198 Days Without You

Field trips, recess at the park sprinklers, warm weather and bag lunches are all signs that my son's first academic year is drawing to a close.  This morning the parent association held one last breakfast and a special conversation with parents and the directors of the upper and lower schools. I felt pretty nostalgic as I climbed up the windy staircase to the music room remembering all the special memories that make up my son's first year here: the first day of school jitters, his first tooth falling out at recess, the numerous play dates with new friends from school, a weekend caring for two ducklings, and the class home visit.  I engaged in every moment possible of his first year in the 4-5s class as if I was re-visiting my own first year in kindergarten.  Yet, there is something very momentous about this first year that goes beyond the milestones of the 4-5s curriculum.  In this same year, my son and I also just about complete one year as a family together.  So in reflection on the past year and the year's struggles, accomplishments, fears, joys and risk taking, I write this brief letter to my son, Diego. Dear Diego,

A year ago today, I sat in my office anxious, scared and missing you deeply.  You see, your papi and I had separated, and I moved back to New York City to take the big job that would provide for you.  Remember when you lived with him in the apartment so you could stay at the JCC preschool last year?  Well in that time, I rented a room to save enough to secure the apartment we call home today.  In those painful and lonely seven months, I missed you every day. At any moment whether I was at work, on the bus or in the grocery store, tears would stream down my face as I questioned whether I had made the right choice to leave you and miss out on the little four year old child you were growing into.  I missed your last tot Shabbat, I missed your end of the year preschool musical production and the parent committee meetings, and all the little moments in between -- but I did it anyway for us.

It is true I doubted myself every day for those 198 days without you.  But today I write this letter to tell you it was the right choice at the right time.  You know why I know this?  Because I see you and me today and we have grown tremendously with a sense of independence and interdependence in our new home, community and life.  The first few months in our home you were afraid to sleep alone in your new room and you missed your father.  I comforted you and slept next to you to assure you of my love, trust and security.  You cried daily at drop off at your new summer school program missing the rhythm and routine of the JCC; but each day I came to pick you up, I found you smiling.  We took adventures over the summer on the subway to parks with sprinklers and neighborhood stores.  By fall, you began a new school less fearful and more certain of yourself and your surroundings.  You no longer cried at drop off and came home tired from a hard day of play in the 4-5s class.  I marveled at your ease in adapting to our familial changes and your resiliency, but this is not to say we did not have our challenging moments.  You challenged me daily for months about wanting to live with your father and not with me.  Our biggest challenge was your hospitalization on your fifth birthday for a severe asthma attack postponing the birthday party you were counting down the days for. You rebounded quickly and we celebrated weeks later at Wiggles and Giggles with all your friends and loved ones.  Onto the holiday celebrations of November and December, you traveled back and forth from Virginia to New York splitting your time over the breaks to enjoy the customs and traditions from your multicultural parentage.  By the New Year, you became a pro at your school routine and would inform me daily of your after school activities and which buses and trains we should take in the morning to school.  I marveled at seeing you become so confident and alive in your environs.  Into spring, we began cooking together, painting together, and going to tee ball practice together which has resulted in some of the best memories this year.  I think your proudest moment was when you led three classmates to our home traveling on two trains and a bus for the annual class home visit. This very milestone in your 4-5s class allowed you to share with pride your culture, family and home life with your classmates. We enjoyed eating apples, grapes and crackers, touring your room, creating a collaborative art piece on the chalk board, break dancing to You Spin me Round by the Chipmunks, and your favorite part -- jumping on my bed.

I remind you of all of this mi niño lindo, so you never forget how much this year has meant to me after spending what seemed like eternity without you.  I most recently threw out the calendar I had meticulously crossed off each day that passed in your absence.  I held onto it like a medal of honor because I needed that visualization so I could see the progress I was making toward having you back in my life.  And now, I can say goodbye to that marked up and wrinkled calendar and those 198 days without you.  Today I proudly celebrate the many more days and years I have with you.

I hope when you read this letter one day, you will begin to understand and feel through my words the depth of love I have for you.

Te adoro y  te amo, mi hijo lindo y querido.

Tu mami para siempre,

Judy.

Rebellious Eating: Today’s food movements seen through childhood memory

By Shani Gilchrist I always smell a horse when I eat a peach. I close my eyes while chewing and am suddenly enveloped in warm, humid air, the musty mammalian fumes from the hot animal’s coat and the greenness that wafted up from the black dirt. My best summer days were spent on my family’s horse farm in the country.  I would sit atop my favorite horse and meander through the grounds, often reaching just above my head to snag a peach when we would pass beneath a tree.

When I was a teenager we had to sell the farm, as it was a large operation and too far from the hospital where my father took call on nights and weekends.  There were no major highways that led from the tiny stoplight-less town where we lived to the hospital in the tiny city where he worked. There were too many nights of pulling through the gates to find that he had to immediately wind the car 35 minutes back to admitting. Then, after finally getting back home at two or three in the morning he would have to get up, check in with the trainer and the grooms, then drive back to his office next to the hospital once again. Something had to give, and since no one of sane mind raises horses for profit, the farm had to be sacrificed.

At a certain time in South Carolina, where an average of 60,000 tons of peaches are grown every year, it is impossible to avoid the smells and lures of the juicy peach. During that time I am often transported back to the sloping grass that was home to most of our fruit trees. By the end of the summer I’ve been known to throw my children into the car and start heading out to the country, toward the direction of the old farm. The only cure for the melancholy that the flavors evoke is a trip to my old stomping grounds and a stop in front of the now dilapidated barn to dream of what the land could be if it were mine. I probably look ridiculous sitting in my big SUV in the driveway of a property whose current owners, I am told, are likely to come out with hunting rifles if they were to see me. Thankfully no one can see the silly look of nostalgia on my face, as if every time we sat around the kitchen table there was a full farm meal, complete with fruits from our orchards and milk that I had gotten from an imaginary goat that lived outside my bedroom window.  The truth is that our dinners often consisted of frozen lasagna, spaghetti with sauce that was doctored from a jar, or barbeque from up the road. There were many evenings when I scowled ungratefully at the food on my plate and wished for “real food.”

Right now there are tomatoes fattening on hairy green stems in terra cotta pots in my backyard. They are out there for two reasons. One is that I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t kill them before we embark on planting a larger vegetable garden. The other reason is that one day, as my 5-year-old son scrambled his unruly limbs into his booster seat at school pickup, he declared that he wanted to grow tomatoes. This was one of those moments where my child’s words almost caused my forehead to violently meet the top of my steering wheel. My oldest child—the skinny kid with the infectious smile and cherubic curls—does not eat anything. And by anything, I mean he does not eat any food that one would consider for true sustenance.  Somehow we have kept him alive on a diet of strawberries, pepperoni pizza, pancakes, and a variety of cheeses. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to hear his sudden declaration that he wanted to grow vegetables of any kind.

The other day we picked our first tomatoes of the season. They were beautiful. And they are still sitting on the kitchen windowsill. My son recoils in incredulous horror every time I suggest that he taste one of “his” tomatoes that he diligently waters each afternoon. I had harbored visions of him being enthralled by the plants that he had nurtured into food for the table. It would be another step toward achieving the sustainable household that I’ve been trying to build. We will grow our own food. We recycle. I make my own counter sprays. We use cloth napkins. Then, a thought occurred to me as his top lip curled as I waved the sweet cherry tomatoes at him this afternoon.

 What if he spends the next thirteen years pushing back?

A friend of mine recently told me about her own childhood growing up on a farm. She was surrounded by everything she needed to feed and clothe herself, but all she wanted to do was go to Pizza Hut. The food on her table actually did come from her cows, goats, chickens and orchards, but it was the last thing that she wanted to eat. I listened to her story and thought about how much the teenage version of myself despised my days of drinking Diet Pepsi and eating whatever artificially-sweetened version of spaghetti sauce my mother had thrown together for dinner at the last minute. Now here I am, wanting every bit of food that sits on my table to be local, organic and at least seventy-five percent homemade.

My food memories don’t usually include the way I longed for dishes that didn’t taste like a garlicky Christmas elf had made it. My mother gave us the gift of insisting that we all sit around the table together each night to talk over our day, but “master chef” was far from being on her resume. My food memories are instead made up of the days that I felt self-important because I was eating a peach right off of a tree, with no packets of SweetN’Low anywhere near me. It was real, but most importantly it was different from the way my parents presented food to their children.

Is our current and beloved farm-to-table movement a similar reaction? It certainly has its perks… no one can really fight the sustainability argument… but now that the movement is heading down the path towards mainstream I have to wonder if our generation, like so many before us, isn’t sticking it to our parents for the quick-and-easy food approach of the 1970s and 1980s that is now being blamed for everything from obesity to cancer. Are our teenagers going to look at us like we are the ultimate dorks for spending so much time on things that could have been thrown into the microwave in another version? Most likely, yes. And their children will be horrified by their parents’ food hastiness.

