And to All a Good Night

What happens when you put your Jewish friend in charge of stringing the lights on the tree, is that you get to the bottom and have no way to plug them in.  “What I have here in my hand is two female parts, but it seems like I need two male parts,” I called out to my oldest friend.  She looked perplexed, herself, having never been the one to do the lights on the tree.  The tree endeavor (both selection and installation) had always been the province of her husband, who made a big production out of it with her kids.  He had been gone just three months and the whole operation carried a pall of sadness.  I was determined to establish a fresh tradition, help her feel confident in her new role and win the day with enthusiasm.  The kids had been good sports at the tree lot that morning, although it must have been terribly disorienting to be there without their father.  I felt the least we could do was to get the tree going before nightfall.  Ultimately, we had to call up our reserves---two effective and creative friends (with four children between them), both Mommies who were responsible for all things tree-related in their homes.  Within the space of twenty minutes, those two had stripped the tree, restrung the lights and carefully dotted the whole situation with ornaments.  That day, my status as “other” when it comes to celebrating Christmas and participating in the “Holiday Season” took a back seat to being present for a loved one. I returned home feeling decidedly less sorry for myself.  Even considering my pattern (like so many American Jews) of feeling a bit left out at this time of year, I had to consider the heartache of my friend and so many others who have lost a spouse or someone close to them, knowing the pain of a loss like that is much more acute during Holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and the assorted benchmarks of life.

As much as I have my own issues with the Christmas behemoth, its value as a touchstone for many families in this country is undeniable.  It is a marker around which people create important memories with one another.  Children experience Christmas as an expression of familial love and have the opportunity to be showered with special attention by parents and extended family.  Adults take time away from work to be with their families and reflect.  Sometimes people even use the Holiday as a way to process wounds that haunt them from childhood.  The corrective experience of making your own Christmas for your own family as an adult must be incredibly powerful on a number of levels.

There still resides inside me, the smart-ass fourth grader who wrote an essay about how the White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony was a violation of church and state.  This represented my desperate attempt to communicate the plight of the American, Jewish 8-year-old during the Holidays.  Back in the 80s, they didn’t really show much of Reagan lighting an obligatory Menorah somewhere or sitting down with his staff for a game of Dreidl.  And I likely would have argued that, to be fair, he shouldn’t be publicly participating in any religious celebration.  They also didn’t give Chanukah much air-time in the media in general back then, which made it even more critical that I drag my Mom into my elementary classrooms so that she could fry up Latkes on an electric griddle.  There is almost nothing more tragic than a bunch of disinterested school children carting floppy paper plates of greasy potato pancakes and dollops of applesauce to their desks to “enjoy.”  “Also, we get chocolate coins!” I asserted to anyone who would listen.

While I feel certain that I will be confronted with many uncomfortable conversations with my own children about why we don’t adorn our home or really do anything amazing at this time of year, I also trust that they will find ways to turn their outsider status into something interesting.  They might end up with a fantastic sense of humor about it.  It might increase their empathy for people that experience actual “other” status (people of color, immigrants, gay families) and who live permanently outside the mainstream.

I will always feel a little twinge at Christmas time.  I will try and remind myself that I can appreciate someone else’s traditions and how profound they are without needing to participate myself.  We have our own traditions on December 25th– Dim Sum!  Blockbuster movies!---and I remain grateful that I won’t need to cling to them like a life-raft, girding against loss.

Lessons from Copenhagen...

Dear Clara, Believe it or not, our time in Washington is coming to a close.  When we arrived last summer, two years seemed like decades away, but in less than half a year, we’ll be on the move again.  We know where now, and that always lifts burden off my shoulders.  I never really mind where the home is, but I do like knowing what I should plan for.  Your father and I did a little scouting mission to our new home-to-be this past month, and here’s what we noticed so far about Copenhagen, Denmark:

• Candles are cozy and lighting matters: In a place that gets dark by the time most of us are finishing up lunch, light and atmosphere matter a lot.  We had heard a lot about Danish “hygge”, which can only be loosely translated as a feeling of coziness or warmth, but we didn’t really understand to what extent those principles of creating a welcoming environment really matter.  Even the Laundromat had candelabras and everyone took their job of creating an environment you want to be in very seriously.
• There is no such thing as bad weather: . . . only bad clothes for the weather---many a Dane seems to say that with pride.  And it’s true---weather conditions, again in a place with a long and cold winter, don’t seem to stop people from doing much.  Whether it was dark or cold or rainy, people had on the appropriate footwear or layers or hats or gloves, and everyone was out, on their bikes no less.   It was a reminder for us that if you’re prepared, you can still be up for anything.
• Fresh air is good for you: In a similar vein to the above, people seemed to be ready and willing to be outside and partake in fresh air.  We saw baby carriages on the outside of coffee shops---with babies still in them---and children out at recess.  Fresh, clean air is a luxury that refreshes the body instantly.  If we’re lucky enough to be surrounded by fresh, clean air, we should take advantage of it.
• Early to bed, early to rise: We arrived just past ten o’clock in the evening our first night, and already all the restaurants were closing up, including in the hotel.  Everything seems to be happening earlier here: people get out of work earlier, they eat earlier and they go to bed earlier.  Yet somehow, I bet their day is still longer.
• Maybe things are supposed to be more expensive sometimes: You notice instantly that life in Copenhagen doesn’t come cheap.  Even the small things, such as a simple coffees in a café, are easily three times the price we’re use to paying.  I know we will be quick to complain about the cost of living---it’s an adjustment after all, and paying more for one thing, means having less for another.  Yet, life in Copenhagen seems to be pretty good; people seem to be taken care of.  I’m sure we’ll get a better sense of how everything works once we’re living there day in and day out, but the thought occurred to me, maybe it’s not a bad thing to pay more for the smaller things in life if it guarantees that some of the bigger things will be provided for.

I can’t wait to explore our new home with you –

All my love,

Mom

Doing it Yourself

This past weekend I infused honey in my tiny Brooklyn apartment. Before you get the wrong idea: infusing honey is no great feat of urban homesteading. The process itself is not much more difficult than than steeping a bag of tea. Avoiding a sticky mess is the real challenge but barring any honey disasters, it’s a simple task: add spices to honey, heat honey, strain honey, pour honey into sterilized jars and seal them up. Before the holidays I’ll wrap my amber jars of cinnamon and cardamom-infused honey in a piece of burlap and tie them up with ribbon. They’ll serve as tiny gifts to family members who we’ve traveled far to see: a little treat from my kitchen to theirs.

