Max

(Editor's note: This is part two of Leigh Anna's exploration of losing her dogs. Part One, Samus, can be found here.) 2011 stunk. It has taken me many months to even get to the place where I can write about this without completely losing it. Some of you already know how my little family was rocked this past year when little Samus, my sweet boxer dog, passed away suddenly. Little did we know that just 7 months and two days later, we’d be saying goodbye to our other sweet baby, my dear boy Max. From the beginning, I was absolutely in love with that boy. We drove 4 hours in the pouring rain one night to Memphis to pick him up. He was so fat, with so many wrinkles. I was so excited . . . and a little discouraged when I tried to get him to sit in my lap on the way home and he just moved to the other side of backseat. We had a dog that didn’t like to cuddle, or so it seemed.

Max quickly became a mama’s boy. Contrary to my observation on that ride home, he loved to cuddle . . . and boy was he lazy. Samus wanted to play all the time and all Max wanted to do was lay on the couch. The only issue we ever had with him was potty training. He was HORRIBLE! He would leave a trail through the house . . . he didn’t know how to stand still while peeing! I would get soooo mad! I finally resorted to buying toddler undies for him and that was the only thing that finally worked. He was so cute in those undies.

 In 2007, Chris and I decided to quit our jobs, move to Atlanta, and go back to school. The day we moved, we noticed Max wasn’t feeling too good. Within two days, he stopped eating and we knew something had to be wrong. We took him to the vet, where they started running tests on him. We left the vet without a diagnosis but they were pretty sure he had Lymphoma. The test would take two weeks to find out for sure.

My boy got so sick. He didn’t eat for those two weeks and lost 10 lbs. We came so close to losing him . . . the test finally came back and it was a huge blow. He not only had lymphoma in his chest, but it was stage 4, B cell, the worst kind. They advised us that most dogs with that kind of cancer only last another year at best, with chemo. But we couldn’t lose our baby without trying to help; he was only 5 years old. We started chemotherapy immediately and after 6 months of treatment, he was in full remission. Max was a trooper . . . my miracle dog. We got lucky and the lymphoma never came back.

 When we lost Samus, our world was turned upside down. We all grieved so hard for the loss, Max included. He slept by the front door; he’d wake me up laying on my chest at 3 am just staring at me; he’d drag us up and down the alleys and streets looking for her; he would stop in his tracks when he heard another dog that sounded like her. It made us so sad to see him having such a hard time with losing her.  That’s one reason we decided to get Rilke, 6 weeks after we lost our girl. Max needed a buddy as much as we did. He was so good with her . . . she was such a playful puppy . . . but he never got mad at her. I think seeing the two of them together, I really started to notice how much Max had aged.

This past Thanksgiving came and went quietly. That Saturday, we woke up to a beautiful morning. The temperature was supposed to be in the 60′s and we knew that it wouldn’t last much longer. We decided to take the dogs out to Fire Island, a beautiful state park beach that allows dogs in the winter months. It was Rilke’s first time to the beach and we were all excited as we packed up in the car and headed out. It was absolutely gorgeous outside and we were just so happy to be together. This photo was from that day . . . I had no idea it would be one of the last photos I would take of my sweet boy:

We had hiked about 2 miles from our car, down the beach, when our world came crashing in on us. Max had been so happy, running, sniffing, playing . . . when all of a sudden, he fell over and started having a major grand mal seizure. Right there where the water hits the sand, on the most beautiful beach, my dog was dying and I felt so helpless. People came running from everywhere, and Chris and two other men started giving him CPR. After what seemed like an eternity, he started breathing again. Someone called the rangers for us and they came and picked us up in a SUV to take us back to our car. Max was awake but out of it for sure. We took him to the nearest pet hospital, only to have them tell us things like cancer, brain tumor, epilepsy, infection . . . our wonderful trip to the beach had gone so bad so quickly.

We did a few tests to check his bloodwork and rule out an infection. They said the only way we would know if he had brain cancer would be to do an MRI, which would cost thousands. We hoped for the best, got a prescription for anti-seizure meds and went on our way. We felt so lost, and I was just a ball of nerves. That night we cuddled him and loved on him and he seemed ok, just tired. The next morning, we went for a walk, ate breakfast, and he had his smoothie and two treats. His head seemed to be bothering him, he kept scratching and rubbing it. He laid down in the sun, on the bed, probably his favorite place in the world, and went to sleep. About 30 minutes later, he woke up, had another seizure, and passed quietly in Chris’s arms.

That weekend was horrible. But . . . looking back, both of us had seen it in his eyes. He lost a part of himself, a spark, when Samus passed away and he never got it back. Even though losing Samus was heartbreaking, it made me appreciate Max so much more those last few months. I am thankful that he didn’t seem to suffer much; I am thankful that we were with him, that he spent his last full day on the beach, and that he didn’t die in a hospital. I am also thankful that I did not have to make the decision with either of my dogs. God knew that would be a decision I just could not have made.

 I loved Samus dearly, but Max . . . that boy was MY boy. I loved the way he woo-wooed when he was excited, the way he demanded a treat around lunchtime every day, the way he nibbled on a toy, the way he said “I love my mama,” and the way he made me massage him every night. He was spoiled all right, but he was one of the best relationships that I have ever experienced and if I could do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat. I’ve had dogs my entire life but there was just something special about my relationship with Max. I would have done just about anything for that dog. Looking back at these photos, I feel like I was at my happiest when he was by my side . . . or in my lap.