Our most distinct memories are tied to our senses no matter what the quality of the thing we are experiencing. What remains poignant is that which is outside the realm of the everyday, and as humans, we naturally seek out experiences--large or small--that take us outside of our comfort zones. Everyone wants what they can’t have, and we don’t even notice this when it comes to food anymore because it comes in the form of righteous “movements”.  The farm-to-table movement is out to save the American small-farming industry and reintroduce the population to foods that don’t have as much potential to cause harm to our bodies. These are causes that are important and need to be championed. But the viral spread of such a movement has more to do with acting on our childhood statements of “When I have my own family, I’m going to do things differently,” as we stomped out of our dining rooms in our untied shoes. Our childhood rebellions will always stay with us, which is why at some point every summer I end up standing in front of a fading barn, looking at it as if it is the Taj Mahal, thinking of horses and tasting peaches.

[Original peaches photo by CaptPiper on Flickr]

Why I Didn't Breastfeed

When I found out I was pregnant, I had just turned twenty-two. I had moved down to Florida after graduating college in Chicago and started dating my now husband. We hit it off right away and went on this amazing two-week long vacation down the East Coast. We spent hours in the car talking, finding out every facet of the other’s life---all of our wants and dreams, hopes and fears. After the trip, we were pretty sure we would get married. After six weeks, SIX weeks. That was before I even knew I was pregnant. At our wedding, my husband’s friend James gave a toast. He talked about how just a year earlier, when five of the engineers, including he and my husband, were cramped in a too-small office under lots of stress, they played “Would you ever”? The question was: Would you ever marry someone after only six weeks? The oldest employee (who had been married already for over twenty years) said he would, and he did. He and his wife were married after only a few weeks. Every other person said, No way, that’s crazy! And then the question came around to my husband. “Yes, when you know, you know.”

And then, a few weeks later, amidst throwing up daily several times a day and watching bad television, unemployed lying on the couch, reality hit me: OH SHIT, I AM HAVING A BABY. I didn’t know how to escape, didn’t know if I wanted to escape. If there’s something my generation is defined by, it’s this attitude of feeling lost without a purpose. Before getting pregnant, I was just floating along. I’d quit my job and moved in with my parents. I was considering graduate schools, and thinking about moving to the west coast. I thought in some naïve way, that this baby would give me a purpose. I would wake up everyday thrilled to take care of this little human being, pack lunches, and dry tears. I would have a job, and it would be mother.

Except you are pregnant for nine (practically ten months) and during that time I didn’t have a job. I was depressed and spent most days in bed looking at blogs online and shopping. My body turned on me. After weeks of throwing up and being sicker than I had ever been, the weight just started to pile on. 5, 10, 15 pounds, all the way up to 50 plus pounds as the due date neared. The truth is I stopped looking at the scale towards the end. The first time the nurse weighed me above 150, clunk . . . clunk went that second weight, I started to cry. Never in my life had I had the two clunks. Boom, boom went my old life. By the time Charley came, I had gone from a size 4 to a size 14.

Even though I only threw up in the first trimester, the entire pregnancy I felt sick. I had heartburn, my body hurt all over, and I couldn’t sleep. The only things I wanted to eat were sugar and carbs (hence the weight gain). I couldn’t even look at a vegetable without feeling something rise in the back of my throat. I was miserable and I wanted my body back. I wanted to have sex with my husband, without this giant belly. I wanted the old me back. The labor took hours and hours; I had an epidural and then Pitocin, then the epidural wore off and the Pitocin increased. It was terrible. But even still, immediately after giving birth, shivering under warmed blankets and tea from the missing heat in my body, I felt better than I had the whole pregnancy. It was amazing how quickly it took for me to stop feeling sick. As soon as he came out, the apple juice tasted fantastic, the air felt cooler, I was comfortable; I could have run a marathon. Then they handed me this squirming tiny alien, his eyes closed, and I tried to breastfeed. And PAIN, PAIN, PAIN, he was tearing apart my nipples! Just as I had started to feel better and like myself, he’d attached to me like a clamp. The nurses didn’t know why he wouldn’t latch properly. They kept trying to reassure me it shouldn’t hurt and I’m telling them, through my tears, it does, it really does. And just like that I gave up.

Psychologically I couldn’t do it. Truthfully, I’m uncomfortable around breastfeeding. I admit it. I’m a woman, and a mother, and breastfeeding makes me embarrassed. Am I just a product of our society’s fascination with breasts as being purely sexual and disgusted with breasts for their biological purpose? I want to feel that it’s natural and amazing, I read blogs where women profess their love for breastfeeding---“I’ll be doing it till he’s five, or in college, it’s so easy!”---and I think, good for them, that sounds wonderful, and then they whip out that boob in front of me, in my living room, and I have to turn my eyes.

Maybe it’s my age. I talked to a breastfeeding friend recently who mentioned how her mother-in-law was a huge breastfeeding advocate, but didn’t breastfeed her first child. My ears perked up. I want to be a breastfeeding advocate, I’m intelligent and educated. I read the studies about how it’s better for everyone: better for the mother, healthier for the child. I hear stories of how women lost ALL of their weight within weeks; it just came right off! (Mine didn’t, still hasn’t, hello permanent size 10). And I wanted to do it, wanted to try it, I really did, but I just . . . couldn’t. My friend said her mother-in-law had her first baby at age twenty-two and didn’t want to breastfeed. She felt like it was her body and she didn’t want to share. She wanted her breasts to remain sexual, not utilitarian. A light bulb went off---that’s me! That’s exactly the psychology of it. After watching my body morph into something it never was, and being so sick and depressed for so long, I wanted my body back. I wanted to own it, be in charge of the weight and my breasts. I wanted to just be me, not just mom.

We are a naked family, and sometimes I’ll take a bath with my son, just for fun; it keeps him entertained. Lately when he sees me naked, he is fascinated with my breasts---wants to touch them, pour water on them---and I think dammit, he’s a male, how did it start so early? Because he wasn’t breastfeed, will he just be obsessed with them as he gets older? Or did it really not matter? And when he reached for my breast, just like he did when he was only a few hours old, a pain shot through me, and I thought, don’t touch me. 

Wherever you go, there you are.

Wherever you go, there you are. I’ll just go ahead and say it: I live in New York, but I am not entirely at home here.  When the question of where I am from comes up, my answer tends toward the knee-jerk and almost always mildly defensive: “CALIFORNIA, I am from California.”  This is said as if to distinguish myself somehow, as if to say ‘I really belong somewhere else.’  To wit, it seems the question of where you are from is most often posed when you are experiencing some particularly regional inconvenience, hazard, catastrophe or maltreatment and you find yourself having to explain to either your perpetrator or the person with whom you are being victimized that this sort of thing is not tolerated elsewhere.

Cliché but true---there is something about this place that not only draws you here, but keeps you here and pulls you back.  I managed to get out once, a few years ago, but somehow I am right back here in an apartment that I swear is “totally huge for New York.”  Like so many people who have come before me, when I left the first time, I lifted off at JFK and thought, ‘Well, I survived THAT and it sure was zany, but Hello Civilization!’  I dreamed of my triumphant return to parking lots, customer service, clean public bathrooms, a revitalized regard for my fellow humanity and a host of other benefits associated with escaping the concrete jungle.

Inside, I feel immutably “Californian.”  I prefer a slower pace of life.  The beach is my favorite place in the world.  I am always cold.  I eat avocado in some form almost every day.  I like living in a lot of space.  I actually enjoy chatting up a stranger, sometimes.  I refer to every highway as a “freeway” and will always describe it as “the” 95, instead of 95.   I might never have a totally appropriate jacket for any of the seasons.

Still, I lie to people all the time when they ask how I ended up moving back.  I tell them I came back exclusively for love.  I tell them my husband was living here and there was no other option.  While this is all technically true, when it became clear that a return to New York was in the offing . . . I felt a little dazzle.  There is some part of me (possibly a self-loathing part) that feels vaunted by surmounting the daily challenges involved in making a life in this punishing place.  I feel smarter here and weirder here.  If I had more time or energy (maybe I’ll get to it this weekend) I would be able to avail myself of quite literally any variety of artistic, cultural or intellectual happening.  Plus, the food, THE FOOD!  New York won’t ever let me out of her dirty grasp but I know I will never feel like I am of this place.

The question of identity as it relates to where you happen to be born or raised is truly fascinating to me.  I obviously didn’t choose California, my parents did.  But I feel like a Californian through-and-through.   Meanwhile, my parents are New Yorkers who described feeling out of place in California much of their adult lives.  Then they watched three of their adult children eagerly move to New York at various points.

Most of the people I know are thrilled to slough off whatever city or town shaped them and adopt the personage of the place they actually had the good sense to choose.  I’m not sure whether it is because I am nostalgic or loyal that California stays with me. I have never quite understood how to integrate the part of me that wants to remain unaffected and the part of me that seriously considers a dinner reservation at 10:45 PM.  Aside from all the garden variety letting go of childhood, end of innocence themes to explore on the couch, I am also reluctant to succumb to a place where people disappear into their own perceived uniqueness.

Some time last year, I was leaving on a trip to California with my husband and I said, “I can’t wait to go home!”  Immediately, he looked crestfallen, “But, New York is your home.  That is where your husband and dog (and now baby daughter) live.”  This is when I started thinking more genuinely about reconciling my bicoastal identity.  For now, I rack up JetBlue mileage points, burn through my iPhone battery chatting obsessively with friends and sprinkle a little California Love around the five boroughs whenever I can.  Eventually, I hope to toggle seamlessly between welling up with tears over the Manhattan skyline at sunset and flipping my very best bird at the guy behind me honking his ass off because the light turned green and he can’t wait another nanosecond.