I like this kind of gift-giving. It’s simple and the act of making the gifts serves as a quiet moment in what can be a hectic season. To be totally honest, it’s more about the joy that it brings me than anything else. Instead of the anxiety of spending hours looking for an affordable gift in crowded stores, making the honey was peaceful, even soothing. For the hour or two that I spent gathering my supplies and preparing my gifts, I had nothing to do but remember to stir the honey and make sure that I didn’t spill anything. There was no whiny Christmas music, no pushy shoppers, just me and my glass jars in a comically small kitchen.

As I strained honey into cup-sized jars I thought about the different ways that our hosts might use their gift. One will stir hers into into cups of tea, another will drizzle it over buttered toast, still one more will pass it along to an unsuspecting neighbor, never to be seen again. There’s no perfect solution when it comes to giving holiday gifts, but in my view, making a little something in your own kitchen comes pretty close. Even if the finished product languishes in someone's cupboard, you've gained yourself a few quiet moments of holiday cheer. For me, that's reason enough to roll up my sleeves and get to work.

Slowing the Season Down

I love the holiday season. I love the air of festivity, the sense of wonderment that seems to slip into the world as we polish off our Thanksgiving leftovers. I love catching glimpses of my neighbors’ Christmas trees through unshaded windows in the dark of early evening. I love the happiness, the large-heartedness, that seems to linger in the atmosphere as days tick on toward December’s end. But I won’t lie: Sometimes I hate the holiday season, too.

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, my husband—whose inner ten-year-old makes an appearance as soon as Christmas is on the horizon—asked me almost every day, with great enthusiasm in his voice, “Are you excited for Christmas?”

“I’m not ready for Christmas,” I said every time. I meant that I wasn’t ready for the rush and bustle, the overcrowded calendar that seems to be part and parcel of the modern December experience. I was looking forward to all of the things we had planned for the season—family parties, Advent Sunday celebrations, tickets to see a live performance of A Christmas Carol—but I was dreading them, too. I’d struggled enough during November with a relentless schedule and the toll it took on my pregnant, chronically-ill body.

As November waned, my husband and I returned from a Thanksgiving trip to visit family with me in not-so-great condition. A few days later, we bundled into coats and scarves and walked two blocks to a nearby tree stand to purchase this year’s Christmas beauty, which my husband proceeded to carry (yes, carry) home in a cinema-esque show of manliness. We tumbled back into our house with our prize, laughing and red-cheeked.

Within hours, I was in the grip of an unpleasant bout of pleurisy, a usually-not-serious-but-very-painful lung condition. Afraid to take the narcotic in my kitchen cupboard—saved for just these attacks of pleurisy—in my gravid state, I suffered through the pain all night, unable to get a deep enough breath to drop off to sleep.

I watched the clock slowly tick on through the night, and I thought, I have to re-think my December.

The next morning, after I’d managed a few hours of restless sleep, I sat down and looked at what we had planned for the month. I sent e-mails bowing out of family events that were too far away or too much to handle. I bought airline tickets to Portland so that our post-Christmas visit to my parents could be made without a thirteen-hour drive each way. I prioritized the list of errands I needed to run and decided to ignore the ones that weren’t urgent.

And in the two weeks that followed, I slowed down. I listened to my body, letting it tell me what it needed. I put off those errands until they became necessities. I didn’t worry so much if the dishes stayed in the sink until evening.

As I sit here writing this now, in the twinkling glow of my Christmas tree lights, I am glad for that forced slowing-down. I wouldn’t have chosen to spend the beginning of my December couch-bound and sick, but it was, I think, what I needed.

Because, in the stepping back, the conscious choice to let go of things that weren’t urgent (and even some things that seemed urgent), I found my way back into the love of the holiday season. I played Christmas music on Pandora and drank peppermint hot chocolate. I let the warmth and the joy of the season seep in, without letting the guilt come with it.

I am far from perfect—but, I am reminding myself, I am enough.

Maybe next time I’ll be able to remember the importance of slowing the season down without being forced into it.

How do you deal with the holiday season madness? Do you find yourself slowing down or speeding up as Christmas draws closer?

When the universe winks [or: Wagon Wheel]

There have been times in my work with communities affected by conflict when I have longed for a stronger belief in a supernatural deity. I have been compelled to pray, to hope that someone out there is listening. At this stage in my life, my imagination of that "supernatural something" that resides outside of ourselves does not take the form of a deity. Rather, my belief can be summarized in the following phrase: The universe is winking.

You know the moments I am describing: In the face of adversity or great irony, of what seems like undue strife, something happens to reassure you that you are not alone, that the world is not laughing in your face, that life unfolds on a continuum and the narratives of joy and heartbreak exist side-by-side. And, if recent experiences with fragility have been any indication, the universe winking at me comes with a soundtrack---Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel."

The song appeared in my life during a relationship that may never have happened had it not been for grief, fragility, and emotional confusion in the first place. As Joan Didion advises in Slouching Towards Bethlehem, "we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not" and, in that vein, I need to extend compassion to the self who thought she could drown grief in affection and be blind to the traits that would make the affection shallow and the grief immutable. He hated my music. That should have been a clue. Anyone who hates the company that Cat Power and Brandi Carlile and Rachael Yamagata keep, anyone who cannot reconcile himself with my army of women singer-songwriters, is dancing on a different sheet of music than the one in which I live. So he made me a CD. [Pause for nostalgic indulgence in the quaintness of making someone a CD, not a Spotify playlist.]

Of all the tracks on it, Wagon Wheel jumped out. Even after that budding relationship withered, Wagon Wheel lingered as the soundtrack to a segment of life for which I never quite found the words.

***

Second day in Cairo. I met the girls on an email list of foreigners in Egypt looking for roommates. I met the boys on a sailboat on the Nile the night before, on my first day. Coincidentally also the first day of Ramadan, the first of many firsts. We are in the boys' apartment and I am alive with the exhilaration of belonging, with the relief of how quickly one belongs when she is a foreigner among foreigners, a stranger among strangers---all of whom wish to throw out that label and slide over to best friends already. One of the boys picks up his guitar. Wagon Wheel is the first song he plays.

That song came with me to Uganda... Sudan... Colombia... Guatemala... Jerusalem. "Points South" of all that. Now Boston. So did the guitar. And so did the boy.

