My Story: Epilogue

My mother came to visit me in early spring, nearly two years after I was married, just a few months before I finished my last college classes. In the previous four years, I had only scraped by three years’ worth of credits. I knew that the end of my classes would not bring a walk across the stage or a diploma to hang on the wall for me. But I also knew, deep in my heart, that it was the right time. It was time for me to be done with school for the present; to focus my energy on taking care of myself and keeping things running smoothly at home. I had learned that it was possible for me to go to school part-time—but when I did, I found I couldn’t do anything else. Keeping one or two classes each semester was a grueling effort for me, demanding all of my time, attention, and energy, and leaving absolutely nothing left of me when I was finished.

It had been a difficult decision to make, but the raw grief that I had felt two years before, when I first realized that graduation might not be in the cards for me, had mostly dissipated. I was tired now, worn down by the endless barrage of health problems and the pressure to keep up with what should have been a light load. I was ready to be done, ready to have the energy to explore other parts of myself again.

That week, as my mother and I sat together at my kitchen table, she asked me if I felt like I had had a “good college experience.”

The question took me by surprise. I had certainly not had a typical college experience; after my first few semesters, I’d had to pull more and more away from the rigor of the academic environment I loved. By necessity, I’d had to learn to find my own identity in something other than the world of scholarship. I’d spent the past two years discovering how much there was to love in my newfound role as a homemaker; I’d learned to take satisfaction in keeping a house of order, and to approach a new recipe with the same zeal I’d previously felt for literary criticism.

I sat at the table, the silver afternoon light of late March diffusing through the windows, and thought about it.

“Yes,” I said finally. “I have.”

Then I added that focus of the last two years had certainly not been a quintessential college experience, but that they had still been good. Very good, in fact.

“I feel… fulfilled,” I said, realizing as I said it that it was true.

Somehow, in the slow passing of days and weeks and years, fulfillment had crept into my heart. I realized, sitting there at the kitchen table, that I was content—that even though the path my life had taken was so different than the one I had expected, I was still happy. My days felt full of beauty; I had learned that even something as simple as loading the dishwasher could feel meditative, fulfilling, if I only opened my eyes.

So yes, I thought. Typical or not, my college experience has been a good one.

.   .   .   .   .

It’s been more than two years since that conversation with my mom. Like everyone, my life is filled with ups and downs, and I still have far too many moments of doubt and insecurity. And yet, the contentment remains. The fulfillment remains. I have come to love this life I’m living, even if it’s not the one I had planned for myself. It’s a continual process, a journey of discovery and delight.

And when I look back on it, even with all the bumps, I can’t deny:

I’m glad to have had the ride.

On Time

Since we’ve made the decision to move, everything seems to be moving at a quicker pace. Actually, it could have started moving at a quicker pace when I found out I was pregnant for the second time; an allusion to what will come of two children underfoot. Like any good holiday weekend, we are spending time with family. Yesterday, as the grill was smoking, and music was playing (Nina Simone) my dad was in the process of fixing the old screen door. Charley loves my dad, his Pop-Pop, and was right there with him, with his own kiddie toolbox, a weathered paint-chipped yellow tackle-box my dad had given him. He is barely as tall as Pop-Pop’s knee, and took out his little plastic pliers, to match my dad’s real metal ones, to twist the door frame. There was much grunting and production involved. And I stood just inside the porch watching them thinking, These days are numbered, and it almost made me cry. Something about being a parent makes you see time more clearly, see that it will pass, that it is a constant. This is a comfort for stressful periods, when you think you can’t make it any further, and a sadness for happy periods, when you wish the night would never end. It’s striking me much more with this second pregnancy. I see my husband and our life together stretching infinitely ahead of us. We have so many memories yet to make, traditions to start. I want to make renting a beach house every summer a tradition, we’ve only talked about it for several years! We have our ritual of only $20 gifts for each other at Christmas, a chance to be creative and thrifty. And I see my past with my family, all the memories already made, history that won’t be forgotten. So many family vacations and apple picking trips, beach days, and snow days, and all the days in between. I am standing in the middle wondering, How did I get here?

There is truth to that Talking Heads song:

You may find yourself in a beautiful house with a beautiful wife You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? 

But perhaps I am feeling overly nostalgic because my brother, my LITTLE brother will soon graduate college, and when we visited a quaint Pennsylvania college the other weekend, and had lunch at a hipster café, I felt old. More than the extra pregnancy weight and the tiredness of chasing a toddler, I looked at the young college girls, so oblivious to anything else but themselves, and thought ‘I don’t see myself there anymore’. They were giggling, wearing their sweatpants to breakfast just rolling out of bed at 11 am, ordering their omelets with only egg whites, and nobody looked twice at my toddler running around.

I am scared of the day when weddings and births turn into funerals, and wonder when that day will come. When it does, there will be an irreplaceable chasm that opens up. I know there will be comfort in my own family, my roots I am just starting to set down. But I will wonder how I made it that far, and how I will carry on.

A Back-to-School Tribute

Before each school year begins, I try to center myself. I organize supplies, I write lesson plans, I memorize my schedule. These sort of tasks, however, aren’t enough and I always find myself reflecting on teaching itself, in the broadest possible sense. I came to teaching late. My first foray into a classroom in a role other than student was when I began my graduate program the summer I turned twenty-five. I felt old, and compared to many of my fellow students, I was old. One of the first things we were asked as we began our studies was to think about the teachers who had impacted us and why that was.

It’s a simple question, nearing cliché. For me, it was easy to answer. My high school Latin teacher, Miss Ede Ashworth, made me crave her praise. I was not the sort of student who yearned for a close relationship with a teacher, or to be pushed to my limits, or to be made to cry by a profound lesson a la Dead Poets Society. I was jaded in high school, arrogant about my self-perceived intelligence, and wary of adults, particularly teachers. Miss Ashworth’s skill and style penetrated my overconfidence and my (probably highly-irritating) cynicism. Her brilliance came from being able to do this without my ever feeling as though she was trying to do exactly that.

I should point out here that Miss Ashworth is a highly-lauded teacher, winning awards that have acknowledged and rewarded her preternatural skill in the classroom.  She managed to bring out the best in so many students, and she did it without seeming to modify her approach or system for any individual learners in the room.  This is nearly unheard of in conversations about good teaching where the norm is to consider the diversity of learners in a classroom and differentiate instruction as needed to reach as many students of possible. This was not necessary for Miss Ashworth---like an elite athlete, she was unfazed by changes in routine, student behavior, or fire drills, and managed to execute well every single class period.

She was teaching Latin, a language so regimented that it can turn off even the most academically-minded student. She required us to make flashcards for every single vocabulary word we learned – a requirement I hated because I didn’t feel as though I needed them.  However, other students made great use of flashcards, and I learned later that while I may not have needed to use the flashcards myself, she had cagily instilled in me the discipline of careful review and preparation. This discipline was key to my perseverance while studying Latin in college.

She told us little about herself, leaving an aura of mystery around her that my classmates and I attempted to shatter through the sort of speculation (“do you think Miss Ashworth ever watches television?) usually reserved for elementary school students. She was always impeccably prepared for class, never seemed to be absent, and could be found before and after school for extra help or to answer questions.

When I did my student teaching, my cooperating teacher told me that he believed there were two core qualities that every teacher must have: she should love the subject matter and appreciate the joys and challenges of working with young people. Miss Ashworth’s love for Latin was palpable---she drove us all over the state to participate in the Junior Classical League, and she ran a yearly Foreign Language Week at school that was driven primarily by her sheer enthusiasm. She had us do art projects about the Romans, she had us travel all over the tri-state area to museums to see relevant exhibits, and she made sure that her students took opportunities to share their knowledge of the language with others. And, even more importantly, while she had very high standards for both academic work on behavior, I remember not one moment when she seemed disdainful when we were rowdy, unfocused, or both.