(images: dbaron & rakkhi on flickr)  

The F Words: Nicole Cliffe

For our first non-navel-gazing edition of the F Words, I knew I needed to give you guys something really, truly, spectacularly great. To that end, I strong-armed my incredibly talented friend Nicole Cliffe into sharing her (always ridiculously entertaining) thoughts about cooking, gender roles, and parenthood. Nicole is one of the smartest, sanest, funniest and most wonderful women I know - and not only because we first bonded over our shared love of Sondheim. Some of you likely know Nicole from her work as the newly-minted Books Editor for The Hairpin---and if you haven't been reading along with her incredible Classic Trash series, posted over at The Awl, you should start catching up immediately. (Her take on Valley Of The Dolls is a personal favorite of mine.) But, before you dig out your copies of Peyton Place and Gone With The Wind - and your mom's copy of Clan Of The Cave Bear (Dirty!), let's hear what Nicole has to say about feminism and food - peach pie, in particular.

Tell us a bit about your day job. I'm the Books Editor for The Hairpin, which is so little effort and so much fun as to be almost embarrassing. I also write a biweekly/monthly column for The Awl, Classic Trash, in which I discuss noted works of gooey literature.

How did you learn to cook? Post-college, definitely. I went the "buy complicated cookbook, treat like a logic puzzle" route. Then, like most people, I relaxed into a little stable of reliable dishes and went from there. If you're not a cook, I recommend throwing a little dinner party for two friends, and cooking Thomas Keller's roast chicken recipe (it's on Epicurious) and making a green salad with a bit of goat cheese and sliced beets from a jar, plus this pie for dessert. When you're just starting out, the perfect formula is a) your main, b) a starter or side that need only be assembled, and c) a make-ahead dessert that can sit on your counter taunting your guests. And, obviously, a fancy vanilla-bean ice cream to serve with it. Keller's chicken is perfect, but deactivate your smoke alarm first.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends or family? ALONE. Get the hell out of the kitchen. I have tremendous amounts of performance anxiety. My father-in-law kept hovering over me when I was making my first Thanksgiving dinner, and once he finally got to "you know you're using that cutting board upside down?" I had to bounce him formally. Of course, that was also the year I made the goose, and was using one of those awful single-use foil roasting pans. It snagged invisibly on the element coil, and about three cups of goose fat settled into the top of the stove. The goose, of course, was delicious, the experience of using a putty knife the day after to scrape congealed goose fat out of the stove, less so.

As long as you don't watch what I'm doing, you're welcome to stay and make me a gin and tonic and talk to me about Mad Men.

What’s your favorite thing to make? I do a two-day plan about once a week, where I bake too much mustard-y salmon for dinner with sauteed peppers and mushrooms or zucchini, then for dinner the next night I nestle my leftover fillets and vegetables in a frittata and liberally coat the whole thing in goat or feta cheese and a dash of cream. It's a little different every time, goofproof, and the frittata makes you look like a pro.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? Indian. There's nothing so soothing to me as rice-and-sauce. A jar of ghee survives in my house for about two weeks.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? Mandolines. Mandolines. Mandolines. And anything that has to be flipped, poached, or, God-forbid, only gels correctly 80% of the time.

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? We're all eaters, and we all start thinking about what we'll have for lunch halfway through breakfast.  We never socialize in the living room, we're always in the kitchen.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women’s traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? I was extremely lucky, I think, to grow up with a male homemaker and a working mother. My mother is a great cook (the recipe I'm sharing is one of hers), but my father is a genius. He makes his own samosas, he has a clay baker, he makes his own pasta, he's never bought salad dressing. In my marriage, however, I'm the cook, and now I have a baby, so I'm a cook-balancing-a-baby, which is a visual I hadn't really internalized for myself. My husband is older than I am by over ten years, and I do notice a bit of a gender AND generational divide in domestic duties. Which doesn't bother me, mostly, as we have great communication around it, but I think that most women I know have husbands that are far more hands-on than their own fathers were, and, having had a male primary caregiver in my childhood, I'm having the opposite experience.

I think a larger factor is that my husband is fundamentally dis-interested in food, other than as fuel, which, for me, is like being an anthropologist every day. I stand there, making notes, watching him not obsess about food. When they eventually develop a pill you can take with a glass of water thrice daily to provide all of your nutritional needs, he'll be the first one in line.

I'm very ughhhhh about choice feminism, generally, but, like most of us, there are things I get really incensed by (name-changing, Brazilian waxing) and things I just merrily roll along with (doing 100% of the laundry and dishes and cooking). That being said, I think the fact that I choose to shoulder the domestic stuff is not a feminist choice, and doesn't occur in a vacuum. I would say I'm a feminist who, for various reasons, has made some choices I would consider un-feminist. I can make my peace with that, but I don't try to do a juggling game to justify it as furthering the course of equality: it doesn't.  As the mother of a baby daughter, I think I'll have to do more work than my mother did to raise a daughter who doesn't have static notions of gender. My family never looked like the breadwinner-dad, apron-mom pictures, so I never bought into them.

Like a lot of women with kids, I've been reading all the interminable pieces on Badinter and the attachment parenting backlash. There's something real there, of course. I planned to be an Attachment Parent, but gave birth, as some of us do, to a daughter who didn't want to sleep with us, lost weight constantly despite 24/7 nursing until she happily switched to Enfamil, and vastly prefers to sit and observe and play with her toys to being worn in a sling. You have to roll with it. And, of course, it makes you question other parts of the intense-parenting lifestyle. I thought I'd make my own baby food, because I had a "natural" birth (just because I skipped the epidural doesn't mean I like the way we create birthing hierarchies) and am generally an organic-seasonal food person, but I was at the supermarket one day and picked up a thirty-cent jar of Gerber's to glance at the ingredients: peas and water. Or, carrots and water. Who gives a shit, then? I bought about eighty jars. She likes them, and I'm not cleaning orange crud out of my food mill.  And now we give her bits of what we eat, and she loves it. You have to do what works for you, and I think you have to rigorously protect yourself from doing unnecessary things in order to compete with other women. Ask yourself every day: would I still do this if no one besides my baby and I ever knew? Sometimes the answer is yes: I cloth diaper, and I love it. Sometimes the answer is no: hence the little jars.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you’re sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? I will eat anything with peaches. If there was a peach-flavored anthrax, I'd be dead now. This is the pie my mother brings to church suppers, to family reunions, etc. I rarely bake, because I find it more stressful than cooking (it's a formula, not a painting) and because I tend towards a more cult-like primal/paleo diet. Because of that, I subscribe to a go-big-or-go-home attitude towards desserts and starches. 98% of the time, I eat meats and fish and eggs and cream and butter and vegetables and berries. But when I make a dessert, I make a DESSERT. Or, of course, I make mashed potatoes with cream cheese. Don't eat it, or do it right. Sometimes, when I make this pie, I think, oh, I could cut the sugar in half. And I've done it, but then the texture isn't quite right. Don't lie to your baking. Embrace it. On a related note, there's nothing I loathe more than those women's magazine articles on making healthier choices at Thanksgiving. It's one meal. Eat whatever you want. It will make zero different in your life or health to eat a single slice (or two, or three) of a wonderful pecan pie. I'm completely neurotic about maintaining a (for me) artificially low weight (which, again, is an active detriment to my feminism), but I will not go to Eleven Madison Park and ask if they can steam some fish for me. I'm going to eat the foie-gras-chocolate torte. And it's going to be delicious. As an atheist, I feel very strongly about the iniquity of attaching shame to our food desires and our sexual appetites. There are only two things that we actually KNOW we're on this planet to do: eat and fuck. Go forth and be glad.

Creamy Dreamy Peach Pie Nicole Cliffe

For the crust: 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 cup butter

For the filling: 4 cups sliced fresh peaches, if in season. Canned work "just" as well. 1 cup sugar 2 1/2 tbsp flour 1 egg 1/4 tsp salt 1 tsp vanilla extract 1 cup sour cream (full-fat, please)

For the topping: 1/3 cup sugar 1/3 cup flour 1/4 cup butter

Prepare the crust: Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Combine flour and salt, cut in butter. Press into a nine-inch pie plate (deep dish is best). Set aside.

Prepare the filling: Place peaches in bowl, sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the sugar, set aside. In another bowl, combine remaining sugar, flour, egg, salt, and vanilla. Fold in the sour cream. Stir the mixture into the peaches.

Prepare the topping: Combine all three ingredients until crumbly.

Finish the pie: Pour the filling into the crust and bake for twenty minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for 30-35 minutes more.Remove the pie from the oven and sprinkle the topping evenly over the filling. Set the oven back to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for ten more minutes.

Allow pie to cool before slicing. Eat!

Makes one nine-inch pie.

I Never Wanted To Be A Mother

By Chris Babinec Oh, Hell no! Not me. I didn’t think it was a bad choice, of course. As a feminist, I believed a woman should be able to do and be whatever she wanted to be. So, if a woman wanted to become a mother, good for her. Not good for me.