***

Katherine's birthday party. Budding friendship, united by parallel narratives which---defying all laws of geometry---intersect as they unravel. The kind of friendship that fills your sails with gratitude, that makes you feel like the universe can wink simply by putting someone in your path. Her friend brought his guitar. Barenaked Ladies. The Beatles. Leaving on a jet plane. Hallelujah, Jeff Buckley.

And then, inevitably, Wagon Wheel. A room full of people singing the words along. The universe winked extra pointedly that night, to make sure I knew I was home.

***

My love for the song is immaterial. This is not the kind of song that one feels was written for her. I have never been to Johnson City, Tennessee, never picked a banjo. This is not a lyrical attachment. Rather, Wagon Wheel is my clue to pay attention. It is the way that I know that, even if I am trudging through the mud right now, somewhere out there the universe is winking. It is the music that plays, almost invisibly, to make sure that I am listening.

Looking Forward: Valuables.

If your home were on fire, what would you take with you? My roommate, Natalie, and I contemplated this recently in socks and slippers, sprawled in our living room on a rainy weekend afternoon. After establishing that much of what was really valuable to us---travel mementos, yearbooks, hard copies of old photographs---were stowed safely at our parents’ houses, we moved on to what was with us now, as adults, in the little Brooklyn apartment we’ve inhabited for the past two years.

We’d both take our laptops, we decided. Our cameras. Our passports. But what else?

“My signed Strokes album?” Natalie offered.

“My vintage fox collar?” I suggested.

We laughed about this, noting the lack---both surprising and disturbing---of sentimental items in our home. We talked about how lucky we were---that if worst came to worst, nothing of real value would be lost.

Then we wracked our brains for more---surely there must be something we were forgetting.

But there wasn’t.

--

Things haven’t always been this way, though.

“Your room looks like a museum,” my friend Maya said to me once. “I’m afraid to touch anything in it."

She was referring to my high school bedroom, where the pillows on my bed were always arranged just so; where there was always a stack of magazines on my nightstand, perfectly straightened; where I had old album covers lining my shelves, as if they were for sale in a record store.

What I remember most about that room, though, wasn’t its obsessive order, but the items that populated it---items I loved, items that represented who I was at that time. There was an electric guitar, seldom used but much-admired. A vintage Who poster, covered in creases from years of display. And a record player, of course, a gift from my godparents.

My college bedroom contained stacks of creative writing papers, stored in boxes under my bed; souvenirs from my trip to India; an entire wall of Polaroids.

Accumulating these things took time. And I exhibited them carefully, almost as if they were items in a shrine. At various points in time, they were things I couldn’t imagine living without.

---

Today, in my new home, in my new city, I’m working (however slowly) on building a new collection of treasures. As time passes, I add to it here and there---photo booth pictures taped to the wall, frayed notepads stacked on my desk, cards from friends propped against picture frames.

Little by little, my home here is developing its story. It’s a happy work in progress.

Still, I wonder, would I scramble to take it all with me if I had to leave? Thinking it over as I write this, I realize that none of these items (or any of the belongings I prized in the past) are as significant as the experiences they commemorate---and that the most important things I’ve collected over the years aren’t things, they’re memories.

That’s a comforting thought.

Slowly, surely, I’m curating a new museum of my own here in my little apartment. There are things I love in it---things I can hold in my hands---but its most substantial collection is also its most valuable. And it won’t ever burn, won’t ever fall apart, won’t ever be lost.

XV. Provence

There is a French television show called Plus Belle la Vie that Agnès and I watch some evenings together, sitting on her neatly arranged couch with our feet on the floor. The show is set in Marseille, the large port town just a 30-minute bus ride away from Aix, and features lots of tanned characters with dramatic relationships and secret dealing in the underground crime scene. The usual stuff of soap operas, I expect, but it's a pretty nice half hour that I spend with Agnès. I’d take any kind of connection with her at this point. Our time together, however, does not always go uninterrupted.

Agnès’s son is named Jérôme. He is 13 years old and spends most of his time when he’s not at school in his room, playing online games or doing homework. I’ve been living in this small apartment for weeks, and I’ve still barely spent any time in the same room with him. Jérôme opts not to eat at the kitchen table for dinner most of the time, which I had never heard of in a French household until now. When he decides that he is hungry or just wants an answer to a homework problem he can’t solve, he shrieks Maman! Viens! in his shrill, pubescent voice. Mom! Come here!

And just like that, Agnès wordlessly gets up and goes. I stare after her every time, wondering why.

Live to Eat

My mom used to say that there are two types of people, with a very important distinction to be made between them. There are those who eat to live and those who live to eat. We, as a family, have always fallen into the latter category. Growing up, dinnertime was serious business. We gathered night after night, with a properly set table, a square meal, and post-dinner coffee (for the adults, of course). Friends who joined us were always amazed that we didn’t just eat and run, but seemingly enjoyed the process. At the top of her game, my mom was a great cook. We have the photographic evidence from birthdays past to suggest she was capable of extraordinary baking feats (homemade Big Bird cakes, for instance) and family members talk about the elegant dinner parties my mom threw when my parents were first married, but really, her specialty ran closer to the classics---the dishes that don’t require a recipe. Our cousin summed this up perfectly, joking that, “A recipe calls for an egg and Janice uses a marshmallow.” Pot roast, linguini and clam sauce, a perfect spiral ham, roasted chicken, escarole and beans, Sunday sauce: this was my mom’s food. Unfussy, with no pretenses---the kind of food that invited you to stay awhile.  She went to the public market in Rochester, not because it was trendy to eat seasonal and local, but because it was cheaper. “Everything’s a dollar!” she would exclaim, arms full of tomatoes, cucumbers, and romaine lettuce in the summer. As we grew up, and inevitably thought we knew everything, my sisters and I rolled our eyes at the predictability of her cooking. If she hosted a brunch, you were guaranteed an egg strata, ham, and a make-ahead French toast casserole. For summer barbeques by the pool, you could count on potato salad, macaroni salad with tuna, and a huge bowl of melon.

