lucky, big leaps forward.  I am going to keep at it, every which way but hopefully not loose...Here’s to making 2012 the best leap year ever!

Comfort and Jews

We spend every Christmas in the desert.  Palm Desert.  Home to movie stars, great restaurants and lots and lots of Jews.  It’s like New York City except with palm trees and golf carts.  The Professor and I have been going out there for a week at Christmastime with our same friends since before we were married.  What started as a vacation for four single working professionals escaping L.A. grew into a 16-year tradition with a family that we all created.

Exhausted from work, we used to show up and sleep for a week, taking conference calls in between dinners and movies.  Then when the kids were little, we'd spend the week on death-prevention patrol.  There is nothing relaxing about a two-year-old near a pool.  Now we have kids that feed themselves and schedules that we have slightly more control over.  Our Christmas week has become a resort vacation with everyone hiking, swimming, playing tennis, and new this year, horseback riding.

I go back and forth about being sad that we don’t observe Christmas the way I grew up— with traditional food, by a fire, awaiting Santa and all of our relatives, dressed to kill.  Instead we wear bathing suits, drink margaritas and play Scrabble.  We order Chinese take-out and watch movies.  So what I have is not what I dreamed it would be.  I always imagined myself cooking big dinners at home and filling stockings in the middle of the night while my children were nestled all snug in their beds.  I never thought I'd be tossing it all in the trunk of my car before driving the Pines-to-Palms Highway where I put my children to sleep in a condo on a golf course.  My 12-year-old asks Santa for cash and my eight-year-old knows more about Hanukah than the birth of Christ. 

Letting go of Norman Rockwell and embracing Woody Allen is not the magic I would have guessed, but what fun is Christmas if you already know what you’re getting?

What's Your Intention?

My yoga teacher starts practice with the words of wisdom, “Set your intention.”  For those of us who appreciate this principle, it’s key to progress in everything we do.  After I became more mindful on the mat, I started seeing better results.  The minute my thoughts start to wander, I reign them in or send them away or tell myself to keep breathing.  I've learned to stop avoiding uncomfortable postures out of fear of pain or failing or falling.  I've begun to accept my limitations without being a quitter.  I am trying to do the same in my life off the mat as well. 

I was at a funeral reception yesterday.  It was a beautiful tribute to my friend's much loved and respected “Maman,” which is Persian for “Mother.”  My friend said she lost her best friend, mother and grandmother (she was raised by Maman, her grandmother).  She is going to miss her dearly and I know the loss was huge for her entire family.  When my friend's children took their turns to speak at the dinner in her Maman's honor, I realized it was not happenstance that the person who they would miss and remember was generous, thoughtful, and loving.

They talked about going to Maman’s house after school where they always had so much fun.  One of them even said he would get excited seeing her waiting at the school gate.  She would fill them up with homemade food, get them to dance to Persian music, and teach them Farsi.  Photos projected on the wall showed Maman, proudly hugging her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.  You could see how much they appreciated the time and attention she gave them. 

School breaks at 3:15 today for 15 days.  The last thing I want is for my boys to remember a winter break with a stressed-out mom who yelled a lot and was forever running out the door.  I know they don't need a trunk load of wrapped gifts, and that what they'll treasure are happy memories of our family together.  In order to arrive where I intend--spending the next two weeks in ways I find important--I am going to have to let go of at least half my list and pull out the Monopoly board, lasagna pan and 80’s CDs.. 

Say, we can go where we want to.
A place where they will never find.
And we can act like we come from out of this world.
Leave the real one far behind.

We can dance.

Naughty or Nice?

The holidays really are a defining time.  If you choose to ignore them, you are a scrooge.  If you embrace them, you are an annoying Christmas-sweater-wearing type.  My friends’ posts recently on Facebook and Twitter were telling.  “Let the madness that is December begin” or “I just had a weekend that didn't feel like a weekend. #tired”

It’s tough finding the sweet spot that works for yourself and your family.  Everyone has different energy levels, budgets and amounts of free time.  I used to think that the key was organization and planning and that if I scheduled everything just right, I would survive the holidays victorious.  I shopped ahead of time, ordered photo cards before Thanksgiving, decorated when my curmudgeonly husband was out of town.  I tried to keep the stress of the holidays to myself by getting craftier and smarter every year, hoping to beat the mayhem, expense, and marathon-style events.

What I have found is that there is no winning at this game. My down-to-earth friend who I thought was so sane showed up at school last week with pine needles in her hair because she wrestled a Christmas tree out of the back of her SUV, up a flight of stairs, and into her home by herself.  I am sure she will decorate it by herself this year, too, as her boys are teenagers now and I’ve never seen a straight male over the age of 12 hang anything on a tree. 

I have a pact with the Professor to keep things to a dull roar, mainly because we are Jewish, but also because I admire and respect his sensibilities.  He grew up in an apartment in Manhattan where everyone valued movies and Chinese food and good moods over homemade turkeys, decorated homes and lots of alcohol.

The problem is I enjoy Christmas lights, holiday parties, and opening the cards and gifts that arrive in the mail.  I don’t want to be a free rider, so how can I receive if I don’t give?  Would it still feel like Christmas if all of my friends stopped decorating and hosting and just went and volunteered for a cause they found important and simply told me about it the next time I bumped in to them at the market?

It seems the balancing act of our lives is magnified most in December.  I really do wish everyone peace on earth…finding a way to achieve it would make this the most wonderful time of the year.

New Plan for December

Young children know how to get it right.  I realized on this holiday trip to New York why my boys love it so much.  Yes, they adore visiting their grandparents.  But I used to think the city was enchanting to them because we go to Chinatown on the subway, climb rocks in Central Park, and have big bowls of ice cream in beautiful places.

