Board Games vs. What If Questions: Another Parenting Dilemma

Last week for some New Jersey public schools it was Winter Break.  On Monday, one of my friends in Pennsylvania posted on Facebook that her “togetherness quotient” had expired; on Tuesday, my sister, who was at home in New Jersey with her three small children, texted me to ask who was responsible for the concept of “winter break.”  (People with no children and timeshares in Arizona, apparently).  On Wednesday, we discussed the equally absurd notion of taking small children “on vacation,” and on Thursday she reported that one of her sons had asked her a question that started with “What if…” and she had interrupted him before he could go any farther.  “I just couldn’t take it,” she said.  “I even said to him, ‘please stop, I can’t handle that kind of question right now.’  And yes, I’m a terrible person.”

Continue reading “Board Games vs. What If Questions: Another Parenting Dilemma” →

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We Are Not Alone

My father-in-law, who is wise and insightful, recently posted a comment on my post, “Sit. Feast on your life,” which included a poem by Derek Walcott.  He (my father-in-law, that is) wrote:  “The personal pronoun ‘we’ says: You are not alone, we belong together.  And that’s what I wanted to add to your consideration: Don’t only look into the mirror to see yourself but look around you to recognize all the people who love you or hate you. You are connected to them in good and in bad hours. That’s what gives life to your life.”

He posted this for me to consider so I have been considering it.  And it put me in mind of a David Whyte poem called “Everything is Waiting for You,” which I would like to share with you today.

Continue reading “We Are Not Alone” →

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Nice Things Men Do

This Christmas my dad came up with the greatest present idea ever: Small Acts of Kindness.  Now, no, my dad did not INVENT the idea of Small Acts of Kindness, but because he is a lawyer with a strong attachment to structure, he created a system for executing the AOKs that is worthy of note: he and my mom alternate months throughout the year, and each month, one does two AOKs for the other.

Stipulations: the AOKs are not to be blended in with birthdays, Valentine’s Day, or anniversaries, and during their anniversary month, they are both exempt from the individual AOKs, since they will be doing something to celebrate together. 

And no garden variety AOKs for him, either.  There may be some flowers involved, a surprise lunch now and then, a gift or two, but for the most part the AOK is exactly what it says: an ACT of kindness, doing something the other person would truly appreciate.  Examples thus far have included:

  • making sure the other person’s shoes are polished and in good repair (no small task when the person has 12,537 pairs of shoes). I think this involved a tarp, rubber gloves, and a step ladder, in addition to the full spectrum of shoe polish colors; 
  • organizing the other person’s sock drawer (again, not a quick job when the person actually has 4 sock drawers–black, blue, golf, and golf overflow–and this is my DAD);
  • repairing assorted items of clothing.

Continue reading “Nice Things Men Do” →

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10 Ways to Tell if You Are a Hypochondriac

You are a hypochondriac if:

  1. You have memorized your doctor’s phone number, or have it listed under “Contacts” on your cell phone.
  2. You are not a doctor, but nevertheless possess a medical encyclopedia, the most recent edition of the PDR, and/or an on-line subscription to JAMA.
  3. You have ever seriously considered hair testing.
  4. You take more than 5 nutritional supplements per day, and/or you can’t leave the house without one of those plastic pill dispensers with divided sections for all of your supplements.
  5. You have ever worried about spontaneously going blind, specifically while driving.
  6. You remember specific time periods in your life by which disease you were worrying about: age 7–Smoker’s Foot; age 12–kidney disease; sophomore year of college–skin cancer; 3 years ago on vacation at the beach–multiple sclerosis, and so on.
  7. A phone call from the doctor’s office after a routine physical has you immediately listing all of the potentially fatal diseases that can be detected by a CBC.
  8. The idea of an annual full body MRI “just in case” seems like a good idea.
  9. The most visited web sites on your computer are: wedmd.com, the Mayo Clinic Symptom Checker, and wrongdiagnosis.com.
  10. You frequently find yourself silently diagnosing other people’s symptoms, best courses of treatment, and probable chances of survival.

Continue reading “10 Ways to Tell if You Are a Hypochondriac” →

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“Sit. Feast on your life.”

Today is the first Friday of Lent—no meat for those observing Lenten practices.  And here’s some interesting Catholic trivia I found while looking up Lenten fasting: “abstinence,” which in this case refers to not eating meat, does not include “meat juices and liquid foods made from meat. Thus, such foods as chicken broth, consommé, soups cooked or flavored with meat, meat gravies or sauces, as well as seasonings or condiments made from animal fat are not forbidden. So it is permissible to use margarine and lard.”  Mmm!  Also, “even bacon drippings which contain little bits of meat may be poured over lettuce as seasoning,” and (thank goodness someone has cleared this up once and for all), “no one considers gelatin or Jell-O to be meat”  (Father John Huels, The Pastoral Companion).  So you can’t eat a burger, but you could eat, say, a salad with lots of bacon bits, or even pasta with marinara sauce.  And in case it was theological doubt holding you back, go right ahead and enjoy that Jell-O, guilt-free.

 Like almost every woman in the Western world, where we have the luxury of worrying about eating too much, food is sometimes often almost always an issue for me.  I have used it to play out a variety of neuroses over the years—mostly by hypochondriacally imbuing it with magical healing powers–and have practiced vegetarianism, veganism, low carb/high proteinism, and most disastrously, macrobiotics.  I once asked one of my friends who is up on a lot of Asian practices what he knew about macrobiotics and he said, “I think it involves a lot of small containers.”