When I was a senior, I was the only student that year to enroll in Advanced Placement Latin. Before the year began, I wondered what it would be like to be in a one-on-one setting. Would it be odd? I was nervous, because part of what Miss Ashworth did so well was treat all of us remarkably warmly, without ever creating too much familiarity. It ended up (unsurprisingly) being the best learning experience of my high school years. Her gentle guidance as I tried to decide which college attend (never saying what I should or should not do) helped steady me. The intensity of the AP curriculum and how desperately I wanted to please her led me to work incredibly hard and reap the rewards.

Thus, as I begin each new school year, I think back to what it was like to be in Miss Ashworth’s classes. I am not yet a fraction of the teacher that she is, and likely never will be, but her example often inspires me to think more critically about how I am approaching both my students and the subject matter. I ask myself what she might do in a particular situation, and I realize now how much work, dedication, and attention to detail went into all of those seemingly effortless lessons. Each time I sneak in explaining a Latin root into one of my classes, I feel the same old excitement that I used to feel in the windowless classroom that she made crackle with language. Although I had no idea at the time that I would ever be a high school teacher, I am forever grateful that I was able to spend forty-eight minutes every day for four years watching her work.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

Rebecca D. Martin is an essayist and book reviewer in Southwest Virginia. She's also a wife and a mother, a reluctant meal planner, a relaxed home keeper, and an obsessively avid reader. Her work has been published in The Other Journal, Kinfolk Magazine, and The Lamppost, and she is a staff writer for The Curator. She writes about books and domestic culture at www.rebarit.blogspot.com. When longtime friend and fellow writer Carrie Allen Tipton and I get together to talk books, especially books with nuanced considerations of family and homemaking, we can’t say enough. So here are in-depth reviews of just two books that are on our shelves lately. We hope you enjoy them!

Rebecca D. Martin Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Our bags were packed for vacation. Our small family prepared to set adrift and let the sand and waves and salted air breathe a simpler, richer life into us. I zipped the final duffle bag, sliding Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea into the top.

Morrow Lindbergh knew what we were after: the “spontaneity of now; the vividness of here” that would strengthen our small family. In this thin volume, organized by meditations on a handful of seashells (literal gifts from the sea), Morrow Lindbergh’s connections flow from an interesting 1950’s cultural critique to early Feminist philosophy to her own struggle maintaining a balanced, introspective life while housekeeping and caring for a family of seven. I hoped her thoughts about home and family, culture and womanhood, work and writing, nature and the sea would set my own thoughts on a good course for our beach week.

I also approached Morrow Lindbergh with some reservation. Here was a complex woman. She lost her first child in a horrific kidnapping and murder. She married early Feminist thought with troublingly hardlined notions of feminine identity. Her husband was a mid-Twentieth Century aviation icon who held racist ideals disturbingly in line with the Nazis. In later life, both Anne and Charles admirably championed environmental protection and preservation. She learned to fly planes when other women merely stayed at home. She recognized staying at home to raise children as a choice, a noble one. This was a woman who had things to say. But did I want to hear them?

I discovered I did. One of the significant and unexpected gifts I gleaned from this book was a sort of readerly humility, a willingness to keep listening to the end, whatever my responses page by page. And in the end, Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a person I genuinely liked, whether or not our worldviews aligned.

There are, indeed, many treasures to be found between the covers of this book. At times, Morrow Lindbergh’s prose grows pedantic, but in other moments it shimmers with a lovely, rhythmic give-and-take, and leaves the reader with gems, most notably her thoughts on simplification: “Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions.” Or, “What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it – like a secret vice!” Or, prescient of our current information age’s pitfalls (and she didn’t even have a Facebook account!):

“We are asked today to feel compassionately for everyone in the world; to digest intellectually all the information spread out in public print; and to implement in action every ethical impulse aroused by our hearts and minds. The inter-relatedness of the world links us constantly with more people than our hearts can hold.”

There is a kindred understanding here. I feel challenged to return home to our normal-paced autumn life and consider how I might simplify (a slimmer Facebook newsfeed, for a start) – and how I might love my family better in the process. Yes, I’m glad Gift from the Sea made its way into my duffle bag, and I’m glad I could overcome some of my hastier judgments in order to glean some of Morrow Lindbergh’s sea gift insights for myself.

Carrie Allen Tipton

A Southerly Course: Recipes and Stories from Close to Home by Martha Hall Foose

Someone else will have to review this lovely book as a cook. I am reviewing it as a homesick southerner. Martha Hall Foose’s recipes and stories emerge from her deep love of southern culture, a sentiment which I share and which remains a source of puzzlement to both of us.

In the introduction, she muses over why southern foodways exert such a hold on her, profoundly realizing that “it is perhaps because we Southerners are homesick for the place in which we still live.” Her poignant longing for the very earth on which she stands connects with my own desire to stand there once again. Like Foose, I was raised in Mississippi; like her, I left to learn of the wider world; unlike her, I return now only in my mind and twice a year for holidays. But her book has helped me undo my own exile this summer, to come back home again.

I first came to know Martha Hall Foose’s work at a cold Christmastime, the right time to snuggle under a quilt made by my great-grandmother in Arkansas in 1936 and read Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook. This, her first book, hooked me with its ingenious cocktail of stories, recipes, tidbits of culinary advice, photos, and mini-essays. I wasn’t the only one; it won the 2009 James Beard Award. The writing was elegant and funny and, thank heaven, deeply unconcerned with speed, ease, or health. The recipes called for mayonnaise and deep fryers, and celebrated regular afternoon libations.

In A Southerly Course, published in 2011, Foose expanded on this successful formula. Marked by her blend of formality and informality, its dishes run the sociological spectrum from congealed salads for bridal luncheons to crawfish bread for tailgating. Its arrangement in five sections, corresponding to the courses of a proper dinner, emphasizes her formal training at the French pastry school École Lenôtre. Ingredients such as mirlitons, sweet potatoes, and crawfish highlight her fusion of indigenous southern staples with highfalutin’ techniques. Unconcerned with political correctness, the author draws heavily on the hunting culture of the Mississippi Delta, her childhood and now adult home. She speaks of a world of monogrammed serving utensils and ladies’ luncheon clubs.

In her recipe for Custard Pie, dedicated to fellow Mississippian Eudora Welty, Foose said that Welty helped teach her that “you don’t have to leave the place that you love and know, that it is not a prerequisite that to understand home you must exile yourself to gain perspective.” For me, leaving birthed fresh perspective on the traditions, people, landscape, and culture that I grew up with a few states east of Texas, where I currently live—and which is most definitely not the South.

A Southerly Course reminds me that though I may live in exile, there are many paths back, through word, image, palate, and most especially, through memory. And if I keep flipping through this book long enough, I might just try my hand at the crabmeat casserolettes. At least I can eat well while I long for home.

The Hand-off

It has been nine months and I still think about you first thing each morning.  The shower drain is streaked with the tears of 284 days.  I worry that I am forgetting you, forgetting the little things.  Then, I will reflexively feel around for you on the bed or think I hear you in the other room and I know you are embedded in the fibers.  When no one else is home, I wander over and put my hand in the clay mold that bears your name and your print.  I run over the ridges and indentations and am stung with memories of holding your hand as you slept solidly on my lap.  Every.  Single.  Evening.  For 11 years. The first day I met you we formed a quiet but immediate connection.  You tumbled my way through a flurry of sound and movement all around us.  We sat on the floor together and you nuzzled up close, warm and curious.  I tried to keep an open mind, scanned the place for anyone else to hold my interest.  But you were it.  You had my number and I had yours.

