CHRISTMAS WITHOUT A SANTA CLAUS

My son is 10 years old, the age where Santa Claus rides the cusp of extinction. My boy still wants to believe, but his common sense keeps overriding his desire. He started off as a toddler extremely pragmatic about the whole Santa thing. I really had to do my due diligence in getting him to believe in the jolly guy, which was kind of hard for me because I don’t lie to my son about things. If he’s going to the doctor to get a shot, I tell him he’s going to get a shot.

“Is the shot going to hurt?”

“Yes, but you’ll get over it.”

I’m that kind of mom. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell a four-year-old that all his skepticism was valid and that Santa is a fake. And six years later, I still wasn’t sure I could. When he outright asked me in the months leading up to this Christmas, my answer was, “Do you really want to know?” He decided he didn’t, and I think we both breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t have to say those awful words – Santa isn’t real – but it was the first Christmas that he thanked us for the gifts. He thanked us about three or four times, which is three or four times more than he does on his birthday, so I think he was still testing us. Did we buy them or was it Santa?

            The fact is, pretty soon Christmas won’t be the same for either of us. Oh sure, we still open presents, we still have a special meal, we still see family and friends. The carols are the same, the decorations fill the house, but without the magic of Santa, Christmas is undoubtedly dimmed. And if my friends with older children are any indication, this is as much of a blow for us parents as it is for our children. I kept hearing from them how Christmas just isn’t as fun when the kids grow up, and how they are having a harder time getting into the holiday spirit. Heck, I even found myself nostalgic for Christmases past, and my boy hasn’t even reached his teen years. It’s inevitable that children will grow up, extended family members will move on, some will pass on, and Christmas just won’t be the same.

            So this holiday, I decided to be proactive. I didn’t want to wait to feel down about Christmas because it wasn’t the same as when he was little. I didn’t want to start buying him super-sized gifts just to compensate for the disappearance of Santa. And I really didn’t want to go through the motions all the while feeling the twinges of disappointment that hanging onto traditions can bring when they’re past being worthwhile. I decided to let our Christmas evolve with us.

We still had our Christmas Eve traditions: Christmas crowns, Christmas meal, Christmas movies. Our son still woke us up way too early on Christmas morning so we could start opening gifts. We spent the remaining morning hours, as we usually do, tinkering with our new toys and stuffing our faces with warm cinnamon rolls just out of the oven. Then, very unlike our usual Christmas, we showered, packed a suitcase, and hopped in the car to spend the rest of the day in a place that does Christmas best: New York City.

We had purposefully waited until after dark so we could see the twinkling lights in all their glory. We saw the tree at Rockefeller Center, the windows at Macy’s, listened to live music in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and did an early countdown to 2015 in Times Square. In effect, we gorged on Christmas.

Later that night, we went to Marchi’s, an intimate, no-menu restaurant run by the same Italian family for the past 85 years. Over the years, we’ve been there with my husband’s family on a few special occasions, so it’s a place we hold dear. We dined on five courses for almost two hours, reminiscing about Christmases past without sadness, and brainstorming with excitement new things to do for future Christmases.

We still had the next day to enjoy the city some more, which we did. Of course we snacked on all the NYC favorites: hot pretzels, Nuts for Nuts, Junior’s cheesecake, and their black and white cookies. We also managed to fit in The Museum of Natural History, Bryant Park, and our favorite Greek restaurant.

            We all had such a wonderful time without completely doing away with our Christmas traditions. It gave us something else to be excited about other than Santa and his gifts. What was one of the best parts of Christmas Day according to our son? Getting to stay up late at the hotel and eat a bowl of popcorn in bed while reading his new book. Take that, Santa!  

I’ll still become nostalgic for the times my son was little, especially at Christmas. But I refuse to become a part of the ‘Christmas is just for kids’ mindset. Some people hold on to their traditions so tightly even when it makes them sad to do so because it no longer feels the same. I want our Christmases to transform with us, so that each one is special in its own way, even as we all grow older.

It’s ok, Santa, you can go. We can handle Christmas from here.

WHY I TALK ABOUT MY KID ON FACEBOOK

            Some days are harder than others. Some days I am overwhelmed with trying to do the right thing for my child with ADD. Now that my son is in middle school I have multiple teachers to communicate with and one terrific special education professional whom I’m trying (probably unsuccessfully) not to deluge. I also have to keep in mind that I have a kid who is trying his best to master these transitions, too. Just the “normal” days are usually difficult enough, but when I let myself wallow, the guilt inevitably follows. After all, I’m a married stay-at-home mother with no other children to worry about. I know single moms with children on the autism spectrum and working parents with children who have Down’s Syndrome. You don’t have to have a special needs child to be having a rough go of it. Other people are going through hard stuff, too. Still, some days are harder than others.

