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.