My mom was the only person I knew who could pull together a meal for 15 with no advance notice. She kept a bag or two of chips in the pantry, and veggies, dips and cheese in the fridge, ready to be pulled out on a moment’s notice if friends or family swung by unannounced. One Christmas not too long ago, our group doubled hours before the beef tenderloin, double baked potatoes, and salad were to hit the table, and I can tell you definitively that we still had leftovers. To this day, if you ask a family member or friend about my mom’s cooking, they will most certainly tell you about their favorite dish, but more importantly, about the memories that the food conjures. Sara will tell you about coming over on Thanksgiving or Christmas and digging the remaining spinach dip out of the bread bowl that my mom saved just for her. She’ll tell you how even with a house full of people, my mom would stop and really talk to her. My friend Meg will tell you about the taco turkey chili my mom had waiting for us on several occasions, when we sought refuge in Rochester after a particularly long week of college. She’ll tell you how my mom always made her feel at home, even in the handful of times she was there. Nikki will most definitely tell you about my mom’s clam sauce, and how she didn’t even need to ask for it when she came to Rochester. It was waiting, along with a pot of coffee after dinner, to give us all an excuse to sit and chat even longer. For me, it’s zucchini sautéed in tomatoes (with a heaping scoop of parmesan) and sausage and potatoes; the food that reminds me of sitting at the table on a Tuesday night---in other words, the ordinary food. It's my mom's salad, generously dressed with oil, red wine vinegar and Marie's blue cheese dressing, begging to be eaten directly out of the bowl. It's the recipes that also remind me so much of my grandma: the pizzelles made at Christmas time and the Easter bread---laced with anise and lightly frosted---that my mom hand delivered to eagerly waiting friends and family each year.

As the years passed, my mom’s enthusiasm for cooking waned. On more than one occasion in recent years, my mom and dad were known to have toast for dinner. “You can’t eat toast for dinner!” my sisters and I argued, but my mom didn’t care. She told us that after forty years of marriage, she was done cooking---except for Sunday dinners and holidays, of course. My sister and brother-in-law took over Thanksgiving hosting duties in the past few years, but as we realized this year, my mom was still the heart and soul of the operation. This was the first year my mom didn’t buy the turkey and bring it over on Wednesday night, completely dressed, with explicit directions about timing and temperatures. This was the first year she didn’t make her mashed potatoes---made ahead of time and frozen (controversial until you actually taste said potatoes)---her stuffing or her butternut squash. This was the first year she didn’t save the wishbone from the turkey, to make a wish on. And so this year we did the only thing we knew how to do without her: we made her food. My sisters and cousins spent the weekend before Thanksgiving mashing forty pounds of potatoes and wrangling with a number of unyielding squash.  Weeks before Thanksgiving, we panicked, not remembering the recipe for my mom’s stuffing. Katie, in Australia, came to the rescue. My mom’s stuffing has been a mainstay in her Australian Thanksgiving for years; her friends actually refer to it as Mrs. Brady’s stuffing. We sat down for Thanksgiving dinner, surrounded by my mom’s food and the family and friends who have sustained us over the last year. A close family friend said grace and lit a candle for my mom. Danielle lost both her parents in the last decade, and told us it was my mom who allowed her to appreciate Thanksgiving again.

My mom’s legacy is everywhere, but perhaps nowhere as clearly as at the dinner table. Whether it’s on fine china at Thanksgiving or pizza on paper plates, we continue to break bread together, sharing our food and our stories as we always have. It’s not just food, after all, it’s family.

For the rest of us

So, here we are again.  The Holiday Season is upon us.  Depending upon who are you are, this either means a great deal or almost nothing at all.  Whatever your traditions or affiliations (cultural, religious or otherwise), there is no escaping the Holiday Industrial Complex in this country.  Every year I struggle with the very mixed emotions that accompany my identity as a secular, Jewish but nostalgic and kind of sappy person.  I yearn for rituals and moments in which to touch base with family, consider particular stories/lessons about humanity, make special foods.  This year, as the matriarch in a new family, I am confronted with decisions about how to integrate “Holiday” traditions into our lives, for our daughter’s sake. Although in 2012, we say “Holiday” in reference to things that might take place in December (to include Chanukah, Kwanzaa), what we really mean is Christmas.  All jokes referring to paranoid conservatives spouting off about the "War on Christmas" or the "War on Jesus" aside . . . the popularization of Chanukah and Kwanzaa have always been simply a response to Christmas (and a pretty woeful one, at that).  Let’s face facts: Christmas will never not be a really huge deal and one that takes the cake.  Christmas is so embedded in our culture, our calendar, our winter and so beloved, there is no extricating it.  Beyond the gifts, music, food and décor, Christmas is also a Holiday onto which everyone’s personal psychodrama is superimposed.  The way in which families gather or don’t, the traditions people had as children or didn’t . . . the powerful dynamics at play during this time of year call up some of the deepest feelings of joy or longing for many Americans.  Oh and also, reverent people consider it holy and significant.

I grew up in a home that was very culturally Jewish, but didn’t really give much credence to Holidays, per se.  We typically belonged to a Synagogue, but mostly only went on the High Holidays, which, incidentally do not include Chanukah.  For Jews, the major deals are Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (New Year and Memorial Day-ish).  Tragically, our High Holidays don’t involve gifts.  And let's be honest---they aren't really all that fun.  Rosh Hashanah tries hard with apples and honey and talk of renewal, but is sort of a downer what with the stern warnings about being inscribed in the Book of Life.  Even the dressed up version of Chanukah has un-sing-able songs in minor keys and potato pancakes (?!).

Chanukah was a bit of an afterthought in my house and my parents often grumbled about how it is actually is a very minor Holiday, bastardized in this country to compete with Christmas.  As far as I know, we are the only culture in which Chanukah is celebrated with gifts.  The Americanized version of Chanukah can often look like a “Jewish Christmas,” with crass commercialism at the core.  Despite my profound yearnings as a child, my parents weren’t buying it or buying it, although some years they managed to go beyond the candle lighting and chocolate coins to bestow socks, pajamas or books.

While, as an adult, I can totally respect their philosophical stand on this front, as a child, I desperately wanted what I saw most other kids having---not just an embarrassment of gifts, but a whole season devoted to them.  I would spend time at friends' houses during December and watch as the tree was trimmed and all the rooms filled up with sparkling trinkets, bright parcels and the fragrance of cinnamon sticks.  The promise of this sacred time when everything got so cozy and everyone gathered together from far and wide (particularly salient for me, as my siblings were much older and lived all over the world) felt impossible to resist.

I also knew people growing up who were Jewish, but just threw in the towel and celebrated Christmas.  This was always sort of sad to me.  It spoke to two unfortunate realities---that Jews in this country feel so overwhelmed by the power of Christmas that they feel compelled to participate in another religion's Holiday and/or they feel their children can't tolerate December without the Bacchanalia.  Meanwhile, I totally get this.  I won't mince words, Christmas wins.  It is friggin’ awesome for kids.  And let’s not even consider families in which there is only one Jewish parent and they “celebrate both.”  I SAY AGAIN, CHRISTMAS WINS.