They reason they enjoy these visits is because we slow way down and suddenly we get to stay in our pajamas all morning and lounge about on the sofa with Grammy & Grampy.  First Born Prince has been playing lots of Lego and reading constantly.  Charming Baby brought an art kit and wrote a story.  Given the choice of how to spend an afternoon, they’ll choose playing cards at the kitchen table over a matinee on Broadway any day.

I would never have guessed that it would take a trip to Manhattan to remind me of the simple pleasures.  As I look at our December, I want to replicate the quiet, happy memories of the holidays from when I was a kid.  I remember getting very excited when "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Charlie Brown's Christmas" were broadcast on ABC each year.  My brother and I would get to eat dinner on TV trays and suddenly the feeling in the air was magical.

I have no memories of my mom stressed out at the mall, cursing at people in parking lots, but I do remember her making at least a half-dozen different types of Christmas cookies and assembling beautiful tins full of delicious homemade goodies for family, friends and neighbors.  My favorites were the date nut pinwheel cookies.  The secret is freezing the rolls of dough before slicing.

We would spend hours decorating the house together with our Bing Crosby “White Christmas” album playing.  Everyone knew it was my job to put the angel on top of the tree and I didn’t even have to arm wrestle my brother for that.  He got to set up the nativity scene and spread the hay around v-e-r-y carefully.  My dad hung lights on the house while singing “Now, bring us some figgy pudding…”  There was no feeling of cramming a bunch of commercial activities into our schedule, but rather time to sleep in and enjoy the heavenly smells coming out of the kitchen.

There is an overwhelming assortment of activities back home waiting for us—holiday theatre, chamber music performances, Christmas parades, tree lighting ceremonies, parties, shopping events.  I have just decided that we’ll be opting out of most of it in favor of baking cookies and watching movies.  At home.  In our pajamas.  Just like it was 1978.

Thanksgiving Lesson

 

“We must get beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths... and tell the world the glories of our journey."

--John Hope Franklin, History Professor Emeritus at Duke University

The traditional six-grade overnight camp trip was cut this year from the public middle school curriculum in our district due to budget constraints.  The whole program just folded up and vanished.  I decided to see what we could do to independently fund and send our students to a privately run camp.  I still remember how much fun I had when I went in sixth grade—it is an amazing opportunity for kids to learn through hands-on experiences out in nature. Students build their self-confidence, leadership abilities, and a respect for our environment.

I started the process in my kick-ass-and-take-names sort of way which turns people either on or off.  I got permission from the Principal to allow us to take the 330 6^th graders off campus for four days and then, with the help of two other volunteers, we researched our options.  We contacted the camps where the private middle and charter schools are sending their students.  Next step is to survey the parents to see who is willing to pay $275 to send their child, and more importantly, who is willing to help pay for other students to go.  We are facing numerous hurdles, and some days I get worn out and rude and say things like, “Pay to play, baby!”  I know, not cool.

We suggested to the principal that we have academic and citizenship requirements to qualify for going (knowing full well that would eliminate somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000 worth of fund raising we would have to do).  That was shot down.  Thankfully, my fellow volunteers pointed out:  1) The kids that need this the most are the ones who wouldn’t qualify; and 2)  Our kids already have so much, we are doing this for the ones who can’t afford it.

Then it hit me.  I am volunteering to keep the public school functioning in the ideal way, not turn it into a hybrid private institution.  I suddenly let go of all my anger about the free riders and people who don’t give.  I became thankful for the chance to work with caring, soulful people who are happy to give time so that we can keep the camp opportunity alive for all sixth graders—this year’s students, future classes, and hopefully, if we get the formula right, other public middle schools all over the city and state.

Haunted Trail

Last week First Born Prince was invited to the Balboa Haunted Trail, which has been around every Halloween since I was a teenager.  I only went once and remember it being over-the-top creepy.  The people who do the haunting chase you with chainsaws and touch you with slimy hands, crossing boundaries, seeming like they might be escapees from an asylum.  The other boys who were going attend a different school that starts an hour later than my son’s.

The mother offering this spooky treat asked me for permission to invite him, and even though I was tempted to just say no for him, I decided to test his ability to self manage.  I explained to my son that I thought it wasn’t a good idea and that I’d rather he wait until he was older and go on a weekend instead.  I am struggling with the balance between being a good mother and being a total killjoy.

He declined the invitation and then, afterwards, cried and pouted (confirming he was tired and needs to get his ass to bed on time) and accused me of being mean.  I ignored him (more meanness) and continued helping Charming Baby with his homework.  Eventually he snapped out of it and joined us in the family room, happy to be in pajamas, home, with us.

Later that night my friend texted me that they had to leave the haunted trail early because one of the boys got too scared.  I wished I could have saved her the gas and entrance money but she is trying to be a nice mom and sometimes that gets lost in translation.

High Price of Privilege

I realized last night sitting around a beach bonfire that my dark tales from childhood are par for the course in most of my friends’ upbringings.  It's comforting to know that I wasn't the only one raised with my parents goosing as much free child labor out of me as possible.  Listening and laughing to everyone’s stories brought back some of my best memories.

Like the way I spent my weekends not performing dance recitals or taking music lessons but helping my dad fix up the rental properties we owned.  I was a master at removing contact paper and old linoleum.  My brother and I both knew the difference between a Philips head and an Allen wrench. 

It wasn’t the middle ages.  My parents did take us to the beach, signed us up for baseball and we swam a lot in our backyard pool, but I got to know them the best when we were working together on a project or doing errands.  The way my mother effortlessly planned out a week’s worth of family meals and shopped from a list in her head, all while keeping both me and my brother from slipping sugar cereal into the cart when she wasn’t looking, still impresses me.

