XII. Savoie

I take the TGV, train de grande vitesse, from Chambéry to Paris, and then another smaller train to Bernay to stay with Pauline and Roger. Clémence now lives in the neighboring city of Evreux, where she is taking classes for university. I see her a few times for the week I am there, back in that small attic room. Then I have to go back south, ostensibly to attend the language classes that I have been skipping for the past few weeks, bored with repeating lessons that I went through just a month before. On the ride back, I spend most of the three-hour trip holding back tears, hiding my face against the window as the country blurs by. In French, the way you say “homesick” is avoir le mal du pays. You could literally translate this as “to feel the pain of your country.” But it’s not quite that. I am mostly feeling the pain of being in this country.

The second I arrive back in Chambéry, I call Pauline, begging her to let me come back. She calls me nénette, her pet word I’ve heard her say to Clémence so many times before. I am on a train back to Bernay the next morning.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Katherine explores grief and loss through her blog Helping Friends Grieve, which she founded in 2010 as a tool for friends and loved ones supporting someone in the grieving process.  Currently, as a graduate student, Katherine studies community healing in post-conflict environments.  Her work in international development and passion for justice and human rights has taken her to diverse regions of the globe, including the Peruvian Andes, Mexico City, Northern Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Katherine’s interest in grief, memory, and healing is reflected in her desire to explore the role of community and inter-connectedness in healing. When she's not working, you'll find her outside: rock climbing, hiking or backpacking. Grief, loss, and mourning take hold of us. They become tides that come and go throughout the day or rollercoasters that catch us off guard, plunging us into undiscovered emotional territory. Loss leaves us bruised and, yet, curiously open to the world as we re-imagine and re-create our lives. We mourn the loss of place, home, youth, loved ones, and ability; the mix of emotions and utterly human trials exist in a web connecting our individual experience to our community. Our country continues to experience and heal from the devastation of hurricane Sandy; a thread ties together survival, loss, and resilience within our individual stories and communities.  We seek safety, interconnectedness with each other, and real, literal moments of joy that anchor us to our everyday lives.

The world of grief and healing is full of stories. Stories that make our hearts ache and bring tears to our eyes. Stories that touch us deeply, resonating with our experiences, bring our losses closer to the surface, and in their own way, heal us.  A belief in the power of stories is why I share (link to Helping Friends Grieve) and encourage others to share. The stories I look to this week, offline, that is, weave together the personal and community elements of grief, mourning, and healing across cultures and experiences with loss.

this i know by Susannah Conway The moment I laid eyes on Susannah Conway’s subtitle, notes on unraveling the heart, the warm book cover beckoned me in. Yes, I thought to myself, that is what I have been trying to say, loss and grief unravel your heart. Susannah vulnerably shares her experience with layers of grief, emotions, and self-doubt, ultimately, leading to much deeper questions of identity.  Her journey becomes one of self-creation. Susannah began her journey writing about grief after the loss of the love of her life, through blogging (link here: http://www.susannahconway.com/2006/04/a-few-beans-to-spill/). This i know, her 2012 book, re-lives her beautiful, tentative steps towards healing, “When we survive a traumatic event or transition in our lives, there’s a point when the healing really starts to take hold and we feel suddenly invincible.”(pg 39) Beyond words, her camera lens captures grief and healing in a moving combination of self-portraits and the world around her, which she claims give us clues on how to re-create our own worlds after loss.  Her writing and photography show grief settling and her creative, passionate self-emerging from an unraveled heart. It is breath-taking and inspiring as we weave our own stories of grief.

The Long Goodbye by Meghan O’Rourke Why do we write about grief? Why do we tell stories about loved ones?  In a 2011 New York Times piece (link here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/weekinreview/27grief.html), Joyce Carol Oates and Meghan O’Rourke explore the public and private sides of grieving through personal emails that they later share publicly. In The Long Goodbye, Meghan O’Rourke jumps headfirst into her journey through the loss of her mother and openly shares its vivid, intimate details. She refers to grief as a nearly universal act with exquisitely personal transactions. (page 57) She opens up these personal moments for the reader to experience and grieve with her, thus blending their own stories of loss with hers.  In her own words;

I was not entirely surprised to find that being a mourner was lonely. But I was surprised to discover that I felt lost. In the days following my mother’s death, I did not know what I was supposed to do, nor, it seemed, did my friends and colleagues, especially those who had never suffered a similar loss. (page 12)

She bookends her story with chapters on love and healing, tying together childhood memories, anticipatory grief, the cracks in her relationships, the rollercoaster of caretaking, and the lack of rituals to shape and support her loss. She gracefully tackles the experience of saying goodbye, allowing the reader to join her and glean insight its messy mechanics.

Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen The Chicken Soup for the Soul series pulls me back to memories of weekends as a young girl, curled up on the couch of my family’s cabin in Colorado, reading stories of teenage love. This scene was nearly repeated after the loss of my father, as I dove back into other people’s stories. Only, this time I found comfort in their stories of loss and healing. I wove their stories into a safety net around my own emotions, allowing me the space to experience my own loss and journey. Wrapped in blankets, sipping cups of tea, I cried over the words I wasn’t brave enough yet to put on paper - a father’s portrayal of the loss of his son, a young woman’s loss of her mother, and a wide variety of other stories written by people who, I assumed, once had also curled up on a couch, searching desperately for meaning in the throes of loss. Chicken Soup for the Grieving Soul, is a compilation of stories written by authors who have lost loved ones. It beautifully walks the line between sharing in grief and inspiring readers with stories of healing and understanding. It connects us, showing our resilience as humans.

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder In the first few years after the loss of my father, I referred to my life, or rather the life I had known as the pieces. By pieces I meant little bits of strength, memories that let light into my life, and relationships with friends and loved ones that sewed me back together. During this time, I moved abroad and sought to re-create a sense of community spanning countries, regions, and cultures. During the months I spent a truly magical place, Mexico City, a friend gifted me Strength in What Remains. I have read and re-read this book over the past few years, scribbling in the margins and always throwing it in my blue backpack before boarding the next plane. I fell in love all over again with Deo’s story as I crossed the border from Rwanda to Burundi this summer. At 22, his devastating story of survival during genocide and his strength span his harrowing experiences in Burundi, his improbably escape to New York City, and ultimately the fulfillment of his dream – returning to Burundi to build a hospital. Through Deo’s journey, Kidder shows us the pieces of loneliness, pain, grief, and displacement from home, but ultimately the resilience of the human spirit that echoes within elements of our own narratives. The essence of Deo’s experiences are rooted in Wordsworth’s graceful words, which lend the perfect title to the book. From the poem, Strength in What Remains;

“Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass,

of glory in the flower,

We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind…..”

…..

My experience with grief is no longer just a memory of my own experience, but a mix of the stories I have loved, savored, and wiped tears off my cheeks while reading. These are just a few of the stories that sustain me.

Curating the internet

Recently, I came across a brief news article offering up a study as evidence of what I’ve already known for a while: Facebook is depressing. The Utah Valley University study showed that of the 425 students who were interviewed, those who spent more time on Facebook were more likely to feel that life was unfair and that others’ lives were better than their own. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that we tend to curate the best pieces of ourselves on the internet. We tend to share the sweetest, most photogenic aspects of our lives, polishing them up before sending them out into the world. You’re more likely to share a photo of your puppy in the brief, glowing moment when she’s sleeping than when she’s simultaneously tearing up your socks and pooping on the floor.