After losing both of our “kids” that we have had for the past 9.5 years, Chris and I just felt lost. Our whole family dynamic changed. Now Rilke was the only dog, and we had only spent a few months with her. She still doesn’t know the kind of things our other two had learned through the years---it’s like starting completely over. But I am so thankful we got her when we did or else our house would be way too quiet. We have since added little Bronson to our family. It’s not the same around here . . . but I hope one day we’ll have the connection with the new ones like we had with Samus and Max.

Once again, in 2011 I was reminded that I need to appreciate the time I am given. I am so thankful that I got to experience Max’s amazing personality and be loved by him. Time goes by in a flash . . . 9.5 years of my life was gone in 7 months and 2 days. I am trying to remember that and really live my life in a way where I have no regrets and really love on my friends and family as much as I can. In the end, that’s really all that matters. I miss you dearly Max . . . I still think about you every day. I hope you and Samus are running and playing on a beach up in heaven somewhere. One of these days, when I close my eyes for the last time . . . I really hope you two come and tackle me with kisses. Call me crazy, I don’t care.

Samus

Sharing my life with an animal is one of the greatest joys I could imagine. There is nothing better than coming home after a long hard day and being met at the door by my dogs, wagging their tails and giving me kisses. . . it instantly erases all my stress, at least for a little while. My husband, Chris, and I don't have kids, not yet anyway, so I treat my dogs like they are my kids. People say things change when you have actual children, but I hope it doesn't. I love knowing that I am giving my dogs the best life possible and that they are loved and appreciated every day.

Nothing could prepare me for the loss I would feel when my first two dogs, Samus and Max, passed away. When we lost Samus, Chris and I spent the next three days in bed, crying our eyes out. Seven months later, Max passed away too. Our home had changed forever. Looking back, we realized just how much Samus and Max had affected our lives. They taught us about patience, unconditional love, and what's really important in life.

What follows are my thoughts on the passing of sweet Samus. I will be sharing Max's story tomorrow.

I’ve tried to write this piece about 5 times now. Every time I see that title, I just tear up and have to walk away. Chris and I lost our baby girl two weeks ago. It was sudden, unexpected, and heartbreaking. We don’t know for sure, but we think she had cardiomyopathy, a condition of the heart, where it just gives out without warning. We knew she wasn’t feeling good, took her to the vet, and her heart rate was at 300 beats per minute. They tried to fix it but nothing worked and after a few hours at the vet, she basically had a heart attack. Chris and I had to hold her the last few minutes while she was passing . . . it was just heartbreaking; there is no other way to describe it. It tore us both to pieces, having to watch something you love so much, go away forever.

Samus came into our lives when she was 6 weeks old. Chris and I had a terrible fight about what kind of dog we were going to get. My heart was set on a boston terrier . . . I even went out and bought a book about them! Chris finally dropped the bomb on me that it was his turn, I had chosen our first pets (cats, they were insane!) and he wanted a boxer. I was SOOOOO mad! That all changed the day he picked me up from work with a newspaper in his hand. He had the ad circled and was determined that it was the day for us to add to our family. I agreed and we drove straight to the breeder’s house. Inside, Samus’s grandmother climbed up on the couch beside us and we knew these had to be the sweetest puppies ever. A few minutes later, all hell broke loose as the puppy gate was removed and we were tackled by 10-12 little baby boxers. Chris picked out our little girl and we named her Samus. I fell so deeply in love with her within that first hour, I just never expected it. I’ve had animals my whole life but this was our first puppy, and she was perfect.

Well, she was perfect in every way but one . . . she was CRAZY!! Chris and I could barely keep up with her the next few months; she had more energy than both of us combined. We decided that she needed a buddy to keep her company while we were at work, so 4 months later, we got Max. They became best friends immediately, and stayed that way for the last nine years. The only flaw in our plan was that Max was the laziest dog ever and spent more time on the couch with us than playing with her!

Chris and I knew that we would lose them one day . . . but it didn’t stop us from loving them dearly. I am so thankful for the fact that we loved her so much, and because of that, I have few regrets. She was spoiled rotten. Every Christmas and birthday, I would go to goodwill and stock up with bags of stuffed animals. We would give them to her all at once and and watch her roll around on the floor in bliss. Max couldn't care less about the toys; they were all for her. Her favorite had to have been the frisbee.

Losing her was one of the hardest things I have ever gone through. For me, it rated on the same level as losing my brother 12 years ago. I knew it would be difficult, but I don’t think I was quite prepared for the amount of grief I would feel. I realized through all of this just how much you can learn about life from a dog. She taught me about joy, love, and losing. Losing her made me look at life through a different lens and I am trying to hold on to that and not go back to the way I was before. I was able to look back at things that had happened the last week, month, year, and see that things happened for a reason and everything worked out like it was supposed to, even though it wasn’t what I wanted. Even looking back at when we got her, I didn’t want a boxer, but God put one in my life anyway. Looking back, she was exactly what I wanted and what I needed in my life, I just didn’t know it. I am so glad that somehow I was chosen to be her mama.

Losing her also reminded me of the fact that no one is promised another day, not you, not me . . . not anyone. I learned that I need to accept things the way they are and concentrate on the joy in my life, not the bad things. And I learned that I need to appreciate my friends and family a little bit more every day because it might be the last chance I get to tell them how I feel. We never thought that on Easter Sunday, when we spent the afternoon in our favorite park, lying in the sun, that 24 hours later, she would be gone forever. I loved her so much, and I still do, and I am so sad she is gone.