So how to make sense of it all now?  The fact is that my parents were consistently generous throughout the year with their love, their time and many of the material things we desired.  Just because I didn't score a payload at Christmas, doesn't mean I didn't have a wealth of toys and games.  I had way more than I needed, as so many of us did.  And despite my desire to be like the other kids, I never had to watch my parents grow anxious or irritable about shopping for a bounty of gifts or spending money they didn't have.  They also made it clear that it was highly inappropriate to develop a sense of entitlement about gifts, especially as a child.  These lessons were swallowed hard, but remain valuable.

I think this is what want for Isadora, ultimately.  I hope she feels loved beyond belief and that she lives with a sense of joy throughout the year.  I hope that she relishes how our family is different and feels confident and comfortable with who we are.  I hope we celebrate important milestones with good cheer and delicious foods in each season and take great pains to be together with extended family as often as possible.  I also plan to spoil her with frivolous gift items and possibly spend more money than is reasonable on things like a long sleeve t-shirt with a bulldog silkscreen.  And certainly most important, I intend to teach her about giving to others and being of service because we have so much relative to most.

(Images: Marco Ghitti via Flickr)

Blessed Table

As I sit down to type this evening I feel incredibly blessed.  I am after all, sitting down to write; that alone makes my heart soar.  I’m perched contentedly in the desk chair I found at an estate sale and painted a glossy candy apple red.  My desk is large square that used to be my great grandmother's dining room table.  Its glossy mahogany surface makes me feel connected in a way few possessions do. The small brass plate on the underside of the surface bears the name of a furniture company long out of business.  The raised letters of that little plaque remind me that the old saying is perhaps true: They just don’t make them like they used too.  This table is both sturdy and beautiful with rounded legs, beveled edges and has a perfection in shape and symmetry that I would have thought impossible outside of a factory.

After it was my great grandmother's, this table was my parents’ dining room table.  On holidays and special occasions we set it with my parents wedding china and covered its mahogany with a lace table cloth. Opposite the brass plaque there is a white sticker that no one has removed. It’s from the move we made when I was a sophomore in high school.  We moved a couple of other times, but I know that sticker as well as I know any graphic image, and it’s from 1998.  But that sticker isn’t the only marker of my childhood.  On the table surface is a giant scorch mark.  Some might call it ugly; some might even think it ruins the table.  I see the history, and I can’t help but smile as I think of the Advent Wreath that we all thought was so lovely: The tall purple and pink pillar taper candles surrounded by a ring of real evergreen.  I remember exactly what I was doing when the smoke detectors went off.

When my husband and I moved into our current home, there was no space for a dining room table, which I figured was just as well as we so rarely used it for such a purpose, but I couldn’t bear to part with my heirloom.  So I hauled it upstairs to my office and decided it would make a fine desk.

Tonight, I sit in my desk chair, a bottle of wine just within reach.  In front of me is, of course, the laptop I’m typing on. Two other sides hold my sewing machine and typewriter while the third I hope to someday organize into an organizational file system and not just a pile of paper.  From my chair I can see the cornfield behind my back yard, I can watch the light change as the sun sets, I can sip a glass of wine and write about a piece of furniture. How blessed indeed.

Gaia & Me

Two weeks have passed. My best friend suggested me to try to put my sorrow into words. I am still not sure this is a good idea---I opened this word document and the white page was staring at me with this blank and ominous look. CLOSE ME. GO BACK TO YOUR COUCH. Some time ago I wrote Elisabeth and Miya and said I couldn’t handle a new piece for my column. I lost a family member on November 10^th, my beloved yellow Labrador Gaia. After 11 years and 4 months together in this world, she is no longer with me. I have been feeling too empty to do anything but work. I still can’t think of much more. I go to the supermarket---that’s a big thing!---I go out for walks over the weekend, and every morning I drive to Milan to edit new pages of some book and discuss publishing options with my boss. I do my best at the office---I smile, break jokes, try to concentrate. And when I cross the exit doors in the evening, tears start to stream down my face. I am going home, yes, but my home is empty now. No hugs. No kisses on that big black nose. The immensity of this loss literally broke my heart. Elisabeth sent me two pieces written by Leigh Anna Thompson on The Equals Record some time ago. I could barely read Leigh Anna’s articles, so I did not finish the story of her loss of Max and Samus. It was too painful, too real and moving. But the few words I was able to read helped me to realize a very important thing---I AM NOT ALONE. There are many other people who consider animals our best companions and cry the most burning tears when our babies leave us.

Because Gaia was my happy baby. I still remember the first drive home in the car with her. I wanted to hold her in my arms, but my two-month-old yellow lab was already too playful to stay still. She spent her first night sleeping close to my bed. She was not alone, she had a new family, who was ready to give her all the love in this world.

I fell in love with her sooner than she fell in love with me. It’s not easy to share my feelings in a language that is not my native one, but my love was pure, wholehearted. She was the first very innocent being in my life. No words were needed, only positive things were shared. Long walks, relaxation, playing, hugs, vacations, afternoons on the couch, dinners with her staring at me and craving for food. And now all the gestures and habits, those little things that have made me happy for so long, are gone.

I was on vacation with my husband (Halloween weekend) in the south of Italy when my mom texted me. I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO TELL YOU, CAN I CALL? I understood right away. Yes, mothers of dogs have the sixth sense, too. Mamma told me Gaia had a severe internal bleeding, and there was an 80% chance she wasn’t going to survive the night. Dany and I ran back to the hotel, picked our luggage. My wonderful husband drove all night, 9 hours straight, while I couldn’t stop crying. I felt panic. Pure and simple panic. Time was running, and there was an entire country to cross from South to North. 600 miles. I arrived at the animal clinic Sunday morning at 7 AM. I knew my Gaia was inside there, and I wanted to see her. The vet suggested me to give her a few more hours and see if she would recover. The emotion of seeing me could be dangerous. I was confused. Just a few hours before they said she was dying, and now she seemed to feel better? I was happy and worried sick at the same time. So I waited, my heart full of mixed feelings. Could she survive? Could she come back home, perhaps? And she did. My Gaia was so strong to recover in the space of a few hours. Someone heard my prayers. OK, she was weak, had to take medicines, and have a CAT scan. But in the meantime, she could come home with me and rest. On Monday, the CAT scan broke my dreams once again---the liver was in a terminal condition. Tumor? Leukemia? Still a few days and the results of the tests would come. But at the same time, given her state, few days seemed to be all we had left.