And if you’ve ever drowned your sorrows in your Facebook news feed while you’re in a funk, you’ll know what I mean. As soon as you’ve broken up with your boyfriend, everyone in your feed seems to be blissfully in love. Circumstances or biology are preventing you from procreating as you’d like to, and suddenly it seems as if everyone else in your feed is popping out babies by the dozen.

The problem with the feed—which is not very nourishing, by the way, but often rather draining—is that it’s missing a holistic view of other people’s lives. When you bond with your real-life friends, you share in their triumphs and their sorrows. Most of our hundreds of Facebook friends are actually acquaintances or strangers, and although it may seem that they are sharing aspects of their private lives online, these glimpses have been selected from among many others for public consumption.

Of course, there are a number of ways to respond to a study like this: ignore it, cut back on Facebook usage, stop using Facebook altogether. My own experience of Facebook has been very conflicted. On the one hand, I find it to be so very useful as a directory and as a sort of social memory. I use it to look up contact information or to find a friend’s friend’s spouse’s name that I’ve forgotten. On the other hand, I arrive to look up a bit of information, and then find I’ve lost a couple of precious hours after having fallen down the rabbit hole of the news feed.

This problem certainly extends beyond Facebook to other social networking sites, Twitter, blogs, etc., and there have been many interesting responses to it across these platforms. Some have chosen to regularly prune their feeds by cutting back on people they follow. Others have taken a cue from Jess Lively’s “Things I’m afraid to tell you” post, sharing some of their own flaws and challenges as a balance to their otherwise optimistic and upbeat content.

For my own part, I’ve taken the “regular maintenance” approach to managing my feeds and overall internet experience. My Twitter bookmark is set to a list of people I actually know. I’ve trimmed my Facebook feed by taking some time to block updates from people I’ve lost touch with beyond Facebook. I’ve used Feedly to craft a reader of content that’s consistently thoughtful and inspiring. It makes sense that we curate our public personalities online, and in response, I’ve tried to curate my own window onto what I encounter when I first open up a browser. It takes time, but it feels like a method for encouraging healthy content consumption, without having to feel like I’m fasting or binging on internet “junk.”

A Note of Thanks

If you spend any time at all on Facebook, you’ve likely seen a new trend this November.  I’m not talking about political status updates---thank goodness. Someone, somewhere in the World Wide Web decided that each day in November, they would post a status about something they were thankful for.  The crusade was adopted and has become a certifiable trend.  And I couldn’t be happier. One of my best habits is saying thank you.  I say it a lot.  I thank cashiers, waiters, and people who hold open doors just like my mother taught me.  But I also offer up non-verbal thanks.  I’ve never cared too much about figuring out who I’m silently thanking, maybe it’s a higher being, maybe it’s the universe, maybe it’s the neurons firing in my brain.  Truth is, that part just doesn’t matter so much to me.  What matters is acknowledging my gratitude.

Every night and every morning I silently reel off a list of things and people I’m grateful for: My husband, my family & friends, my life, my health, the health of all the people I already mentioned etc.  I think it helps put me in the proper frame of mind and reminds me how incredibly blessed I am to lead the life I do.

Throughout the day I’ll send out silent shout outs for the things that make me happy---a letter from a friend, a particularly great cup of coffee, a snuggly blanket.  Acknowledging the joy or peace of a moment goes hand in hand with being grateful.  When I tell my husband how content I am to be sitting next to him and reading a good book, I’m also saying thanks; thanks for a perfect moment.

I haven’t hopped on the Facebook thanks train, at least not yet, but I’ve enjoyed reading notes of gratitude from friends and acquaintances who are thankful for their family, friends, freedom, jobs, spouses, and pets among other things.  Right now, I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to write this column every week, I’m grateful to Elisabeth and Miya for welcoming my enthusiastic email and inviting me in; I am continually awed by my inclusion as a contributor alongside women whose words paint pictures, tell stories, and inspire searching thought and I am always pleased as punch that anyone besides my parents would care to read my words.

In Thanks,

Renee

After the Storm

Last Monday, my husband, James, and I were alternately cowering in our apartment waiting for the impending storm and braving the winds and rain to walk down to the river and check in on the condition of the harbor. By midday, the river down the street from our apartment was already churning and the water lapping up as high as we’d ever seen it. At night we lay awake in our bed, listening to the sound of the wind and ambulance sirens, both relentless in their shrieking. From the river itself, we heard nothing.

The next morning, we walked back to the water’s edge and it was clear that river had been where we stood. Clear that while we had managed eventually to sleep it had dashed in and then retreated as quickly as it had come, leaving bits of styrofoam and seagrass strewn in its wake. In DUMBO, a four-foot high brown water mark tattooed restaurant windows and a small lake rippled in the remaining wind at the foot of Main Street. Park benches were covered with the same mess we’d seen further down the road. The power was out and so were the neighbors, walking among the debris to survey the damage.

In the days after the storm, the subways remained flooded and so my sister and her husband walked from the East Village across the Brooklyn Bridge and over the river that separates us. They set up shop in our tiny apartment and we tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy---a surprisingly easy task when there’s a wi-fi connection and warm drinks to be had.

The heartbreaking bit of course is what’s still happening in places where normalcy is harder to come by. In DUMBO and Red Hook and Rockaway and along the Jersey Shore and the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts, there were lives and livelihoods and homes swept away with the rising tides. We’re such a fragile bunch, us humans---so reliant on the technologies that we’ve built and the infrastructure that buoys us. But as always happens after a tragedy, I am also astonished, astonished by our resiliency. If you're looking for ways to help, head here. 

Reaching for Sweet Things

“So there is a girl sleeping in the front room,” I hear my grandmother whisper to my grandfather. “Did you know that?” I listen through a cracked door. She has just said goodnight to me very warmly, despite the fact that I am mostly a stranger to her these days. The room I am staying in is a blank walled cube with a vaulted ceiling and three big windows. In the mornings I wake when the sun comes in, when it is quiet and bright. The shape of the space reminds me of a hamster carrying crate, the cardboard kind you’d get at a pet store. Four straight walls, a milk carton style top. The ever present sense of fascination and fear I feel while staying in this room makes me feel a strange kinship with those small furry creatures. Bewildered. Alert. In this house I feel wonder at all the new things I see, and also a heart pounding anxiety in facing the unknown.

My grandparents both have Alzheimer's Disease. My grandmother is further along than my grandfather. I have recently been recruited to spend weekends with them so their regular home health aide can take time off. Their regular caregiver is a beautiful woman who moves through their home with grace and kindness, who tiptoes through the land mines of potential conflict as though it were her sixth sense. Instead of correcting, she redirects. Instead of asking "don't you remember?" she slips into their world and accepts their state of being. This is only my second weekend, and so far I have stepped on plenty of land mines. I have, for example, identified myself as their granddaughter, to which they say, defensively: Of course you are, we know that!  Now I've learned to say it less directly, more casually. And I usually add: Well, you have so many, it's hard to keep track of us all. A concession which they gladly take.