I’ll end with this, an excerpt from a poem by Danna Faulds that I am trying to take to heart:

“Do not let the day slip through your fingers, but live it fully now, this breath, this moment, catapulting you into full awareness. Time is precious, minutes disappearing like water into sand, unless you choose to pay attention. Since you do not know the number of your days, treat each as if it is your last. Be that compassionate with yourself, that open and loving to others, that determined to give what is yours to give and to let in the energy and wonder of this world. Experience everything, writing, relating, eating, doing all the little necessary tasks of life as if for the first time…pushing nothing aside as unimportant. You have received these same reminders many times before, this time, take them into your soul. For if you choose to live this way, you will be rich beyond measure, grateful beyond words, and the day of your death will arrive with no regrets.”

I miss you Samus.

Less is More

Lately, I've been on a purging spree. It’s not uncommon for my refrain to be “Get rid of it!” when asked about just any item in the house. I might have a problem. I have recently been looking at all manner of things I use on a daily basis and really quizzing myself, “Do I NEED that?” The extra stuff is really getting to me. It seemed that as soon as we moved into a big house (2500+sq.ft.) eighteen months ago, we have acquired all manner of extra junk. It just shows up---donations, presents, hobbies we hoped we would have---all over, gathering dust in corners, and overtaking the garage. Maybe we just have trouble saying no? Do you have this problem? If someone gives us a gift, we are thrilled and grateful they thought of us. And we (sort of) like DIY projects, so we end up with extra furniture that needs to be refinished and two clawfoot tubs. Perhaps we like to revel in the possibility of it all. We don't buy the golf clubs and tennis rackets because we WANT them to sit in our garage. We think that they will make us happy. We buy our kid even more toys because of course, more is more, and that will make him happy.

But is it? Instead I feel stressed by all the projects yet to be finished, the renovations that aren’t complete, and all the hobbies I never pursued. Instead of feeling like I am living up to my potential, I feel the opposite, like I am failing at doing it all.

Jordan, from Oh Happy Day, had a great quote the other day about purging:

"I’m by no means a minimalist but I’ve realized lately that everything

we own just takes up space and that it takes time to manage it all.

The less stuff you have, the more time you have. "

That's the element that is missing in all the forgotten hobbies in our 'Closet of Broken Dreams' (Literally, our master closet is where we hide all the things we used to enjoy, including but not limited to musical instruments, cameras, darkroom equipment, snowboards, and broken bicycles.) We never made the time for all those interests; merely just buying the item doesn't give you the time.

I was trying to describe to my husband the other day the happiness derived from small pleasures when I lived in my little (less than 500 sq.ft) apartment in Wicker Park. I can remember buying flowers one afternoon at the farmer's market. They were yellow daisies, and I put them in the middle of my tiny two-person kitchen table. And every day when I walked by them, I smiled. Once I bought a poster from a sale at the Art Institute downtown, and that poster, in my hallway, gave me more pleasure than most of the things currently in my house. Those two items, the flowers and the poster, I interacted with more on a daily basis since they made a big impact in my small space. Now, even when I go through the effort of framing a photograph, say of Charley and I, it gets lost in all the space we have. Sometimes I even forget I have it. We have rooms that are sitting empty, and bathrooms we don't even use, and after eighteen months, I am starting to feel that more isn't more, and you can really buy a house that's too big.

It seems I have become an over-buyer of sorts. I don’t buy thirty boxes of tissue, and actually Costco makes me nervous, but I tend to purchase things I think I will need for the future. Those items could be a bathtub for future renovations that haven’t happen or a fancy stroller for when we move to a city. Except we never moved to a city, and we still haven’t renovated that bathroom. Even today, I found myself thinking about buying another bike for when I’ll be cruising the streets of D.C. or Brooklyn, and I had to step back and think, but when will that even be? You could say I have trouble living in the moment. I constantly have that feeling of ‘my life will start when’ ______. When I move, get a job, have another kid (or not). I struggle to recognize and appreciate the moment as it is.

In an effort to slow down and appreciate life, I have to realize I can’t do all those different hobbies. So what am I really passionate about? I’ve been reading “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin and she has a great simple quote (adapted here to reflect the writer, er, me). “Be Shannon." A huge part of that is realizing my interests are not everyone else’s. I’ve never been much into sports; I would love to play tennis again one day, but the last time was over seven years ago. I truly love photography, but I no longer have the time available to do photography how I wanted to, processing the film, carefully weighing each decision and step. Instead I keep that hobby in a small way. I try to capture the little everyday moments with my son that might otherwise get lost in the cracks. I loathe staged family portraits and would much prefer to remember that on a random Wednesday afternoon he played trains at seven A.M. in his pajamas and the pajamas were red and had fire trucks on them; they were his favorite.

There's a part in the book where she talks about the too much stuff phenomenon. A little boy plays with his blue car everyday, takes it everywhere, and loves it to pieces. His grandmother comes to visit and sees how much joy is derived from this one car, so she goes out and buys him ten more little blue cars. He immediately stops playing with any of them. When she asks him why he replies, "It's because I can't love all the cars."