Those first months were all halcyon hazy summer.  You flopped on your belly in the dirt as I dug up weeds and planted patches of color all over the yard.  You refused to sleep alone and forced us to cozy up on the kitchen linoleum at your side or bring you into bed in the wee, small hours.  The canyon trail with the sloping hillside was your favorite sunset destination and after 10 straight hours of managing tragedy and illness, there was no better way to end my day.  You caught a bad cold early on and I sat through that birthday dinner frantically counting the minutes until I could get back home and continue nursing you through.  Nothing else mattered as much.

Nobody had ever seen anything like you.  The way you moved, the way you talked.  You could tear around the yard, scooting and leaping into the pool or settle into a nest of pillows on the couch and in either mode, you were utterly fascinating.  To a person, every one was impressed by the limitlessness with which you adored.  You wanted nothing more than to be with.  Your only enemies were balloons and footballs.  You had the most ridiculous face, defying all explanation … it made no sense.

In the later years, you happily abided five major moves, three of them cross-country.  You integrated a series of new family members and seemed to let go of your former incarnations without incident.  Everywhere we landed was home to you and every new person a comfortable lap.  You just had to get your bearings, get the lay of the land and you were off to races.  You were an inspiration to me in this way.

In the final months, you noticed my lap disappearing.  Our nightly ritual was growing increasingly less convenient but even this you soldiered through.  It required maneuvering and creativity, but you managed to nestle into new positions along the way.  Reluctantly, when there simply wasn’t the room, you opted for the second best lap in the vicinity.  I wish I had known that we were in a countdown during that time.  Or perhaps I am glad I hadn’t.  I was so busy with this other countdown, you see.

That last day was simply too much.  I was supposed to be elated and basking in the celebration of a new life.  In actual fact, I was the shell of a person.  I felt guilty for not wanting go — I truly wanted to cancel the whole thing.  But then, how do you cancel something like that?  How do you explain it to people?  ‘No,’ I thought.  ‘It’s time to start the transition.  You will regret not having marked this occasion.’  And I still think that is right, even though I was scarcely there.  It was all happening to someone else.  I look at the pictures and think, ‘Oh, she was there?  Did I talk to her?’  The only things indelibly imprinted from that day are his whispers in my ear, once to tell me it was time to go and the second time to tell me she was already gone.  I spent the car ride back telling myself it was OK that we weren’t there, that they were all surrounding her.  What a spectacle I must have been arriving at the hospital — stuffed into that silk dress, belly protruding and wild with grief.

She turned eight months today.  We half-joked that we hoped she would be imbued with your spirit, your passing converging with her birth.  I often think you would have loved her and how amazing it would have been to see you two together.  She is so delighted by everything these days, so fully engaged, she would have patted your haunches and squealed like she does with Ruby.  People kept telling me that her arrival would soften the blow of your leaving.  By all rights, the two should probably not even be comparable.  Of course they are and also not even close.  She’s on my lap constantly, much more than even you were.  She glows with your light, absolutely shares your disposition, there is no question.  Still, if you were here, you would shove her over just enough to divide the space and I would totally let you.

Lessons from a conference...

Dearest Clara,

We’ve been on the go a lot, both with and without you, these last few weeks.  Most recently, I was in New York again, but this time for a conference.  I seem to have a lot of those---some for my day job, and a lucky few just for my own interests.  Conferences can be a little intimidating, a bit like the first day of school.  And when those presenting and attending are people whom you’ve long admired and want to learn from, you always wonder what your place is.  You wonder if you will be brave enough to talk to people.  And you’ll always wonder what you’ll say as you work up your nerve.   These are the things that have helped me in these kinds of events:

• Bring lots of business cards: It’s a great way to break the ice and it’s a great way to have something to talk about.  And bring more than you think you’ll need---you’ll give them about because you meet people, because you have to leave one with your luggage, because you’ll want to leave behind your contact information, or enter to win something.  Just have lots---I promise you’ll use them.
• Know something about those speaking: They took the time to prepare a presentation, so take the time to prepare and learn something about them.  That way, if you have the opportunity to meet them or sit next to them at part of the event, you already have a few things you can go to when making conversation.
• Remember most people---even if they don’t show it---are just as nervous: Don’t be intimidated.  Everyone else is outside of their comfort zone too.  Introduce yourself, bring others in if you see they want to be part of the conversation, and don’t sweat it if a conversation doesn’t go the way you planned.  Try to be an even more friendly and approachable version of yourself, and be inclusive.
• It’s okay to take a break: Sometimes conferences and events can become overwhelming---they’re full of people we don’t know, and hopefully new ideas we haven’t seen.  It’s tough to be always “on,” and the days can become long.  It’s okay to duck out for a few minutes into a corner or quiet space, or even take an hour back at the hotel to decompress and reset.
• Go to more than one! Believe it or not, these things get easier over time, and when you’re a repeat visitor, you always know someone too, which makes for smoother sailing.  All of the sudden, you become the person that others come to see.  A few events a year where you’re exposed to new people and new ideas are good to stimulate your own ideas---choose wisely but make the investment!

Now back to the sessions!

All my love,

Mom

“I’m just trying to change the color on your mood ring”

A few Christmases ago my mom slipped a mood ring among the chocolate coins and trinkets in my stocking. She gave my husband the color key.  Brilliant, I know. I consider myself to be a fairly chill girl, but even with all my zen, I am still sometimes overtaken by wild emotions, by bad moods, by the little things that get in the way. I’m proud to say that it happens less frequently now than at any previous time in my life.  Somewhere along the way, I made a decision.  I decided that I control my emotions, rather than them controlling me.

Sounds like a crazy self-help book right?  I know.  Put into words it seems silly, but the simplicity seems to work for me, enough that by now it has become habit and I don’t have to repeat the silly words to myself.

When something I can’t control upsets my equilibrium and threatens to send me into a funk, I make a conscious decision to not let it get to me.  I hype myself up, metaphorically dust my shoulders off (to quote a second rap lyric), and step forward, leaving the drama of a mood swing behind me.  And it works . . . most of the time.

Something as simple as choosing to look forward, choosing not to dwell in negatives, almost always gets me back to center. Sometimes though, I need an extra step: a cat-nap with headphones, a happy nail polish color, a pint of ice cream, a date with Aaron Sorkin.  Whatever external action perks up my mood.  And it works . . . most of the time.

But then there are those moments, the imagined slights, the could’ve/would’ve/should’ve, and the worst, knowing I somehow shortchanged myself.  That, for me, can be the start of a spiral.  I don’t scream or yell (although perhaps I should). When I get down on myself, it’s internal.  I second guess everything I do.  I can’t find the right words to express myself.  I almost literally feel outside of my body; disconnected from my soul. I can feel my skin crawl.  I sound crazy to my own ears.  Now a simple nap with an Oasis album or a bottle of OPI isn’t going to cut it. The only cure is time, usually a good night sleep.

You may have surmised that I was similarly waylaid this week.  I didn’t do my best on a project and it ate away at me for a little while.  I’ve avoided the mood swing, but I’m still a bit down.  And so I’m asking: How do you turn a bad mood around?

No, it's not a compliment

I think about street harassment nearly every day, because I am harassed nearly every day. This is the reality for women who spend a decent amount of time walking around outside---even more so for women in densely populated urban centers. And I live in Manhattan, so . . . yeah. Nearly every day. Most days, the harassment is mild. A smacking of the lips as I pass, a low whistle, an obvious up-and-down with a creepy, slow nod at the end. These are the days when I think that hey, maybe it's all in my head. But then there are the times I'm followed, or told to smile, or surrounded, and I know that the milder stuff is just in a different place on the spectrum.

And before you go telling me that this is all a compliment and I should be grateful for the attention, a few things: anything that makes you feel threatened is not a compliment. Any time someone reacts to you ignoring them by calling you a bitch or a slut or a whore---all of which have happened to me---that's not a compliment. And trust me when I tell you that this happens to nearly all women, no matter what we look like. (I have lost nearly 100 pounds in the last year or so, and the only change is that instead of being called a fat bitch when I ignore men who harass me on the street, I get called a slut. So creative!)