            Like yesterday. I know from past experience that my son needs to do his homework as soon as he gets home from school. Otherwise, he gets tired, his medication wears off, and he becomes completely unfocused. What normally takes fifteen minutes will instead take two and a half hours. That’s not two and a half hours of him just sitting staring at a homework assignment. That’s including the fits, the tantrums, the screaming, the crying, and also many minutes of him staring at a homework assignment.

            I don’t talk about my son’s diagnosis often except with the people it impacts (his teachers) or the friends whose children unfortunately have that in common with mine. It’s not that I have any shame associated with the label, it’s that I don’t care for the generalizations or limitations that label might impose. That’s what he has, it’s not who he is. I’ve heard “every kid has ADD now,” as if it’s a trend rather than the unhappy diagnosis after many days worth of testing with multiple specialists. I’ve seen people whose children are perfectly healthy demonize the drug industry and those of us parents who choose (nay, need) to put our children on medication. If my kid had asthma, you wouldn’t tell me I should learn to control it without medication, so why would that be our only valid option for ADD? Perhaps people think we give him his pill and it instantly makes him compliant and docile like a trained circus animal. They scoff and say, “Wouldn’t we all love a magic pill for our boisterous boys?” But my boy isn’t merely boisterous. He can sit silently and read for hours but he can’t sit at a table without at least one foot on his chair. He can be in a classroom but he hums or makes noises, not to get attention, but as a subconscious way to soothe himself. He doesn’t do it for laughs or attention. In fact, attention for his tics is the last thing he wants. He has spent years learning strategies to calm himself when he gets frustrated, but in the moment, the “energy,” as he calls it, builds and he has to find a way to release it. He doesn’t get any reward out of jumping or yelling except for the release of pressure. The medication lessens the feelings that cause him to have to do what it takes to calm himself. It gives him that extra moment of thought to control his impulses. It temporarily changes his brain chemistry to be more like that of a typical child. Trust me, it’s no magic pill. It helps, but some days are harder than others.

            As I was saying, yesterday was one of those days. He came home from school an hour later than usual because he had an after school activity. I should’ve made him go right to his homework. But he wanted to play outside and although he just went hiking for an hour in his after school club, I didn’t want to deny him outdoor time. It was a beautiful fall day. He’s a boy. He wanted to be outdoors. Besides, he was in such a happy mood. Things would be fine. He’d do his homework later.

            But I know better. Happy has nothing to do with it. He doesn’t resist and make noises and throw himself around because he’s not happy. He does it because he doesn’t know how else to say, “I feel out of control.”

            By the time he came in, it was dinner time. We ate together as a family. He got to his homework right afterwards, as expected. It was a math paper. He stared at it. He made noises. He started one problem, lost track of what he was doing, then had to start again.

            I read a blog post once from an adult man with ADD who said to imagine that you have a sticky note with something you need to do written on it. Now imagine it’s floating in the air with 500 other sticky notes swirling around it, all brightly colored, all with other things to read on them, “Look at me,” “No, look at me”. And even though you’re trying to keep an eye on your one yellow sticky note, you’ve got to dodge this constant barrage of others vying for your attention. That’s what ADD is like.

            I can see it in my son’s eyes. It’s different than procrastination. Believe me, I’ve seen that, too. So I try to help, to keep him on task, “Nine times two. What’s nine times two?” It’s just a small part of the first equation. He’s no math whiz but he certainly knows his two’s. “Nine plus nine,” I say it differently hoping it will trigger a response. Nine plus nine, he’s whispering over and over to himself. And so it goes until his frustration begins to overtake him and before we can stop it, there’s the full-on screaming tantrum. And I’m trying to hug him because I know the pressure from my body makes him feel more in control of his own. But he’s crying, “I can’t stop myself. I can’t stop myself.” That feeling of believing he can’t is just as bad as the feeling itself. And there’s nothing I can do but hold him until he calms down and finally remind him that he just did stop himself. Indeed, he did. And we dry our tears and we hug and kiss and he says he’s sorry and I say it doesn’t matter, let’s move on. We get back to it. It’s still hard, but he finishes it. He asks if he can go read now and I say yes. More hugs and kisses and I love you’s and he goes to his room.

            I berate myself for not making him do the homework right after school. It’s my fault. This has happened dozens of times in the past, I should know better. But, dammit, sometimes when my kid comes home from school and wants to play, I want him to be just like any other kid. I want to be a mom who doesn’t have to worry what time the medication will wear off. But I can’t be. I’m the mom who understands that almost any toy he’s given will eventually be taken apart and examined piece by piece. I’m the mom who cringes when he grows out of anything because his clothes have to be just the right fabric and texture for him not to obsess on their discomfort. I’m the mom who needs to have much more patience than I do. Some days are harder than others.