I am a copy editor. The good thing about my job is that I can work from home, too, if I need. And how could I even think of going to the office when my Gaia apparently had such a short time left? So I sat close to her in the living room for the following days, wondering for how long the situation would last, and hoping the answer was forever. It was a long week of tears and hope, days when I couldn’t eat or sleep. Gaia did not seem to feel pain, she was weak, and very sweet. She was all hugs and kisses. She must have thought I was going nuts, breaking into tears every now and then.

On Saturday morning, November 10^th, it was Gaia who told me that she couldn’t resist anymore. I knew it. I just felt that Friday night was the last night. So in the morning I looked into her eyes, and she was asking me to let her go. I knew what I had to do. I had discussed it with my family and we did not want her to suffer, so we called the vet. I don’t want to share her last hours. They were the worst of my life. I wanted to hold her little and innocent soul---if I couldn’t keep her body with us, her soul had to remain with me forever. I could not stand or talk. I wanted to live forever in those hours. I prayed to God. And then I prayed the Sun, and the Moon, asking them to stop. Why not? Please, please, please, I need more time. And I squeezed my eyes as if this could make my prayers sound more pure. I had recently read Mitch Albom’s “The Time Keeper”. So I asked to become Father Time, to have an hourglass in my hands and be able to stop the time. But it didn’t work.

So now I am alone. Gaia lives in my heart. She is still in the house somehow---my mother still worries to keep the food out of her reach. She tells me she expects to see Gaia sleeping on her couch, or stealing an apple in the kitchen. But no, she is gone.

11 years and 4 months. In this time I graduated, I got my masters degree, I went to America and taught Italian for 3 years (oh, 3 years flying back to Italy every chance I got to make up for the time we were losing), I got married, and I started a new career in publishing. Eleven years of big changes, with my best friend/sister/daughter/companion Gaia always in our big family house, filling it with her presence. Always here close to us. Man, all those moments I gave for granted. Is it possible to have no regrets at all? I don’t think so, but I’m sure my girl was happy. She was a human, in a family of humans. And she was the most cheerful and spontaneous and loyal in the big house.

Many friends, dogs’ parents like me, told me she must be in some other place now, happy and not feeling any pain. I believe this is true, and feel her presence in the backyard when I open the windows in the morning. I believe right now she is here in my living room, in that corner where she used to sit. She is looking at me with those big sweet hazelnut eyes. She smiles. This gives me solace, for a while. And then I suddenly break, I cry like a baby because I miss her so badly. I physically miss her, I miss the fact that every day she was teaching me something new and precious.

And I find myself wondering if my sorrow will ever take another shape, the shape of the Sun, or the Moon maybe? The Sun will shine, warming me with her memory every day. And the Moon will shine, too, watching over me while I sleep and dream---I dream of her with me in the old days, and I dream of the new days that will come, in some other place, space and time.

I love you, Gaia.

Thank you all for reading this.

Coming and going

Last Thursday, I landed in Chicago and hit the ground running. I had just a couple of hours to catch a glimpse of the city before my work there began in earnest. And although I knew I’d be exhausted by the end of the trip, I wanted more than just bland seminar rooms and conference center halls to make up my first impressions of the city. It was the first time in a long time that I’ve simply showed up someplace new and set out to wander. As I hopped out of the cab on Michigan Avenue, I felt myself slow from my usual hurried pace to a leisurely stroll. I had no particular destination in mind, and in fact, had little sense of where I was to begin with.

It felt strange at first, to plop down in the middle of a purposeful crowd without much direction of my own, and then, all of a sudden, it felt so good. I wandered in and out of shops, just to browse, in a way I wouldn’t in my own city. I ran my fingertips over silky dresses and sequined tops. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and snapped photos. I smiled at strangers and held the door behind me.

Over the course of the next five days, I worked long hours and ate enough deep dish pizza to last me a decade. I took in all the twinkling lights and laughed at how Christmas seems to have blossomed rather early in Chicago. It’s funny how some places seem imbued with such magic when you meet them for the first time.

It felt just as delightful to go as it did to come back home to Atlanta, just as luxurious to sleep in a new bed as it did to return to my own. Our little place felt even more cozy than when I’d left, and I couldn’t help wondering at how sometimes slipping away and returning again is the perfect reminder of delight in newness and comfort in familiar.

Lessons from Thanskgiving...

Dear Clara, We’ve finally arrived at just about my favorite holiday of the year.  And not just mine.  I think everyone feels this way to some degree.  I confess that I really didn’t appreciate Thanksgiving for what it is until I went off to college and realized what a gift it is to be able to come home and sit around a shared table to take stock of good things around us.  Thanksgiving is such a unique holiday in that it’s something celebrated by nearly every American, regardless of religion or geography or race or anything else.  Everyone does it their own way, but just about everyone does it.

For us, we're in a bit of an inbetween stage.  Sometimes Thanksgiving is at our house far away from home, and sometimes we still go home to celebrate.  But in the ones that I’ve kept watch over, here’s what I’ve learned always makes the holiday come together:

• Always have room for one more: Thanksgiving is all about the opportunity to come home and be around your closest family and friends.  But not everyone can travel, not everyone has someone nearby, not everyone’s plans worked out.  Always have room for at least one more person at your table; you’ll be grateful you extended the invitation I promise.
• Share with those unfamiliar with the holiday: Thanksgiving really provokes a bit of a fascination amongst those who are non-Americans.  As you travel the world, or meet travelers at home, share this holiday with those who otherwise wouldn’t get to experience it.
• Set your table the night before: You’ll thank yourself the next day.  Also, set your champagne in the refrigerator the night before as well.  There’s no start to the holiday meal without at least one decently cold champagne toast!
• Count up how many oven dishes you have: It’s amazing but nearly everyone I know, myself included, have found themselves in a position where everything just won’t fit in the oven.  Abroad, where ovens are tiny, this is even easier to overlook.  Do a double check of what needs to go into the oven and when it needs to be there, to make sure you can fit everything in.
• Make an effort to be grateful:   Regardless of anything that might happen on this holiday, it is first and foremost about gratitude and mindfulness.  Set some time aside, whether on your own, or as a shared experience around the table, to really think about your blessings and what you’re grateful for.  Even in tougher times, we are still given so much, and we should take this opportunity to acknowledge what we have and how we can share it best.