No, it's not a compliment. It's a power play. It's a way of reminding women of what we already know: our bodies are public property, and are vulnerable to violation at any moment. (And before I hear the cries of misandry and, "Well, then, how am I supposed to approach the ladies at all?", let me cut those off at the knees with this handy, dandy guide.)

The good news is that I finally feel like this is something people are talking about. The fabulous Hollaback blogs started the conversation. You can submit your street harassment stories to them---along with photos, if you've got 'em---and trust me when I tell you that the support you get from your fellow commenters will be tremendous.

And in the if-you-don't-laugh-you-have-to-cry-because-it's-so-apt department, we have The Onion's recent post, entitled "Weird, Area Woman Wasn't Harassed Today." Let's just say they get it, proving once again that satire is this era's truest form of news. I don't want to spoil the punchline, or anything.

Chiming in from abroad is a new documentary from Belgian filmmaker Sofie Peeters. Peeters interviewed harassers for the film, which explores not only the impact of the behavior on women, but also the particular class and social issues at play. She found that confronting the men and listening to their stories led them to show her a greater deal of respect; that said, women shouldn't have to confront the men who threaten them in order to be able to walk down the street without feeling victimized. But, you know, progress is progress, however small.

It's pretty awesome knowing that all of this is out there. But it hasn't really changed my experience a whole lot. Just the other night, at about 10:30, walking from 84th to 86th Street on Broadway (a "good," if quiet, neighborhood), I was harassed three times. Once by a man who walked up behind me and whispered, "Sexy baby," once by a man telling me, "It doesn't hurt to smile," and once by a man who simply looked me up and down and licked his lips. I suppose I could have confronted them, but in the moment, it always seems safer to keep walking.

I hope my friends' daughters are never able to say the same.

Photo: Henry Tonks, Woman Walking on Sand, ca 1910

What August Means Now

By Carrie Allen Tipton For those invested in academic pursuits, August marks time like no other month. It speaks of newness and transition in a way that other folks more readily associate with January and its resolutions, or October and its changing leaves, or March and its budding limbs. August’s gift (or curse) of hyper-awareness of the passage of time blesses (or afflicts) tiny kindergartners no less than aged professors. Whether you are on the making or receiving end of a syllabus or book list in the upcoming educational year, the month delineates for all school-oriented persons the End of Something and the Beginning of Something Else.

As a student, this weird blurry month, neither fully summerish nor yet fully schoolish, meant shopping for clothes, finding color-coded folders, looking for the precise metric specifications of binders stated on the supply list, searching for a new and cooler (is there such a thing?) lunchbox. In the university years there were the added tasks of purchasing football tickets and meal plans. After many years of dutifully carrying out these sorts of instructions, I became a professor and began giving them to others. The road to this position was long and many times I have questioned whether it was, in that extremely charged yet vague term which indexes a host of existential presuppositions, “worth it.” Suffice it to say that it required many years of very long hours of single-minded focus and a willingness to live below the poverty line for the better part of a decade. Fine. It was over now, and I was professoring. In this new capacity, my old friend August meant screening books for readings lists, determining test schedules, building online class modules, anxiously checking electronic enrollment in the hopes that a course wouldn’t be canceled, dodging onerous committee work, applying for travel funding, and plotting out research goals.

For twenty-eight years, then, some version or other of me was essentially still Going To School every fall, and August meant what it always had: a physical and cognitive return to the educational premises. And then all of a sudden this year August stopped meaning anything like it once did. In late spring, I became pregnant with our first child. Let me, as I used to say to my students during lectures when an idea required further explanation, hit the pause button here. If this were an academic article, you would now be treated to a lengthy footnote about how I’d always hoped that if I ever had a child, I could stay home with it until it was school-aged. This was a simple and uncomplicated desire that could afford to remain simple and uncomplicated as long as it was theoretical. While there was no viable life-partner in the picture, such a decision was lodged (like so many of my academic ruminations) in the realm of abstract thought, and so it stayed for all of my adult life until I met my future husband two years ago, a mere year into my professorial career. And based on my longstanding desire, prior to our marriage, we agreed that I would stay home with the wee ones if wee ones ever materialized, at least in their early years. I would try freelance writing, editing, and perhaps some online teaching.

It would make a lot of sense, we figured, since I was quite unhappy as a professor and earned proportionately little money for my trouble. Pace Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose insightful article “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of The Atlantic, but the thought of trying to have it all has always seemed to me quite exhausting. I just wanted some of it, and the part of it that I wanted changed as I walked through different seasons of life. So the decision was in place long before the baby ever was. It was still abstract and simple and uncomplicated, until the day in early April when two drugstore tests set the pre-arranged plan into motion. As I began the process of disentangling myself from a tenure-track job at my university, I felt liberated from unfulfilling employment, eager to spend the fall months prior to the baby’s arrival immersed in my beloved writing, and proud for being willing to run screaming from the ivory tower after three years of soul-searching that showed it to be an ill fit for me. I still do feel those things, and harbor no golden nostalgia for the frustrations of the career path I left. But what I do harbor is a giant question mark about who I am now, especially while my daughter is still an “inside baby,” and who I will be in the remaining months of her gestation, and who I will become as she emerges, and how we will become something together. Abstraction, simplicity, and lack of complication are rapidly eroding as I find myself in the midst of a new kind of August, and I have had to learn all over again what it means this year.

So far it has meant knowing, for the first time in my life, the months spanned by peach season, and that early August represented the final window of opportunity for capitalizing on the soft round spheres. I made a peach ricotta tart and did not make a syllabus. It has meant starting yoga classes, in the middle of the day, to help with my achy joints and to communicate with my girlie, my changing positions a sort of Morse code telegraphing her to be strong and peaceful and that I will try to be strong and peaceful for her. I sat in a roomful of people with legs crossed on rubber mats and did not sit in a roomful of people in pre-semester meetings. I measured for and ordered drapes and marched through Ikea looking for mounting hardware. I put up sheer taupe curtains in our living room and did not put books on an office bookshelf. I wrote and wrote and wrote and did not aim to produce a single article intended for a peer-reviewed journal. I am not sad, but August is feeling weird.

An entire book has been written about the difficulties and joys of either combining motherhood and academia or leaving the latter for the former, so I should have known that August wouldn’t sit right this time around. Reading Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life assured me that I wasn’t crazy for feeling dazed disorientation as I walked out of the halls of academia into the blazing sunlight of other paths. Of course it made sense that I was losing my emotional footing in the bright light of August, which every other year meant that I should be walking into the university instead of away from it. I still can’t see quite where I am headed and am only accepting, day by day, what this August means. To borrow the phrase of an incomparably greater wordsmith, T.S. Eliot, “in my end is my beginning.” August has always at its heart represented new beginnings for me, and although something large and weighty has come to an end, many other things have now begun. And when I think of this, I think that perhaps, after all, this August is not so very unlike the ones that have come before.

YWRB: Truth

By Amanda Page I will always choose truth.

Even now, years past slumber party angst and antics, I prefer the subjective, nuanced, very dangerous truth.

In my youth, truth was confession. I'd offer up my flaws, my mistakes, my humiliations. My sin from simply being human---those were the only truths available. Certainly, I was full to the brim with that type of truth.  I had plenty of that type of truth to spare. I believed in offering it up, chasing it away, making it leave my body through my mouth and be judged by others. I didn't want it as my own.

As I've aged, I've witnessed maturity in my truth. My truth is no longer an open wound. It has healed, slowly, through years of claiming itself. My truth is owned. I do not borrow it. I simply believe it.