I just never got excited about babies. I never wanted to hold them, rock them, and take care of them. I never smelled that “baby smell” others would swoon over. I didn’t dream of staying home, cooking nutritious meals, wiping butts, listening to crying and whining. I didn’t need someone to look up to me, tell me they love me or call me Mommy. And, I never wanted all the trappings I thought being a mother would bring: a long-term partner, a permanent abode, and an interruption in my timeline of conquering the world.

Nope, for me, there would be adventure! Travel! Exotic foods, exotic lands, exotic jobs! And, of course, I would be a champion for women and children across the world. I would become a feminist icon. I would start my own non-profit. I would devote my life to helping others in need. I would try to live like my hero: Wonder Woman. Maybe I would run for office someday.

Above all, I would do what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted and nobody would get to tell me any different, especially not a man and certainly not children. I would be my own woman. Independent, free, yet devoted to our common humanity. I would, with effort, figure out how to balance my interests in, and devote my time to: women’s rights, civil rights, human rights, environmental concerns, animal rights, children’s rights, alleviation of poverty, cessation of war, and the list goes on and on. I would do everything, be everything I wanted to be. Maybe I would learn some humility along the way, but if not, so what, men get to think big, dream big, act big---why shouldn’t I?

To a large degree, I have already accomplished many of my goals. I have traveled and I have adventured. I have eaten exotic foods and been to new and interesting places. I’ve met incredibly interesting people and had many partners. I’ve tested my limits. I’ve tossed off the shackles of fear more times than I can remember. And, to a large degree, I have devoted my life and career to helping others.

Of course, the strangest thing happened. When I was about 30, I realized nearly all my life, I had been working with children.  Even as a youth, I was a peer leader, a voracious volunteer for many causes that helped other youth.  As I grew older, I found my niche working with teens, and not the Up With People, kind. The gang banging kind. The rough and tumble kids, the homeless youth, the sexually exploited minors/child prostitutes, the disenfranchised, angry, conduct-disordered kid who would just as soon spit on you and rob you, as give you the time of day. I love these kids. Since I was about 21, helping these kids has been my passion and my work.

These kids, as it turned out, were as outraged as I was at the state of the world. They were justifiably angry at the lives they had been handed. While they couldn’t acknowledge it or express it in appropriate ways, the anger seemed to drive their behavior. And, I get anger. I mean I really get it. It’s another reason I never thought I’d be a mother. I thought the outrage I possessed, the unbridled passion, the “you can kiss my ass” attitude might not be good for children.

These kids I worked with often didn’t have mothers. Or, sometimes their mothers were doing the best they could, but due to oppression, patriarchy, institutionalized discrimination, or due to substance abuse, mental health disorders and other complicating factors of our lives and culture, the mothers just couldn’t give these kids what they needed or wanted. Without knowing what was happening, without planning it, wanting it, thinking about it, or feeling any particular way about it, I began mothering.

It started in little ways. I would go to work, ask the kids about home, school and homework. I’d try to get the homeless kids and their families’ food, school, shelter. I would help the kids develop internal and external resources. I’d ask about friends, life goals, and try and inspire and motivate the kids to achieve their dreams, no matter what the obstacles seemed to be.

Then my mothering instinct became stronger. I started to realize how few children have the supports they need to achieve even basic goals. I noticed the threats to these children’s lives---not the boogeyman kinds of threats---the kids already knew how to defend against those. I mean, the threat of indifference, the threat of being objectified and commodified. The threat of being powerless, invisible, of having no voice and no means to advocate for themselves.

Then I really became a mother. A full-on, I will kick you ass if you hurt my babies kind of mother. I became a clinical therapist and trauma specialist so I could help those children who have suffered the worst humanity has to offer. I remain strong to bear witness to the pain and suffering these children can barely express. I talk about my work so others know how dreadfully children are treated in this world; not all children of course, but so, so many.

When people ask me, “How can you do that work?  It sounds so depressing!” Like a mother, I ask them, how could I not? If not me, who? That outrage inside me, that anger I thought might not be great for kids, is the fire that fuels my service, my advocacy and my ability to stand up for those in need. It’s exactly what kids need.

Now, at 39, I have a 3-year-old girl of my own and a baby boy on the way. My daughter’s smile, laugh, story-telling, empathy and grace give me an overwhelming, intoxicating sense of joy, peace and balance I never knew I missed. I have known the pleasure of pregnancy, birthing, and breastfeeding. I have learned some balance in parenting different ages and stages of development. I still do not need my children to look up to me, tell me they love me or call me mommy, but it’s delightful when it happens.

And, of course, the only way I am able to sustain my strength to do the work that I do is because I have a devoted, feminist husband who equally shares the load, a long-term partner I can’t imagine ever living without. A man who inspires me. A man who teaches our daughter every day that men are not always oppressors, that sometimes a man is just the person you need to do the critical work of your calling. And, that fathers are equally important as mothers.

So, while I may not be conquering the world in quite the fashion I imagined I would, and there are still so many places I want to go, things I want to see, fears I want to face, I wouldn’t trade my life or my experiences for anything. I love my life and I cherish motherhood. I never wanted to be a “mother”, but it’s because I alone limited the meaning of that word.

New Glasses

By Michelle Bunt I bought a black T-shirt at a second hand clothing shop a few years ago, that had this phrase on it: “Love yourself.” Something about this statement resonated with me: it was a beautiful, short, simple, yet profound commandment for how to live life. Even so, if you had met me then I would have been the first to admit that I had no idea how to do that in reality. Given my background, it is hardly surprising though. Growing up with two Schizophrenic parents, who also had mild intellectual disabilities, meant that I didn’t receive much in the way of guidance or support. Added to that, my home was at times very violent, and I was never fully certain of my safety. While others kids wished for things likes bikes and barbies, I just remember wanting to be loved. It wasn’t until recently that I realized the only person who could really fulfill that desire was me. Everyone who knows me even a little, knows that I love to read: stacks and stacks of books all year-round. I often think that books saved my life. As well as being my only friends and the only consistent, dependable things in my turbulent childhood, they taught me how to love myself. I had been in counseling for quite some time since leaving home, and I had made lots of progress in many areas, but one thing that I couldn’t seem to turn around was my harsh inner critic. I blamed myself for my past, and I couldn’t see all the amazing qualities residing in me that God had blessed me with from birth. Forget loving myself---I didn’t even like myself! Then something wonderful happened. I found a new counselor about three years ago, who had a profound influence on my life. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow in one of our sessions early on in the process we ended up discussing my favorite series of books as a child (The “Alex” quartet by New Zealand author Tessa Duder). We talked about how I loved the main character, Alex’s, resiliency. This was something we kept coming back to again and again. One day my counselor invited me to consider the possibility that the reason this was my favorite story as a child, and the reason it has remained close to me all these years, was because it was my story. The quality of resiliency that I so admired in Alex described me too. Once I realized this, a subtle shift occurred in me. I didn’t all of a sudden love myself, but finally I could see and appreciate one quality in me as being something to be proud of, something to guard and protect, and keep fighting for. Still I had to figure out how to love myself practically. Recently, I received an invitation to my friend Angela’s wedding. Now don’t get me wrong, I love weddings. There is something incredibly magical and sacred about two people committing themselves to each other. However the majority of times I have been at weddings, I've felt incredibly sombre. Around couples and families who are openly demonstrating their love and support of each other, and celebrating each other’s achievements and happiness, I am reminded of the lack of support and love from my childhood. It is not a conscious, self-pitying thought, but rather a deep ache that arises from within: a wound that has been patched up many times but never completely healed. Which is why when I received Angela’s wedding invitation, I felt a dichotomy within me. I was delighted to go and share her special day with her, but also dreading the painful emotions it would likely bring up for me. The wedding day came, and the weather was glorious---uncharacteristically hot for our city. Angela had a traditional Catholic ceremony, and I loved both the tradition and modesty of it. After the ceremony, there was an amazing reception with the most sumptuous food and a great live band. I was feeling comfortable, relaxed and joyful, yet I kept looking deep within, expecting to find this oh-so-familiar well of sadness, but it was there no longer. In its place was a sense of ease---how easy it was to be present and fully happy for Angela, as opposed to being envious, or feeling neglected. The absence of this deep ache of sadness within was so unexpected. If I’m being truly honest, I don’t think I ever believed, back when this whole journey started, that I would ever arrive in this place: free and liberated to live my life, not just survive. This was the first moment when I realized that my decision to love myself---to start transferring the energy and attention I used to put into other people into me---had paid off. One of my favorite teachers at the school I attend, often uses the analogy of how people live their lives in different ways depending on the glasses they are wearing. Through one set of lenses things look a certain way, but if you take off those glasses and replace them with a new pair, things will look completely different, and each individual has a lens prescription unique to them. Since my friend’s wedding, when I discovered such a fullness of joy in a part of me that had only ever known pain, it feels like I, too, have traded glasses. My new glasses are not perfect, but they are not fogged up like my old ones were. Whereas before I could vaguely detect objects, now I am able to see and recognize things in detail, color, and clarity. Now that I have seen through these new glasses, I can finally take off my old glasses and let them rest, in a case that is firmly shut.