            Which brings me to the title of this blog post: Why I talk about my kid on Facebook. I don’t talk about the ADD. I talk about the good stuff, the fun stuff, and also the stuff that drives me crazy (the firewalk of Legos, fellow moms?). I posted a photo of some “contraband” I found under his bed covers yesterday morning: a flashlight and a Calvin & Hobbes book. And this afternoon as I sat here feeling helpless that I can’t make my son’s hardships go away, one of my friends, who only knows him from my Facebook posts, wrote, “Love this kid.” And it immediately made me stop feeling sorry for him and for myself, for that matter. I know how incredible he is, but sometimes I worry that that's just a mother’s blind love for her child. My friend’s comment was a simple affirmation for me that he is perfectly him. He has so many qualities that will carry him through. I wish I could take his struggles from him, but every parent wishes that. And I know in the big picture, those struggles will contribute in making him who he is meant to be. But some days are harder than others, and my friends who might not even know about my bad days help me to keep it all in perspective. That’s why I talk about my kid on Facebook. 

WORD OF THE DAY: RELEASE

         At the cusp of 2014, a friend of mine clued me in to the idea of finding a “New Year’s word”. Here’s how it works. You choose a word that reflects the biggest obstacle you need to work on in your life. It’s not a goal or a resolution; it’s emotionally deeper than that. You don’t need willpower or a checklist. All you need is to listen to yourself. You keep that word in the forefront of your mind the whole year, which will presumably lead you to making that issue a priority.

         At the time, I only half believed in the value of having a word. Still, after much soul searching, I chose the word release and made my best efforts to think about its meaning for me on a daily basis. As it turns out, it’s not a bunch of hooey. Eight months later, I’m reaping the emotional rewards of my deliberation.

         There were several things I consciously worked on releasing the first six months of the year, like certain people and expectations of myself and others. However, the more surprising lessons I learned were those instances where I didn’t even realize there were things I needed to release. Keeping my word in mind was more powerful than I thought.

         It started a few months back with a Facebook acquaintance. I only knew her online, a friend of a friend. I noticed after I accepted her friend request that a flurry of news articles started appearing on my Facebook newsfeed. Whenever she commented on them or shared the links, they would appear -- and apparently she did this A LOT. I found myself reading many of them. The thing with Internet articles, whether they are from the Huffington Post or Fox News, is that they aren’t meant to inform as much as to incite. Whether you agree with their stance or not, they are written to provoke. They are invariably one-sided, often trading impartiality for an enticing headline. Outrage is the desired outcome.

         So for several months I would browse this Facebook friend’s caustic posts and comments, and at times read the article she felt so strongly about as to call other commenters fucktards for disagreeing with her opinion. As those of you on FB know, this is often par for the course with social media discussions. Sometimes I agreed with her, sometimes I didn’t, but I never involved myself, so the exchanges barely registered on my radar. Or so I thought.

         However, after months of her rants, I finally decided to un-friend her. I didn’t think any more about it, but the following week, I felt quite a bit lighter for no particular reason. Then I realized it was because I wasn’t allowing her daily vitriol into my life. Just because it wasn’t against me, I thought it wasn’t affecting me, but I was mistaken. When someone goes through life so angry at everything, whether couching it in support for a cause or not, it still seeps into everyone they touch, even virtually.

         This latest release lesson was reinforced when my family and I took an 8-day road trip this summer. Limited television and Internet had the obvious benefit of insulating us during our vacation, heightening the experience of being away. What I didn’t expect was that it also alleviated stress I didn’t know I was harboring.

         We are bombarded with nasty politics, wars, missing children and pets, abuse, and trauma from all over the world. No longer do we get a mere daily newspaper and our thirty minutes of Peter Jennings dispensing the national news. We are inundated 24/7 and almost all of it is negative and skewed. Are all of these headlines really making us more informed? Or are they creating an environment where everyone jumps to conclusions and opinions, which promptly turn into personal attacks? We’ve become a society that feeds on negativity and fear veiled in concern.

         I don’t believe in burying my head in the sand, yet my knowledge of all the unfairness in the world, all the sad things that happen to others, and all the causes that ought to be funded isn’t helping any of those situations. I don’t believe simply knowing about all these things makes us contributing members of society. I can’t hear about every bad event and I can’t help everybody. I can only do my small part. Hearing about endless tragedies only makes me feel fearful, anxious, and overwhelmed. How about you?

         So I released my need to read everything I come across. Instead of scrolling through the headlines daily, I glance at them maybe once a week. And after taking a Facebook hiatus during vacation, I realize I can go entire days without it, and I do.

         Being without outside distractions of situations I can’t control makes me more fully present in my own life, where I have (just a little) more control. This simple change has made me much more content. I’ve become more aware of all the wonderful things about my family, my home, and my town. I find myself feeling grateful rather than fearful, hopeful rather than helpless. I think an optimistic outlook and a positive attitude is infinitely more conducive to making a beneficial impact on our world. I release the rest.

You don’t have to wait until the New Year to choose your word. Think about a personal, inner conflict you would like to work on and simplify it into one word. I would love to know your word and how it helps you in the coming months

Camping: Give Me a Marshmallow, a Campfire, and the Key to a Hotel Room

Now that school is over, I’ve eagerly pulled out my annual summer checklist: s’mores on the firepit, BBQ with friends, trips to the beach, ice cream outings... Unfortunately this year there’s something new on the list: Camping.