It differs in eyes that aren't mine. If I were to offer it up, then you might see a shade darker or lighter than what I insist is present. There is such a thing as a true red, but I might think it's crimson while another chooses firetruck or candy apple. If I decide my true red is the red of flames and fire, then that, my friend, is the truth I choose once again.

The truth doesn't expose us. It doesn't excuse us or even explain us.

We don't need a game to reveal it.

Although, the game might build a friendship. It might offer insight into someone unexpected. It might twist your truth until you see it take a different shape. It's still your truth.

Dare to own it.

Finding Home

My husband and I are nomads. A fun game on a quiet Friday evening involves, “If you could live anywhere, where would you live?” Answers have included large cities, various countries. The answers have surprised us, terrified us, and comforted us. Then for a bonus round, we choose which furniture we would take. I suppose this has shown that we really hate the majority of our furniture. Especially the couch we bought for $50 from a woman off Craig’s List in Seattle. Although I liked her; she had two rowdy boys, and lived in a run down little cape cod in what turned out to be a fairly expensive area of town. Being a nomad is harder when you are a parent, and own a dog. Rentals don’t want you. Everywhere seems too expensive, and then there is a whole other emotional element. The biggest differences we have had in parenting is our perception of it. Becoming a mother brings out your hidden desires and biases. Who knew I could never live in a split level (gag)? Or that he likes cities and apartments, but couldn’t live in them with two kids and a dog? Or that the random homeless guy on our street would scare me so much more once I was pushing a stroller? Giving birth opens up so many hidden vulnerabilities in you.

We are looking for home. I constantly wonder, does everyone else go through this? This constant search for the place where the best parts of their childhood and adult selves converge? Are we just over-thinking it? Ever since we moved back to Florida, we both knew that it wouldn’t be permanent. Being pregnant with a second child now, makes me remember aspects about my own childhood. We talk about our favorite things. So many of mine revolve around the seasons. There was apple picking in the fall, and pies to be made. Pumpkins, and chilly October evenings perfect for a light jacket and a fire. Snow, and sledding, ice skating, trips to Chicago. He remembers big family gatherings, being close to his cousins, and the smell of the country: “Kind of gross, but nostalgic too.” We both ache for home. And then these things need to combine with our adult biases. We like good organic food, strong coffee, interesting people to hang out with. We are looking for all the best parts of a city, without the city prices. Does such a place even exist?

We’ve started to look at houses in his home town, a small middle of nowhere town in Pennsylvania. It’s quiet, and people live there forever, including most of his family. Driving around at night, the streets are silent, the streetlights hazy. It’s the kind of place where people rarely lock their doors. I didn’t know places like it still existed. And the houses, oh my, the houses themselves are enough to overcome the small town-ness of it. Great big 1800’s houses with period details, hulking doorways, towering ceilings. Houses with a history. Houses I could write my novel in (creative people work better in places with higher ceilings).

We have discovered that we are emotional real estate buyers. To love a house is more than the sum of its parts. It’s the feeling at the front door, finding all the best hiding spots for hide and go seek. It’s all those little quirky features that make it yours. I grew up on Lake Michigan in a cold windy town in Northern Indiana, in a drafty house built in the 1930’s. It had a laundry chute that ran down to the basement, and a drop down ironing board in the kitchen, inside a narrow little cabinet. My parents sold that home years ago, but the second they found a house in Florida with an ironing board just like it, they fell in love. Sometimes it’s all the little things that you remember. It doesn’t matter that I have never seen my mother iron on it, although I did many times as a child in Indiana, it’s the memory of it all.

But tell me, what is home to you? A smell? A memory? Have you found it, or are you eternally searching?

The End is the Beginning

by Trina McNeilly Is the end really the end or is it just the beginning?  It’s arguable.  So much so, that I argue with myself on the subject on a regular basis.   The end of what, you ask?  I suppose that could make all of the difference, but, no not really.   The end of a relationship. The end of a job.  The end of a season.  The end of dream.  The end of your sanity.   Sometimes, I feel like I’m at the end of everything, although it probably appears to others that I am not at the end of anything.  You know, the end of my rope, all I can take, all out of options, no where to go from here, that kind of thing.  That kind of end.

It’s the frequent and regular kind of end that nags us all from time to time.  This kind of end tries to befriend some more than others.  And lately, I seem to be one of them.

I am at one of those ends.  And I’m standing at the edge of end squinting my eyes for the smallest bit of beginning.  I’ve always been able to see beginnings, pretty clearly even.  But this time, my tired eyes are straining---straining in the search for a speck.  If I get a glimpse, I’ll be good.  At least that is what I tell myself.

I’ll stare down that speck of a beginning, that small piece of hope and I won’t take my eyes off of it.  I’ll try my best to catch it and put it in my pocket.  But than a beginning can never be hidden for long.

All beginnings must start with an end. And I think the end that I am at is my childhood.  I know, strange words and an even stranger idea, coming from an almost 35-year-old mother of four.  But the truth is, I’ve only ever felt like me.  And the me I’ve always seen, when I walk past the mirror or hear myself in my head, is the 10 year old freckle-kissed kid, with a twinkle in her eye and plan up her sleeve.  A girl who spent her days taking on the neighborhood by way of her royal blue 10 speed and splashing away any small concerns in the backyard pool.  I had nothing to worry about except the plan I had for the next day or perhaps the rest of the summer.

I only ever wanted to grow up so I could be a school bus driver, try out for the Mickey Mouse Club, get my license, have a boyfriend, wear makeup, and grow boobs---all letdowns and disappointments concluded by age 16 . . . which led me back to the notion that being a kid is a way better deal.

But I grew up in the way that we all do.  That is, in the way that we are supposed to.  I got married, got a job, and had kids.  And yet, although the mirror, daily, shocks me into reality, somehow, on the inside I still feel like my 10 year old self.

I have been waiting and I suppose just expecting that one day, someday, I’d wake up and feel like the adult that I surely should be.  All of my Oprah watching days only led me to believe, and rightfully expect, that my 30’s would gift me with a new sense of self.  Every 30-something on the show from movie stars, regular plain people, to Oprah herself said over and again that once they hit their 30’s they suddenly felt comfortable in their own skin.  They knew who they were, what they wanted, who they were not, and what they did not want.  The self-assured weren’t afraid to speak up for themselves and almost couldn’t care less what other people thought about them anymore.  It was as if this confidence of ease magically took over their former unsure selves and no decision was a hard decision at this point because they just knew . . . knew themselves and knew what to do and certainly what not to do.

However contrived, that was my ideal of what it must really feel like to be grown up.   Yes, I am idealistic.  I am, in fact, a person with a lot of ideals.  Sometimes and maybe even often, mistaken for being naive   And wouldn’t you know, most of my ideals were configured, thought up, created and baked to perfection as a young one.

I told you I was at the end.   And here is how I’m kind of, for the most part, certain that I am likely, and almost surely, at the end of my childhood . . . because, I’ve found myself at the end of many of my ideals.  The grown up truth is that things are not always as they seem and certainly not always as you want them to be.  The end.

Today, it’s “how do you do?” to the grown up me.  It may still be a little ways off.  But it is a speck that I can at least see.  And no, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say goodbye to the hopeful freckle-faced me.  But now, I can at least guide her and help her to be the woman she is supposed to be.  The beginning.

Lessons from a Road Trip...

Dearest Clara,

This past vacation, we took what we call “The Great American Roadtrip”.  Except, we didn’t take it here in the US, we took it in Europe.  We called it that because we drove for hours and hours through countries and countries to get from the Austrian Alps to the French Coast, and that seems like the kind of thing that one would do here in the US.  If someone tells you that they just drove across ten states, I think you would hardly blink twice.  But in Europe, if you tell people you just traversed ten countries, they’re not quite sure what to make of that.  Like the gentleman who stopped us at the gas station in Switzerland, who just couldn’t believe that our license plates were from Vienna, even though we were only half way on our trip.

