Category: family life

Why Everyone Needs a Superhero

Halloween at Gabe's daycare

In the dark early hours of the morning, I saw a shadowy figure in my bedroom, and my first thought was that it was Jesus.  I’d been reading some Anne Lamott the night before—the part of Travelling Mercies where she describes what she later came to believe was Jesus’ presence in her bedroom as she was struggling alone, drunk, strung out, through the aftermath of an abortion.  Anne writes that she could feel the presence so strongly that she got up and turned on the light to see if someone was there. 
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As Cool as the Air in a Redwood Grove

One of the chapters of Anne Lamott’s Travelling Mercies is an account of a health scare she had with her son Sam.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending on your perspective (and mental health), we had a similar experience this week with Gabe.  But before I tell you about that, I want to show you this picture by Toni Frissell, a female photographer in the 1940’s and 50’s. 

It’s from an underwater shoot of models all wearing white, fluidy gowns.  To me, it evokes many things: surrender, descent, freedom, and something of the seductive power of depression.  It also reminds me of the scene in “The Piano” where Holly Hunter almost drowns because she lets her leg get tangled up with her piano when it falls overboard.  (Hunter plays a mute woman in the 1850’s who is sent to New Zealand for an arranged marriage.  Her piano is, quite literally, her voice).  She is very calm at first, quietly observing the water around her, gracefully allowing herself to be pulled down, down, down.  Then suddenly it’s like she wakes up and realizes what is happening, and she struggles to free herself and swim to the surface.  The camera shows her discarded boot sinking slowly deeper, while she swims up, towards a life that she is not sure she wants, certainly one she knows nothing about, but one she is not ready to give up. 

Continue reading “As Cool as the Air in a Redwood Grove” →

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September Heart of the Month: A Challenge to All of Us

Happy September, my friends!  Today I have some good news and some good news.  Which would you like to hear first?  Okay, I’ll start with the good news.  My freshman-in-high-school son has now made it through two full weeks and so far has: figured out how to take the bus there and back (mostly), learned how to open and close his locker (sort of), found people to sit with at lunch (the hardest thing about high school, in my opinion), met a girl who has drawn his name on her notebooks and binders (of which I hope she has more because it seems a bit early in the game to make that kind of commitment), not gotten anyone pregnant, not contracted an STD, and has actually spoken enthusiastically about a few of his classes.  Thank ya, Jesus!
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June Heart of the Month: Bring Your Heart to Work

Well, I’m getting June’s Heart of the Month in just under the wire, but I have a good reason:  today my mother, MaryAnne Crowley, officially completed 34 years and nine months of a truly inspiring teaching career.  She did a few other things in the meantime, such as gave birth to and stayed home with three children, moved house 5 times, supported my dad as he went to law school at night to pursue his own professional dream of becoming a lawyer, got a Masters Degree as a Reading Specialist, learned to play golf, travelled to more countries than I can think of, and compiled a truly spectacular shoe collection, especially for someone with size 5 feet.  The best line at her retirement party was spoken by one of the younger teachers my mother has mentored: “You may have tiny feet, but you have very big shoes to fill.”

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To Read in Your Leisure Time (Ha Ha Ha!)

If you are a Dr. Phil viewer, you may have seen the recent show on Dr. John Robinson’s time-use study claiming that “Women have at least 30 hours of leisure every week.  In fact, women have more leisure now than they did in the 1960s, even though more women are working outside the home.”*  If you are a working woman, you may have already used Google Earth to locate Dr. Robinson’s home, somewhere in the Baltimore area, and are currently figuring out how to make something very large and very heavy fall onto it.  And if you were doing this, by the way, you’d be using your “leisure time.”  As Brigid Schulte wrote, in her Washington Post article on the study, answering emails or using the computer for anything other than work is leisure time.  Other examples include:

“Watching movies with the kids. Visiting a sick friend with the kids. Talking to a friend about her leisure time on the cellphone to report this story while taking my son’s bike to the shop for repairs with the kids. Leisure, leisure, leisure.”

“Printing out a gift card to Best Buy for my friend’s son while yelling at kids and husband to “get into the car now” two minutes before leaving to go to a birthday dinner. Leisure.”

“Sitting in a hot, broken-down car for two hours on a median strip and playing tic-tac-toe with my daughter while waiting for a tow truck. Yes, that, too.”

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You Can Learn A Lot About a Person By How They…

 Maya Angelou has said: “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”  To these words of complete truth, I’m going to add that you can learn some important life lessons by watching how people behave in a Butterfly House.

We visited a Butterfly Conservatory on our vacation to Niagara Falls last week, and I wrote about it in an earlier post.  I love them.  If I could live in one, I would.  They’re one of the only places where I feel completely calm, except for the reptiles.  Those would have to go.    
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Motherhood: The “Thankless Job Filled with Fail” Version

One of the funniest websites for all things parenting and pregnancy related is Let’s Panic! by the fabulous writers Alice Bradley and Eden Kennedy.  I wish I had created it, because it’s like they open their mouths and everyone’s voices come out, except 100 times funnier.  Here are some of their tips on “Alternatives to Yelling:”

  • Tamp your anger down, down, farther down, as deeply as you can, until you are wild-eyed and tense as a jungle cat.  But at least you’re not taking it out on your child!  Oops: you have cancer now.
  • Instead of making noise at your child, express yourself through art.  Try a collage made with your child’s photograph and large streaks of thick oil paint and maybe some animal teeth or feathers.  So cathartic!
  • Communicate your feelings via your child’s teddy bear. You can’t punch your child, but you can punch Mr. Fuzzy.  Just punch and punch and punch some more.  Mr. Fuzzy can take it.
  • Move out. Make sure to leave him or her some beef jerky and spare lightbulbs.  No need to be cruel. (source=Let’s Panic!)  Continue reading “Motherhood: The “Thankless Job Filled with Fail” Version” →
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    God Put a Rainbow in the Clouds

    In 2002, Maya Angelou was the speaker at the University of Illinois’ commencement.  It was a cloudy day, and all the dusty old Important University Administrators droned on and on with their dusty old words.  And then Maya Angelou was introduced.  She stepped to the podium, opened her mouth, and her honey-rich voice rolled out singing, “When it looked like the sun wasn’t gonna shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds!”  Then she called out into the mass of people, “Good afternoon, rainbows!”  It was 8 years ago, but it could have been 5 minutes for how full and powerful her voice still is in my head.

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    Like a Band of Gypsies

    Guess who's along for the ride!

    “Like a band of gypsies we go down the highway
    We’re the best of friends
    Insisting that the world keep turning our way

    And our way
    is on the road again.
    Just can’t wait to get on the road again.”

     –Willie Nelson, “On the Road Again”

     From what I understand, despite prevailing stereotypes, travel in the old gypsy tradition had a sense of pride and nobility about it.  So as I mentioned in my last post, it seems clear that Willie Nelson did not have traveling with children in mind when he wrote his song. 

    In fact, quite the last thing I felt after our 13-hour trip from Illinois to Niagara, NY was noble.  As Sid the Sloth says to Diego the Saber Tooth Tiger at the end of the classic film, Ice Age 1: “You’re traveling with us now, buddy!  Dignity’s got nothing to do with it!” 

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