Camping shouldn’t be a yearly endeavor as far as I’m concerned. It’s more of a bucket list sort of activity that you should get credit for if you’ve tried it once. I already had it crossed off my list when I was 25. Since I was smart enough to do it in my twenties, I feel I shouldn’t have to experience it again in my forties, at least not without a tricked-out RV. Camping couldn’t possibly get better with age.
 

But it’s something my seven-year-old son has been looking forward to as summer inched closer. Those picture books make it look so fun with the campfire and the weenie roast and grinning people sitting on logs playing a guitar. He’ll be disappointed to know nobody in our family plays guitar. Besides, what the book illustration doesn’t show is in about four more minutes their butts will have gone numb sitting on those hard logs, which by the way are probably sprouting poison ivy. They’ll wake up the next day torn between which to scratch first, their oozy rash or all their mosquito bites. I didn’t want to squelch his love for the outdoors, but unless you’re a cartoon, after sunset nature is best viewed through a picture window. 

The first time I went camping was in the mountains of Vermont with my husband and six of our nature-loving friends. It sounded like an easy weekend; we’d throw a tent and a couple of sleeping bags in the trunk of our car and head out. My new husband (an expert camper) kindly informed me that unless I was planning to hunt or fish for our food, I would have to take a little more time packing. Since I wanted to eat, I took his advice and our car trunk ended up holding most of the contents of our refrigerator… and something to cook the stuff in… and to eat it on… and to wash everything with afterwards. After we stuffed clothes, pillows, toiletries, folding chairs, lanterns, and the bug spray aisle of the CVS in the back seat, the tent and sleeping bags almost seemed superfluous. Getting away from it all is fine as long as you take most of it with you.

The eight of us arrived at the beautiful camp sight. I staked my spot and then sprayed what I hoped was an impenetrable barrier of OFF around me. My friends were horrified, but I was willing to sacrifice a pine tree or two to keep myself from being able to play connect the dots the next day with my scores of mosquito bites.

I will admit we had a lot of fun that night, even with the blood sucking bugs and having to haul the contents of our house to the middle of nowhere. In fact, camping might’ve won me over had there been a nice hotel to hop over to once everyone said good night. When you fall into your tent sleepy with wine and fresh air, it all seems fine. But then you wake up the next day having transformed into Pigpen. I had to shower.

The dimly lit outbuilding they referred to as a bathroom had a cold shower, which I was reluctantly going to utilize. It was the same building where I had used the nonflushing “toilet” the night before so I had practice holding my breath. I calculated that I could make it halfway through my soap rinse before having to gulp more air. But when I approached the shower stall, it was being guarded by a brown, fuzzy spider roughly the size of a tennis ball. I nixed the shower. The entire day I was certain I could feel my cells mutating from yesterday’s Deet left on my skin.

We got a sudden downpour later that day, which thankfully forced us to shorten the trip. Camping, check.

But here I stood twenty years later buying a tent so my son could experience camping. He couldn’t wait to put it up and sleep under the stars. The good thing about getting older is that you do, indeed, become wiser. I realized that when you’re seven, being fifteen yards from the house is camping even if it’s still technically our backyard. We’re going camping, son!

As the firepit wore down and darkness set in, I licked the last of the marshmallow off my fingers and waved good night from our picture window. You know what? Camping does get better with age.

Autism & ADHD: Let's Move Beyond Awareness

            Today is World Autism Awareness Day. We’re supposed to change our Facebook profile pictures to blue to spread awareness. Just like when we were to change ours to purple for World Cancer Day and to Go Red to fight women’s heart disease, not to mention when everything in creation goes pink for breast cancer awareness. (And, as my breast cancer survivor friend said, “ruined the color pink”.)

            I can’t help but think making things blue changes very little for the autistic community, kind of like what Secretary’s Day does for secretaries. We’re so saturated with awareness days and causes and people running 5k’s for causes. I suppose awareness is the first step towards understanding, but shouldn’t we be past that point? I think a lot of people are aware of developmental disorders like autism and ADHD, but they still have very little understanding of them. Any psychological disorder seems to be too vague for people to fully accept. If it doesn’t show up on an X-ray then it must not really exist.

            So instead of acceptance, I’m seeing a lot of blame. There’s a misinformed collective blaming vaccines for autism (with no scientific proof) and ultimately blaming parents for deigning to vaccinate their children against life threatening diseases. The paleo dieters blame parents for feeding their children bread and sugar, making an anecdotal assumption that these foods are the causes of ADHD.

            As a society, we don’t want to hear, “We don’t have all the answers.” We don’t want to accept that science is a process and psychological disorders are not always fully understood. We want to be able to point and say, “See? That’s the cause,” and choose an answer that appears common sense. Science is rarely common sense, but then again, people like to pick and choose the science they believe. Then they become upset by their growing (misinformed) beliefs. Why aren’t doctors doing something about it when all these bloggers and “health” coaches have figured it all out? It must be a conspiracy. It becomes us vs. doctors and the real issues don’t get addressed.