But despite the long hours in the car, road travel is still one of our favorite ways to really “see” a country.   The landscape, the people you meet, the dishes you have to try, the improvisation that you have do to, the strange items you can purchase at the gas station – all of that gives you an entirely different sense of place.  It’s a bit like adding salt to food – it’s still the same food you are eating, just with a flavor that becomes more alive (assuming of course, that you’re not adding too much!)

Road trips turn out the best when they’re not overly planned, but still, a few things have become good lessons for us over the kilometers and miles we have traveled, at least for Europe:

• Always have a map and water:  Always.  Whatever fancy gadget your generation will have when you become of driving age might fail you, it might get stolen, it might get forgotten or it might get lost.  In short, nothing replaces a paper map.  Have one just in case.  And have water because you should for a myriad of good reasons, the most important one being because your mother said so.
• Learn how to change your own tires: I’m no pro at this, but if you learn how to drive and you put yourself on the road, you should know how to change a tire.  Don’t think that you can call up Triple A anywhere in the world, and in many areas, the faster you get off the side of the road, the better, and the best way to do that is to know how to do it yourself.
• Make time for the scenic overlooks: There’s a reason why they call those out on signs.  You probably can’t stop for all of them but make time for some – and don’t forget to take your picture in front of them! You’ll develop a fondness for them when you come home.
• Know how to drive manual:  Often times in Europe – or nearly anywhere else in the world – there will be no other option.  You don’t have to like it, but you do have to know how to do it.  Ironically, once you learn how to do it, you’ll probably love it.
• Go with your gut: If it looks like a fun place to stop, stop.  If you had a planned stop and it looks like a bad idea, don’t.  The more you move around, the more you’ll develop a sense for these things, so trust yourself to make those calls.
• Always take advantage of the bathroom: This applies to travel of any kind but if you see a legitimate bathroom, whether porcelain or tree shrub, take advantage, you never know when the next stop will be.

Lots of love,

Mom

Colors of India.

Half the fun is getting there, they say. Certainly, visiting the roads less travelled has always fascinated me and drawn me to new adventures. This is why, for our honeymoon, Dany and I chose India, a country we had never been to before, but somehow seemed to know through our Indian friends’ stories. We travelled from Agra to Cochin, saw crowded cities and remote villages, witnessed congested bazaars and found cows hacking their path through vegetable markets. We spent time with our friends in Delhi, sharing typical spicy dishes with their families. We travelled the rocky roads of Rajasthan on our own, rode camels along the Pakistani border, got soaked under the Mumbai rain, and finally took part to our friends’ wedding in Kerala. Step by step, we realized how legendary stories are attached with every place and how strong our emotions could get.   

What struck us the most was VARANASI, a holy city located on the banks of the river Ganges, a pilgrimage site for hindus. People come here to die and be cremated at the burning ghats along the river. It’s very different from what we had known and seen before. It’s a unique place where you smell joy, hope, life and death. All at once.

Have you read Arundhati Roy's book, The God of Small Things? Some stories draw us in by making us wonder how they will end. This novel begins by telling us how it ends, and has a living, breathing rhythm to it. It’s a very melancholic novel, and it paints a picture most of the people probably wouldn't sympathize with. This is one of those books that left an indelible mark on me---the words dance and merge, and take in the sad memories of a story that is tragic, but hopeful in a way. The hope lies in the possibility of new beginnings.

Writer's Words -  Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

On joy.

“Anything's possible in Human Nature,” Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. “Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy.” Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it. Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over.

On death.

It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined. Over the years, as the memory of Sophie Mol slowly faded, the Loss of Sophie Mol grew robust and alive. It was always there. Like a fruit in season. Every season. As permanent as a government job.

On Small God. 

So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression. 

Varanasi As I Saw It. 

 

 

 

Growing Up

When you live in New York City, there are moments when you find yourself at odds with her. When my husband, James, and I moved here a year ago, I was fresh out of graduate school and just starting a new job. James was on the job-hunt and together we moved into a tiny apartment on a six-month lease just to see if we could hack it. I'll admit that this first year has sometimes seemed like a test of wills. The wills in question being our own, and the apparent will of the city herself. I don't mean to exaggerate our struggles. We've been triumphant, almost entirely. We've survived moments of legitimate worry like car accidents and thefts and desperately low bank accounts. Those moments serve best as a way to put into perspective our complaints about laundromats and malfunctioning subway cards. Despite all odds, this month, we even managed to get married.

There's little about this past year that's been truly unique. The particulars, of course, but not the thrust of the story. Since moving together last June, we've been regaled with stories of a once-upon-a-time nature from other once-young couples who shared bathrooms with neighbors and subsisted on ramen and ketchup packets and fiddling in the subway. The stories usually finish with a sigh and a "You're only young once." But while on one hand these stories offer a sense of community and the relief that someone else has also survived a difficult moment, there is a risk, I think, in believing that this kind of struggle exists only for young people.

I spent Sunday with my 90 year-old cousin, Mildred, who has lived in the same New York City apartment for 60 years. She is the picture of grace and good humor, and like us, she battles a willful city. I've decided that it's still more hopeful to realize that struggle exists at all stages of our lives and that young or not we have the capacity to overcome it. In difficult moments, I've found, a few stems of fresh flowers make a world of difference. And it doesn't matter one bit if you're 28 or 90. Mildred agrees.

Inheritance

By Sheila Squillante Something happened tonight that I was totally unprepared for.

Before I describe it, I’ll back up and say that lately, my daughter, Josephine, has been asking a lot of questions about death. In particular, she wants to know, “Did my grandpa die?” My answer is always the truth: Yes, sweetie. He died. Each time the question comes, her inquiry deepens so that we have gone through, “He was your dad? Your dad died?” “How did he die?” “Why did he die?” “Where is my grandpa now?”  and, “Can he come back?”

These questions obliterate me, but I have been able to take a deep breath each time and tell her the age-appropriate truth with maybe a little quaver to my voice, maybe a quick tear, but mostly with composure. I did the same thing for my son when he began to ask these questions.

And I’ve been telling the kids about their grandfather since they were first interested in listening to stories. Josephine has been asking for “Grandpa Stories” before bed for at least a year. She has them memorized and asks for them by name: “The Snapping Turtle,” “The Red Rooster in Brewster,” The Glue Cookies.” Tonight, though, as we were finishing up a book we got from the library, turning off the light and climbing into her bed for our nightly snuggle, she burst into racking, whole-little-body-shaking sobs out of nowhere. I thought, at first, that she had physically hurt herself. I was completely thrown and I asked her what was wrong. She could barely form her mouth around the words,

“I miss my grandpa. I want him to come back.”

Oh, sweetie.

I gathered her up into my arms and held her while she cried, stroking her hair and telling her it was okay to feel sad, that I feel sad sometimes, too. That it’s okay to miss him. But that when I’m sad, I think about The Glue Cookies or The Red Rooster and it helps me feel better, closer to him. I promised her I would tell her Grandpa stories whenever she wanted me to to help her feel better, too. I told her all this while she cried and cried and I buried my face in her hair and cried too. Quietly. Mostly swallowing my grief for fear of indulging it and letting it overwhelm us both.

It’s not that I didn’t expect her to ask hard questions about death or that she would maybe someday feel a void where my father should have been in her life.

But I did not expect it to happen *now*. She is three years old.

I have become so used to my son’s rather cerebral, analytical relationship to my father’s death (the only emotion I’ve seen him express has been around the extrapolation of death-in-general to Death of Parent. Me.), that I forgot about the child whose uncanny empathy has been a primary part of her personality since she was a year old. This should not have surprised me. This is who she is.