Love I Came Looking For

By H. Savala NolanPhotograph by Leigh Anna Thompson

I expected to come back to New York and look beautiful.  Show off tan legs late at night in a white dress and red heels.  I expected to cook dinner at his house, get tipsy with red wine, and make out on his couch.  I expected to feel like I felt at the beginning, when I got my first look at the city.  Riding a train from Rhode Island that August evening, I looked up from my book, and there was Manhattan, silver stilettos of skyline, regal in thick orange sunlight.  It was fascinating, an intricate Cubist brooch on the breast of the earth.  It sent out shock waves---this metropolis squeezed into place by the corseting rivers, and I felt as if my body had just been plugged into a sun.  That first weekend, I stayed with a friend on Park and 91st, and I'll never forget: tiny-aisled, overflowing grocery stores with moms and pops at the register, my first taste of the ubiquitous ginger-carrot salad dressing, Bow Bridge, Tasty Dlite frozen yogurt, the eerie insulation of Upper East Side apartments, the motionless heat of subway stations, doormen, Prince Street, the Astor Place cube and Around the Clock french toast, Midtown magazine workers with tap-tap heels, the clip and cadence of New Yorkers conversing, the swirling backseat universe of taxi cabs at drunken three AMs.  I knew I had to live in New York, and for seven years, I did.

At the end of those seven years, I graduated from college and flew home to California.  I thought it would be a six week visit, and I'd return for my new job as a public school teacher.  But I didn't want the job.  I wasn't ready.  So I stayed in California, and offered my coordinator in New York a cursory explanation about changed life circumstances.  That November, unable to stand being gone from my beloved city, I bought a last-minute ticket and flew east for a weekend.

I expected not to spend any money.  Fifteen dollars a day, I told myself.  Have will power!  Think what Soho is actually like before you decide to shop. Eat Zone bars for breakfast and pizza for lunch.  Don't buy foreign magazines and dream of a chic life just because, in this city, it seems plausible.  Don't get wine or bottled water.  Embrace  lowbrow: drink coffee from street kiosks with Parthenon cups. Take the subway.  Take the bus. Take the shuttle to the airport.  Don't buy cigarettes---they're cheaper in California and you barely smoke anyway.  Ignore your chipped nail polish.  Don't get your hair blown out.  Don't buy a week of Bikram classes because you're worried about getting fat.  Go hungry.  Let your feet ache. Remember your rent, gym membership, cell phone, health insurance, medications, credit cards, student loans, car insurance, the price of gasoline, groceries, and the fact that you took off work to pull off this trip.

Make the most of this weekend!  See everyone.  Everyone. This is a pleasure trip, but you are here on business---the business of finding a way back.  See the friend who you haven't seen since she returned from London, see the one you had the fight with, see the guy who owes you a favor, your roommates from Italy, your old boss, your old professor and get a signed copy of his new book.  Network.  Remind them that you exist even if you crossed the river.  Swing by the old office and chat up the editors, get to the Guggenheim, email that moron at MTV and invite her out for coffee.  Pay.  Insist.  Congratulate her on the engagement, the apartment. Tell her she looks wonderful.  How shiny her hair is.  Let her be the heyday Carrie Bradshaw we all wanted to be.

That weekend, I expected a definite answer from myself because I was confused: I gave up New York, a real job, and my friends to do what---drink overpriced Whole Foods vegetable juice and sunbathe to skin cancer?  Live with my mom? Surf Craigslist?

I have a new job now that I don't mind---a small creative business, decent pay.  But, as I told a friend that weekend over amber pints in the Village, I don't want to become a brick in the wall, and my boss can probably sense that I have one foot out the door.  My former New York Life is stuck in my mind like a song.  Even in the green, clean, serenity of my Bay Area enclave, I observe all things California with disdain and keep Manhattan in my mind's eye. Sometimes I intentionally say, "Are you waiting on line?" to remind myself that I haven't gotten used to being away.  When people wave clipboards at me and ask for my signature, I tell them, "I don't live here," and I mean it.  I haven't registered to vote, I haven't made any friends.  And when I'm on the freeway, I pretend I'm driving out of town for a beach house weekend, Atlantic ocean and hydrangea bushes, brown nannies and white babies, naked feet in loafers and fresh cinnamon donuts in East Hampton---only this time, I'm not sitting in the backseat of a Yukon, charged with three kids and counting the minutes until the paycheck.

But where am I actually going?  What city? What life?  I am clueless.  I see signs but can't read them.  I expected the long Manhattan weekend to make it clear—I belong here—to make me fall in love, like I did every night I rode home in a taxi, watching the city lights beyond the window glass, or looking at Chagall and chandeliers past the champagney Lincoln Center fountain.  Like I did those first, verdant, Central Park days of spring, or after exchanging some unexpected kindness with a stranger who was also a New Yorker.   After a New Yorker Smile, where one city dweller makes quick eye contact with another and they take turns exchanging eyes-looking-away smiles.  But I don't feel in love; I feel lost.  Starved, restless, unheard—and I don't know if place will fix that.  I'm an artist, I get to create something from nothing---but so what?

I do know that I'm waiting, actively waiting for an arrival, a renaissance---I'm not sure what to call it.  But I'm ready. Sometimes I could scream I'm so anxious for it to get here.  I'm underground in a tunnel, alone on a platform, and it will come to me, barreling forward, a train with no passengers, its headlights at first just a flicker through the dark, its weight a shudder on the tracks that sends the rats fleeing.  Then its sound will rush up and deafen me---all my blessed futures collide---and its wind will blow, tossing up the dormant riches that have been gathering dust on the floor of me.  I'll jump off the platform and grab hold of the metal snake as it bullets forward.  My old skin will open.  I'll have something to make, and I will make it.  That is the love I came looking for.