            It’s understandable why some parents of the affected children want to believe these things; we’re overwhelmed and we want answers NOW. But why do people without children or the parents of healthy ones perpetuate these harmful myths? Perhaps they’re scared it could happen to them, so having an “answer” makes them feel well armored. It’s similar to blaming the victim of a crime. If we believe the victim did something wrong, then we can also believe we wouldn’t make that same mistake, thus it won’t happen to us. Or it could just be that maybe people like to be judgmental.

            Whatever the case, we need to get past the faux awareness into true awareness. What can each of us do to actually help these children?

·      Support early intervention. You could write letters to push our legislators to get funding for early intervention for the services these children need. Every research study shows the earlier children get help, the more progress they make. People who can afford it aren’t the only ones who should have access to it.

·      Support financial resources for integration at public schools. Homeschooling is not the answer for every child who doesn’t fit the public school mold. Public education is the right of every American child. During my son’s time in elementary school, I’ve been a strong advocate for getting him the correct intervention so he could have the best possible education. I am extremely lucky that his school had the financial resources and was willing to use them in order to make this happen. It included hiring an outside consultant for an extended period of time who was an expert in the field. It changed everything for all of us. My son went from not being able to even remain in the classroom to being fully participatory aside the other students. It also helped that the excellent staff at his school were extremely receptive to learning behavioral strategies from the consultant. Although every child is different, the principal acknowledged that because of us, subsequent special needs children in that school will also benefit.

·      Don’t believe every blog post, media hype, or so-called “research study” you read. This way you might not feel so quick to give your insight from the two minutes you spent reading an article to a beleaguered parent who has spent the majority of her motherhood doing everything in her power to help her child. Don’t share dubious statistics or fearful theories about your views on the horrors of medications with a parent who has spent countless hours consulting with specialists about said medications. In short, be skeptical about the things you read on the Internet and assume that a parent of an affected child knows a hell of a lot more about it than you do. And don’t presume to know what you would do if you were in her shoes.

             There are better ways to be supportive and “aware” of autism, ADHD, or any other developmental disorder. You can learn more about them by looking on their actual websites for accurate information. You can learn about the symptoms so if you encounter a child, you can be more accepting of their difficulties. You can teach your own children not to be afraid of differences and to reach out to all kinds of kids.

            Let’s move a step further than the feel-good awareness colors and charity runs. Let’s each in our own small way actively do something to make a difference. A simple hug wouldn’t hurt either.

www.autismspeaks.org

www.chadd.org

Gwyneth Paltrow Makes It Hard Not to Join the Bandwagon

            I’m a brat. I’ll admit that. When everybody’s on a bandwagon, I won’t hop on it. In fact, I’ll jump on the vehicle that’s going in the opposite direction. It’s a decision initially made subconsciously and genuinely. Over time, however, I might become stubborn and look for things that continue to support my less conventional viewpoint. As I said, I’m a brat. That’s brat without a hashtag. I declared Crocs to be butt ugly and Farmville to be perplexingly boring well before everyone else collectively admitted to either. Nobody has style wearing Uggs with shorts, just sweaty feet. And you wasted approximately ten hours of your life if you watched all the Twilight movies. (No excuse if you read the books, too.) I may not be any less a conformist than the average person, but I don’t mind speaking up when a trend is not for me. A few other bandwagons I never hopped on:

I had no desire to be friends with any of the women from Sex in the City. Did women really love that show or was it just that after years of book club gatherings, they wanted an excuse to finally be able to talk about fun things, like men and sex.

To Kill a Mockingbird was not the defining book of my childhood. I don’t think it was for that many others, either; I think it was merely the only literary one people could remember reading.

I’ve never done the clean eating, juice cleanses, plant-based, vegan, almond flour, soy milk, Ayurvedic diet fads. I don’t believe in demonizing food groups. When women talk (and talk and talk) about eating whole foods, they’re really referring to the whole pack of cookies they secretly scarfed down last night. I don't mind eating my cookies in public.  

            So it was that my brattiness shifted into gear when everybody was joining the ‘I hate Gwyneth Paltrow’ bandwagon a couple of years ago. Now, there are very few non-criminal people that I hate (ok, there are three to be exact) and Gwyneth isn’t one of them. She’s not vying for our attention. It’s not like she’s Kim Kardashian, all over the Internet posting Instagrams of her butt that I invariably mistake for YouTube SNL skits.

            Sure, she was engaged to Brad Pitt during his Legends of the Fall years, which might automatically put her in the hate column. On the other hand, she’s never gotten a boob job. Even after she won the Oscar and that pink dress looked like it was going to slide all the way down to her waist for her lack of chest, she never got fake boobs. You gotta’ give the gal credit.