Food is also land mine. What to eat, when to eat, where to eat. Too many questions and decisions, too much room for confusion. Long menus with complicated descriptions are overwhelming, and so it helps to pose two options. Would you like the chicken, or the pasta? Because one of those is what you usually get. These are key words and phrasing. You usually do this, so does that sound good? The answer is always: Yes, I will do what I usually do.

Last Saturday morning we had breakfast at home. I made french toast---my favorite childhood breakfast---then arranged pieces of cut up fruit into little bowls and set them at the table next to two small plastic boxes of pills. The next morning I made "sunny side up" eggs, also an old favorite. Each morning I feel like I'm entering into a new world where there are new social codes, new conventions, new people. Our one moor, the one common thing we have to keep us from drifting apart, is food. As volatile as it can be, it is also our touchstone.

As we are finishing breakfast, we talk of lunch. Then we talk of which day this is, we talk of the weather, we talk of the newspaper (which one of us will read out loud, sometimes going into imagined stories of the people in the photos on the front page.) But it always comes back to food. Well, we just had breakfast, so what is for lunch? Breakfast then lunch then dinner -- a sequence of time based actions that is retained. I think talking of food is also comforting because it is a ritual, a measurement of time. Our day is held up by meals. When do you want to have dinner? My grandmother asks. We could eat at five, would that be ok? I will say, repeating this answer to a series of questions new to her, but the same to me.

When I was little I remember standing on my tiptoes in my grandmother’s kitchen and reaching my hand into the wooden bread box on the counter top. I must have been very small, because I clearly remember the discomfort, as I reached, of my armpit digging into the edge of the counter. But it was worth it. If I were lucky, I'd come out grasping a handful of Starbursts.  I would separate the pinks from the rest and squirrel away my cache in my pocket, saving those cherished pale beauties for last. I would sometimes mould many flavors in to one pastel blob, rolling and kneading the hardened corn syrup into a sticky ball, which I would later nibble, pretending it was a special kind of apple.

That breadbox is on their counter still, but I’ve not been able to open it since being here. It’s as if opening that box and finding no Starbursts would mean something. That my grandparents, as I had known them in my youth, are lost forever? That my happiness is no longer so easily accessed, that my inner life is now more bland? That we've lost the time of tiptoes and reaching? Yes, maybe all of the above.

Still, I stay with them in their kitchen and make them the breakfasts of my childhood, pretending that those french toasts and sunny side up eggs can link our two worlds and the past to the present. Maybe next weekend I will buy some Starbursts to hide in the old breadbox. I entertain the idea of catching glimpses of pink wax wrappers beneath loaves of brown bread.  I know that a gesture like that won't make my grandparents feel any less lost or confused. It won't make me less worried for them. It won't bind my shattered heart, which breaks, each day, into smaller and smaller pieces as I brush my grandmother's hair, hold her hand, fold her clothes, paint her nails. But I will do it anyway. I will do what I usually do. I will gesture, reach, and imagine. Just like I will say to my grandmother, for the fifth or sixth time in a row, We could eat at five, would that be ok? 

Yes, she will say, that will be fine.

The Effects of a Storm, an Ocean Away

My landlord woke me up with a phone call on Monday morning. “Are your friends and family okay?” he asked. “I heard about everything on the news, and I was so worried.” It’s the first question off any of my new London friends’ tongues when they see me, and the first question of any stranger when I first tell them where I’m from. Is everyone okay? Is my old apartment okay? Is New York okay?

My answers are, in order, yes, yes and I don’t know. The first two are easy: almost everyone I know in New York lived mostly out of harm's way. A few of my friends have had to walk or bike to work; some have had to go without showers or use candles to light their way. My old apartment, nestled safely in Midtown, never even lost power or water. The last question is the worst and the hardest for me to answer, both because I have no information and because I hate that I have no information. I don’t know how New York is, because, while I identify as a New Yorker to everyone I meet in Europe, while I compare everything I encounter here ceaselessly to the world I knew and loved back there, while many of my friends and family are still in the place I consider home, I am not. I am in London.

I’m not jealous of those in New York, and it should be said plainly and clearly that I absolutely wish Sandy hadn’t hit the East Coast and Caribbean. I wish it was a repeat of last year in New York City, where we ventured out into Times Square in the middle of Hurricane Irene and took pictures in the typically overrun with tourists hub that was now deserted (I, of course, also wish Irene had never negatively impacted the areas outside of New York that bore the brunt of the storm). But there’s something to be said for the ache you feel when something happens to your home and you can’t be there. You want to stand up for it. You want to experience things with it, so it doesn’t have to go it alone. I don’t fool myself to think I know what New Yorkers are going through right now, but there’s a part of me that wishes I was there for it. New Yorkers, I believe, are at their best in the face of adversity, and I feel a pang in my chest when I read Facebook updates about candlelit sleepovers or charging parties or the Exodus like group walking over the Brooklyn Bridge together. I want to change things there---I want to help, desperately, beyond the Red Cross donations and options from afar---but that’s not the whole story. I want to be there because I feel it---the city, the people in it---would change me.

And while my heart goes out to everyone affected by the storm, New York will be okay, with or without me. And I will be okay, with or without it. But it’s moments like these you realize that it doesn’t take a hurricane to create ripples strong enough to be felt even across an ocean.

XI. Provence

My classmates and I pile onto a bus and drive for over an hour, winding up and over and around the steadily climbing hills of the Luberon valley and eating tasteless crackers to keep from getting sick. Then we step out and this golden-orange view, peppered through with greenest evergreen trees, is what awaits us. We are in Roussillon, a town whose rusty clay cliffs have been mined for ochre for the past century or so.

Tipsy on the fresh air, we rush to climb and play in the silty dust like children, and the ochre cliffs---run through with brilliant smudges of pinks and oranges and crimsons, even---rub off on our clothes. The earth feels like soft charcoal on our fingers. Soon we are covered with it, and traces of color will make their way back on the bus to Aix-en-Provence with us, only to be found hours or even days later by scolding host mothers, impatient with hanging the laundry outside to dry only to find it still dirty and streaked through with red silt.

Why they insist on cleaning our clothes is beyond us---the teachers at the ACPP center tell us it is a différence culturelle which translates most directly as don't question it.

The Faithful

"“Do I love you this much?" she’d ask us, holding her hands six inches apart. “No,” we’d say, with sly smiles. “Do I love you this much?” she’d ask again, and on and on and on, each time moving her hands farther apart. But she would never get there, no matter how wide she stretched her arms. The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained. It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching’s universe and then ten thousand more. Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve." -          Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

My latest pick for book club was a wholly personal one. My friend Dorothy gave me a copy of the book right after my mom died, but it was almost seven months before I was ready to pick it up. For anyone unfamiliar with the story, Strayed writes about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail by herself, after her mom's death. What stuck with me most about the book weren’t the months she spent alone while hiking, or the blisters on her feet that she writes about in detail, or the weather or wildlife-related obstacles she encountered on the trail. For me, it was reading about how her life spiraled out of control after her mother's death.