Thank You, Kindly

“Beautiful . . . enthralled . . . raving . . . wonderful . . . stunning . . . brilliant . . . gorgeous.” Last week I opened my email early Monday morning and found not one, but TWO lovely notes from a satisfied bride.  Just that Saturday, we had done her wedding florals and she apparently wrote the first “thank you” the very next day.  Then, after becoming concerned that the initial note may have gone to my junk mail, she wrote yet another, similarly warm letter.  She wanted to make absolutely sure I had been properly thanked.  This happens much less frequently than you might think.  I proudly pictured her making certain to fire off these emails before jetting to her post-wedding brunch.  In my elaborate fantasy, her new husband was calling out, “Janie, let’s get going, we are going to be late!” and she replied with, “Just give me one more minute, I simply MUST let Sarah know how fabulous she is!”

I found myself turning this bride’s sweet words over and over in my mind and it energized my work for the remainder of the week.  ‘This is why I do this,’ I thought.  I tried to access that sense of fulfillment during several decidedly lower moments during the work-week and even in one instance of standing over the changing table, with a fresh bathrobe suddenly soaked in poop.  Ironically, her wedding was only a small, intimate affair, for which we did just a few precious arrangements and yet it was one of the more immediate and glowing responses we have received to date.  The power of her generosity and this kind of communiqué cannot be underestimated.

Growing up, my parents were not terribly formal about much of anything and bucked societal convention in ways that were often spectacular, at times mortifying.  But, when I received a gift from a friend or relative, my mother would place a note card, envelope, and ink pen (she abhors a ball point) in front of me on the dining room table with the expectation that I write a personal “thank you.”  Just before my Grandmother passed, we were organizing some of her papers and found a prime example from my “thank you” canon.  I must have been about six years old and I was demonstrating my gratitude for a Chanukah gift.  In quaky script, I had seemingly offered a stream of consciousness communication that included the sentence, “OK, I have to go now, my stomach hurts.”  So, clearly, I hadn’t yet understood the precise etiquette involved in such a letter but I promise there was a solid “thank you” earlier on the page.  I imagined my Grandmother having a chuckle at my wording but perhaps being filled with the same tender feelings I experienced upon receiving this bride’s emails.

Throughout my adult life, I have endeavored to acknowledge the people around me with verbal and/or written “thank yous” whenever possible.  I have done this for gifts and deeds, alike.  Even though we operate almost exclusively in an internet age, I have traditionally resisted writing electronic thank yous and have instead opted for a carefully chosen, hand-written card.  I labored over my wedding thank you notes to the extent that they were sent out in (somewhat belated) spotty waves.  It always feels important that I write something personal and capture my genuine response to each treasured item.  Although many people find writing thank yous daunting, I generally relish the meditative process.

I am ashamed to admit that for the first time in my life, I dropped the ball on thank yous when our baby was born.  The bounty bestowed on us from friends and family has been truly overwhelming and continuous.  For a while there, even massively pregnant, I managed to stay on track with diligently recording each gift and responding in kind.  I wrote notes and letters and made phone calls.  This went beyond my being compulsive (although there was certainly some of that), this was me authentically intending to return the kindness and make our appreciation evident.  Toward the end, things went a little haywire with finishing my wedding season, entering into the Holidays, and preparing for a new life and I failed to record some things that came in the mail.  The slippage escalated and compounded when I lost one of my master spreadsheets matching names and gifts.  Ultimately, I gave up altogether and became convinced that slighted friends and family all over the country were preparing to weed us out of their lives.  At one point, I recalled that a close friend who recently had TWINS had been prompt with her thank yous and I sank even lower.  No excuse, Sarah.  No excuse.  If anyone still waiting on a thank you is reading this piece . . . thank you?

Perhaps the most significant thank yous, in my view, are the daily acknowledgements in relationships.  I try assiduously to thank my husband for something, anything at least once a day.  If he says something kind, puts away the clean dishes, walks the dog, anticipates my food craving . . . I make an effort to tell him I feel lucky to be with him.  He invariably says something like “I live here, too,” or “You don’t have to thank me for that.”  Sometimes he uses it as an opportunity for bombast and mild teasing, “WHAT KIND OF HUSBAND WOULD I BE IF I DIDN’T . . .”  But, I know it gives him a boost and lends value to the small tasks that frankly make up the majority of a life together.

My sister once told me that the secret to a happy marriage is “choosing someone you can eat dinner with every single night for the rest of your life.”  At the time, I thought that was absurdly unromantic.  Now I understand that it speaks to not only compatibility, but a capacity to do the mundane together and be grateful to be slogging through with the person sitting across from you.  I want my husband to hear about that gratitude as much as I am able to proffer it.

My recent experience with this gracious bride reminds me to be voluminous with praise and recognition.  There are countless people who do not just do enormously nice things for me all the time, but provide a series of tiny kindnesses that get me through the week.  The ripple effect of a hand wave when someone lets you into her lane on the FDR to a beautifully crafted missive on letterpress for a huge favor from a friend is undeniable.  This is hokey, fine.  But, a well-timed and well-executed demonstration of gratitude is totally free and can shore up even the most jaded among us.  I don’t always recycle appropriately (I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW A MILK CARTON IS A PLASTIC) but I can take a brief moment to thank the guy for toasting my bagel to perfection.