            Therefore, I assumed she had more substance to her until last year when she bragged about having the ass of a stripper. Not just any stripper even, but a 22-year-old stripper. Even though she went around telling people this (in case you didn’t notice on your own) and even though she spends two hours every day working out, this doesn’t make her any more narcissistic health conscious than the rest of us, I’m sure.

            And why does she have to be like the rest of us anyway? Wouldn’t it be worse if she pretended that she was just an average Jane and not a privileged Gwyneth? Her self-absorption seems genuine to me, as is the pretentiousness that accompanies it, which makes it sort of amusing. She wants to share her better ways with the rest of us. She wrote her cookbook so she can share the enlightened Gwyneth way of eating. She said she started her blog in 2008 because she has the answers the rest of us have been frustrated to find. She told Elle magazine:

"When you go to Paris and your concierge sends you to some restaurant because they get a kickback, it's like, 'No. Where should I really be? Where is the great bar with organic wine? Where do I get a bikini wax in Paris?’ People know that I know that.”         

            If only I had been one of those people. I spent my time in Paris drinking possibly non-organic wine and walking the Champs Elysees. We went to the Louvre and chose our own restaurant in listening distance to the bells of Notre-Dame. If only Gwyneth had told me where I should really be.

            I still can’t hate her, though. It was my fault for not having read her blog before venturing to Paris packing a razor. Maybe if I followed her advice I would like her more. However, my husband shot me down when he invested in stocks instead of a wood-burning pizza oven in our garden. “It’s one of the best investments I ever made,” Gwyneth had declared. Opportunity missed.

            Every interview or Goop post seems to have at least one of these lovely nuggets for the average person to seethe over. But whenever I would read another ‘I hate Gwyneth’ blog, I would look into what she actually said. Most of the quotes sounded a little better in context, and some I even agreed with. (Cheese in a tin doesn’t sound great to me, either.) Gwynnie, I still had your back.

            And then came the announcement two days ago that she and her husband were separating. This was her chance to finally show the chink in her gleaming armor. She now had a commonality with at least 40% of Americans. She could’ve become almost likable! But then she blew it with her conscious uncoupling statement, as if her break-up was on a higher plane than everyone else’s. She used a new-age phrase as a way to let us know that their separation was well thought out and not a personal failure. Their relationship simply had run its course. News Flash Gwyneth: That’s what we ordinary people call divorce.

            So the ‘I hate Gwyneth’ bandwagon rolls on. As I try grasping for a reason to stay off of it, her latest interview with E! News comes out regarding her status as a working mom. After noting that her rule is to do only one movie a year because of her children, she goes on to say, “I think to have a regular job and be a mom is not as -- of course there are challenges -- but it’s not like being on set.” So basically she’s saying being a mother with a regular job is not as taxing as being a movie star. Ugh.

            You’re going to force me to join the bandwagon, Gwyneth, aren’t you?

Tales of a Reluctant Shopper

Dressy enough?

     People fashion their lives around different things: their career, their spouse, their passions, etc. In hindsight, I now believe I have fashioned my life around not having to dress up. I chose to live in a college town where my regular jeans-and-sweater combination looks polished compared to the co-eds who regularly dine out in their slippers. I'm a writer, which entails rarely having to leave the house. I can stay at home most days in my sweat pants or jeans. It should be pointed out that my sweat pants are the cute, fitted kind, not the diaper-y grey kind. I'm not a slob, I just don't like uncomfortable clothes. 
     I hate stuffing my feet into sky high heels, I hate wearing sleeveless dresses in winter, and I think it goes without saying that I hate Spanx. I thought having to wear panty hose was bad until wearing no hose became the thing and I was wishing I could once again stick my powder white legs into a pair of tan L'eggs. Am I too old for tights?
    So I set up my life pretty well for the minimum amount of instances where I'm not in comfortable clothing. Invariably, however, I am lucky enough to be invited to an "occasion." When it's a formal occasion, it's almost easier. Usually I can find a dress that I like well enough and shoes that I love (but know I won't love wearing). But "business casual" is the tricky invitation. It always involves having to buy more than one thing that all go together. It's almost like redecorating your bedroom. You're just going to paint it, but then once you do, you realize you need new curtains and then a new rug and then a new lamp... Come to think of it, I'd rather redecorate my bedroom.
     Another one of these dressy occasions is coming up and I was complaining to my husband that I would have to go clothes shopping for something to wear. I didn't blame him for not believing me that I had nothing to wear. Some women say that and what they mean is, among these thirty-seven dressy things, I have nothing I want to wear again. Nope, for me I literally have nothing suitable to wear. My shopping experience today might clue you in as to why. Here it is in a nutshell:

I go to the store and pick out 14 pairs of black dress pants to try on because I am too lazy to search for anything besides black dress pants. I have a shirt at home that will match. One less thing to buy.

I try on all 14 pairs, hating each and every one, as I knew I would. Did I mention I hate dress pants?