It was my mother and father who taught me how to cook, clean, garden and run a home.  I am not sure what to do with my skills and knowledge as the Professor and I employ a housekeeper, gardener, and handyman.  The Professor was at least trained how to pay for all of it.  I am just straddling the two worlds and trying to make sense of what exactly are privileges.

Case in point:  I now know two people that pay a dog poop scoop service to stop by their homes to clean their pets' messes up from their lawns.  Both of these families have strapping, capable children.  All I could think was maybe their sons and daughters were too busy doing all those things I never did as a kid to find the time to learn how to deal with the shit that is a normal and natural by product of owning a dog. 

I thought about it for about two seconds and then happily instructed First Born Prince and Charming Baby to get busy.

Rockin the Sabbath

The year before we left for New York, I was so overbooked that we almost never had long, quiet nights at home.  I dreamed of family game nights, family movie nights, but they rarely happened.  We always had people over, or somewhere to go, or I'd be tossing dinner at my kids while standing as I skipped eating because I was trying to lose weight. Often we’d meet for dinner out, usually at the local restaurant/bar that everybody goes to, sort of like a Cheers except with chardonnay and kid's meals.

I want to replicate the family time we had in Ithaca.  We had a lot of it there and I discovered the more time we spent together, the easier it was to get along.  It’s just that I need a little help prioritizing.  I decided to try having a regular Shabbat dinner, which means gathering your family for a special dinner every Friday night, to mark the beginning of the Sabbath, or Jewish day of rest.   You don’t have to produce an elaborate meal, it can be any little gesture—a table cloth, flowers, something that makes the dinner different than all the other nights of the week, a simple way of showing your family you are honoring what’s important. Plus, the Challah lady delivers the traditional bread to Hebrew school students in class on Thursdays, so we were halfway there.

We had to decline two dinner invitations and squeeze in a run to the market, but I pulled it off and we had all the ingredients for our first look-at-how-nice-and-sane-we-are Shabbat dinner.  We sang blessings as we lit candles, poured the wine and tore pieces from the ceremonial Challah.  I noticed we all lingered around the table talking for over an hour, much longer than our normal eating time.

Charming Baby was practically chirping and came over to me and curled up in my lap after dinner, petting my hair, feeling affectionate.  First Born Prince thanked me profusely for the cooking and I couldn’t believe it when they all cleared their plates and helped clean up without me even asking. 

I feel like we are setting a family tone and as the mom, I'm the DJ.  

Staycation's All I Ever Wanted

First Born Prince and I are teetering on the edge of what is one of the most tender moments in a child and mother’s relationship.  He is on the brink of becoming a young man and I can barely keep a dry eye or straight face.

We made plans for a few last hurrahs before school starts, and in San Diego with kids that means Lego Land, Sea World and the Zoo.  (I don’t advise the Wild Animal Park in the summer, unless you want the full African desert simulation.)  I’ve been wondering when my oldest son would outgrow these places, or more specifically, outgrow going to them with me.  How many times can you sit with your mom watching Shamu do a flip?  

He was only a little bit surly and rolled his eyes when he thought I wasn't looking.  I can handle most of what he challenges me on in my sleep.  What I wasn’t prepared for was how boyish he was at the end of our Staycation last night.  He asked me to tuck him in.

“The zoo was so fun, Mom.”

“I know.  I’ve never seen the koalas awake before.”

“I liked the lion.  And the jaguar.  And the tiger.”

He always did love the big cats, and used to carry a plastic tiger around with him when he was two-years-old.  After we went over the night zoo highlights, I watched him fall asleep while I looked around his messy room.  Nestled on his nightstand, in a place of prominence and importance (by his charging iPhone) was the little carved wooden tiger he bought on our way out as a souvenir.

Battening Down

I knew it was coming and I have been mentally preparing myself for months now.  There are no storm windows for the type of hurricane I am going through.  Reader, if you think I have it easy and don’t want to read about the perils of navigating life in an affluent beach town, then I will warn you to stop right now and go somewhere else.

The schedules and invitations are rapidly filling my in-box.  I went from casually volunteering at one elementary school and attending some university lectures to feeling like I’m running the state.  It’s unbelievable how much more there is to just do here.  The Professor keeps reminding me to not lose sight of the goals we set and deals we made.  Deals I struck in the middle of the night during a cold Ithaca winter.

I know it can be done, that I can carve out a quiet life for us here in La Jolla.  I see other people who appear to be operating at a sane pace.  How they are immune to the chaos of raising kids and building careers in a city is beyond me.  It is going to take a lot more than just picturing the smiles on my sweet, well-rested boys’ faces.  And it’s going to have to come from somewhere besides the knowing eyes of the Professor.

It looks like I am going to have to say it on my own.   Just purse my lips, press my tongue against the inside of my top front teeth and say it.  “No” and that’s it.  Maybe add on a “Thank you”.  No looking down, mumbling “I’m sorry” or “maybe some other time”… I will look temptation straight in the eye and be brave.

Thinking of time as more valuable than money should help.  I actually took a stab at a time budget, paying myself, husband and children first, then the damn dog, next of kin, and so on.  Nowhere in my sensible plan does it allow for hours of socializing, volunteering, excessive competitive athletics, and extra tutoring on top of the already committed two days of Hebrew school a week to get ready for the Bar Mitzvah I have yet to plan. 

The problem is that everything sounds good and important—etiquette and dance classes for the boys, tennis lessons, weekends away, business dinners, university clubs, writing groups, never mind the regular soul food I need from drinking wine and talking to my girlfriends.

I feel like an old lady with her trusted purse tucked tightly under her arm, bracing herself against whatever or whoever might try to snatch any precious spending capital she has left. 