I thought about this last weekend, while I was in California with some of my oldest and closest friends. We had gathered for Brooke's wedding, a friend since we rode our big wheels to nursery school together. We then spent years in Brownies, with my mom as our fearless troop leader. Last summer, Brooke showed up in New York for my bachelorette party, Brownie sash on. She said those are some of her best childhood memories, in large part because of my mom. Katie flew in from Australia for the wedding. Just a hop, skip, and a 14 hour flight for her. The line between friend and family is blurry with Katie and I; that's how long we've been friends. Katie is the kind of friend who flies halfway around the world when your mom is in the hospital, the kind who sits with you and makes you laugh when you think there is nothing left to laugh about, the kind who can be trusted with the most unpopular of errands (buying boxers for your dad, for instance). Andrea came from Chicago, leaving her baby boy at home with her husband.  Andrea has a laugh bigger than any room and a heart to match. She’s loyal and never forgets---not the bigger things like birthdays or even the little ones, like the color dress you wore to prom. Sara, my daily lifeline and keeper of secrets, was the only one missing---and miss her we did.

The wedding ceremony was a traditional Catholic mass, held at a beautiful old church in Santa Barbara---my first time in church since my mom's funeral. We sat together, observing the same rituals we’ve known since we were kids. The only off-script moment came during the Prayers of the Faithful, the part of mass when the congregation prays for those in need. The groom's cousin---leading the prayers---giggled his way through, while the rest of us looked on in confusion. Later, Brooke confessed that the prayers she and her husband had prepared weren’t waiting on the altar, and so their cousin was forced to improvise. More importantly, she wanted me to know what wasn’t said: a prayer for my mom they had intended to include in the ceremony. It was an acknowledgment that took my breath away, and I heard my mom so clearly in that moment, reminding me what good friends I have.

Back in Brooklyn, it was my turn to host book club. Just like every other one over the last six years, there was a heated debate about the merits of the book, but more importantly, there was plenty of wine and laughs. Overwhelmed with gratitude, I looked around at these girls who have become my friends later in life, who have held me up and righted my footing repeatedly throughout the last year. Rather dramatically, I announced that it was because of them---because of all of my friends---that I was not off hiking by myself somewhere, a la Cheryl Strayed.

My mom gave me the best and the worst of herself: her eyes, but also her hips and thighs; her brains, but also her impatience; her candidness, but also, at times, her candidness. There is no doubt, however, that she also gave me the gift of friendships, to which there is no downside. For that, I will thank her now and forever.

On making (and breaking) tradition

As a brand new family unit, my husband and I now face the strange and interesting task of managing tradition—embracing some of the traditions that have been passed down to us from our families and communities, casting others aside, and creating new ones. I’ve always been interested in tradition. I’ve loved learning about ritual practices and mythologies and uncovering the origins of our often deeply-held beliefs about why we do things the way we do them.

But engagement and wedding planning were a bit like being tossed into the deep end on the tradition front. I can’t count the number of times I received advice in the past several months—often from perfect strangers—that began with the loaded word “traditionally.” Let’s try out a few basic examples to get the “tradition” juices flowing.

“Traditionally, a bride wears a white dress.”

“Traditionally, a bride is escorted down the aisle by her father.”

“Traditionally, Americans eat turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.”

Why do brides “traditionally” wear white dresses? In which cultures is this true? Who started this trend? What if a bride hates white? What if a bride does not have a father? What if there is no bride, but rather two grooms? What if an American is also a vegetarian?

Ouf. As (I hope) you can see, even the simplest statements about tradition require a bit of unpacking and may be more useful in statistical reports than as practical advice for individuals.

This is not to say that all traditions are bad or wrong. Traditions can offer guidelines for interpersonal conduct that help us connect with and show respect for others. Traditions can help us make meaning of important life cycle events. But many traditions also have the frustrating characteristic of seeming natural and obvious to insiders, while appearing completely foreign and unnatural to outsiders. Many traditions do not account for difference.

So as we continue in the process of “tradition management” together, I hope that we will be able to practice a bit of what we’ve learned thus far—that tradition is best handled with equal parts critical thinking and creativity, research and respect, humor and sensitivity.

More or Less Normal

By Carey Swanson Taking my daughter on her first official trick-or-treating excursion did not happen quite as planned.  We went early, at four o’clock, rather than after work.  I wasn’t at work, of course, because it is Day 3 of the Hurricane Sandy school closings.  We will end up with this entire week as a surprise staycation, with no school for the kiddos in the city as we cope with the aftermath of this storm.

I'm homebound from my apartment in central Brooklyn, and the strangeness has officially set in.  I was not alone in my decision to simply celebrate Halloween.  Loads of kids decked out in store-bought animal costumes, or inspired cardboard cars and sandwich boards dotted the streets, only on occasion having to divert their path to avoid the stray fallen tree or branch.  For the most part, there was simply no sign of anything amiss, and everything seemed more or less normal.  Most businesses are open, with bins of candy ready.  It feels so strange, the normalness of it all.  It feels like it should feel different.  The mood is festive.  People laugh and smile and wave at the costumed children and adults alike.

Step a little closer, however, and you’ll hear a touch of the strangeness, if you know what to listen for.  Bits and pieces of cell phone conversations:  No, we’re fine, but we have four guests with us.  They don’t have heat, electricity, or hot water and who knows how much longer it will last.  Or: Another day with the kids is going to drive me crazy!  And if you look closely, scan the landscape; you’ll see a glimpse of it here and there.  The Laundromat sign, broken and caved in, bulbs exposed.  The shop awning, inexplicitly on the ground, trick-or-treaters simply stepping around as they make their way down the street.

Go a mile in any direction and you’ll find streets or homes still in water, without power, businesses struggling, a city slowly but surely pulling itself together after this crazy storm.  During the storm itself, as my lights flickered but kept steady, I found myself feeling left off the hook somehow.  It was hitting us, it was right on top of us, my Facebook page was telling me that people were losing power in every direction, but I was markedly unaffected.   It hit my city, but somehow it missed me.

So what is to be made of this?  I know I’m supposed to simply be grateful and count my blessings.  However, I feel like that seems unfair—shouldn’t everyone get to do that?  Why do I get to count my blessings as opposed to the shop owner in lower Manhattan, or the family in Staten Island, or the neighborhood in Queens?  I’ve been sitting here in my apartment, homebound these past three days, and yet everything is the same except for my day’s destination and the endless sound of the news anchors on repeat in the background. I can’t help but be transported back over a decade, to the last fall morning I sat on the couch slightly removed and yet right in the thick of disaster.  And I won’t try to compare tragedies or even in any way equate one to the other, except in the feelings it brings up to me as spectator.  Back then I was uptown, couchbound and fixed to the news, aware of the fact that I was technically stranded on a closed off Manhattan Island.  In my city I was a safe distance, while to my friends and family in the Midwest I was right in the thick of it.  And I watched, cried, and then went about my life.

Today, I took my daughter trick-or-treating.   While the mayor peppered the city employees with praise, I attached paws and a tail on a 20 month old.  While firemen went door to door looking for trapped victims, I stuck lollipops and bubblegum she’s not old enough to chew into a bag.  And when a fallen tree blocked my path, I crossed the street, and kept on walking.  Side view of a disaster, and yet life goes on, more or less as normal.