The mound of rejected black slacks on the floor pushes me to a place in my shopping trip where I always end up: The place of 'who cares?'. (You thought I was going to say the food court, didn't you? That's for later.) 

I go get a pair of black jeans off the rack.

I try them on. They're comfortable. They look good. I won't have to iron them or dry clean them. I'm sold, but I can't find a price tag.

I quickly return to the 'who cares?' point again, partly because I have to pee. I decide to purchase the black jeans regardless of the price. 

Thankfully they were on sale down from $49 to $17 plus the cashier used her 15% off coupon for me. I feel it's my good karma for putting all the pants back on their hangars in less than six curse words.

I come home feeling satisfied (but I think that's mostly due to my binge at the food court). Then my refreshed brain realizes the pants I ultimately bought are not dressy enough for the occasion I was shopping for in the first place. 

I'm back to 'who cares?'. They are comfortable and were a good deal, so I'm wearing them.

And that is the story of why I have nothing dressy to wear. But I do have a rather nice collection of black jeans.

Valentine's Day Sucks for Everyone. Here's a Better Solution.

            Valentine’s Day. It’s a great holiday for, say, second graders who get to pass out mini Valentines to their classmates and eat pink iced heart-shaped cookies. But for us adults, it’s like having an arranged marriage every February 14^th, forced to profess our love in some public display for all to judge. Private unexpected gestures of affection become insignificant when there’s a specified day marked on the calendar obligating us to prove we’re in love.

            You may have to search the corners of the world, but there are some places that don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. I have friends who are temporarily living in Reykjavik. [To visit their blog go to http://experiencingiceland.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/if-stephen-hawking-order-a-hot-dog-in-iceland/.] Through them I have learned that Iceland is one of those places. Instead, they have two separate days: Husband Day and Wife Day.

            This is genius.

            I love this idea because, let’s face it -- people who aren’t married don’t need a special “love” day. Unattached people don’t want to be reminded that they’re not in love, and dating couples constantly like to remind us that they are. They’re not the ones who need a special day set aside to get the kids out of the house so we can have sex as loud as we want to. It’s the husbands and wives who need a special day.

            Besides that, married couples shouldn’t have to compete with the daters on Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day for daters is completely different than for married couples. Boyfriends want to impress their girlfriends and can do this easily with all the clichéd traditions. Buying an overpriced dinner at an overcrowded restaurant? Impressed. Buying a stuffed bear holding a heart? Impressed. Giving her roses and candy? Impressed. If the girlfriend is under 30 years old, then she may be sincerely impressed. (All it took for my husband on our first Valentine’s Day was an assortment of chocolates in a shiny red box. I was 23.) If she’s over 30, she’s just thrilled to have a date on Valentine’s Day and will gladly pretend to be impressed. Either way, it’s a win/win for the boyfriends out there.

            Wives, on the other hand, are not as easily impressed with such tired, traditional gestures. We’ve been through many, many more Valentine’s Days than girlfriends have. A bear and boxed candy from CVS will not cut it. A bouquet of red roses means he doesn’t know my favorite flower. Once you’re married and your money is pooled, it’s a different ball game. The minutes ticking by as we wait for a table at the crowded restaurant are clocked in dollar signs that we’re paying the sitter. Early on when I was dating my husband, he surprised me with a Valentine of a 24k gold herringbone necklace and matching bracelet. Nowadays if he gave me that for Valentine’s Day, all I’d be able to think is, I’m wearing a gold mortgage payment around my neck.

            Let’s be honest. Husbands are the ones with all the pressure on Valentine’s Day. They gotta’ get it right that one day or possibly feel the repercussions for weeks. Wives just have to show up in lingerie after the kids are in bed and we’ve done our part. But most husbands don’t want to do any of that Bachelor romance. The only reason they might is to keep up with the daters who are sending their girlfriends Valentine's flowers at work. But on Husband Day, wives can spoil their husbands without worrying about getting cheated out of their own day in the process. Chicken wings at his favorite sports bar? Impressed. Pretending you don’t want to shoot the TV when he turns on yet another episode of Pawn Stars? Impressed. And then add the lingerie.

            Wife Day sounds more appealing to me, too. Being married means we’re passed the dating stage, thank goodness. I would rather celebrate the benefits of being a wife than have to re-live what dating women go through on Valentine’s Day. Forget picking at my candlelight dinner. He can buy me a giant burrito, because guess what? I’m his wife and I don’t have to pretend I don’t eat. We can come home and I can put on fuzzy blue pajamas and he still wants to give me a back rub (among other things) because guess what? I’m his wife and it’s too damn cold in February for lingerie. Embracing me for who I really am and perhaps doing the grocery shopping for once? Happy Wife Day.

            That’s not to say romance is dead once you get married. We happily married couples have our moments. We also know that true love isn’t dictated by Hallmark. A deeper, lasting love is shown in small ways every day. My husband puts gas in my car so I don’t have to. He leaves me love notes to find when he travels on business. He cleans the shower because he knows I hate to. He’ll even sit through an episode of The Real Housewives with me. Come on, that’s true love. I would hope he can list similarly thoughtful things I do for him on a regular basis.