Leaving...Returning...I'm Here

La Jolla, California

I’ve returned to California and after considering changing the name of the blog, or starting a new one or quitting altogether, I decided that continuing to just roll with it as is will be the best course of action. It’s a practical approach that works in most areas of my life.

As for the title, “Leaving California”, it still makes sense. What this journey is ultimately about is growth and change and the choices and trade-offs we make along the way. The stomach-sickening feeling of saying good-bye to people and places you love when you move on with your life is something we all deal with at one point or another.

Even if we stay with the same people or the same town, the relationships and places change. I cry regularly over how much I miss the sweet-smelling, little sweaty-faced toddlers in my house. I also am pissed off that the children’s book-store, “The White Rabbit”, and independent film theatre in downtown La Jolla gave way to an upscale dog accessory shop “Muttropolis” and a “Massage Envy” spa center.

I left California with two young boys and have returned with two strapping giants, all of us older and changed by our experience. I purposely under-scheduled the boys this summer trying to outsmart myself, thinking I would be so worn out with running them around, playing Camp Mommy, that I wouldn’t notice how much they’ve grown, but I did notice and I am just sick about it. I alternate, like a schizophrenic high on coffee or down on chardonnay, between wishing school would hurry-up and just start already and wishing I could freeze time. Right here. Right now. Me and my pre-pubescent boys, together, forever.

I refuse to wax poetic about how our town has changed. I can just get in line with the rest of the planet, can’t I? Suffice to say “M-TV Real World” has rented a house near-by and now I can’t get a parking space in front of our favorite local Italian place when I crave homemade pasta.

Final Good-Byes

Loads of work and a bit of kitty drama on our last day in Ithaca helped keep my mind off of how sad we all were to leave. When I went to tuck our cat into a bathroom before the moving crew arrived, she jumped out of my arms and took off. I spent the day alternating between looking for her and doing last minute packing and cleaning. Even so, the weight of leaving was heavy. You would think supervising a crew of six men loading my belongings onto a truck would’ve cheered me up. Okay, it did help.

Handling the logistics of the move was the easy part. I am seriously cut out for physical labor. I popped Advil, drank whatever was left in the fridge and kept at it. I began fantasizing about running off with the Naglee Moving Company. I, too, could make a 9 – 5 life, taking cigarette breaks and piling into the small truck for a McDonald’s run at noon. Maybe I would become buff and tattooed and have an uncomplicated view of the world. I know I am not fooling anyone with this. If I can’t cut it as a Professor’s wife in upstate New York, I certainly am not going to be able to pull off wanton sex goddess on minimum wage.

Our friends hosted dinners for us every night last week and we got to spend time with most of the families we had grown to love. I joked that it was like an Indian wedding, with so many parties for days on end. I had to laugh or I would have cried. The kids seem fine, only talking about the nature they are going to miss--the deer, snow, lake and waterfalls. The Professor is going to miss it most of all. At least he will be traveling back often, continuing to teach part-time at Cornell.

My roots grew deep these past two years and pulling out feels like I am tearing off and leaving behind a limb. I know we’ll keep in touch and my family will go back to Ithaca in the summers, and some of our new friends will visit us in California, but it’s not the same as rolling up your sleeves and helping each other raise kids, stay married and carve out careers in person.

Maybe the best way to sum up how we eased leaving was that instead of saying “Good-Bye,” we said, “See you soon…”

Free to Good Home

The first time I heard an urban-legend about a goldfish, the kind that survives for years beyond life expectancy, I was five-years old. We had a neighbor in Los Angeles named Josephine. She had a thick South African accent, called her husband “Lover” (Lovah) and did very theatrical things like wear all black and do a dance and sing as she sprinkled fish flakes into their goldfish's bowl, explaining to me that was why it lived so long.

“Goldy is impossibly precious, a carnival fish, meant to last only a fortnight and here she is, seven years later."

Just last week we had to find a home for Charming Baby’s goldfish (no name!) that he had for over a year. He romanticized that Fish was a baby caught in our Koi pond, but I seem to recall it was a feeder I bought for 15 cents to pacify him on one our trips to the pet store. First Born Prince had been amassing toads, frogs, salamanders, and turtles, always needing to stop for another aquarium, or crickets or meal worms. CB wanted his own pet to care for and somehow we ended up with one I swore wouldn’t make it past a fortnight.

I always expected Fish to be a floater when I walked into Charming Baby’s bedroom, but he would faithfully be there, swimming to the top of his tank any time I cast a shadow on his home. His behavior surprised me, more endearing than I cared to admit. The damn thing was supposed to die, not become yet another living thing for me to love and worry about.

When I told Charming Baby we couldn't move Fish to California with us, he announced that he was returning him to his family in the Koi pond. Before I could explain that would be sealing the pet’s fate, he scooped him up and ran to the pond and set Fish free.

We have only a few days left until the moving truck pulls away. I keep walking down to the back pond, hoping to see Fish alive and swimming to the surface for a feeding.

Valuables

We are supposed to make a list of our valuables, all items going on the moving truck worth over $100 dollars a pound.

I didn’t do this the first half-dozen moves of my adult life. I always felt we had nothing to declare except our children. As I walk around the house with my note pad I realize there is plenty worth cataloguing--art, antiques, the rug I bought in Istanbul, some of the furniture. I am going to dust off and wear my engagement ring and take my other keepsakes with me. The Professor has some heirloom watches from his grandfather we need to decide to claim or carry. Other than that, we are all set.

I mentioned on our way to New York that if the whole moving truck went up in flames, I’d be fine with it. I still feel that way. I like to imagine what I’d do with the check and free time. I hate to admit this, but I’d love to stick it in the bank and enjoy the freedom of not replacing the stuff. When the Professor reads this, he’ll wag his raised-in-an-apartment finger at me and proclaim he told me so. He loves that most of what we've spent time and money on you can't take with you.