Big Love to New York (and the whole East Coast)

I’m feeling particularly homesick for New York today. With so many loved ones struggling through the hurricane aftermath (including Miya in Brooklyn and many of our beloved contributors all over the East Coast), it’s difficult to believe that I’m across the country and can’t do much more than obsessively scroll through photos and check in on friends and family through texts, emails, and phone calls. Sandy proved devastating to so many, but it reminded me that the fundamental beauty of New York City lies in its people.  New York is tough and New Yorkers are tougher; don’t let that deceive you though. If you’re going to cram over eight million people into a small island and its boroughs, everyone needs to get along. I’ve yet to visit or live in a city where people demonstrate more generosity of spirit than in New York.

Maybe it’s because New York is a city of transplants and all of us remember the first time we found ourselves on an uptown express train instead of the downtown local, holding back tears while wondering if daily life would ever feel easy. Then there’s the day you become a real New Yorker and offer directions to a band of map-wielding tourists or recent grad decked out in her interview best.

In that same spirit of generosity, everyone is lending a hand while New York wrings itself out. Even before Sandy made landfall, Facebook and Twitter exploded with offers to house evacuees. And after, those with power, water, or . . . booze opened their homes---offering charging to the powerless, grooming to the waterless, and merry-making to the stir crazy.

That's how I know New York will be just fine; after all, it’s full of New Yorkers.

Oh, and see you tomorrow (Jet Blue willing)!

It’s easy to contribute to the relief effort in New York and other afflicted areas. To donate, visit the Red Cross, call 1-800-RED-CROSS, or just text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation. Another way to make a huge impact is to donate blood. Blood supplies were severely depleted, but the need is as great as ever. Please consider scheduling a blood donation by visiting redcrossblood.org.

Greetings from Grrls Meat Camp

The morning is chilly and bright. A sheen of frost covers the picnic tables and the wooden deck, the nearby pond is shimmering in the morning light, and the towering evergreens sway in the breeze. This idyllic setting belongs to the YMCA’s Camp Duncan, located just outside of Chicago. Inside the cozy cabin kitchen there are biscuits in the oven and sausage gravy simmering on the stove. After breakfast there will be an entire 250 pound hog delivered to the back porch, followed by lessons in whole animal butchery, pate and sausage making, and grilling and smoking. This is Grrls Meat Camp.

I first learned of Meat Camp via Kate Hill's Kitchen at Camont blog and through last year's Washington Post coverage of the inaugural event.  It's a gathering of chefs, butchers, bakers and enthusiastic home cooks. It's a weekend of food, fun, and ultimately of camaraderie and encouragement.

The group's Facebook mission statement reads: "To inspire, educate and foster sisterhood through a cooperative collaboration of women . . ." with an aim of "giving voice to those working with animals and meat on farms, butcher shops, restaurants and home."

It was an inspiring weekend, and not just because of all the delicious food.

It was a salon, of sorts, with conversation focused on sustainability, ethical farming, and our shifting food systems.

Even more moving, perhaps, were the personal stories shared of learning a craft that didn't typically welcome gender diversity. At Grrls Meat Camp, though, we were all in the front row. We all had access to new knowledge and experience, and were encouraged to participate.

At one point over the weekend I over heard a conversation between two of the butchers who were discussing the most physically difficult parts of their job. "If you have the right tools, you can do anything. Anything is possible if you've got the right tools." It's true of butchery, sure, but it struck me as some advice for life's work in general. "The right tools" could mean sharp knives and saws, but also the strength an individual receives from a supportive community. Many women I met this weekend were self-educated and self-motivated, their successful careers the products of their own initiative. Even the professional food photographer who was busily shooting stills of the beautiful dishes coming out of the kitchen agreed: No one taught her to be a photographer, she taught herself. So, even if you have no desire to butcher a hog or some beef hip, these lessons from Meat Camp resonate with those of us finding our way---in the kitchen, and beyond.

Kitchen Meditation

The potatoes are cold in my hands, imbued with the chill of the refigerator. My husband will only peel potatoes after they’ve been sitting in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes, but I prefer to do it quickly and go on to other things. Dusty brown peelings curl off into the trash can, the little pile growing fast as the white flesh of the tuber is revealed. When the potatoes are chopped and placed in boiling water, I raid the crisper for other vegetables: Carrots, onions, fresh garlic (a staple in my kitchen), celery, corn. I have a method for chopping each different vegetable—the carrots are sliced in half long-wise and then diced into half-moons; the onions are gently scored in both directions across the top, so that when I cut off an inch from the onion’s face, I’m rewarded with a shower of evenly-chopped pieces falling to my cutting board.

I vividly remember a conversation I had shortly after getting married, when I was still part-time in college and struggling to get the degree I knew was out of my reach for the time being. “I want to like cooking,” I had said into the phone. “I feel like it’s the kind of thing that I should enjoy, that I could enjoy. I feel like it’s something that could bring me a huge amount of satisfaction. But I’m always just too tired.”

And I was. Even with a light class load, by the time I got home from my one or two classes in a day and finished my homework, I’d exhausted my slim supply of energy for that day. I made dinner each nigth with my husband because I believed in good, home-cooked food, and I loved eating the fruits of our labors—but I rarely enjoyed the experience. Always, I felt that frustrating sense that the true joy of cooking was just out of my reach, the kind of thing I ought to feel, but didn’t.

I baked bread, and ended up so tired I could hardly enjoy the finished product. I made muffins, and thought that cleaning the muffin tin might be the death of me. I cooked soups and puddings and even, on occasion, things like pasta from scratch, reveling in the knowledge that I could identify every ingredient that went into our meals—but ultimately, feeling utterly spent by the task.

Two years later, when I began the true transition from part-time studenthood to full-time homemaking, I was surprised to discover that suddenly, I was beginning to love cooking. All at once, as I began to spend less time in the classroom and have more time for the kitchen, I was feeling all those things I had thought I should feel before. Baking became a celebration. Chopping vegetables became a game. Doing the dishes afterward became a meditation.

Now, as I sweep a neat pile of onions and carrots from my cutting board into a pan for sautéeing, I think about that time of transition. Cooking still tires me, of course; it’s a physical task, one that requires time spent standing up, and often one that demands strength in the kneading or rolling out of dough. But in my life as it stands now, that’s all right. I may be tired afterwards, but I have the liberty to spare a few minutes for rest and recovery.

It is, I think, a perfect example of the unexpected joy the last few years have brought me—my adult life in a microcosm. For such a long time, I was frightened of my plans being changed, terrified of being forced to find something new to define myself. And yet, when that change did come, it wasn’t meaninglessness that lay on the other side—it was just a different kind of purpose, a different shape to my days.

A different shape, but a good one.

I pour extra-virgin olive oil over my pan of vegetables, letting the rich, fruity scent of the oil assail my senses, hearing the crackle and pop as it hits the bottom of the hot skillet.

And in this quiet kitchen moment, I know what it is to feel peace.

X. Normandie

Pauline is a nurse at the hospital in Bernay. Because of the proximity to the Channel and, therefore, England, it’s not uncommon for British patients to come in from time to time. Pauline doesn’t speak any English, and so she has asked for me to help her make a list of important questions that she must be able to say in a routine exam. It’s fairly easy for me, though sometimes I lack the proper medical jargon.