Inheritance

I’ve always bristled at comments made about women turning into their mothers. They strike me as belittling---as though our lives aren't our own to shape. Still, there are moments when I find myself doing something and I swear it’s as though I’m watching my mother instead of myself. I'm reminded of her when I'm brushing my wet hair in front of the mirror, or tucking a checked shirt into a pair of jeans, or pushing my long sleeves up to the spot on my forearms where they’ll stay put. The movements themselves are inherited. There are other things, too. The Brooklyn Bridge Park offers monthly horticulture walks and last week I made plans to attend one. At 5:30 pm, just at the moment when the late afternoon sun is glinting most dramatically off the East River, I trekked down to the park. I had my notebook and camera stuffed in a bag and in that earnest pursuit of knowledge gathering, I was reminded again of my inherited traits.

My mom is a woman who calls things by their proper names. A stand of magenta flowers by the side of the road are not just pink flowers, they’re Sweet William. A small grey bird at the feeder is a Tufted Titmouse. A neighbor’s tree is a Black Locust. As a child this knowledge was impressive and as a teenager it was mortifying. Now, the pattern seems to have cycled around again and I realize that I am the kind of woman who wants to call things by their proper names. Like my mother before me, I'll trek to the local park for a nature walk in order to do it. Lucky for me, living in a city doesn’t preclude my learning. As the weather has warmed up, I’ve spent most of my evenings walking through the park. It’s an incredibly impressive spot. Pier 1 is filled to brimming with native and ornamental species where only three years ago it was an empty concrete lot. If you’re nearby, it’s worth every minute of a visit and if you go soon, you'll see it teeming with juneberries and elderflowers and blueberries that are just starting to ripen. The rosa rugosa are as beautiful as the sea roses near my childhood home and a deep enough whiff of them could transport me right out of the city. If I had any intention of leaving.[gallery link="file" orderby="rand"]

My Happy Place

Over the weekend I took Charley with my Mom, Aunt and Grandma to Jekyll Island, Georgia. Four generations of the same family under one roof, but that’s another story. Jekyll Island exists much the same as it always has, even despite an expensive, large convention center and new entrance with a roundabout. The trees remain littered with Spanish moss, the air is sticky and warm, and the people and attitudes are the same. People don’t vacation there because of the amenities, they go because they have been vacationing in the same place for as far back as they can remember. That’s why we still go. My grandmother has owned a condo there for at least twenty years, and we would vacation there when I was a child. You aren’t getting anywhere quickly on the island; vacationers seem to go at their own pace. Food will come when it arrives, the bartender will show up when she feels like it, but always, always, there is that Southern charm. You might be annoyed until you hear that syrupy sweet accent, “And how are you doing today sweetheart? What can I get for you?” It struck me that it wasn’t just the landscape that hadn’t changed, our family hadn’t really changed that much either. When I was Charley’s age, my Grandma had an older shih tzu named Maggie, and we hated her. She nipped at every kid that came past her path. I distinctly remember her huddling under the Christmas tree one year with crazy, half-blind eyes, guarding the presents. Now my Grandma has another shih tzu named Mickey. They look the same, but Mickey is friendly and doesn’t nip. But if you saw a picture of me as a little kid with Maggie, and Charley with Mickey, you would think no time had passed at all.

Since we had vacationed there when I was a child, my Mom kept pointing out things that were different, or the same, and activities we had done back then. And I had trouble remembering any of them. I have few early childhood memories. My earliest memory is probably the day my brother was born. I was five. They lay him down on the ottoman in our living room and neighbors came by and oohed and ahhed over him. I stood from afar and contemplated what I should be doing. No one was paying any attention to me. Then I remember things sporadically until high school. My third grade teacher? Couldn’t tell you her name. The year we got our minivan? No idea. I seem to remember the stressful, bad moments, or the really good moments, and everything in between falls through the cracks. There is one place though I remember quite strongly, and that’s the beach.

My brother and I would spend hours at the beach, especially the summer my father owned a bakery and worked nights. We would walk the three blocks up the hill to Lake Michigan and swim all day long. My brother would dig, and dig, and dig in a wild frenzy of flailing arms, sand slinging across the way. I would act out elaborate scenes in my own little play. In some I was a star gymnast (it was the year of the 1996 Olympic games). I would throw my arms upward dramatically, my toe pointed forward, and the water would be my balance beam. I flipped and twirled, both things I couldn’t do on the sand, or in real life. But there, in the water, I could be anyone. The sun would be setting, glistening off the lake, and you could see Chicago in the distance, and I would still be practicing, dancing until it dipped below the water. The beach was my happy place.

Now, in Florida, I take Charley to the beach at least once a week. It’s where we relax and bond and just play. I have a theory in parenting that everyone has a happy place: it’s the location or activity you remember so fondly as a kid that when you have your own child, it reconnects you to your younger self. It’s much harder as an adult to get to the happy place. It involves a level of mental distance from the things adults think matter so much: money, cleanliness, work, laundry, dinner. It takes forgetting everything you should be doing, and just letting go. It’s a challenge, and the beach seems to be the only place that I don’t feel the need to check my phone or the laptop, or do the dishes or laundry. My husband’s happy place with Charley is playing Legos. I see how he lets go any stress he has, and just plays with him. And he actually gets into creating elaborate staircases, castles, and barns all out of those multi-colored plastic pieces. He lets his imagination take over. What is it about being an adult that makes imagination so difficult?

The longer we stayed in Jekyll, the more memories came pouring back to me. We spent all day at the pool, and at one point I turned to my mom and asked, “Wasn’t that bar a hot tub before?” And she laughed and said yes, it had been. I would notice little things like that, small flashes of memory. We rode horses on the beach and through the woods. It was hot and buggy and I was scared. My horse bucked going over a fallen tree. I had a crush on another boy vacationing named Tai. He walked down to the beach with me on the boardwalk stairs. I think we talked about music. My skin was cold and prickly when we came in from the pool into the air conditioning. There was no worrying, only being.

Feminism: A tragedy in 3 acts

By Whitney Ruef Modern feminism has been a point of contention for decades. Some say it’s the reason why women aren’t where we should be: barefoot and pregnant cleaning the homes of our hard-working husbands. Some say it’s helping to break the glass ceiling of women in the workplace. And some say "feminism is something that men invented so women would burn their bras and sleep around." It could be a combination, but who really knows what the hell women are thinking anyway?

Chivalry isn’t dead. It’s brutally maimed and writhing, taking its last, rattling breaths. What we don’t talk about though, is that women are killing it. We decided (or maybe men decided while they were in line at the gas station buying lighters for the bra burning ceremony) that we wanted to be treated as equals in all aspects of life. It was an all-or-nothing declaration of independence and self-sufficiency, and it was glorious. Then, a strange thing happened: for the first and only time in the history of the modern world, men listened to us.

All of the sudden we were working jobs and taking care of children. We were super women. We were making our own money and showing the world that we are just as capable as men in the workplace, kicking ass and taking names if you will. The Nike commercial “Anything you can do, I can do better” came on television and women across the country sat on the couch feeding their newborns, typing emails with their toes and laughing knowingly that we had finally gotten what we wanted, because we’re wily and women always get what we want.

Sure, we were still being objectified, but we were going to put a stop to that. Enter: the pantsuit. The perfect corporate wear to make it absolutely impossible for any male to be attracted to you. We wore the pantsuit like it was the ticket to our next promotion, because if we looked like a man, no doubt we would get treated like one.

Then one day, we had a realization: we weren’t getting asked on dates anymore---we were hooking up. We actually didn’t like juggling a job and taking care of our latchkey kids who hated us. Maybe all of our bra burning and declarations of equality weren’t getting us what we wanted after all. And we were finally able to admit to ourselves that taking it easy every once in awhile is actually kind of fun.

We like having the door opened for us. Dinner dates are enjoyable. And we like being taken care of when we’re sick or hurt. While we were kicking and screaming to get what we thought we wanted, somewhere along the way we mixed up the meaning of equality and respect. Women don’t want to be treated like men - we aren’t men. It’s time to reevaluate the goals of feminism in the world today. But we’re women---the only thing that’s certain is that this opinion might change tomorrow.

Whitney Ruef recently graduated from VCU Brandcenter where she studied advertising copywriting. She is currently living in Richmond, VA and looking for "the job a million girls would kill for" in advertising. She is a third degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and thinks some of the best food comes from taquerias located in gas stations. Her portfolio can be found at www.whitneyruef.com.

From Orlando, Florida...

Dearest Clara,

Normally my work takes me to big cities for small amounts of time, and it's always so hard to leave you behind.  So when the opportunity came to speak at a work conference in Florida, I thought it would be a nice change of pace.  In fact, I even thought I would run a little experiment this time around and bring you on the trip, along with our nanny so that we could get a chance to do something new together.  The work hours were still there of course, but being able to take you to the pool in the evenings, and on long strolls around the Magic Kingdom property are something I'll never forget.  I know we won't have the opportunity to travel this way very often, so I enjoyed every minute.

