Sucking Blood

I am a vampire, roaming the earth seeking my life source.  It’s not blood I’m after, that’s far too simple of an answer for a creature like me.  It’s not love, either, that’s too Hallmark and Hollywood, if you know what I mean.  I am not soulless though.  The Professor and my boys are a source of nourishment in every sense.  Even with all my good fortune, I still need more.  I moved our family back to California thinking it was sunshine I was after.  I feel sorry for the vampires who search in either the most predictable places (sigh) or the oddest.  I’ve discovered it’s not in the California sunshine, nor is it in wine bottles, gyms or shopping malls.  Intellectually, I get the message:  The energy I am seeking comes from within.  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Vampires don’t suck their own blood.

Then something wonderful happened.  The good people of La Jolla recruited me to help our schools.  I have volunteered in leadership positions for over ten years and was on hiatus from the public education crisis while we were in Ithaca for two years.  Since we’ve been back, I’ve been avoiding the noise by writing checks and apologizing profusely to my friends.  I was a burn out.  I rolled my eyes.  I snickered.  I almost went nuts when the parent, sitting poolside on a weekday last summer, explained to me how she couldn’t afford to give the whole $1,000 per child that the school was trying to raise, and then in the next breath told me about their vacation to Hawaii and how she was planning to take her son to Disneyland as a pre back-to-school treat.  I thought I was going to strangle a middle-aged woman right there in someone’s backyard.  How could I effectively lead a group of volunteers from a jail cell?

This year, I couldn’t refuse.  I’ve been to a few meetings already and started feeling the energy in my veins.  This community amazes me and inspires me.  I found myself laughing again and enjoying the company of the other volunteers.  These are not rich ladies who lunch.  Okay, a few are.  But most of them have careers, or work inside the home, or both.  They show up and they get shit done.  I love it.  I realized I have been too focused on the negative.  I have to let go of the people who don’t give.  I have found it in my heart to not blame the less fortunate.  Either they are clueless and wander around not knowing half of what’s going on, or worse, they know but feel like they are not in a position to give, either time or money.  I can’t imagine feeling that locked up.  Nowhere to run or hide except maybe at Disneyland and even that only lasts for a day, two if you’re charging it.

I can’t remember if vampires can see themselves in mirrors or not.  Doesn’t matter.  If my good luck continues, I’ll be like all the energized, happy souls around me.

Spring Cleaning

My favorite spring cleaning activity is purging.  Old clothes, books, toys, stupid purchases (did I really pay for an avocado peeler?) and outgrown sporting equipment are given away.  The house feels cleaner and fresher, ready for guests and naps on the back porch.  It’s taken me years of living with a New Yorker who was raised in an apartment to learn how to let go of stuff.  I used to have every single thing with meaning saved—notes passed to me in the hallway dating as far back as junior high, letters received while I was in college, dried corsages, bouquets, favorite pairs of jeans, an old boyfriend’s Stanford Football jacket (I’m actually saving it for the day he shows up on Facebook so I can get his current address and mail it back to him for his wife or kids to enjoy).  Yes, I can be nice.

I learned to let go slowly over the years, but I still have trouble with my sons’ artwork and school work, all of it from pre-school through six grade, categorized and saved.  It’s taking over my garage and office and we’re only half-way there.  Since First Born Prince, we have moved four times, twice across country.  You would think I would be better at tossing by now.  I assign emotional currency to each and every pencil and crayon stroke they’ve ever made.  A friend of mine suggested I take digital photos of everything and then recycle it.  It’s not the same.  I already feel like I lost the little boy who created what I am looking at when I dig the projects out.  How will I feel if I lose his creations? 

Then there are the keepsakes that you simply cannot toss.  I have a pile of those sacred items in our master bedroom—the blankets and pillows from when my boys were little that I can’t even bear to put in the garage.

Today I eyed the bag and knew it was time to commit--make a permanent place for the assortment of baby blankets and pillows somewhere inside my home or store it.  I picked up Charming Baby’s “emergency” nee-nee (the real nee-nee, his blanket he slept with every night of his life for seven years, was accidentally left on a Disney cruise ship).  Caressing the soft, cream fabric, I smiled remembering when I bought the back-up “just in case,” he informed me I was wasting my money because it would never replace the real one. 

Sam, the Sharpie markings read on the satin trim of the blanket.  We labeled it his first week of Kindergarten to use at school for naptime.  His real nee-nee was far too needed and cherished at home to be stored in a cubby at school.  Without emergency nee-nee in front of me, I am not sure I would have remembered how we discussed which blanket would be sacrificed, labeled and sent to do duty at an institution.  Nor would I have so clearly pictured how brave he was the day I hung up with the Disney World Lost-and-Found Specialist, confirming nee-nee was gone, and he looked me square in the eye and said, “It’s okay, Mom, I’m a big boy now.”

I think it was I who cried that night realizing I’d never see nee-nee again.

Blessing or Curse

“We were blessed with cute faces,” my father explained to his chubby fourth-grade daughter.  He was trying to comfort me as I sat across the table from him at the Howard Johnson’s All-You-Can-Eat Fried Clams night, a ritual I endured every Tuesday after my brother’s basketball practice at the JCC.  I was on a diet, so I wasn’t bellying up to the clam bar with my brother and our neighbor’s three children.  At nine-years old, I was already sitting with the moms, sipping a Tab and ordering the diet plate--a plain hamburger patty and scoop of cottage cheese with a side of canned peaches.

My father rationalized that if you had a cute face, you could get away with being a little pudgy and still be attractive.  That may have been the case for a middle-aged married man living in the suburbs in the early 80’s, but it wasn’t my reality.  I felt pressure to be skinny, not sturdy.  I was actually cursed with a gene pool of giants.

My most painful memory during those years is of the day they weighed us at school and the nurse announced each student’s weight over her shoulder to the clerk recording the numbers.  As I waited in line, my heart raced with anxiety.  I knew I weighed more than all the other kids.  No one else in my class weighed over 100 lbs.  When it was my turn, I made eye contact with the nurse and silently pleaded with her to not share my weight out loud. 

“Lisa Barnhouse, 103.”

I don’t remember if the other kids were shocked, or if I was teased, or if Jeff Shaller, the tall blonde boy who made up songs about my Barn butt, was even there that day.  I just recall the fear.

First Born Prince got really round and soft right before he started shooting up overnight.  One day he looked like maybe he should skip a meal and the next he was lanky and needed bigger shoes.  When I talked to his pediatrician about it, he told me that males lose 25% of their body fat when they go through puberty, while girls gain 40% (yes, boobs and hips are made out of fat, people).

I am glad I didn’t give him the cute-face pep talk.  Nor put him on a diet.  I reassured him he was exactly the right size for someone born 11 pounds and predicted to grow up to somewhere between 6’8” and 7 feet tall. 

Charming Baby is also the biggest kid in his class, just like his “big boned” mother and “baby fat” brother, except he doesn’t worry or feel self-conscious.  He marches to his own beat, one giant step at a time.  I only realize it’s a challenge at all when he has a growth spurt and gets clumsy all of the sudden.  Just this week he fell twice on the playground, tripping over his own feet that have grown two sizes since September.

For comforting my baby, I simply kiss his scraped-up chin and tell him I am sorry he got hurt.  Looking at that cute face he was blessed with, I don’t think there’s much else to say.