She repeats after me. “’Ave you ‘ad a poo?”

I struggle to keep a straight face and nod encouragingly. The translation doesn't sound quite right, but it's the best I can do.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is?)

Rhea St. Julien was absolutely certain she would grow up to be a Fly Girl, but had to rethink her life goals when In Living Color was cancelled in 1994.  Since then, she's been trying to find a comparable life goal, trying out teaching Pilates, becoming an Expressive Arts Therapist, and a work-at-home Mama/children's programming consultant.  In the process, she's become one of those wacky San Franciscans her grandmother always warned her about.  In her spare time, she can be found rocking out with her husband in their band Him Downstairs, shaking it in dance class, or reading a stack of library books.  Her personal blog, Thirty Threadbare Mercies, focuses on parenting, spirituality and pop culture.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of The New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein

Just after my daughter's Where the Wild Things Are themed 2-year-old birthday party, I found myself sitting in a pile of pink, sparkly gifts, worried that perhaps I would be smothered by all the tulle and sequins. It hit me: the princess craze was right around the corner, and Olive had just been issued her uniform. I needed to heed my friends' suggestions, and read Peggy Orenstein’s Cinderella Ate My Daughter, before the fate the book's title warned became reality.

I was a charming toddler, and was told so often, by strangers as well as relatives, who made up funny nicknames for me like "Reebeedee", "Ribbit" and "Pumpkin", that they felt reflected my free spirit and but also my cuteness. However, I do not recall ever being called "Princess." It would not have fit my tendency to come home covered in dirt every day from the playground, or the way that I dressed, which was mostly in overalls or corduroys.

Since having my daughter, however, I have been disconcerted by how many people call her "Princess". Far from a castle, we live in a cramped urban apartment, and as the child of a pair of artist/social workers, she has anything but a royal pedigree. When she plays, she’s aggressively physical: running, jumping, dancing, singing. We dress her mostly in primary colors, rather than the ubiquitous pink pastels that take up the girls’ section of any children’s clothing store.

However, no matter what she’s doing or what she’s wearing, people say, “Oh, look at the little princess!” Well, why should it bother me that people are bestowing this moniker on her? Isn't it a compliment?

Orenstein, journalist and mother, breaks down why the princess title gets under my skin: “Let’s review: princesses avoid female bonding. Their goals are to be saved by a prince, get married . . . and be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Their value derives largely from their appearance. They are rabid materialists. They might affect your daughter’s interest in math” (p.23). She goes on to explain how the princesses-on-everything phenomenon was created by a Disney exec a decade or so ago, a marketing strategy rather than something girls started doing on their own, which led girls away from creating crowns out of felt and gave them perfectly scripted play to follow, word by word.

Don't get me wrong. Sequins, wands, and big dresses are attractive, and your child of either gender may be drawn to them. However, Orenstein’s book shows how girls today are being told that if a toy, like a toolkit, or a ball and bat, are not painted Pepto Pink and adorned with a picture of a skinny, smiling girl in a tiara, then they are not suitable for girls to play with, and if they do otherwise, then they are not really a girl but . . . something else.

For toddlers that are engaged in the brain-building task of sorting their world into categories, not knowing where you stand is not going to make you feel like a cool misfit, it is going to negate your existence entirely. So, young ones seek to proclaim their gender through engaging in whatever their culture considers appropriate play for either girls or boys.

This is not in and of itself a problem, but if all the options for girls are focused around how they look rather than actively doing something, they equate being a girl with looking pretty. And that creates a never-ending urge to define yourself as beautiful externally, which can lead to the myriad of problems women have with body image.

Princess play, and what it turns into in the tween years (The Hannah Montana/High School Musical/Cheetah Girls industrial complex), is largely focused on appearance, rather than accomplishment or inner growth. Orenstein asserts, "Girls pushed to be sexy too soon can't really understand what they're doing. And that, (researchers argue), is the point: they do not---and may never---learn to connect their performance to erotic feelings or intimacy. They learn how to act desirable but not how to desire, undermining rather than promoting healthy sexuality" (p. 85).

This is perhaps the strongest argument of the book, for me. I want my daughter to understand pleasure as something derived not from how others perceive her, but from actually experiencing it. If I praise her only for how she looks, she will become so used to objectification that she will seek it out in order to feel loved.

Reading Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From The Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (with its deceptively pink sparkly cover) on the playground while my daughter used dump trucks to push the sand around, led to some interesting conversations.

"LOVED that book," one mom intoned passionately, which quickly turned to sheepishness when her daughter, decked out in a pink-and-purple Princess gown, ran up to us to get a snack.

"Oh, I just finished that book!", a Dad covered in tattoos told me. "What did you think?" I asked. "It was great . . . but she doesn't really offer any practical solutions." So, several parents I knew and respected had read this book, but didn't feel like they were doing things any differently now.

However, that may be just what Orenstein wanted. She makes the case in her book for parents finding their own personal threshold for gendered toys and activities, but that, at the very least, it is "absolutely vital to think through our own values and limits early, to consider what we approve or disapprove of and why" (p. 182).

Which is why I suggest picking up a copy of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, as a good first step to figuring out what your boundaries are going to be around Bratz, Barbies and Beauty Pageants, before you find yourself in the toy aisle at Target, hemming and hawing about your child’s request. I recommend it for parents of both boys and girls, as Orenstein reviews the research on whether nature or nurture defines toy choice and play attitudes for children of both sex.

Orenstein’s tone is engaging, funny, and suggests a journey rather than a checklist of “shows to ban” and surefire ways to protect your child from materialism and objectification. Her book is an invitation to the conversation about girlie-girl culture, rather than a hard and fast indictment of it. I may not be able to keep my daughter completely from the lure of Princess play, but I am going to counterbalance it with stories of strong women, and relationships with adults who are non-conformist in their gender expression, so that she will have more choices, not less.

A Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

Ever since the end to the Harry Potter book series, fans have been waiting with baited breath to learn what JK Rowling's next step would be. When she announced A Casual Vacancy, a novel for adults, her Goodreads page blew up with animated GIFs that expressed the internet version of a collective orgy of anticipation.

A fan of the Harry Potter series myself, I dutifully pre-ordered the novel to my Nook, and looked forward to being transported by Rowling's words once again. A few days before A Casual Vacancy was released, The New Yorker published a rather nasty portrait of Rowling, in which the profiler took cheap shots like saying she was wearing heavy foundation, or bringing up her troubled relationship with her father in revealing ways. My back went up: why can't writers be quirky and not exactly perfectly likeable?

But then I read A Casual Vacancy. And I realized, the New Yorker writer was simply furious at Rowling for wasting her talent and our time by writing quite possible the least redemptive, most depressing novel of the past decade.

To understand why Rowling wrote such a soul-crushing novel, let’s go back to where she left off with her readers. Personally, I was disappointed by the end of the Harry Potter series. Harry and his friends end up in safe jobs, with happy marriages, and everything is tied up with a neat little bow. It seemed like Rowling had really phoned it in, giving children an unrealistic portrait of adulthood, which was out of character with the series, which often showed adults as complex figures, capable of both betrayal and loyalty.