Sometimes when I travel for work, the destinations seems elusive---how much can you really learn about a place between the airport, the hotel and your work site?  But with you, we did go out and about at least a little bit, and you made me see things that I probably wouldn't have otherwise noticed at all.  When your father asked how Disney was, I said it was funny to me. Everyone is happy, everything is clean, and everything almost struck me as artificial, like a utopia.  And he astutely asked me, "isn't that why people go there?".  And he's right. People come to Disney for the magical experience and for a chance to have a glimpse of life where everything is in its most perfect form.  The street isn't dirty . . . the waitress isn't rude . . . the Boardwalk is just as you remember it from the pictures.  All the characters that you know and love from your imagination could actually pop up at any moment, and everything in your imagination suddenly becomes real.  When I thought about it that way, I realized it was a gift to have a bit of that magic, especially with you.  So with that in mind, here are a few of the things that I learned from our trip that I hope you remember:

• Wear sunscreen . . . lots of it.  You probably don't need me to tell you that you have your mother's skin.  And that means sunburns and that Florida sun stops for no one! Wear it, put on more than you think you need, and put it on more often than you think you need.  You'll thank me one day.
• And wear a hat too . . . See above.  I know you don't like it, please just wear it.  I promise one day you will think hats are cool.
• You can never have too many swimsuits. Specifically, swimsuit bottoms.  If there's one thing that drives me crazy during vacation days, it's having a wet swimsuit on or having to put a wet swimsuit back on a different day. One of the best luxuries of vacation is having a nice dry suit to put on every time you need it, even if you're just about to jump into the water.  Keep an eye out for end of season sales and stock up---you'll be glad you have extra.
• It's nice to believe in magic. Part of being a child is believing in magic and in the power of your imagination.  Part of being an adult is appreciating those that still do.  Real life gives us plenty of opportunities to see just how real it can be, so protect that part of your world that is full of wonder, happiness, awe and possibility.

All my love,

Mom

The Wisdom of 105 years

What She Taught Me: If you happen to be born under a Czar in Russia, it is best to die under the first black President of the United States.

The most memorable path from Odessa to New York is via Ellis Island.

If you marry young and wrong, fix it.  Then marry again, older, and get it right.

Go to summer camp, work at summer camp, send your kids to summer camp.

Work very hard in noble, middle-class professions, but have manners like you are from Old Money.

Speak your mind early, often and even, maybe especially, when your speech fails you.

No excuses---maintain your hair, makeup and nails.  In a pinch, lipstick in a bright hue and clip on earrings will suffice.

Read voraciously, talk about books constantly, engage politically and do the New York Times Crossword Puzzle as far into the week as you can manage.  Obviously Sunday is the pinnacle.

Be unabashed in your pride and boasting when it comes to your family and your own significant accomplishments.

Make your marriage a true love affair, canonize your husband and keep his memory alive during all the years he misses.

Venerate the country you live in and be passionate about preserving its loftiest ideals.

Women can and should be controversial, if at all possible.

Be grateful about the opportunities in your life, whether they came to you by chance or by your own toiling.

Listen to music, play music, make your children play music.

It is totally acceptable to embellish when you are singing the praises of your family, even if a few of your grandchildren somehow end up with promotions along the way.

The Sweet and Low and all the other accouterments on the table at a restaurant are there for the taking.  Fill up your purse, sister.  Fill it up.

Rhea Sapodin Tauber July 17, 1907 – May 26, 2012

family is universal...

A portrait series on the families of the Omo River Valley in Ethiopia by Brookelyn Photography.

Sleep and Intimacy

When I kiss my husband, it is with a question. Will it be tonight, dear? When I kiss my child, it is with an answer. He is wondering: do I love him? And I respond, with my arms and my mouth, Yes, always. His kisses are innocent. They contain no motives, no history. They simply are. Kissing is a game to him. It’s a call and answer. Mama! Mmmmmmmm

Yes? Oh! Mwah!

Mama, MAAMAAA!! Mmmmmm

Mwah, I love you.

Before having a child, my husband and I could spend hours kissing like deprived teenagers. We had the luxury of time. Now, sometimes we will kiss hello, and goodnight, but otherwise we are simply too busy for long embraces. This translates to our sleeping life as well. We have developed what we jokingly refer to as ‘the pillow wall’. It started when I was pregnant. I would writhe around, unable to get my large midsection comfortable without losing feeling in one of my hips. To combat this, I would snuggle an oversize body pillow. Sometimes, that pillow ended up between us, and by morning, we were peering over it wondering where the other had disappeared. The pillow wall remains, albeit smaller now.

The only time there was a cease fire was after our son was born. I rid the bed of extra sheets, too-fluffy down comforters, and erroneous pillows, especially body-sized ones. Everything was a hazard. According to the wisdom of my mother and the hospital nurses, co-sleeping was dangerous. I was putting my newborn infant at risk to potentially stifle him with all of that extra fabric. But I did it anyway. It was a natural response to his mewing at 4:00 a.m.: gather him in my arms, and put his cheek on my chest. We rocked each other to sleep. Some nights, it seemed to be the only thing that worked. Although, I often worried more than I slept. Worried he would roll off the bed, worried my husband would roll over onto him. But through it all, we snuggled and bonded. I would watch his tiny face for the smallest inclination of waking, and think, Never grow up.  But then take back the sentiment when it was hours later and he was still awake. It seemed those first few weeks he couldn’t breathe if he wasn’t attached to me in some way. Eventually we all found some equilibrium of sleep and wakefulness.

Recently, the other morning, he had a fever. Maybe two-year molars, or a bad dream, I wasn’t sure. He was up at six, very rare for him. I went to his room and found him disoriented, crying, a mess of tears and sweat. His blonde curls forming a little C on his forehead. I scooped him up and we lay on the couch and watched Dora until he calmed down.  He was the little spoon; his head was on my arm, warm to the touch. The dog was on my feet, her paws running in dreams. I closed my eyes to the wheezing of soft, sweet bursts of breath on my face. When I woke I had an odd nostalgia. Could it be I missed some part of those first few sleepless months? Missed the intimacy and the closeness that my now independent toddler rarely needed?

I let the dog out, set Charley up with some cereal and went to wake my husband. By then it was after nine, a more respectable hour. Our curtains were pulled in the master and it was dark and cool. I watched my husband sleeping, snoring, facing away from me and knew he didn’t need me. I will never be his whole world, but for my son, for even a short time, I was his everything. I was everything he had ever known, ever needed, ever wanted.

Memories of Freedom

I am the product of small towns. As a fourth grader, in Vincennes, Indiana, I rode my bicycle to school every day. Vincennes is a flat town of under twenty thousand residents and I lived in a neighborhood that was a straightforward grid. I rode three blocks down Twelfth Street and two blocks over on Wabash Avenue. This was fully allowed by the school; it was a K-6 school and bike riding was permitted when students were in fourth grade or above. I loved it. At the time I had a Huffy “Desert Rose” bicycle, which featured a fuchsia color scheme that was all the rage in 1988. There were bike racks at the school and I would ride there in the morning, chain my bike to the rack using my neon orange combination lock, and at the end of the day retrieve it to ride home. I have no idea what, if any, doubts my parents had about allowing this. I do know that I remember the experience with remarkable, visceral fondness.

One day, while riding home, I was knocked off my bike by an older (probably sixth grade) boy on his bike. It was an isolated incident of totally random meanness. I told my parents about it, and, if memory serves, my father went to talk to his parents. While I remember this incident, the sort of thing many parents might fear happening, it is but a blip in the experience of being allowed to ride my bike to school.

I was reminded of this when I read an article in Bicycling Magazine about a controversy in Saratoga Springs, NY.  In spite of rising obesity rates, and environmental concerns, many schools prohibit students from riding bikes because of safety and liability concerns. The article reported that “one British study found that over the course of four generations, the distance that eight-year-old children in one family (the Thomases of Sheffield, England) were allowed to roam from home had shrunk from 6 miles (for great-grandfather George in 1926) to one mile (for grandfather Jack in 1950) to half a mile (for mother Vicky in 1979) to 300 yards (for son Ed in 2007).”

I read the article weeks ago and I keep returning to that statistic. Many of my fondest memories from my childhood involve “exploring” with friends, either on bikes or on foot. When my family moved to Bethany, West Virginia, in 1989, I found myself in a college town with no traffic lights, no gas station, virtually no traffic, and a coterie of fellow professors’ kids with whom to ramble around. Summer often involved four or five of us in the woods, finding crayfish in the creek, or playing an elaborate version of nighttime hide and seek we called “flashlight war.” I remember distinctly the day we decided to “ride our bikes to Pennsylvania,” and while it was only a three-mile ride, the thrill of crossing a state line all by ourselves has never left me.

How do I provide my son with these experiences? Is it possible in 2012, to give kids this sort of freedom? Are such idyllic experiences only feasible in small towns? As a parent, I feel like every decision we make about our son’s welfare is complicated and fraught. “Does the store have organic bananas today? Is he too heavy to use his jumper any more? The weather is cool and humid – does he need a sweatshirt?”  This isn’t even beginning to touch the big issues that cause rifts among even the best of friends like the never-ending debates over breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and so on.

I remember one day when I was probably about twelve years old. I went out into the woods that framed our yard in West Virginia. I was by myself. I probably was never more than a thousand yards or so from my house. I had no cell phone, no GPS. I went wandering, and I stumbled upon two trees that had grown towards each other creating an arch of sorts. I stood, mouth agape, astounded by the way these two trees framed an area of wildflowers just beyond. Romantically, and tapping into my inner Anne Shirley, I dubbed it “the gateway to beauty.” It was a remarkable sight, and I believed (and in a way still do believe) that I was the only person who had ever seen it.  I went back days later and couldn’t find it again, but the memory lingers ethereally and has for twenty years.