If we had it his way, there wouldn’t be a stick of furniture or any walls that we owned. We’d travel and teach for the rest of our lives. I had to push for my bourgeois desires and brow beat him into buying a house. Now I am fantasizing about having no nest. Funny how we become like our partners. I read that couples start to look alike after being together for years. I don’t think I resemble a six-foot-five Jewish man, but I am glad I am starting to think like one.

Break These Chains

I was going to the gym the other day out of routine. It was sunny and breezy outside and I even had to push Lucky Bastard’s nose back into the kitchen as he tried to follow me to my car, wagging his tail, hoping for a hike. I drove all the way to the gym, parked my car and then said out loud to myself, “This is ridiculous.” I threw my car into reverse and headed directly back home.

Huck and I had one of our best hikes yet that day. I love the state parks here. Ithaca is so green this time of year and the trails were empty because school wasn’t out yet. What had I been thinking when my first action was robotic? I guess I wasn’t, just banging out my day as if they were all average and endless.

This weekend the Professor is taking First Born Prince to his final travel lacrosse game. It’s special in that it’s all weekend long and the team is staying at a hotel. Charming Baby wasn’t invited. FBP wanted a special father/son trip (that’s code for no little brother tagging along).

My youngest son asked if we could do something, too.

“Like what?” I immediately envisioned CB and me going to see the new Judy Moody movie and buying flip-flops at the mall (Huck ate his last pair).

“Camping!” What? If I did that, how could I obsess over my things-to-do list and have anxiety attacks about the impending move? How would I be able to drink too much coffee Saturday morning and get bitchy and have a good yell at my sweet baby?

I thought about how breaking my patterns of habit last week with the gym yielded new freedom and an awesome memory in my mental scrapbook. I booked a cabin for us in Treman State Park. They have cots, fire pits and little picnic tables. Our friends booked one, too, so we’ll have buddies there to hike, swim and make dinner with. I am so excited; I just may just leave my coffee pot at home.

Cornell Campus Club Reading List

I have definitely riffed on Cornell Campus Club for women before. The club is mostly a social organization, offering affinity groups and educational lectures, set up to help women who have been Shanghaied to this town meet friends with similar interests. I joined the book club, which meets regularly and every year they choose the reading list in advance. Since I am moving and busier than a politician’s PR agent, I cannot attend the potluck next week where all the book suggestions are discussed and selected, but I thought my blog followers, being of impeccable literary taste, would want to know what’s on the table for the upcoming year. I am v. excited to have my summer reading list penciled out for me! Please note, my writing mentor’s book, Cleaning Nabakov’s House is on the list. An excellent read! I can also vouch for The Help and The Glass Castle, and will tell you I was given Cutting for Stone from my mother-in-law who says it's a must read. I am starting it tonight. Enjoy!

Cornell Campus Book Club Book List Suggestions:

Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson
For those who enjoyed When Will There Be Good News or have read other of Atkinson's terrific novels, Started Early, Took My Dog is the latest. It again features Jackson Brodie, this time in a story that collides with the stories of a security chief called Tilly, and an aging actress on the brink of disaster. Atkinson's writing blends of humor, wit and insight while facing the hardships and horrors of a violent and sometimes unexplainable world. Her gift for characterization, careful plotting, and well toned sentences make her novels mysteries that are rightly reviewed as good literature and are a pleasure to read. (384 pp.)

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
This is a classic, and for some of our group it may be a long-overdue revisit either as a reread or if you've seen Hitchcock's film version. I read it for the first time in high school but just re-read it and absolutely could NOT put it down. It's the story of a young girl who finds herself becoming the second wife of a wealthy man with a mysterious past and who must in a sense grow into a woman and learn to manage the house, the people and the secrets that she unknowingly takes on in marriage. The novel is taut, seamlessly smooth to read, and jam packed with beautiful descriptions, clever characterization, and page-turning revelations. (416 pp.)

The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life - Jasmin Darznik
Adult daughter Jasmin Darznik discovers by chance that her mother, Lili, lived a completely different life in Iran before marriage to her father, forced into an arranged marriage at 14 years old. The first marriage was abusive and Lili's father helped her divorce, but she had to leave her first daughter in his custody in Iran. Reviews say: "fulfills the highest ambition of the memoir as a genre: to tell a personal story that, by virtue of its honesty, sheds light on an all too universal truth," "beautifully recounted,"and "illuminates the complexity of Iranian women's lives as few books have ever done." (330 pp.)

Cleaning Nabokov's House - Leslie Daniels
"A comic woman-in-distress novel involving the literary master Nabokov and a country cathouse ... her out-of-the-box narrator is hilarious, chaotic, and surprisingly resourceful. Wardrobe-challenged Barb, who is inordinately fond of toast, loses custody of her kids in a vicious divorce... [Barb] discovers a hidden manuscript. Is it Nabokov's?... Daniels is warmly funny and audacious in this shrewd and saucy mix of family drama, gender discord, sexual healing, and high literature; a raucous yet sensitive tale of one quirky woman's struggle to overcome the lowest of low self-esteem to get motherhood and love right." (330 pp.)

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Many of us have read it before so we could concentrate on the themes it discusses. Was it the basis of the romantic literature that we now find sells most widely of any type of fiction? Also, we could tie it in with the latest movie version which has gotten good reviews. (352 pp.)

A City of Djinns - William Dalrymple
This book is classified as a travel literature. William Dalrymple is regarded to be a master at this genre. He won a prize for his Last Mughal. City of Djinns is an account of the author's year in Delhi, with his new wife who provides illustrations. It is part personal and part a history of the city. For those of us who will never visit Delhi and even for those who will, it should expand our experiences. I suggest that we could put this in the January slot and make Indian food. (350 pp.)

