My Articles:
Against All Odds
Anticipation or Anxiety?
Would you cut off your right arm to save your child? That’s a no-brainer. Of course you would.
OK, something harder, then. Would you go watch a movie about a guy who cuts off his right arm when your 19-year-old begs you?
Hmmm. Even parental self-sacrifice has its limits.
“Can’t we see something else?” I whine when Ally suggests seeing 127 Hours, which chronicles the real-life wilderness ordeal of Aron Ralston after his arm is pinned by a boulder. “Maybe Jackass 3D is still playing?”
“No. I really want to see 127 Hours,” Ally insists. “Close your eyes during the gory parts. Or go read in a café if you can’t hack it.” Continue… »
Are We There Yet?
Right after Californians banned same-sex marriage by passing Proposition 8, NPR aired a segment exploring how people felt about the outcome. One man who voted against gay marriage was already reconsidering. “I don’t know why I oppose it,” he sighed. “I guess I’m just not there yet.”
Now that federal Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled Proposition 8 unconstitutional, I wonder how far the ambivalent man on NPR has traveled in the last two years. Is he there yet?
I too was slow to arrive. The gay rights movement wasn’t on my radar screen until I was in college in the 70s. Even then, it was barely a blip. I thought I was standing up for my friends against rumors they were gay by saying, “No, they’re not.” I lacked the courage to respond, or even to know, “So what if they are?” Continue… »
The Four Musketeers
Courtesy flickr.com
The girls met the first day of kindergarten, peering out from behind our legs as we tried to pry them loose with reassurances and fake smiles. We clutched our daughters with one hand, Kleenex with the other. The teacher, soft and ample as a grandmother, coaxed the girls onto the rug for circle time, while the Parent Club coaxed us away with coffee and pastries.
Before long, we couldn’t pry the girls away from each other. Felicia, Rose, Shannon, and my Emma were inseparable, like a litter of exuberant puppies. Everybody called them the Four Musketeers. Continue… »
Guilt of the Well-to-Do
“No comprendo.” That’s what I want to say as Lupe pauses from cleaning the kitchen to tell me about her weekend. But between my fractured Spanish and her broken English, I understand all too well.
Besides, the meaning of a finger slicing across a throat is universal.
Fighting tears, Lupe tells me that her relatives fell victim to an attempted carjacking on Saturday. Her sister-in-law screamed when their assailants tried to snatch her baby, and Lupe’s husband and father-in-law were knifed and badly beaten. Continue… »
What Came First, The Grandmother Or The Egg?
I just became a grandmother. Pepita, as we affectionately call her, sleeps a lot, nestled in her bunny-bedecked bed. She is tiny, her head a perfect oval, as bald as an egg.
Maybe that’s because Pepita is an egg. My 13-year-old daughter just brought her home as part of Family Life’s attempt to prevent teenage parenthood. All eighth graders are charged with 24/7 responsibility for their hard-boiled infants. No overnight sojourns in the refrigerator next to the leftovers, no cracks or substitutions, no transformations into egg salad allowed. During P.E. or nights out on the town, a reputable eggsitter must be found. My daughter even has to read 20 minutes a day to Pepita. Unlike with real babies, no pages can be skipped, and the egg’s grandparents must vouch for this exemplary parental behavior in writing. Also unlike with real babies, the experiment with teen parenting lasts only five days, and no college tuition must be salted away.
Phone Home (But Maybe Not So Often)
Phone home. ET instinctively knew how to relieve stress. Now research confirms that if you reach out and touch someone, preferably Mom, you’ll feel better.
According to a recent study, girls aged 7-12 who spoke on the phone with their mothers when upset showed decreases in cortisol, the stress hormone, and increases in oxytocin, the chemical that promotes well-being. A phonecall is as good as a hug—just ask Ma Bell. Researchers speculate that the benefits also apply to older daughters, notwithstanding readers’ comments that hotly dispute the findings with countless variants of “HA! You’ve obviously never spoken to MY mother!”
Helicopter Mama
In our ongoing domestic drama, the cast of secondary characters has changed, but the script remains the same. Our kids, off in college, have been replaced by my in-laws, who have just moved into a nearby retirement home. My husband and I are still the protagonists, and we know our roles well: I become overinvolved, he detaches.
Just as I was the one who volunteered in the kids’ classrooms, I am the one who drops in at the Redwoods to see how my in-laws are faring.
Not so well, it turns out. Their assigned buddies stood them up for a dinner date. When they ask in the dining hall if this seat is taken, other residents say “Yes,” and decline to make room for them. More often than not, the seat in question remains empty.
Transplant
Photo by pawightm, flickr.com
A pot of flowers doesn’t seem like much. It can’t begin to compensate for the loss of rose beds, lemon trees, and azaleas just coming into their glory. But at least it’s something to greet my in-laws the day they’ll cram what they can of more than 60 years of marriage into two tiny rooms in their new retirement home.
My in-laws have never cared about material things; flowers are the one indulgence they allow themselves. A pale yellow Cecil Bruner rose foams over the entry of the Craftsman bungalow they are about to leave behind. Blue bells, daisies, holly—every season’s bounty—always grace the coffee table in the living room. My father-in-law, who disapproves of brooding as a foolish waste of time, has banished all misgivings about their imminent uprooting. Still, he confessed to me a few days earlier that he felt a pang as his prized roses were starting to leaf out. He will want a bit of dirt to fuss over.
At the nursery, I select lemon-yellow ranunculus, blue pansies, white impatiens, and a single periwinkle to spill over the edge of a big ceramic planter. I carefully ease the flowers out of their plastic cubes and transplant them into the readied planter, adding a little extra soil to fill in the empty spaces. Bits of dirt smudging the pansies’ upturned faces wash away as I give the pot a good, gentle soaking. It looks perfect. Continue… »
The Harm Reduction Omnivore
Long before Michael Pollan changed the way we think about food, we were influenced by our own resident activist. Our daughter, Emma, then age seven, returned one summer from Marin Humane Society camp proselytizing against animal cruelty and dolphin-safe tuna.
We endured her preaching for a few days, until her hunger for Chicken-of-the-Sea got the better of her. I resumed packing lunch boxes with a sigh of relief, but also with a pang of regret. Deep down, I knew Emma was right. Continue… »