Is there space for that sort of moment in a world where kids aren’t left alone “outside” very often? Even though I was really very close to my house, I felt like I was on another planet. Would I still have felt that way with an iPhone in my pocket?

I want my son to have these experiences, but I realize that these memories were not hyper-orchestrated by my parents. They bought me a bike, they let me ride it, they trusted me to come home again, and they trusted the environment enough to let me go. I hope I will be able to do the same for my son, even though the culture has shifted.

Home Sweet Home

For Mother’s Day I received Toni Morrison’s newest novel, Home.  As a huge Toni fan, I look forward to reading the text and enjoying the characters as I always do, but what struck me the most about her newest book is the simple title, Home.  In that short four lettered word, so many meanings and experiences come to my mind.  Home has come to mean many things to me over the years.  Literally, I can count up the dozens of addresses and phone numbers I’ve changed and re-changed, area codes and postal codes, boxes and bags.  You see, I’m a mover.  I’ve been a mover since I was young.  My parents come from migrant people, and I think there is something about my ancestors being from, as we say in Spanish, ni de aquí ni de allá (neither here nor there). My mother’s family hails from the Tex-Mex borderlands, and they are migrant farm workers who have settled in the Rio Grande Valley.  My dad’s biological mother, though he was adopted from a family in Richmond, was part of the great migration of African Americans to the Northeast in the 1940s, and she has called Hartford, Connecticut her home for many decades.  While my parents met, married, child reared, and divorced in Richmond, Virginia, my soul has always felt I was from some other place.

Home from a practical sense was in constant flux from my perspective.  I grew up knowing home existed with my mom, dad, sisters, and then with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins (which is common for Latino families). There were several times in my childhood that I vividly recall moving in the middle of the night and making home with my grandparents or aunts for several months because of my parent’s troubled marriage.  One time we lived for three years in an apartment on the other side of town from my father, and then moved back to the house.  Each time we came and went leaving behind my faded childhood memories of Baxter Road.  I felt less and less connected to the notion of home and created new memories by the time I was coming of age on Hampstead Avenue in a low-income apartment community.  By the time I was ready to apply to colleges, I wanted to leave home because I felt no connection to home or to Richmond.  I was a repressed and depressed teen in lots of angst and sought refuge outside of my home.

College made me feel safe, and I found security in my dorm and new life in college.  But it was only temporary and often felt ashamed to tell anyone freshman year that going home meant going to a small 2 bedroom apartment that was shared by my mother and grandparents, an uncle and his friend, my 5 year old cousin, a noisy dog, and a parrot.  My sisters, mother, and I---four grown women---shared a 10 x 10 room, a full size mattress, pallets on the floor with blankets and towels as another bed, and clothes neatly folded and piled in boxes along the wall.  Our lives were all squeezed into one tiny room, waiting presumably for a home.  I remember feeling angry and thinking, this is what I am coming home to?  I selfishly did not want to come home anymore and found ways to stay on campus during breaks.  I now realize that I desperately needed space, but foolishly thought I needed to make college my home.

My mom finally made her dream come true in 2002 by becoming a homeowner, and a year later, I made another home as  I pursued graduate studies in New York City.  Ever moving, within my first three years in New York, I lived in 3 different boroughs and 5 different apartments, continually searching for home---Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn and the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx.  Each time, I created and re-created home.  Each time searching, looking and “constructing” home.  Each time my home experience came to an end, and I was on the move again.  New number, new address, new postal code . . .

In 2008, I came very close to having home when I bought the “house of my dreams” with my then husband in Virginia.  I had moved back to Richmond that year to help my family with my sister who was battling cancer.  We went big and bought the home I had dreamed about when I was kid: the 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath colonial style white house with black shudders, red door, garage, fenced backyard, and manicured lawn.  I just knew I had made it because I had a [big] home to call my own.  Finally no moving, no sharing, tons of space, privacy and it was all mine.

Months and years into the home, I noticed the house was always cold, and there was something very metaphysically empty about it.  Despite the freshly-painted neutral walls, newly-purchased gorgeous wood furniture, and fancy alarm system for protection, there was still this barenness.  It was the details though that should have clued me in. The little things were never done: the curtains were never hung, photos and art never made it to the walls, and the dining room sat empty night after night.  Something in my gut told me this was not home and that things would change.   I tried to ignore that quiet whisper because I had to make it work, right?  I had constructed this life and this home, right?  Soon it became painfully obvious that not only was this house built on a shaky foundation, but so was my marriage.  As the summer of 2010 came to a close, so did my home and my marriage.

Fast forward to 2012, I have downsized to a 2 bedroom,  1 bath apartment in a beautiful neighborhood in northern Manhattan bordering the Hudson River.  While I don’t have the oversized house, I have found my home.  I finally am at ease and at home not only in my home, but in myself.   The joy that I feel has no words.  Every inch of my home is literally and metaphysically warm---stacked with books, and brimming with my son’s art and toys.  It is imperfectly perfect, but I am finally home.

In the end, I now know that home is not a literal space to fix and construct, but a metaphysical and metaphorical space for loving, nurturing, and caring for myself and my loved ones in an honest and meaningful way.

Home is the jog up to the Cloisters on a crisp spring evening.

Home is the sand and rocks of the wild James River between my toes.

Home is the wind blowing my curls in my face when I ride down the highway.

Home is cradling my son in my bed at 2AM when he is scared of the monsters.

Home is the pungent smell of garlic and the sumptuous taste of a meal cooked at home.

Home is my life; home is my voice; and home is my truth.

Home is me.

Home sweet home is knowing that home is deep within me.  I am home wherever I am at.  I am home now and always.

From Bologna, Italy . . .

Dearest Clara,

Believe it or not, your mother was young once.  Well, I'd like to think that she's still young . . . but in returning from my 10th year reunion of graduate school in Bologna, I realize that the years are going much more quickly now, especially since your arrival.  If I had to pick the most care-free year of my life, apart from maybe my preschool years, it would be the year I spent here a decade ago.

Bologna is a gorgeous town---enough history to give it gravitas, enough decadence to make it fun. But our year had its dark moments as well.  Only a few weeks after we arrived, the twin towers fell in New York, which not only cemented us as a class, but redefined the subject matter  of international relations that we were in that very place to learn.  Ten years later, the bond of that experience is still holding us all together, mostly in a positive way. I enjoyed seeing my classmates so much---many things (and many people) hadn't changed a bit.  One day you'll see what a gift it is to be given a few moments back from a time you remember fondly.

Bologna is one of the great gastronomical capitals of Italy, and many of the products you probably take for granted like balsamic vinegar, parma ham, and parmesan cheese, come from places just around the corner.  Eating and life, like politics, are taken very seriously there, so unsurprisingly, I walked away with a lot of lessons that related to those very activities.

• The most charming places frequently aren't the most known - there is no better example than Bologna itself of this.  While Venice, Florence and Rome all have their merit, often you'll find them so packed with people that you can barely see what you came to see.  In Bologna, you'll find a handful of tourists at a maximum, but yet, the food, the art, and the architecture are some of the best.  And a short car ride will bring you to some of the most charming towns you'll even know from that region.  Take the time to find authentic pockets in your travels, they are world-class because the world doesn't yet know about them.

• Good products don't need to be complicated - when you have something good . . . really good . . . like fresh mozzarella, or fresh pasta that was made with quality ingredients and great care, you don't need to do much to it to keep it really tasty.  Sometimes, it's best to enjoy things for what they're meant to be.  Simple isn't always boring.

• Always own a beautiful pair of walking shoes appropriate for cobblestones - this is true for just about anywhere in Europe where you'll be on your feet (which is just about everywhere in Europe) but this seems to come up the most in Italy because there is such a core belief that even the functional has to be beautiful.  Good walking shoes don't mean ugly, utilitarian things that you just throw on your feet.  Comfort can be beautiful, but it takes a long time to find.

• Pumpkin, sage, and butter go together - This combination is a staple in this part of Italy.  And it always works.  Remember this when you're stuck for ideas during Thanksgiving season.

• Appreciate the art of the aperitivo - This is a beautiful tradition all over Italy, but in Bologna, they up the ante of the pre-dinner cocktail with their  little bites and morsels that go above and beyond (although truth be told, I find Venice does this pretty well too).  The whole notion of the aperitivo is to slow down and appreciate what's in front of you and to enjoy good company, even if sometimes it's just your own.  And if you're already in the business of all this enjoyment, remember that sometimes it's worth paying for the view.  Even if it means a little extra.

• When in doubt, choose prosecco - Whether it's an aperitivo or a cocktail hour or anything else, if you're in doubt on what to ask for, you can always count on local bubbly as a safe bet.  Nearly everyone will have it, it's light, it lends itself to slower savoring, and it's just the right balance between cost, a nod to your host country,  and worldliness.  You'll find that you will have your own favorite go-to's eventually, but I think every lady hesitates about what to order at some point.  Just keep that in your back pocket.

Our next reunion in Bologna will be five years from now---I know it will be here before I know it.  Seems like it would be the perfect time to have you join me--- I hope your kindergarten class will be able to spare you for the trip!

All my love,

Mom

The Fallacy of Gender Neutrality, or How I Womaned Up at My Local Bookstore

I'm standing stock-still in the children's picture book section of the Upper East Side Barnes & Noble, facing a decision rife with anxiety and laden with import. Will it be Madeline, or will it be Make Way For Ducklings? Let's back up.