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]

Urban Foraging

I wish I could say that I forage with wild abandon all over Brooklyn. I wish I scouted mulberry trees and returned as they began to fruit, that I rooted around for burdock in city parks and dug up sidewalk purslane and dandelion greens. Truth is, I’m something of a serial rule-abider and foraging in the city makes me nervous. In the country, there’s more of a sense of communal ownership. At the very least, you can usually find a field and wooded path where nobody’s there to watch as you fill a basket or two. Growing up, my mom would pick my sisters and I up from soccer practice and pull our lumbering minivan off the side of road to pull down a bramble of bittersweet for the front door. She’d spot a cluster of black-eyed susans during a walk by the beach, and we’d have a vase full of them at home. Once, she enlisted me and all three of my sisters to dig up an entire forest floor of daffodils in order to save them from their impending death by backhoe. You’d think that all of this wanton disregard for personal property would have instilled in me a similar streak. In some measure at least, it seems to have done the opposite. I get nervous about breaking rules. In the city, the side of road usually means someone’s yard. Trees have fences around them, for goodness sake. Foraging in city parks is frowned upon by park officials and last week when the juneberries were at their peak in Brooklyn Bridge Park, all I could muster was to pop a few ripe ones into my mouth. When I saw a young couple filling containers to take home, I felt a pang of jealousy, but found no more courageous reserves to harvest a pie's worth myself.

Besides my mild case of  rule-abiding, there’s also the pollution factor. I worry thinking about the kinds of things city plants are supping on. If the filmy dust on my window sill is any indication, there’s a lot of stuff floating around in the air around here, and not all of it can be good. Brooklyn Bridge Park is managed organically, but the same can’t be said for the 1700 parks managed by the City Parks Department. [gallery link="file" exclude="2086"]

Sometimes though, even a scaredy cat needs to face her fears. This weekend, I enlisted the help of my fiancé James to do some old fashioned foraging. If you live in New York, you might know that it’s linden flower season. Take a stroll down many of the city’s sidewalks and you’ll stumble upon the intoxicatingly floral scent of just-blossomed linden. It’s heady stuff. Dried, linden leaves and flowers make one of my favorite tisanes. It reminds me of lazy evenings spent in the south of France. After dinner and cheese and a glass or three of wine, we’d sip linden flower tea and ease even more gracefully into the evening. James and I plucked a whole bagful of the new spring leaves---flowers still attached---and I strung them up to dry in our apartment. Another batch is steeping, destined for syrup.

There’s yet to be a Brooklyn-berry pie baked at our house, but I think I just got a step closer. What about you? Any courageous foragers out there?

Ode to House Hunters

I wouldn’t call myself particularly design-oriented. I appreciate good design and good aesthetics, but I’m not oft-inspired to do anything I would call “design” at my home beyond being sure that I can see my alarm clock from my side of the bed. That said, I love HGTV. That’s Home and Garden Television if you are not familiar. I came to HGTV slowly. As a teen, my mother occasionally watched their shows, but I was resistant to the appeal. I would never make my own headboard---why should I watch someone else do it? Never mind that I will never be a 1960s ad man nor a police detective and I happily watch shows about those enterprises.

At some point in the last decade, it all changed. Was it that I matured, became an adult, and suddenly had an interest in the aesthetics of my abode? Absolutely not. What changed was the introduction of House Hunters to the channel. House Hunters is addictive and infuriating. It has a simple rhythm, not unlike Law and Order, that is soothing and anesthetic.  House Hunters allows me, from the comfort of my couch, to judge the interiors of stranger’s homes.  I find this remarkably relaxing.

Each episode is structured in the exact same way. Viewers accompany potential house buyers on visits to three different potential homes. The prospective buyers walk around the homes, commenting on what they like and don’t like. Sometimes the prospective buyers affect the episode minimally. They want granite countertops and open concepts and are pretty bland. On other occasions the prospective buyers can be absurdly demanding, and it can be fun watching their dreams of finding a four-bedroom house for under two hundred thousand dollars dissolve. Schadenfreude is a key component of watching House Hunters. Aristotle said that good tragedy must have spectacle, and the best episodes include the spectacle of dreams dashed or the buyers being shown a short sale house that was clearly trashed by some combination of frat boys and rabid beavers.

On occasion, the prospective buyers are people I want to root for. They seem friendly and intelligent and just want a place where they can grow some plants or have a baby.  Or, they realize that they will have to pay more for the neighborhood they really want to live in and they accept it and take the plunge. This can be satisfying as well, but not necessarily cathartic for the viewer.

Often there’s a semi-manufactured conflict in the episode. It might be a conflict between spouses, an adult child house hunting with parents who aren’t ready for their child to grow up, or a newly-divorced middle aged woman looking to start over. I accompanied my wife to a professional conference once and we saw a gentleman there whom we recognized. We saw him from afar and couldn’t remember his name and then we realized, “Oh, right, it’s that guy from House Hunters who lived in Knoxville who mocked his wife’s interest in Feng Shui!”

Regardless of the manufactured conflict of the episode, the viewer is led through three homes. Sometimes there are murals. Sometimes there are dolls. Sometimes there are words on the wall (you know what I mean, things like “The food here is seasoned with love” in the kitchen. I loathe words on the wall).  On every third episode, there’s a man demanding space for a “man cave” where he can watch football and not have to interact with his family, and everyone around him treats him like this is appropriate, totally ignoring the fact that “man cave” is just “cave man” backwards. All of these are targets for disdain. I know that when I have stored up disdain from a rough week at work, I can simply spend twenty-two minutes with House Hunters to release it upon unwitting strangers.