Perhaps she felt she needed to atone for wearing the kid gloves with Harry and co., so she wrote her characters in A Casual Vacancy with a razor-sharp lack of compassion for the reader, or for her storyline. She spends the first thirty pages describing all the characters, save one, as unspeakably ugly and savoring the death of what appeared to be last person with a soul in Pagford, the stultifying English small town in which the novel is set.

"It must get better. There has to be some emotional resonance and redemption in here somewhere. It's JK Fucking Rowling!" I told myself, as character after character that I thought could perhaps be an interesting anti hero turned out to be a baseless tweeb, only concerned with their own petty desires, which mostly centered on jockeying for position for the council seat vacated by the Last Good Person in Pagford, which is the outward premise of the novel.

I got the feeling that the hidden premise Rowling sought was to show the raw underbelly of life, to stick her reader’s noses in it and say, “THIS is real life! Not magical train rides and children defeating death with a flick of a wand!” But . . . the world that Rowling created in A Casual Vacancy was not that realistic to me. Sure, people are petty and small-minded and self-centered, but they are also capable of change and of sacrificial love.

The question begs itself: who did Rowling write this book for? Certainly not for Harry Potter fans of any age. And that is fine---artists should not have to pander to their past work as they keep creating. However, the new work she has presented is so unlikeable, so devoid of truth and beauty, that my only hope is that she wrote it for herself, because it was a story inside of her that just needed to be told.

Want to know what Rhea thought of every book she read last year? You're in luck---she reviewed all 58 books here.

Social Distortion

I used to be a person who worked the room at a party, sprinkling laughter around as I moved from conversation to conversation.  People often commented that I relished being social, like talking to people was a vocation for me.  In fact, this is part of the reason I became a therapist — I seemed to have a knack for engaging with people, hearing their stories and reflecting their light.  If you had known me as a teenager or in my 20s, you would never have understood that this persona, this social bravado was something of a mask.  I have always battled with anxiety and a sense of failing to fit in.  I have carried a fear of others judging me harshly, of saying the wrong thing and of being mortified publicly.  I achieved social success in early life with a paradoxic solution and it came to me with relative ease.  Amazingly, people bought it.  I am noticing now in my later 30s, with mounting responsibilities and a collection of profound life events behind me, the person who really just wanted to be home under the covers, the person on unsure social footing has re-emerged.  And yet, when I fumble around for that outgoing mantle, the trusty suit of charm offensive, I can't seem to find it.  Or when I do, it keeps slipping off. When I was a kid, I was described as socially precocious.  I could hold my own at an adult dinner party, and was expected to perform in those situations, at times literally.  Once, a friend's parents actually hired me to sing a medley of show tunes (no joke at all) at their New Year's Eve party in front of 500 guests.  My memories of that evening are storms of emotion that include terror and elation.  Mind you, I was 7 years old, maybe even 6.  In retrospect, I don't have the first clue about how I pulled something like that off.  What reserve of preternatural confidence did I draw upon to make that happen?  The person I am now grapples with chatting up a familiar colleague at a professional networking event.  Who was that little girl and where did she run off to?

In adolescence, I don't have to describe the tempest of feelings, the cauldron of concerns that befell me.  This is implied in the word, "adolescence."  Incongruously, this was the period in which I honed my craft.  By about age 15, I could have taught a master class at the Actor's Studio.  My singular focus in that era was to entertain others and deflect attention from the awkwardness of the pariah I imagined myself to be.  In a hackneyed teen movie archetype, I was the class clown (oh sure, check the yearbook), the person in the corner of the room shouting "LOOK AT ME, I'M DANCING!"  I would do anything for a laugh and would risk any kind of consequences to help a friend.  I fought so fervently against the advancing insecurity that I presented as radically carefree.  My antics as court jester/supporting actress in a leading role once landed me in the Vice Principal's office where he told me without mincing words that my future hung in the balance.  That grim meeting followed an incident in which I was performing an ill-timed, but spot-on impression of our AP Economics teacher just as she walked back in the classroom.  I recall very little of Keynes, but I can still hear her exact words as she pointed to the door, "Sarah, this is my classroom, not yours.  Do not pass go on your way to the office."  Mercifully, that was followed two weeks later by an offer of admission from the college of my choice.

Although in college the social anxiety would keep better pace with me, I redoubled my efforts.  I immediately accrued a boyfriend (during orientation week, didn't even wait for the first day of classes!), surrounded myself with friends and became immersed in activities.  I was a consummate "joiner" in those days - sports teams, singing groups, volunteer organizations and the like - whereas now I can't even bring myself to participate in an essentially anonymous Mommy list serve.  In my sophomore year, exhausted from the chase, I finally succumbed to symptoms I could no longer fend off and landed in therapy.  The next decade or so would find me toggling between a brilliant capacity to shine in the spotlight and struggling to even answer the phone when a friend calls.

In my current life configuration, I have all the usual excuses for why my facility for being social has suffered.  Like everyone on planet earth, I am tired all the time, have way too much on my plate and am just trying to make it through the week.  I am also depleted from many consecutive years of major life changes, some tragedies and some losses.  But I have to ask myself, what is the alternative?  I had an "Aha!" moment last night when my husband wanted to discuss potential plans with friends later in the week.  I was prepared with every justification as to why I wouldn't be able to make it…the baby, chief among them.  My husband had a response to every barrier I constructed (including a babysitter) and capped it off with, "I would like to spend some time out with my wife."  It suddenly occurred to me for the first time that being wrapped up in my own head, folded in on myself has real impact on this person I love.  There was no getting around his matter-of-fact request and I felt a little ashamed that my self-indulgent fears would come at the expense of his social life.  I am not sure what about this interaction tipped the scales, but in an instant, I was confronted with how much I have regressed on this issue in the past few years.  Stopped in my tracks, I agreed to an evening out.  A small thing, to be sure, but an important shift.

I am on the hunt again for that brassy girl of my youth who enjoyed costuming and talent shows.  That girl bucked authority, won debate competitions and was the glue holding her group of friends together.  She left the house for a night out utterly prepared to experience something magical.  And I know I have opportunities to reignite that energy all these years later.  I can approach professional events, teaching floral classes, meeting with clients and vendors with a new zeal.  I can exude competence in that realm and pay special attention to building relationships through my business.  I can employ all the mental gymnastics required to tamp down nerves with friends and acquaintances, which these days mostly involves reminding myself that I am just not that powerful…nobody is noticing the things I think are vulnerabilities.  People are busy with their own lives and just want to connect.  Nobody can take a lifetime of negative self-talk and swirling doubt and transform herself into a reality TV diva.  But somewhere in there I have expertise in "acting as if," which has often lead to me to a steady state of being.  If you see me out on Thursday wearing a fabulous top and a broad grin, be sure to give a wave from across the room.

Not open for business

I'm a 33 year old woman who has no interest in having children. If your first reaction to that statement was something along the lines of, "Oh, just wait, you'll change your mind," or "You never know until you try it, " I beg of you: please keep it to yourself. You're not alone in having that reaction, and I've heard it a thousand times. The thing is, I won't, and I do. And it can make dating awfully interesting.