My family has been procreating at an alarming rate recently, and I was there to choose two books (my traditional Yay, You're Pregnant! gift) for my cousin and his wife. Unlike the majority of my friends who've gone through this particular rite of passage of late, they aren't going to find out the sex of the baby ahead of time, and so I went to the store intending to purchase a couple of classic picture books.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, one of the best books of all time, was sitting on a display table up front. One book down, one to go.

In The Night Kitchen is a favorite of mine, both since I loved it so much as a child, and since I plan to teach as many children as possible to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch in as horridly messy a fashion as possible. But they didn't have it in stock, and I was due at dinner---in Brooklyn---in two hours. I desperately scanned the shelves for Babar, but they only had a couple of the later books from the series, and I couldn't give this kid a sequel without the original. And then there's the Velveteen Rabbit, but the edition on offer was cheesy and unworthy of the tragedy held within. Plus, do I really want to be the one who makes the baby cry real tears for the first time? No. No, I do not.

They did have Make Way For Ducklings, which I understand is a seriously famous children's book, but I have no emotional connection to it whatsoever. And unfamiliarity doesn't seem right for the very first gift I'll ever bestow upon this new human being. But it was pretty, it was hardcover, and it wasn't spotted with drool or spitup, which, frankly, made it a rare find.

And then, I spotted it: yellow spine, Belemans' distinctive brush stroke font, and twelve little girls in two straight lines. Madeline.

But wait, I thought: what if this baby turns out to be a boy? And then I died a little inside. Because, honestly, it pisses me the hell off that the notion of gender neutral books even occurred to me. What makes a book gendered? When it features a female protagonist?

Well, yeah. In our culture, it does. I grew up reading books about boys and girls, romances and sci fi, Gone With The Wind and Star Trek novels (oh yes), but the vast majority of the books my brother read (with The True Adventures of Charlotte Doyle being a rare exception) were about boys and "boy" things.

And this is a pattern that continues into adulthood. Women gladly read books with male protagonists, but the reverse---especially if the book is written by a female novelist---is rare. Just last week, I was at my high school reunion. Dan Brown---who graduated 25 years before I did---gave a little talk, and one of the questions he got from the audience was whether he had any advice for a woman looking to write a mainstream (read: not romance) novel about a female protagonist. His response? That the success of his Robert Langdon novels with women prove that people will buy books featuring heroes of the opposite gender.

My high school prides itself on teaching critical thinking skills, but methinks they let Dan down that day. After all, male is the neutral gender in our culture. Large numbers of women buying books about men is nothing to write home about---the reverse, though---that would be remarkable.

All of this flashes through my mind in an instant, in the way that only righteous indignation can, and I spin on my heel, jog up to the cash register and pay---proudly---for Madeline and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs before I lose my nerve. And I'm kind of hoping it's a boy, if only for the opportunity to buy him the Little House series when he's ready for chapter books.

Poor

Unbeknownst to me, I grew up poor. I had one doll and six colored pencils and, judging from class photos, an entirely rust wardrobe. “We were poor!” my mother explained, exasperated by that fact. Oh. Orangish-brown was cheaper?

I played Bakery all summer with fresh cow poop pies, scoured our gravel drive unsuccessfully for gold, and the only books in our house were on loan from the library. Someone paid my dad for a favor with a goat, and she became my very first and favorite pet and stayed that way until she was eaten by a wild duo of Dobermans from a neighboring farm and then my dad shot those Dobermans.

(This is the kind of thing that happens when you’re poor, you know. It’s quite a dangerous lifestyle.)

I remember all this at the oddest moments, raccoon sneaky memories scavenged only at my darkest. Sighing sadly as I step into my stuffed closet full of too many options in the same shade of black, and open our toy trunks full of far too much, already forgotten. Excess replaces exquisite so easily, I think, recalling line-drying our family of seven's clothes daily to save on electricity and extra clothing costs as I sit here with my windows open and air conditioner running. The daily clasp of my Rolex crushes me guilty when I think of my dad’s dress watch: a gold-esque Timex, rarely worn. His best wasn’t even my everyday. I don’t want that to be my truth.

I guess there comes a point in our lives when we realize that everything we own tells our story. There maybe sometimes comes yet another moment when you can’t look at all your stuff without feeling all of your yesterdays puddle and threaten to flood if you dare look down. I haven’t looked down in years.

We’re packing up our life again very soon, and I’m struggling with my story. I’ve too much stuff I don't need and too big a tale to tell and some very sad chapters that I don't want to remember and don't want to forget, and it’s gutting me to edit.

The other night, I took a blanket fresh from the dryer. It had been my sister’s, one of at least 20 gifted by our other sister, Jeanie, when she was dying. You would’ve cried if you saw how many of these blankets she bought, each one hand-picked because it was softer than the one before and this one a brighter red than them all. God, she just wanted to wrap up their yesterday and make it warm again, when life was good and simple and Lin used to ride no-handed down the hill in the sunshine and bite off chunks of green apple she’d swiped from the neighbor’s trees and hand them to her mid-bicycle ride so she wouldn’t break her capped front teeth. I swear, Jeanie would give up everything she had to get those moments back. But we all know that would be impossible.

Poverty, redefined.

It’s been six years without my sister Lin and longer than that with a broken-hearted Jeanie, and this blanket is torn beyond repair. And it smells, no matter how much fabric softener I use. And the red reminds me of unhappy. And so I announce to no one that there is just too much stuff in this stupid house and something has to go, and I walk out to the trash and throw away one of my most precious memories while I swallow sobs and look up at the stars, trying like crazy to keep that yesterday with all my others.

I’ve been sick about it ever since.

Write down everything you're wishing you had right now. Title it My Wish List. Now, cross out that title and write in its place Things I've Lost So Far. Same list, yes?

It’s not so bad to be poor, I think. You miss a hell of a lot less.

Images via here, here, and here.

Learning to Garden

My tomatoes are growing. This is climactic because I have never been a gardener. As a child I avoided dirt, and the first time I planted a flower I was more distracted by the black under my nails than the task at hand. Back when I lived in a city it wasn’t even a choice. People didn’t ask me what herbs and vegetables I was planting for spring, and no one offered advice on pruning my hydrangeas. And I was ok with that. I was ok with not having a yard filled with green grass. I loved my little apartment like a home. And then two things happened. I left the city and I got pregnant, almost at the same time actually. And suddenly I was expected to grow things; to put time and effort into cultivating something. I had never put time or effort into anything but myself before that, and even then, some days there was minimal effort.

Immediately after giving birth to him, I tried to recall what it had actually felt like. I would close my eyes and rely on my sense memory. Was it really so painful I screamed for a C-section even when I had been so vehemently against one? The human brain is an amazing thing. I tried to remember the actual pains of contractions. Someone told me before I gave birth that it was like the worst period cramps you could ever imagine. But it was so much more painful even than that. It was a knife, cutting cleanly through my stomach, until I felt it within every inch of my body; the opposite of an orgasm. The knife came every ten minutes . . . every five minutes . . . two minutes . . . every thirty seconds. I was sick, violently ill and throwing up every few minutes. My fluids were extremely low; I was put on an IV, had an epidural, had Pitocin. It took a whole room of assistants and my midwife to bring this baby into the world. A whole room, like a whole village. And he came, and I loved, and didn’t sleep, and cultivated. Or tried to at least.

One of the most important things about gardening is remembering to water the plants. This should be an easy one, but if you are too busy or too selfish, it’s not. For a year of our marriage our grass was brown. Who knew this was a big deal? There was always some issue with the sprinkler system. One head was broken, then another. We gave up communicating about it; it became a stick in the wheels of our marriage. I would say the second most important thing about gardening is knowing when you’ve made a mistake and have to pull up the roots and start over.

We decided to leave Seattle in the fall. It was chilly and sprinkling rain. We didn’t own a car, but I was determined to live the city lifestyle I missed about Chicago. And so we piled the baby and most of his belongings into the stroller and began to trudge up Queen Anne hill. We walked, and sweated, even in the misty fall rain. No one tells you how tall those hills are, practically vertical. As we alternated pushing the stroller, we fought. We argued about who kept hitting the bump in the road and causing Charley to screech in alarm. We argued about why we couldn’t afford a car, and whose fault that was. We dissected every aspect of our life and our marriage on the way up that hill, and when we reached the top, we realized we didn’t like any of it. It was a long way down, and a long way back to Florida, 3, 206 miles to be exact. But we knew when to leave and start over.

I thought of that the first time I planted basil and it died. I had been too busy with everything else to water it, and the leaves were brown and curling. But, determined to be the gardener wife, I let it sit on the windowsill. Leaving it there didn’t mean it got any better. I pulled up its roots too.

Each spring I get a little better. Last year I planted lantana. I dug and I dug, they flourished, but only for a season, for I had bought the wrong variety. I looked around the yard and everything else was dead too. That was the beginning of the year of brown grass. But now, we are better. We don’t argue about the grass, or who chose to move to Seattle. We let it all go. And slowly our garden is growing, thriving. After such a struggle, I feel like Charley when I see the juicy red tomatoes sprouting---wonder and amazement. It wasn’t always that easy for me.