As I helped her settle, I realized that this was the first time in more than eighteen years that I’ve had to push my own grief aside to minister to someone else’s. That it was my own daughter’s felt terrifying–I don’t want her to hurt like this–but also, in a sense, wonderfully healing.

I have always said that part of the reason I write about my father is to continue him, to enliven him for my children. Maybe I’ve been able to do that a little, and it feels good; it makes me happy.

But somehow it never occurred to me that, along with my memories, my stories, my kids would also inherit my living, persistent, still vibrant grief.

Header Image: New York Public Library. Photo by Centennial Photographic Co. of sculpture "Grief".

The Kindness of Strangers

I’m never in a hurry to talk to strangers. For example, if I am going into a store, my preference is to dodge the salespeople who aim to greet me on my way in and avoid talking to anyone unless I purchase something. I know people who want to be greeted, but I am not one of those people. If I am greeted, and asked if I would like help, I always say, “no, I’m just looking.”  I respond this way even when I am actually looking for something and I don’t know where to find it. When I worked in retail, I felt like I could spot the people who feel the same as me---the lack of eye contact, the drifting to the side of the store---and I would forego greeting them in a silent show of solidarity. Now that I am a parent, strangers talk to me. Most of it is pretty much okay. Conversations at the playground with other moms hit the same themes (how old? what’s his name? and so on) and are easily ended when one’s child runs too far afield or asks to go on the swings. My son receives a lot of compliments on his general cuteness from strangers, and I know how to gracefully nod and say thank you, or even more cloyingly, tell him to say thank you. Sometimes folks ask questions about him that would be pretty hilarious to ask another adult stranger, but I do my best to give answers that will be found satisfactory while never actually revealing much about us at all.  A woman asks, “does he eat table food?” I answer, “he loves eating!” An older man asks, “Is he a good boy?” and I answer, “look at him!”

I thought about this recently when a friend on Facebook posted a link to the hilarious article “Hello Stranger on the Street, Could You Please Tell Me How To Take Care Of My Baby” by Wendy Molyneux. I read it, chuckled heartily, and took a moment to be grateful that this hadn’t happened to me terribly often in my son’s first year. There was the time when my wife and I were in Target and attempting to adjust his position in the baby carrier on my chest, and a woman stopped and said, “Do you need help, that doesn’t look like it is on right.” I roared to action, as someone who is sleep-deprived and carrying fifteen sweaty pounds on her chest is likely to do, particularly when she feels as though she really does have it under control.  I snapped back that we were fine and, confident in her moral high ground as baby carrier good Samaritan, my foil didn’t back down. The end result was more than a bit of incivility near the denim short display and my having a very frustrated spouse.

But that was nearly a year ago, and as I read the Molyneux piece, I thought about how it hasn’t happened often. I felt grateful to live in the East, where people are generally not overly perky or interested in one another (simply buying milk at the grocery store when I visit my parents in St. Louis makes me feel as though I have walked into another country what with all of the smiles and cheer).

As these stories always go, though, I had become too comfortable.  Too complacent. The three of us went to an art fair along the Hudson River this week. It was a gorgeous day, sunny, and breezy. We had brought our son in his big jogging stroller to be able to navigate over the grass. We lathered him with sunscreen and put on his baseball cap. To enter the fair, we had to go through a little aisle and down a small hill, and I lifted the front wheel of the stroller off of the ground to give myself more maneuverability on the hill.  As we entered the fair, a woman stopped us and said, “Just so you know . . .”

“Just so you know . . .”  It’s pretty rare when someone says “Just so you know . . . that sweater looks awesome on you” or “Just so you know . . . you make the best cole slaw.”  The phrase gave me the perfect amount of pre-processing time. I knew what was coming was going to be infuriating. I stopped the stroller.  I looked at the woman, a little older than my mother, and she said, “as you came down the hill with the stroller tilted, the sun was right in his eyes.”

I wanted to explain that my goal had been for him to never see the sun, never know that the sun existed, live a vampire-like existence of dusk and twilight and now that was ruined, ruined, and I would always think of how she had been the one to bring me the news.

I wanted to explain that we had been planning to spend all afternoon on that small patch of hill (one where everyone was coming and going in a single file all day, and where we were now holding up traffic), but that she was totally right, the angle of the sun made doing that totally impractical.

I wanted to roll my eyes. I wanted to snap back.  I wanted to say, “Are you serious?”

But I didn’t. I smiled and nodded.  I said nothing. She seemed surprised. She looked at me. I looked at her. A moment passed.  She said, “Now though, with the hat, he’s fine.” I nodded again, still smiling. She looked at my son.  She said, “he’s gorgeous.” I smiled, and nodded, and said “thank you.”

We moved on. My wife immediately praised me for keeping my cool. We realized that the power dynamic shifted the second I didn’t say anything in response, forcing her to backtrack to fill the silence. In fact, by the end of the interaction, she seemed embarrassed. In my previous experience of unsolicited parenting advice, I filled all of the potential silence with anger, and ended up feeling terrible. Furthermore, overly engaging with strangers is not something that I do---in anger or in any other situation. Unsurprisingly, being myself worked best, and we walked on, into the shade.

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

We're huge fans of Jenny Volvovski's work. She is a member of the award-winning creative group Also with Julia Rothman and Matt Lamothe. She has been re-imagining book covers for the books that she's read, and we've thoroughly enjoyed following along on From Cover to Cover. In our minds, any project that combines reading and design is awesome. This is no exception. Here, Jenny shares her reading list, along with her re-imagined covers. 

From Cover to Cover is a project I’ve been working on for more than a year now. It has a very simple premise: I read a book, and then design a cover for it. I started it because I love to read, and always think about a book’s cover before buying the book, while reading it, and after I’m done. I also wanted to have a project independent from my client work, where I could have the freedom to do whatever I wanted, without worrying about feedback and revisions. Book covers are a great medium for graphic designers because so much content has to be condensed into a single image. The cover has to relate to what's in the book, but also not give too much away.

I wanted all the book covers I made to feel like part of a series, so I gave myself restrictions; a color palette (green, white, black) and limited type choices (Futura, typewriter, hand drawn/handmade). I always prefer working with a set of limitations, so this made the project both more challenging and more fun.

Skippy Dies by Paul Murray

Skippy Dies will probably be made into a movie. It’s a very plot driven novel that follows the adventures of a couple of teenage boarding school boys (and eventually girls and teachers) at Seabrook College in Ireland. It covers typical school-age topics like love, and bullying, but also some very non-typical ones, like opening a portal to a parallel universe. The story starts with Skippy dying (this is not a spoiler) at a donut shop and that’s primarily why I chose donuts to be the main visual elements on the cover. Donuts are mentioned later on in the book as a metaphor for life. I also like to think of each donut being a metaphysical stand-in for the main characters in the book.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Cloud Atlas was recently made into a movie, and I am not quite sure how they pulled it off, but I would recommend reading the book before seeing the movie (sage advice). The book consists of 6 seemingly unrelated stories starting with travel journals of an American notary traveling in the Pacific in the 1850s, and ending (kind of) with the adventures of a clone in a post-apocalyptic future in Korea. There is a thread between all of the stories, which I will not give away, and as you turn the page and start over with each new narrative it’s really exciting to find out how the previous story relates to the next. Since so many topics, characters and time periods are part of the story, it was hard to pick a visual for the cover that made sense with all of them. So, I decided to make the focus of the cover the structure of the book. There are 6 stories, they start chronologically (earliest time period first). The first 5 are interrupted, the 6th starts and concludes at the center of the book, and then the initial 5 are concluded in reverse chronological order. So, the folded paper on the cover is a reflection of that. The type is printed on top of the paper, so some spills from one piece of paper to the other, like the overlapping stories. The shadows and the white paper give a “cloud-like” effect to the cover.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

Since there’s a running theme of books being made into movies, the Lonely Polygamist fits quite nicely, as reading it feels like watching the continuation of the HBO show Big Love. The book follows Golden Richards, owner of a fledgling construction business, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children. He of course, is unsurprisingly cracking under the weight of all the responsibility. In order to deal with the stress Golden has an affair. And not-surprisingly this doesn’t solve his problems. For the cover of the book, I made the title and author name act as a family tree for Golden Richards’ family. He is represented by the white O in the middle, his wives are the bigger letters connected to him, and the smaller letters represent the children (there weren’t exactly the right number of letters to account for all 28 children, but I thought this was close enough). And, if you look closely, one letter stands away by itself with no linear connection - representing the affair.