And remember that I will always be grateful for you.  All my love,

Mom

Tradition

(If you’re a fan of old movies and/or musicals like me, I wish you luck getting the soundtrack to Fiddler on The Roof out of your head.) It’s probably no surprise that with the holiday season in full swing, my thoughts have turned to Traditions: the tried and true that I love and the possibility of making new ones.  As my sister and I have grown up our holiday family traditions have evolved.  We no longer leave cookies and milk out on Christmas Eve or receive a note from Santa with a paw print from Rudolf on Christmas morning.  But we still put presents under the tree and watch our favorite holiday movies: Holiday Inn, White Christmas, and The Muppet Christmas Carol.

This year I’ll be traveling on Christmas Day and won’t make it to my parent’s house until a day later. Surprisingly, I’m not bothered; I thought that I would be disappointed to be spending the 25^th away from home.  But it’s just not true.  Instead I’m excited for a long layover in a place I’ve never been as I know that the traditions and holiday celebrations will be waiting for me when I get back.

Perhaps this is something that others have already learned, but it’s a lesson I’m just now coming to appreciate: When it comes to traditions, it’s not really about the number on a calendar or the address on a door.  When and Where don’t matter; Who you spend your time with and How you spend it is all that makes a difference.

Imaginations of a different life

I was between places, which is increasingly where I think I live. Between Guatemala and Bosnia, between two different worlds of heartbreak and solitary immersion into the work that makes me come alive. Between the confusion of fulfillment and immense human tragedy inhabiting the same universe. There is a level of experience that comes with floating in the in-between places and it comes with a dance of transience, reflection, and anticipation.

A dear friend asked me during that in-between place if I ever imagined a smaller life. "Can you do away with it all? Kick it into the sea?" We all like to think that we can. "No, really, I'm serious. Small house on a Greek island. White house, blue windows. That is your life. All of your life. Can you do that?"

There is exhilaration to living in the privileged overlap between the life you imagined and the life you are inhabiting. As a guest lecturer in my Processes of International Negotiation class yesterday, former Ecuadorian President Jamil Mahuad posited "sometimes, real life is more imaginative than imagination." So what if that imagination shifts? What if, enamored as you are with your current life, grateful as you are for it, you also harbor a parallel imagination of a different life?

In that life, you wake up on a Greek island. You are blessed to call that your homeland.

Your hair smells of salt, your eyes breathe of sea.

Your days are sun and waves, white-washed and bright. Your breaths are deeper, your fingers slower when they type. Or write. Maybe they remember to write, pen intertwined between them.

You remember what slowness feels like. You smile more easily, you drop your shoulders to their intended height, well below your ears.

You call yourself a writer. A photographer. A creative soul. The labels matter less; they become easier to claim. You create. You put the whole force of your soul behind your creations.

Your senses become more acute, and so does your memory. Greek islands are for nostalgia and remembrance, for making memories, for sometimes forgetting them.

You know that Greece, or the islands, is not the only place where you can do all of this: where you can claim the labels, and create, and drop the shoulders, and inhale deeply. But you also know that Greece gives you permission -- and permission is what you need to set yourself on this trail...

You fill your palette with wine and feta, with warmth and embraces.

You love. Amply. The only way there is to love.

You call that your life.

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A Very Paleo Holiday

By Megan Flynn

A few days before Thanksgiving last year, my mother called to let me know that she had transformed her diet into one resembling that of a cave-woman. She had gone Paleo. No grains, no dairy, no sugar. And just in time for the holidays.

“So,” she said, “I’m still going to make mashed potatoes because I don’t want to push it on anyone this year, but do you really think I need to put butter and sour cream in them like I usually do?”

After trying to convince her that yes, she most certainly did need to put butter in the mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, she tried to convince me that yes, this time next year she most certainly would be making a Paleo-friendly meal for all of us, and that we were going to like it.

I was still really looking forward to going home for Thanksgiving, because who doesn’t love Thanksgiving? The food, the football, the family; it’s all good. Throw in some cocktails and the fact that my parents live on Smith Mountain Lake, and there’s really nothing else I’d rather be doing that weekend. Even if it means eating sausage and kale for breakfast in the morning.

On the day before the holiday, my family went to a shooting range and I found myself in the kitchen with nothing to keep me company but a mound of apples and even more yams, just waiting to be peeled. I was going to attempt to make a flourless, sugarless pie for my mother and anyone else who was brave enough to try it. I first made a traditional pumpkin pie, full of flour and sugar, for those of us who weren't willing to sacrifice our traditional eats for something as silly as life-long health. When that pie was in the oven, I began my challenge. And then something amazing happened: I got excited.

My skepticism and the negativity that surrounded it began to clear as I peeled the fruit and pre-heated the oven. I smiled as I rolled out the homemade pie dough, and I caught myself singing along with the radio as I cleaned up the counters and waited for my mysterious creation to bake.

The pie was terrible.

But we had a good laugh about it and my mom, who refuses to give up, swears that it makes the most perfect brunch with a side of bacon and eggs. It’s those moments—when something doesn't work and you laugh about it with the people you love the most, when the best parts of a holiday weekend are the quiet moments spent together around a table with a glass of wine—those are the things that remind us what the holidays are about. After Thanksgiving comes Christmas, and I know that when I once again return to my parents’ home, there will be no cookies set out for Santa. There will probably be no cookies at all. But I’m discovering more and more that I don’t really care.

One thing I’ve learned over the past few years is that while traditions are important, the people with whom you share them are irreplaceable. And here I am, a whole year later; my own diet completely changed to resemble that of a cave-woman, and I eat sausage and kale for breakfast all the time, and that sugarless pie sounds like a perfect side dish for brunch, and I know that even though we may say that holidays are about the cookies, that’s not always exactly the truth.

So whether or not there is sugar in your coffee; even though you’re confused about the uses of coconut oil and the lack of flour in that crust, what really matters is that you've found your way home once again.

Quiet Can Be Loud

I'm thrilled to introduce you to this week's contributor, Trina McNeilly. Trina needs no introduction to many of you, as she's the blogger behind the popular (and gorgeous)  La La Lovely. She's also a mom to FOUR!, a freelance writer and a self -proclaimed style scout, who is currently making her childhood home into her grown-up home.  What struck me immediately upon "meeting" Trina over email was first, her obvious kindness, and second, that she said the fear of turning into her mother isn't much of a fear at all for her. I know exactly what she means. And with that, I give you the lovely Trina.

By Trina McNeilly 

My mom kills me with kindness and loves the way we all want to be loved: unconditionally.  She was the mom that every other kid wanted to have and I was lucky enough that she was all mine.