Fields of Glory - Jean Rouaud
This book represents a dialog between two generations seemingly far apart. The memories of World War I era veterans from the French lower Loire Valley are narrated from the perspectives of the grandchildren, whose initial boredom with the nostalgic stories from another era progressively become affection and understanding for the psychological urge to remember and be remembered. Prix Goncourt 1990. (168 pp.)

Dreams of My Russian Summers - Andrei Makine
Andrei Makine, born in Siberia in 1957, has written an ode to his French grandmother, a memorable account of life in Communist Russia as lived by the woman who gave him joy, comfort, and permission to dream of other worlds. Slowly, over the years, Charlotte reveals harsh truths to young Andrei - but always with a lyrical and dreamlike quality that makes reading this book feel as though you're inhaling pure, gauzy poetry. Prix Goncourt 1995. (256 pp.)

The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls
(250 weeks on NYT bestseller list) Memoir: Life of a family with idealistic nonconforming parents. Both the good and bad aspects related with thoughtfulness, understanding and grace: Hard to put down. (288 pp.)

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
Anglo-Indian twins grow up at a charity hospital in Ethopia mid 20th C. Story of their family, lost parents, guardians, medical training and Ethiopian politics and war in rich, tapestry woven language. (Possible Ethopian meal connected with this). (688 pp.)

Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in a small Far West town of Fingerbone,which is set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. The author also wrote Gilead. (219 pp.)

American Lion - Jon Meacham
This is a biography of Andrew Jackson in the White House. (316 pp.)

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination - Elizabeth McCracken
In Elizabeth McCracken's memoir—a love letter to the child she lost and the devoted husband who suffered alongside her—McCracken displays her many talents. Her warmth, candor, crystalline prose, lovely imagery, and attention to detail bring her story to life. (208 pp.)

Finding George Orwell in Burma - Emma Larkin
In Burma there is a joke that Orwell wrote not just one novel about the country, but three: a trilogy comprised of Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Finding George Orwell in Burma is a lively combination of biography and armchair travel, as Larkin travels to all the places where Orwell lived and worked. (304 pp.)

Behind a Mask - Louisa May Alcott
For those who wanted to read a 19th-century American woman writer, but a far cry from her well-known domestic fiction. She made her living and supported her family by this sort of writing. It is a dark and ingenious study of deception and betrayal. My edition has an introduction by Doris Lessing. (108 pp.)

Private Life - Jane Smiley
Her latest work, it got a rave short review from the New Yorker, which called it masterly. A precise compelling depiction of a singular woman living near San Francisco with her astronomer husband about the turn of the 20th century. (416 pp.)

The Cookbook Collector - Allegra Goodman
Her latest novel, teaming with new life: a dozen characters on both American coasts, whose lives intersect in ways that she lovingly traces. We liked the book by her that we read a few years back. (394 pp.)

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family - Annette Gordon-Reed
An excellent non-fiction work that would help us know a lot more about a period of American history and a prominent American president, Thomas Jefferson. For this writer, the scandal was not what Jefferson did, but what historians did in scanting the evidence for it. (800 pp.)

The Island - Victoria Hislop
The Petrakis family lives in the small Greek seaside village of Plaka. Just off the coast is the tiny island of Spinalonga, where the nation's leper colony once was located—a place that has haunted four generations of Petrakis women. There's Eleni, ripped from her husband and two young daughters and sent to Spinalonga in 1939, and her daughters Maria, finding joy in the everyday as she dutifully cares for her father, and Anna, a wild child hungry for passion and a life anywhere but Plaka. And finally there's Alexis, Eleni's great-granddaughter, visiting modern-day Greece to unlock her family's past. (480 pp.)

Every Man Dies Alone- Hans Fallada
Fallada wrote this novel in twenty-four days in 1947, the last year of his life; he was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and had just been released from a Nazi insane asylum. The story is based on that of an actual working-class Berlin couple who conducted a three-year resistance campaign against the Nazis, by leaving anonymous postcards at random locations around the city. The book offers a visceral, chilling portrait of the distrust that permeated everyday German life during the war. Especially interesting are the details that show how Nazi-run charities and labor organizations monitored and made public the degree to which individuals supported or eschewed their cause. Ranked #2 bestselling in German literature in Amazon.com. (544 pp.)

The Lacuna - Barbara Kingsolver
Harrison Shepard, the product of a divorced American father and Mexican mother, spends his formative years in Mexico in the 1930s in the household of artists Diego Rivera; his wife, Frida Kahlo, and their houseguest, exiled Leon Trotsky. After Trotsky is assassinated, Harrison returns to the US settling down in Asheville, NC where he become an author of historical potboilers and is later investigated as a possible subversive by the McCarthy Committee. Fascinating, educational read. Good candidate for our January dinner because Harrison is the cook for the Riveras. Frida loves to entertain and eat. (507 pp.)

The Help - Kathryn Stockett
Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s is a city of tradition. Silver is used at bridge-club luncheons, pieces polished to perfection by black maids who “yes, ma'am,” and “no, ma'am,” to the young white ladies who order the days. This is the world Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan enters when she graduates from Ole Miss and returns to the family plantation, but it is a world that, to her, seems ripe for change. As she observes her friend Elizabeth rudely interact with Aibileen, the gentle black woman who is practically raising Elizabeth's two-year-old daughter, Mae Mobley, Skeeter latches onto the idea of writing the story of such fraught domestic relations from the help's point of view. With the reluctant assistance of Aibileen's feisty friend, Minny, Skeeter manages to interview a dozen of the city's maids, and the book, when it is finally published, rocks Jackson's world in unimaginable ways. With pitch-perfect tone and an unerring facility for character and setting, Stockett's richly accomplished debut novel inventively explores the unspoken ways in which the nascent civil rights and feminist movements threatened the southern status quo. Look for the forthcoming movie to generate keen interest in Stockett's luminous portrait of friendship, loyalty, courage, and redemption. (464 pp.)

Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial – Janet Malcolm
"She couldn't have done it and she must have done it." This is the enigma at the heart of Janet Malcolm's riveting new book about a murder trial in the insular Bukharan-Jewish community of Forest Hills, Queens, that captured national attention. The defendant, Mazoltuv Borukhova, a beautiful young physician, is accused of hiring an assassin to kill her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov, a respected orthodontist, in the presence of their four-year old child. The prosecutor calls it an act of vengeance: just weeks before Malakov was killed in cold blood, he was given custody of Michelle for inexplicable reasons. It is the "Dickensian ordeal" of Borukhova's innocent child that drives Malcolm's inquiry. With the intellectual and emotional precision for which she is known, Malcolm looks at the trial—"a contest between competing narratives"—from every conceivable angle. It is the chasm between our ideals of justice and the human factors that influence every trial—from divergent lawyering abilities to the nature of jury selection, the malleability of evidence, and the disposition of the judge—that is perhaps most striking. A longer version of a fascinating article in the New Yorker earlier this year. (168 pp.)

The Great Outdoors

We just got back from the Adirondacks. The trip was part of my plan to live out the vignette in my head of giving my boys canoe trips and picnics beneath pine trees. A bonus is that I, too, got to experience the great outdoors, not just imagine what I saw in the Technicolor Yogi Bear cartoons of my youth.

It was everything I hoped it would be, minus the wrestling and whining at bedtime. Rather than pitch tents, I booked an upscale lodge. I will hike, sweat, get dirty and eat peanut butter and jelly all day long, but come evening time, I want a bubble bath, a glass of wine and a fish that someone else caught and prepared set down in front of me, preferably grilled.

I am not a princess, just someone who, given the choice, will pick the genteel accommodations built for city people traveling to the country. We stayed at Mirror Lake Inn in Lake Placid. It was lovely and even my boys appreciated all of the charm.

One of the other big spender things I like to indulge in is springing for the kids’ souvenirs. I tell them they’ll have to use their allowance so they choose carefully and then at the cash register, I whip out my wallet and say, “It’s on me!” I am sure they have figured this out, like Santa and other pretend animals and fairies that visit our home, but they humor me just the same.

First Born Prince spent almost an hour on the main street going from shop to shop, looking for a woodsy frame and a postcard of a canoe on one of the lakes to put in it, as his keepsake. He knew exactly what he wanted and we didn’t stop until we found just the right one. It was so sweet, like the time he picked out the little replica of Ellis Island to remind him of our family trip there, too.

Charming Baby chose a walking stick with “Adirondack Mts.” carved into the handle, which I sincerely hoped would be used for hiking and not as a weapon against his brother. This morning I saw him busy in his room, arranging the stick by his bedroom window where he has his current favorite things on display: National Geographic book on birds, drawing pad, and special pencil with left-handed gripper.

The years are flying by and I’ll be damned if you have to ask me twice to create these memories for them. At one point on one of our hikes, we stopped for a break and Charming Baby looked around at all of us, smiled and said, “This is so cool.” I knew what he meant. It had little to do with the mountains and rivers, although those gave what he was talking about a beautiful backdrop.

Is there a Stay-at-Home Mom guidebook?

Why do I envy women who can unapologetically be stay-at-home moms, satisfied with offering their families inspired meal plans and a laundry system that works? They are not killing themselves to validate their existence outside the home, always mumbling something about the class they are taking or small business they are starting. I guess it’s because they are not afraid of the answer to the question, “What do you do?” Or, they had a frontal lobotomy.

These women aren’t stupid or bored and seem to have a fulfilling existence. Martha Stewart built an empire showing us the meaning and importance of organizing our closets and making our own cookies. Who else but a housewife has the time to label garage shelves and store wreaths properly? Those of us who chose working in the home found ways to make it about more than just raising the kids--volunteering, throwing dinner parties and training for marathons. Even if it’s not sexy, it can be at least a little glamorous.

What happens when mom wakes up one day and decides she doesn’t care about the cupboards anymore? What happens when the kids are old enough to do their own laundry? We’ve been at it for a long time now and some of us cannot hide the stress-fractures anymore. I recently heard tales about a woman in an upscale suburb in Silicon Valley falling out of her family’s golf cart after a BBQ where she had too much to drink. Her husband just put her back in, waved good-bye and drove off.

Where there is a symptom, there is usually a disease. I like being at home, I want to be the one around after school and making dinner. It’s a fun challenge figuring out how to keep it all fresh. As we hit the doldrums of the stay-at-home mom career, we have to find ourselves somewhere besides the couch, mall or bottle.

I am trying to find that sweet spot—a place where my household is running smoothly but I am not ready to slit my wrists with a butter knife. I am one of the lucky ones in that I have a choice, but even with that, balance takes practice. At least I have the saving grace of really funny friends and a husband who thinks there are no right or wrong answers—only good questions.

I Need Yoga, or a Drink

I never really understood the Professor’s complaints about California until we moved away. He used to leave parties and say, “All people care about is the size of their butts and backyards.” I would roll my eyes, convinced that he just needed to have a drink and relax.

Of course, I got to the point where I would look around my neighborhood on trash and recycling day, sick to my stomach at all the waste bins lining the sidewalks. There was a time I got angry at the people driving huge SUVs, alone, to run their errands, burning fossil fuel, without a care in the world except how often they could run those suckers through the car wash. I would try to calm myself down by practicing the breathing I learned in yoga.