A date with myself at the local library

If you’ve read The Artist’s Way, you know that Julia Cameron considers regular “artist dates” to be one of the two pillars of the creative life (the other is “morning pages”). Whether you consider yourself an artist, or simply wish to live a more creative life, I’d definitely recommend this book for getting unstuck, getting inspired, or getting started. You can find out more about morning pages and artist dates by reading the book, but for the purposes of this post, an “artist date” is simply a little adventure you take on your own—something playful and restorative and separate from work.

One of my favorite artist dates is a trip to the local public library. This, for me, is quite different than a trip to a university library. As a college and graduate student (and as a student library employee), I spent plenty of time working in libraries. Many university libraries are perfectly lovely and contain their own sort of magic and possibility, with their stacks and stacks of scholarly tomes.

But when I really need a little creative restoration, I find it at the local library. Small public libraries do not have everything—every book ever written, every article ever published, all of the newest best-sellers—but sometimes “everything” is a little too overwhelming for an artist date. Instead, when I make a trip to the library, I’m really only looking for two things: a seat by the window and a book I don’t already have at home.

I tend to gravitate toward the nonfiction section, or more specifically, the how-to books and instruction manuals. These books usually don’t try to tell you how to think, but rather, how to do. As a hardcore overthinker, I find the whole doing perspective so refreshing.

Last weekend, I discovered the wedding books section, which was delightfully sandwiched between books on dying and anthologies of fairy tales. I even found a couple of gems like Weddings for Complicated Families and Wedding Planning for Dummies. Then I wandered through the shelves and shelves of biographies and thumbed my way through a few travel guides before snagging a corner window seat.

You can learn a lot about a community through its library, especially if it’s a small one. You can notice which books made the cut for their limited holdings, which books have been donated, and which books have a waitlist twenty people long.

I love finding the particular, and I love finding the universal among those shelves. By skimming along the titles, it’s easy to discover that many of the questions that seem so personal have been asked before, and someone, somewhere has tried to answer them. How do I find my purpose in life? Which dog breed is right for me? How is my religion similar or different from others? How can I live a healthier life? Or, a favorite from last weekend, How do I move to Canada?

Everyday questions jostle for space right next to whole-life questions on those library shelves. I think I’m more interested in the questions than in the answers when I meet myself for a library artist date, which is probably why I end up with stacks of library books that I rarely finish before their due dates. They seem to have more magic in their natural habitat, offering delight simply by their juxtapositions on the shelves.

Mind Games

The carnival ride that was my day started at 4:30 AM.  This seems an unnatural hour for a human to be awake.  And yet I am frequently up at this time attending to domestic or professional responsibilities, or some combination of both.  I am not alone in this, I know.  As I haunted our still apartment, pumping fresh milk for the baby and packing my tools for the flower market, I began preparing mentally for the day ahead.  In the muggy blackness of the morning, I set out for the Manhattan Bridge---the city on the other side, still/already bustling with activity.  Driving over, I fantasized about the delicious coffee beverage I would enjoy before hitting the floral vendors, did a quick survey of all the tasks I had to complete before my 2 PM installation (including pumping two more times) and mustered up an extra helping of confidence and sense of competence.  I thought, “I have a lot going on and I am really doing it!  RIGHT ON, SISTER!”  My primary objective is always to keep that thought (or something just like it) as my ballast.  I aim to stay the course psychologically with something helpful and supportive as my guide, until I am back at home base, checked in for the night.  It is not easy, has never been easy, will never be easy.  Forthwith, a record of my efforts on this particular, not necessarily unusual, day. I came close to totaling the car when the cab in front of me decided to slam on the brakes (appropros of nothing) while crossing an intersection through a green light.  I navigated the interminable construction on Houston (fight or flight response still kicked into high gear) and eventually slid into a parking spot near the coffee place.  I took a minute to regroup---my heart still beating a little too noticeably---and thought to myself, ‘UGH, THIS CITY!’  I knew I would live a full day before most people even crack an eye.  Then, I did a reframe that went something like this, ‘So, that makes me lucky, I’ll get twice the day out of it.’  I let out a sigh (an audible dusting myself off), shoved open the car door and spilled onto the street with my bloated purse (Why always so HEAVY, Sarah?) and clipboard, ready for action.

The process of taking negative thoughts and replacing them with positive thoughts is a very simple component of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  The basic tenet of CBT is that you can change the way you feel and behave by changing the way you think.  In the above example, my automatic thought was that this city was making me crazy.  If I continued down the path of that negative thinking, I might feel awful about my situation and then engage in self-defeating behavior.  When you interrupt the process of barreling straight from the thought bubble to the emotion to the behavior, it is like pushing the reset button over and over.  You get a fresh start on each experience and eventually, you may find that the maladaptive thinking begins to lessen.  The positive feedback loop is that the sunnier your thoughts, the happier you feel and the more effectively you move through life.  It all sounds so heel-click-y and effortless, right?  Depending upon myriad factors, including temperament, physiology, environment et al, the phrase “easier said than done” may have strong resonance here.

Among my all-time “Aha!” moments in terms of challenging negative thought patterns came years ago from a superb clinical supervisor at an outpatient psychiatric clinic.  During our supervision (a weekly meeting that’s sort of like professional therapy for therapists), we covered many esoteric concepts.  We discussed the theoretical underpinnings of the work I was doing.  We reviewed patient after patient and delved into my private response to each of them, how my past experiences and intimate feelings might impact our sessions.  We discussed psychotropic medications and which of the patients seemed to be benefitting.

One week, I came in fit to be tied about some issue at graduate school over which I was completely powerless.  It was distracting me from my work that day.  My supervisor sat and listened patiently as I described the nature of my snit.  Finally, he said, “Have I ever told you about my commute?”  Incredulous, I thought, ‘This jackass isn’t even LISTENING to me.’  I managed a, ‘No.’ And then he proceeded to tell me that he drives an hour to and from work, every day on the busiest freeway in the city.  He said that both ways, he sits in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour, sometimes more.  For various reasons, he did not have an option to change this commute, so he was resigned to this fate.  I flashed on the sense of helplessness and frustration that I was sure must well up inside him while sitting idle on the freeway.  I asked, ‘How INSANE must that make you?’  He replied with this: “It doesn’t make me crazy at all.  I just decide to relax and use the time to think and dream and listen to great music.”  Genius.  I couldn’t believe it---he was explaining to me that there are actually options from which to choose when interpreting your life circumstances.  For whatever reason, no amount of study or my own therapy put as fine a point on it as that miniature sketch.  My mind was officially blown.

Which brings us back to now.  During the course of the day in question, I was confronted with many, many opportunities to lose my shit.  These opportunities ranged from, “Good GRAVY, NO!” moments to “Well, that’s annoying.” interludes.  I experienced a little witching hour---right around 3PM things got dicey and I drifted into approximately 13 solid minutes of self-pity.  I gave myself permission to indulge until I was back at the apartment.  Interestingly, I found I didn’t need all the time I had allotted.

Image: Traffic on the George Washington Bridge, Dan McCoy, 1973