            So maybe we’ll eventually adopt Iceland’s tradition of Husband Day and Wife Day and get ourselves off the Valentine’s hook. In the meantime, I’m sure he’ll bring me daisies (my favorite flower) and buy me a card, because American society tells him to. And even though I tell him he doesn’t have to buy me anything, he doesn’t dare listen to me. But I hope he knows he doesn’t have to impress me once a year anymore like he so easily did that first Valentine’s Day. He impresses me every day as a husband, a father, and a provider. I am impressed by his loyalty and his constant support of my aspirations.

            Perhaps I sensed those were the promises held in that simple box of chocolates he impressed me with over twenty years ago.

So What DOES He Do?

     I was chatting with an acquaintance the other day, a fellow mother I hadn't seen in a while. When I asked what she'd been up to, she began listing her children's schedules while lamenting about having only one evening a week to eat dinner together as a family and spending entire weekends juggling their various practices and games. Then she asked about my nine-year-old son and his activities, hoping to bond over similar complaints. I couldn't oblige. I told her that he plays trumpet two mornings a week at school and he takes karate two days a week after school, purposefully leaving our evenings and weekends free.
     "He's not doing indoor soccer?"
     "No," I replied.
     "I think it's the only way to keep up if they're going to play in the spring league."
     "He doesn't play in the spring league."
     Her eyebrows shot up. "Oh. He must be a baseball player," she concluded.
     "Nope, doesn't play that, either."
     This seemed to stump her momentarily. "Well, some kids just aren't into sports. Mary [not her real name] loves that Community School of the Arts. They do choir concerts and art shows... Do you know about their programs?"
     I smiled. "I've heard of them."    
     Now her brows positively furrowed in what must have been complete bafflement. Finally she asked, "So then, what does he do?"
    

He swims  

Plays in the snow

Reads  

 
Sketches pictures

Does science experiments  

making crystals

Goes to the zoo  

Takes day trips  

New York City

 And long weekend trips  

Washington DC

Burlington, VT

And longer trips 

Nantucket

Disney World

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Takes plane rides and car rides to visit family

waiting for our plane

Makes up his own comic strips  

Makes his own home movies

Lies on the grass  

Touches aquarium creatures  

Finding a clam

Hikes

Bowls  

Visits museums near...

Mystic Seaport

Hillstead Museum

And far  

Smithsonian's Air & Space Museum

Sews his own stuffed animals   

Runs just for the fun of it

Skis

Plays putt putt golf

Enjoys the local library  

Goes to the beach to catch sea creatures...  

And make sand castles

Kayaks

Creates paintings  

Takes summer evening walks with his family

Meets up with friends at the playground after school

Tries to sell his paintings 

Spends Sunday afternoons at Barnes & Noble

Spends a day at the fair

Builds things for his room  

his own tv (with Oprah on)

Sculpts with clay

Stays up late for a double feature at the Drive-In

Camps in our backyard  

making s'mores in front of tent

Fishes with his dad  

Plays board games

Visits the New York Botanical Gardens 

Catches frogs in the backyard  

Checks out the inside of a submarine

Experiences live theater and concerts

Boston Pops Christmas concert

Makes a science fair project

Goes boating

Gardens

Plays tag with the kids next door

Makes origami  

     That's what he does, or what he did in 2013 anyway. No coaches, no experts, no signing up involved.
     I didn't make this list to tell anyone else what their kids ought to be doing. I am hoping, though, that we as parents can learn to trust our children more. We don't have to schedule everything for them. They don't need formal lessons in order to learn everything.
     They will play.
     They will be creative.
     They will learn how to use their down time.
     In fact, without us scheduling all their free time, they will discover what they like to do and what they're good at. We can let them unearth their talents before we push lessons and practices on them. We can let them be creative in their own way on their own time when they feel like it.
     There's a lot of joy to be had in playing a team sport, however we seem to have lost the balance between game time and family time. A few years back, a friend of mine told me she was thinking of canceling a family trip to Yellowstone because the baseball game schedule of one of her sons conflicted with their summer plans. Ugh. Astonishingly, we tend to underestimate the role of family in our children's happiness and success in life. Why don't we ever measure our success as a family? How can you think having your six-year-old spend her evenings plucking violin strings at a Suzuki program is more beneficial than spending quality time together?
     They don't need formal lessons to enjoy arts and crafts. They don't need to perform in a concert to like singing. Formal training will come later if they decide to pursue them. Fill their memory banks with the time they learned how to cook from their dad or ice skate from their mom. Let's trust ourselves to be their teachers and their role models, instead of eclipsing our time together with programmed activities.
     Don't worry. There is still plenty of time to tap our children's potential. What we're running out of is time to enjoy each other and make memories together.