When that didn't work, I remember calling our friend and sage, Jon, in LA to complain about my anxiety. She pointed out that I wasn’t exactly riding my bicycle to the grocery store and I still shopped for crap at Target. I was buying plane tickets regularly, not innocent by any stretch. She encouraged me to get comfortable with my place on the spectrum and stop criticizing others. I wasn’t going to stop people from consuming so I had better just focus on my own footprint.

Living in Ithaca gave me a break from the stress of worrying about our planet for a while. In fact, I am probably the grossest consumer in the entire upstate New York region. I’m sure the artists, academics and Trustafarians aren’t impressed with us capitalists who earned our money the crude way. Only the families that have traded out urban living for the groovy rural college-town life truly understand my plight. The people who have arrived here through the ranks of art, academia or inheritance probably wonder how I can sleep at night.

My nerves are shot as I think about saying good-bye to all the incredible friends we have made, the nature and university we’ve enjoyed. Now I am the one grumbling as we leave parties, wondering about my own sensibilities. Sure I'm excited to get back to our friends and family and the beach, but I am giving up driving by local farm stands for a downtown that has a Maserati dealership on the corner. I think the Professor and I have finally arrived at a place where we realize it's not about us but up to us.

Loss, Flowers & Comfort

Last week my best friend’s father died from a stroke unexpectedly. She was there, miraculously in town visiting her family for Memorial Day weekend. In some ways I am sure that gave her solace. But there really is no peace when you lose someone so loved and cherished. Everyone who knew him, or knew of him, respected this man. He lived a life full of integrity and accomplishments.

His death is a loss not only to my friend, her family, and especially her mother, but also to many larger communities, including the field of marine biology. He was a humble, generous man, charming and funny, a highly regarded scientist, professor, musician, husband, father, grandfather and friend.

I imagined my friend’s mother’s home filled with flowers, like my mother’s was after my father’s death, so at first I didn’t send anything. Then it dawned on me that I was a product of a businessman’s family and that we express ourselves much differently than academics. Turns out I was correct—only her father’s doctor had sent a bouquet. Their friends and family were sending long, heartfelt e-mails, and setting up a student scholarship in her father’s name.

Finally I could be useful in the sea of pain I feared. I wrote a long e-mail and sent flowers. For some reason her mother wrote back to an old e-mail account that has been turned off for years. I would never have received her beautiful thank you note if Charming Baby hadn’t been screwing around with my computer over the weekend. My in-box was flooded with junk correspondence from the old e-mail address.

As I cursed sharing my Mac with a seven-year old, I weeded through it all before deleting anything because of my Type-A first-born neurotic tendencies. I now feel very blessed to have a busybody son and that I received 2,247 e-mails to go through.

I found my friend’s mom’s gracious words and a photo attachment. It humbled me that she took the time to photograph the flowers I sent and send it to me. She was able to illustrate for me how much she is going to miss him. “In 46 years we never ran out of things to share, even if it was just the fact that there was a steller jay in the bird feeder and the one who saw it wanted the other one to be able to see it too.”

Academic Regalia

We are having a perfectly lovely, long, lazy Memorial Day weekend.  The kids and I have been hiking and catching movies. We’ve been barbequing and swimming. The Professor walked in ceremonies with his graduating students on Saturday and Sunday. It is so hot and humid, even he was tempted to wear shorts under his black, heavy gown.  But both days he donned his dress pants.

“I think that’s the right thing to do, although no one would blame you for going naked underneath in this heat.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’d feel terrible if one of the old professors looked down and saw my bare ankles.”  There are some scholars here who have been teaching for decades and take the ceremonies very seriously.  Their regalia is so grand they rival even Dumbledore’s velvet robes.

As I drove to campus to drop him off for his second day of honor and torture, I saw some grads in sandals, no pants.  They looked silly.  They looked like boys who would rather be tapping a keg than participating in commencement.  I also saw plenty of young men in proper ankle-covering clothing and dress shoes.  They looked proud, like they had just accomplished something huge.

I know I am a sucker for pomp and circumstance.  It made me think about how when we watch the ceremonies honoring the military today, I won’t see our enlisted men and women wearing shorts or flip flops!  I don’t care how hot it is in Washington DC.  If you stop to think about the people that have dedicated their lives to the finest institutions in the world—our universities and our military--and the parents and kids that have sacrificed time, money, and even their lives, I think the least you can do is put some pants on.

Impersonating Someone Who Cares

We went hiking recently at one of the infamous Ithaca gorges.  As we came off the trail, our car was parked next to the only one in the lot surrounded by a bunch of teenagers.  They were drinking, showing off their underwear hanging out of their jeans, and arguing about who was going to drive.  I decided to make good use of everyone’s time.

I loaded my kids and dog into our car and then grabbed my registration and proof of insurance from the glove box.  I flashed it at the teenagers from a distance as I spoke really loudly.

“New York State Police.  I need to see some identification.”

They looked terrified, which is remarkable considering I was wearing Lululemon from head to toe.  All of the sudden they went from acting like little shits to picking up their empty beer cans and being really polite.

I looked directly at the wise guy behind the wheel, wearing his baseball cap sideways.

“Tell you what, if you can blow under a .08, I’ll forgive the fact that you’re a minor.”

He was mumbling and we both knew he wouldn’t be able to pull that off.  Thankfully the girl who had been bouncing around on his lap looked like she was sober, even if she was going to faint.

“Since I am off duty and have my kids with me, I will let you go if one of you can safely drive you all away from here.  Otherwise, I’m going to have to call this in.”

Do cops have iPhones?

After pretending to search my vehicle, I told them I didn't have a breathalyzer, and that all I was really concerned about was their, and everyone else on the road's, safety.  They seemed to regain color in their faces when they realized I was leaving.  I have no idea if I helped or not, but I saluted them as I drove off.