Continue reading ““Sit. Feast on your life.”” →

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“Something New in the Ashes of Your Life”*

A few weeks ago, I was talking with my dad about what he and my mother plan to do after they retire in June.  Somehow the conversation got around to where they wanted to live, “down the road,” which I took to mean when they are quite a bit older, and when they may need more help.  My parents and siblings live on the east coast and I live in Illinois, which I believe my east coast father thinks of as “the prairie.”  I told him that they were very welcome to live near us, mentioned the lower cost of living, the relatively good healthcare, the proximity to us, and he said, “Well, the thing is that you have terrible weather.  All year.” 

Continue reading ““Something New in the Ashes of Your Life”*” →

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Radical Lent—A Poetic Approach to 40 Days in the Wilderness

So it’s Lent.  If you’re Christian, that is. Lent spans 40 weekdays, beginning on Ash Wednesday (today) and ending the Saturday before Easter.  I grew up Catholic, which I consider a privilege, mostly because grounding in any faith tradition gives you something to work with.  Whether you practice it or not as an adult, a childhood spent in a strong religious tradition means you are never homeless.  I may be wrong, but leaving home, while difficult, may be easier than never having had the feeling that you belonged somewhere.

Lent has some beautiful theological significance, which you can read about if you are so inclined.  But one of Catholicism’s (Catholic school, specifically) greatest weaknesses is the inability to translate deeper spiritual practices into meaningful experiences for children, so what I remember about Lent is that you either give up something you like or do something that you don’t like.  Forgive me, but the spiritual gap between Jesus’ self-sacrifice and giving up chocolate (or, as my son Jacob decided when he was 8, beer) for 40 days is so enormous as to be absurd almost beyond words.

This year I have decided on a radical approach to Lent—I am going to do more of something I love and less of things I do not love. Specifically, I have committed to the discipline of reading one poem each day for 40 days, and writing about what it reveals.  This is not really radical, because my belief is that unlike the giving up beer approach to Lent, which treats us as if we are spiritual babies, this approach will bring me more into an adult-adult dialogue with myself and the world, which I believe is what God would prefer anyway.

Continue reading “Radical Lent—A Poetic Approach to 40 Days in the Wilderness” →

10

Unanswered Questions from Dinner with a Poet

Unanswered Questions from Dinner with a Poet

“What are you thinking about now?” he asked,
across the table,
over the empty plates,
into the silence of an unfinished conversation.

“Is it normal to be terrified?” I want to say.
And when will writing not feel
like assembling a jigsaw puzzle
where all the pieces are gray,
or like being in a country
where my currency is defunct.

But I swallowed my words with a sip
of good Chilean red,
and all I remember now are these two things:

With tired eyes and a precise, compassionate voice,
he looked at me and said,
“Fear is a useful diagnostic tool.” 

And then, when we got up from the table,
he took my wine glass, not quite empty,
put it to his lips,
and drank it. 

LCS
2/13/10

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For Valentine’s Day (a short love story)

“I’ll always think of you when I see dirt,” he told her. He said this because every time they walked in the woods, she smeared dirt between her hands. Dry summer dirt, cold, crunchy winter dirt, and all the promising, practically edible dirts of the spring and fall. Being with him was like that. Earthy. Messy. Like compost–generating a slow and steady heat. She was completely awake with him; she saw everything. The tiniest ferns unraveling, moist green mosses, as complete as the world; and once, the blossoms of a cherry tree fluttering to the ground. “Snow,” he said that time, and they both laughed.

“I just want to love you,” she told him as they walked through tall prairie grass in the spring. “Yes,” he said. They walked in all seasons.  Once, in the rain, he gave her his jacket and she had to roll the sleeves up four times. “How do you feel?” he asked another time, standing in the middle of a summer forest. “Like myself,” she said. “I always feel like myself with you.” He didn’t say anything. There were mosquitoes that day, and clouds of little gnats hanging in the humid morning air.

Another time, they walked across a quiet frozen lake. They had been sledding on a flimsy plastic sled that he had tied to the roof of his car. They ate chocolate and drank the juice of a grapefruit from each other’s mouths. He walked to the edge of the lake to look at the snow, and she laid down in the middle, looking up into the white sky. 

A black bird winged–she remembered thinking that word–winged–from the top of one bare brown tree, across the lake to the top of another, and it was as if love itself had flown down and blessed them.

3

Because there are all kinds of love poems

I wrote this poem for my sister-in-law last summer when she was very kind to me at a difficult time.  “An der Ringkirche” is the street where she lives, and ‘Ringkirche’ means “the church near the ring.”  You can see a gorgeous, almost magical 19th-century church right outside the window of their apartment building.  This poem tries to describe a moment when a small gesture made me feel truly loved.

June 1-An der Ringkirche
for katja

After months of struggle
in this hard interior country
I am landed here–
a clean sunlit room with one white orchid,
and air that rings round and rich
with cathedral bells.

In the center of the glass table
someone I love has left a gift–
pale gold perfume.
When I spray it into the sunlight
it makes a living glimmering cloud,
and as I step through it I breathe, Yes.       
Yes: it can be as easy as this.

LCS
2/10

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