See, I like children. Hell, there are some children I even love. A lot. Like, stand-in-front-of-an-oncoming-train a lot. And so men are occasionally confused by what they see as conflicting positions. I talk about my friends' kids with love, admiration and excitement (especially when it comes to buying them books), but I'm not at all interested in populating a nursery of my own.

Three years ago, this wasn't an issue. I'd never be asked about my desires for marriage or children on a first, second or even fifth date. But now? Hoo, boy. People want to know what's up with my reproductive system like it's going out of style. Which, I suppose, it is. I can't have more than a few thousand viable eggs left at this point.

Case in point? A couple of weeks ago, I went on a solidly good first date with a guy we'll call John. He talked a bit about having had lots of lackluster relationships in his 20s (he's now 34), and about wanting to change that pattern now. He also talked about how all his cousins are married with kids, and how he feels a bit behind. At first, I was taken aback by all this marriage/baby talk on a first date (a woman bringing this up would, no doubt, be labeled as crazy and desperate as opposed to adorably open and honest), but I found it kind of charming. (I didn't feel the need to bring up my own stance on the first date, but I appreciated the openness.) I talked a little about my friend Miya's daughter, whom I adore, and about how my pregnant cousin Abby was almost to her due date.

On the second date, though? The man was couldn't stop talking about how "far behind" he is and how his life to this point has been a waste---all because he's not married and doesn't have kids. He talked about it a little. And then some more. And, finally, he wrapped up by launching into a speech about how he sleeps so much better when he sleeps next to someone, and let's go to a comedy club (despite my having said, repeatedly and that very evening, that I do not enjoy comedy clubs).

Obviously, this guy is a textbook version of oblivious. I made up a 7:30 AM meeting to get away at the end of the date, then steadfastly stepped away when he tried to kiss me goodnight, and still he acted shocked and led on when I sent him a (very nice) thanks but no thanks email a couple of days later.

And yet, he is a great example of an important point: women are not the only ones with biological clocks. When it comes to feeling subject to the whims of nature and the rules of society, we women are not alone. After all, we can't possibly have been the only ones enforcing the norms all this time.

So, let's make a deal. The next time a woman tells you she doesn't want children, pay her the respect she deserves and take her at her word. And when a man tells you he wants kids, pay attention and assume it's not just a seduction tactic. After all, when you're 33, you don't have time to spend on people who want your babies.

(original photo by velkr0 on flickr)

The Secret Downside to Travel

When I was in high school, I watched The Real World: Paris.  It was the four thousand eight hundredth season, and was called the most boring by many critics, cited as evidence the franchise was failing.  To me, though, The Real World: Paris represented who I wanted to be.  Look at those cool, college-age kids (not to be confused with people actually in college) gallivanting under the Arc de Triomphe!  If I were in France, surely I would be flirting with beautiful, accented men at clubs.  I would be eating baguettes in sexy heels, or meeting friends in quaint cafes with spindly tables and tiny coffee cups. When, four years later, I found myself in Paris, I was staying at a hostel on the outskirts of town, unable to afford the outrageously expensive rooms in the busier areas.  My roommates were not seven strangers, picked to live in a house, but rather a family of cockroaches, a cold shower and an Irishman named Stephen who was always drunk (although on further contemplation, the latter holds true to the MTV series).  I wandered around the streets during the day, expecting to be hit by the wonder Paris had long promised in my imagination.  And to be sure, it was beautiful---the Sacré-Cœur Basilica glowed shining white on the hills of Montmarte, while the Notre Dame crouched in its gothic glory on its lonely island in the Seine.  By myself, though, seeing the sites felt single processed: I saw it, and I was done.  There was no one to digest the experience with, to complain about the upwards trek to the church on the hill, or to share a crepe with on the banks of the river.  Most importantly, I was no different in Paris than I was back in the United States:  the simple change of location didn’t render me suddenly high-heeled.  It didn’t make accented men want to flirt with me and it didn’t make me suddenly enjoy coffee, in tiny cups or otherwise.  It was the first time I realized a change of location wasn’t enough to warrant a change of self, and the first time that the reality of a place didn’t live up to my fantasy.

Yet, I kept doing it.  Social media took what The Real World began with and elevated it exponentially: even my failed Paris adventure was documented in a series of photos artfully designed to portray the image of the trip I had before I took it.  When I was readying myself for my move to London, I found myself picturing weekend jaunts to Berlin and Rome, likely with a jaunty hat and a perfectly structured leather tote bag, perhaps embossed with my initials.  I pictured Zack and I strolling hand in hand through manicured English gardens.  When, in my imagination, it started to rain, we would laughingly duck into a quaint pub to nurse hot toddies while the droplets pattered against the ancient paned glass.  I pictured myself surrounded by groups of English-accented creative types, who would have immediately taken me into their circle and invited me out to inspiring, interesting events all over the city.  Needless to say, I have an overactive imagination.

When I came to London, I was lonely. It felt lame to disclose it even to my family and friends, to admit that this European city I was lucky enough to move to felt closed to me.  Zack, busy with the program that we moved out here for, had less time for strolling than I expected, leaving me with large chunks of time to fill on my own.  With no job and no friends, I spent a lot of time by myself.  There are so many hours that can be filled by browsing career websites, by Facebooking and reading blogs that, after a while, all seem like they say the same thing.  I walked around by myself a lot, although the ever-present rain rendered that, even, more difficult than my pub-filled fantasies had allowed for (there are only so many times one can duck into a pub a day).

It’s gotten better: I’ve found writing groups out here, I’ve started building my own company, and slowly but surely, my circle of friends has expanded.  But it’s not perfect. It’s not, unlike my Facebook or Instagram might suggest, a series of charmingly strange foods (prawn cocktail chips anyone?), beautiful parks, and friend-filled nights out.  It’s these things, yes, but it’s also the moments that I don’t document, the trip to the grocery store in the pouring rain, the night when, alone in the house, I spend far too much time talking to my cat.  And that’s okay.  It’s not that my life isn’t the real world---it’s that the real world isn’t real.  The good, the bad, the rained on, the postcard worthy---that’s the real real world, and that alone makes it better than anything a fantasy of television or social media could offer.

IX. Provence

Agnès has a small dinner party one Friday night and asks me to stay through the drinks before I go out to meet friends. I don’t pass up opportunities to speak French, plus watching my host mother in these kinds of social situations is oddly fascinating. The two male guests are old boyfriends of hers who still come over and have her cook for them sometimes. Both quiet and sullen, they don’t say thank you when Agnès sets plates full of steaming food in front of them. I think that that she might have a type. The shorter of the two scoots his chair up next to mine in the living room. As I sip my small plastic flute of rosé, he asks me a few questions about myself: where I’m from, what I’m studying, why I’m in France. Then he asks me how many children I want to have.

In the United States, this kind of question would be considered out of place. Rude, not to mention weird, and none of any strangers’ business how many children I want to have, or if I even want to have any. But here, it’s not. Not as weird as I think it is, anyway. French culture — while so socially progressive in some ways — can still be so backward that it makes me want to scream.

But I’m starting to realize that I can’t change it. So I stare at him for a beat, unblinking, and answer, “Thirteen.”