There are HGTV purists who decry the fact that the network’s programming consists mainly of real estate-related shows, including many House Hunters copycats. They miss the emphasis on design and home improvement. I’ll admit, the joys of House Hunters are only tangentially related to the concepts of “home and garden.” Not unlike MTV forgoing music videos in favor of teen mothers, and the History Channel forgoing history in favor of pawn shop proprietors, HGTV knows where the ratings lie, and it’s with They Who Love to Judge (while often in pajama pants). I am not necessarily proud of being a part of that demographic, but at least I know I am not alone.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An Introduction

I’ve always been something of a city mouse and a country mouse. For me, the New York City skyline makes me catch my breath in just the same way that the rocky coast of Maine does. Whether I’m driving down a country road or cruising down the West Side Highway at sunset, my heart fills with pure and unadulterated glee. People like to draw stark lines between the city and the country. Where the city is fast-paced and full of energy, the country is calm and quiet. Where life in the city is described as complicated, country life is depicted as simple, serene. The reality, of course, is that the two ideals don’t have to exist so separately. To make sure that when I’m in one spot I’m not spending all of my spare time wishing I were someplace else, I’ve chosen to bring bits of my country life into my city life. You can see them in the photographs I take: my window box in Brooklyn, flower stands at farmer’s markets, herbal tea, brewed at home.

At first glance, this marriage of country and city appears to be mostly an aesthetic choice.  But I don’t eat farm fresh produce just because it’s beautiful to photograph and my choice to fill my home only with flowers from nearby farmers goes beyond my particular adoration of Black-eyed Susans. For me, these choices also take into account my impact on the planet. I’m not saying that country folk have all the world’s environmental questions sorted, but sometimes living in a big city can mean that the nuances of seasons and the environmental impact of our choices can feel distant. The truth is that whether we’re in the country or the city or in all the places in between, we’re living in an era of global climate change. In the face of these changes, it’s been important for me to reconsider my own lifestyle.

For the most part, the changes I’ve made have been small and gradual. I was never a Hummer-driving, Big Mac-eating lady to begin with. But carefully thinking about the impact of my lifestyle on the planet has become a part of my everyday life.  I may live in a big city, but I’m trying my darndest to make sure that I stay in touch with the country all around me. Rather than flee the grit of the city for a simpler life in the country, for now anyway, I’m committed to making a simple life in the city. It’s mostly a fallacy that life in the country is so simple, anyway. Just ask my sister, she’s a farmer.

It’s a tough thing, this writing about sustainabilty and lifestyle. For some folks, it will across as preachy: pushing an agenda that finishes by boosting the confidence of the author and trampling on the choices of readers. For others, it won't go far enough: buying cut flowers from a nearby farmer isn’t going save the planet. Always, the issues are complicated. What of the workers? What of the economics? How do you afford grass-fed meat, anyway? This column isn’t a place for me to tell you what to do,  it’s a space for me to chronicle what I’m doing. It’s a celebration of the city. It’s a celebration of the country. Mostly, it’s a celebration of the planet and a story about making my place in it. I hope you’ll indulge me. 

Looking Forward: No Place Like Home (Wherever That Is)

“Where are you headed?” the cabbie asked. “Going on vacation?” He’d just picked me up at my apartment with instructions to deliver me to JFK.  This was just over two weeks ago, a sunny Friday afternoon. “I’m going to L.A.,” I told him, “Home.”

In college, “home” was where my family lived. My dorm rooms, apartments, and communal digs were temporary; my tenure in the sleepy, beach-centric college town I loved had an expiration date. When I graduated, I continued the transient life, making stops in Cambodia, New Zealand, Japan---and finally New York City.

I’ve lived here now for three years, and frequently get asked how long I plan on staying---can I see myself settling here permanently? Or will I move back “home” in a few years?

As with most big questions in my life right now, I don’t have answers. However, I do often tell people that New York feels like “The One"; that I love its noisiness and smelliness, its history and cultural mishmash. I live here and work here. Most of my friends are here. For all intents and purposes, my life is here. And yet, it still feels a bit funny to refer to New York as home. In fact, it's a strange concept for me to think of home as anywhere other than where my parents are.

Is home defined by family, I wonder? Parents? Friends? Or is it where you work? Play? Lay your head at night? I'm not sure. I have a feeling the answer’s different for everybody.

On my recent trip to L.A., I spent ten relaxing days padding around the house, chatting with my parents, sitting around the dinner table eating meals I grew up eating. This definitely felt like home. It felt familiar. It felt safe. And while I don’t feel the same attachment to the city of Los Angeles as I do to New York, most of my family lives in L.A. And that means a lot.

In some ways, my heart aches to set down roots somewhere, to feel like I have a home of my own. In other ways, I know I have the rest of my life to feel settled. As a fellow blogger said to me over brunch recently, “You have plenty of time ahead of you to sit at home in the suburbs on a Saturday night.”

Early last week, I boarded a red-eye flight back to New York that touched down a few minutes after 5 the next morning. The sun was just rising; I’d barely slept. As I climbed into the backseat of a waiting taxi, I could only think of one thing: bed. I closed my eyes.

“This it?” the cab driver asked, squinting up at my red brick building. Twenty minutes had passed. We’d arrived. I answered “yes”, thanked him, and paid the fare.

“Have a nice day,” he said, handing me my suitcase. “And welcome home.”

I Know a Lot of Mothers

I know a lot of mothers. I have a mother. I am a mother. I have watched my sister and many friends become mothers. I work with mothers. As a pediatric nurse practitioner, I have worked with teen mothers in New York City’s foster care system. I have worked with mothers on the Upper East Side. I have worked with Noe Valley moms in San Francisco. I have worked with mothers in as many family constructs as are imaginable. I can’t avoid mothers! The privilege to meet and talk with hundreds of mothers has afforded me an intimate glimpse into 21st century motherhood, and I see the emotional stress it creates. I was asked recently by a mother if she had done irreparable damage to her son. Her son was having significant constipation despite her best and plentiful efforts, and its root cause certainly wasn’t her fault. In my experience constipation is rarely a permanent state, so even though it was not solved at that moment, it didn’t mean it couldn’t change tomorrow. Yet, while it was happening, she felt like she had really done harm, and she blamed herself for not being able to find the one key solution to solving her son’s distress. Her sentiments are ones I hear a lot: a fear that our mothering attempts aren’t good enough and potentially so egregious that they’re permanently damaging.

Like so many other aspects of our modern lives there is a message of fear being driven into the minds of our new mothers. Despite the dramatic accomplishments of 21st century women---earning the majority of higher education degrees in this country, becoming household breadwinners, and having the ultimate freedom to dress as we like, say what we feel and choose our marital partners---I still see a lot of women who were clearly confident and successful in their lives before having children subsequently become crippled by the multitude of decisions required for motherhood. Where does this fear come from?

I suspect some of this fear to trust our instincts begins during pregnancy when the process of labor looms ahead, making many women become anxious about the pain of childbirth. It’s why 84% of first-time mothers choose to have an epidural, many before even experiencing the first twinges of contractions. Or maybe it’s when women are selecting items for their baby registry, and they begin to feel materially unprepared to care for their new infant being inundated with the marketing of “essential” baby gear and products. They’re told they can’t just bring a baby home without places ready to put the baby, soothe the baby, carry the baby, bathe the baby, feed the baby, stroll the baby. The message that the baby-gear marketing gives to new mothers is that they are unequipped. Or perhaps it’s that the experience of motherhood has become overly intellectualized to the point that we can’t trust our instincts. We read competing books theorizing about how to parent (be a tiger mom or a Zen momma), how to feed, how to sleep train, how to create the perfect high achiever, all while not landing them in therapy. Or perhaps it’s that we really do live in a toxic world and even have a toxic womb and the number of chemicals, pollutants, and pesticides in our food, water and environment make raising children a terrifying endeavor.

Despite the fears and new stresses that becoming a mother puts on women, the majority of women I encounter face the challenges and do their best to navigate their way through the bumpy and unpredictable path of motherhood. I think we women, good at being task-driven and achievement-oriented, quickly realize the gravity of our new role that first time we hold our new baby in our arms. Unlike our iphones, this new tiny being didn’t come with a manual. Instead, we must decipher the needs and adapt to the powerful rhythms of our new baby that is distinct from any other.

It is true that being a mother may be the most important job we have in this life, but even if we feel insecure, we can still find personal joys in its challenges. We need not get bogged down with piling guilt on ourselves or comparing ourselves to how other mothers express motherhood. Just as we quickly learn that our baby is unique, we too, must get comfortable with creating our own style of motherhood. I love to encourage families to create their own family culture--expressed through the spices they use to cook to the way they spend their Saturday mornings. Creating family customs and routines that are personal help to build confidence and make motherhood fun.

I work fulltime so I find that the time I have with my daughter, Eloise, is really just book-ended during the week. Mornings are always rushed for us as I focus to get her ready so that my husband can take her to daycare. I try to make the rushed process fun--we might read a book while getting dressed or we make up silly songs while mixing her oatmeal “mommy stirs the water, Ella stirs the milk.” In the evenings we’re less rushed, but we still need to get a lot done in a short time. Still I try to make more time for play and cuddles. I discovered when Eloise was six months old that I could make her giggle and since then I try to do one thing every day to hear that adorable, pure laughter. Our latest game involves us pretending to chew bubblegum then popping each other’s imaginary bubbles that ends in hysteria. We get our cuddles in during the bedtime routine--three books with daddy and me and two songs just the two of us. I know I can’t be present for Eloise all day/every day, but in the time I do have with her, I try to be mindful to keep those sacred two hours each evening Eloise-focused. And of course each day that is a challenge as she’s two and meltdowns are plentiful!

The parenting decisions we make will certainly impact our children, but which ones and to what degree is unknown. The decisions that matter most are the simple ones that don't require monetary means or social status. In the long term it really doesn't matter if you have the fanciest stroller, read the latest how-to-train your baby book, or bought the current new fangled baby gear. What matters most are not things that need to be acquired but things we already possess. In our harried 21st Century lives, time with our children may be limited, but in the time we do have it's so important to do our best to be truly present, find ways to be playful, nurture with physical touch, and encourage their curiosity. Take heart in knowing that most of what our kids take away from our mothering is out of our command. Our children will grow and develop into themselves in spite of us. We are certainly going to make mistakes, ones that we can’t even anticipate yet, but why not have fun doing it? Let's roll up our sleeves, dig in and get our hands messy, and just do our best!

Emily Novak Waight is a pediatric nurse practitioner in San Francisco. She has worked with families in New York and San Francisco across a range of cultures and backgrounds. She lives with her husband and daughter, and loves to run, hike, and enjoy sunny days on her deck with her family.