We were the treat house.  Growing up, ours was the house that everyone wanted to play at; for the fun, undoubtedly, but also for the snacks (it was not unusual to catch a neighbor kid knocking on our front kitchen window asking my mom for sweets).  We had a home that people just wanted to be at.  I attribute this to my dad providing a wonderful place and my mom making it a home.  Besides giving us a home, the greatest thing they gave me and my siblings was the gift of being kids.  We spent our days living out whatever it was we could imagine and playing our days away.  There was not a worry or care and if one tried to find its way in, there was no doubt that they would scare it away and make any wrongs right.

I've always held both my parents in high regard - put them on a pedestal, in fact, and looked up to them the way I thought all kids did. It’s hard not to look at my mom with a sense of adoration.  I don't know anyone as kind, loving, giving and beautiful as she is. To me she was – and still is - the perfect embodiment of beautiful elegance living in the casual comfort of the everyday.  I've always known my mom was beautiful, more beautiful than I would ever be.  To this day, when someone says I look like my mom, it’s a compliment I hold onto.  But, when someone tells me that I am like my mom, it’s the best compliment of all, because beyond her beauty is a beautiful soul.  Hers is a soul that houses a quiet inner strength, the kind that often goes unnoticed.  And worse than going unnoticed, is often mistaken for weakness.  But there is no weakness there.  My mom’s is the kind of strength that needs not be spoken, needs not be displayed, needs not show its heavy lifting to every person it encounters.  It is the kind of strength that is content to continue on, day after day, on good days and bad days alike.  It is the kind of strength that is enviable; that is, if people knew about it.

There are days I can't quite find my step.  And some days worse yet, when I can't find my footing at all.  But, before I collapse and cave to my wobbly limbs, the strength I need comes in the whisper, in the thought of a woman who has already taken the steps that I am, on that day, afraid to take.  And hope flickers in my heart.  And in that small flicker of hope, I find my strength.  My quiet inner strength is taking form.  Forming courage.  Forming tomorrows.  Forming a foundation of strength for my own daughter.  And so the story continues.

This is the story of a beautiful soul whose strength might not always be seen, but whose inner beauty always shines through.  All those years, I watched my mom putting on her makeup, always applying lipstick before she walked out the door. In teaching me those very same practices, she was actually teaching me something far greater: how to love without conditions, how to serve a family and put others first, how to love until there is nothing else, how to hope against hope itself.  A mother’s unconditional love is never wasted, it is only reproduced.

So with my lipstick in hand, I say thank you mom, for all that you might not have even known you were teaching me.  Because of you, my soul is growing strong in the quietest of ways.

One Bad Mother

I have the video monitor on with the sound turned way up. I listen with one ear perked to her noisy, clogged breathing---such an adorable, pathetic, concerning sound emanating from our miniature person with a cold.  I glance periodically at the screen, whose camera looks like it is hunting for paranormal activity.  I flash on all the tasks that should consume the rest of my evening---the tasks left hanging from a never-ending work day.  It is 8:38 PM and I wonder how much steam I've got left before that heavy molasses feeling envelops my brain.  I am distracted momentarily by her flipping over, sighing a little and registering a tiny complaint.  My resolve begins to waver and now I'm considering the consequences of simply climbing into bed at this point with the monitor and a magazine.  Or better yet, scooping her up out of the crib and bringing her into bed with me.  In weeks like this one, there are days when I spend more time watching her on the monitor than I do holding her in my arms. Even a generation ago, I am not sure women allowed themselves the luxury to think about work-life balance in the way that we do now.  Today, as I was frantically rushing home to catch 20 minutes with the baby before bedtime, I thought about how lucky I am to even consider such a notion.  How fortunate that I have the education, training, and capacity to work outside the home in the first place, let alone be daunted by how to thrive in two environments.  My work is meaningful to me, it is in a chosen field, and I have a large measure of control over my schedule.  I am not limited to an exclusive childcare role nor am I forced to work a job that is dangerous, unsatisfying or menial.  When I zoom out on my scenario, I realize how refined and esoteric my dilemma might seem to some.  In fact, in an ideal world, more women would face this kind of dilemma---one in which they are choosing among many good options for childcare and have the privilege of participating an elevating career.

It would appear that whether or not women (and many men) have had the consciousness or the language to describe it, this struggle is ages old.  I try to recall how my own mother dealt with managing work and home life.  I don't ever remember noticing her being particularly tired, lacking the energy to make things happen at home or even seeming anxious about her responsibilities.  She consistently helped with homework, threw some hot meal on the table (albeit rarely cooked by her) and made it to all our games/performances.  Although she worked full-time, I always had access to her on the phone.  She arranged for school pickups and shuttling to activities with others if she was unable to coordinate her schedule.  We definitely reconvened each night as a family and this seemed to re-set the connectedness.  I do remember a general sense of wishing I could spend more time with my mother and vaguely complaining about this in moments.  But weekends were exclusively devoted to us and our needs and whatever else was happening during my parents' busy lives, it was clear we were the priority.  Of course she had help, as I do, with housework and childcare.  Oh and did I mention she had five kids?

When I ask my mother these days about what it was like for her raising a brood and working full time, she admits to feelings of guilt, mostly about not being enough or doing enough at home.  She was always highly competent and effective at work---in her mind, it was home that suffered.  Although it was not our experience that she dropped any particular ball, I have more insight now into how she must have lived with powerful ambivalence.  It is also worth noting that my parents literally never took a single vacation on their own or did any individualized, enriching, adult activities.  This is the one area where I picture doing things a little differently.  As much as I can't begin to process the demands on their time for all those years, I hope/plan to delineate more regular space for my marriage and more escape for myself.

Sometimes my mother says to me, "Oh, well, you know it was easier back then."  I have some sense that she is right about that but neither of us can put our finger on exactly why this is true.  I think for one, it required less money and less time at work to be a solidly middle class family and achieve financial flexibility.  I also think there was more neighborly and community support built in to people's lives.  Perhaps the expectations on adults and children were also more reasonable---not everybody was supposed to a "Super" anything?  The fact remains that we had soccer, art class, piano lessons et al and my parents were pulled in a zillion directions.  Still, I can't access a single episode of a legitimate melt down---the machinery always moved fairly seamlessly forward.

The guilt I feel about missing time with our baby casts long shadows and tugs at me throughout the day.  I genuinely imagine that she might develop a greater attachment to the baby sitter during weeks when their time together is more enduring.  When I come home and she instantly lurches forward from the babysitter's arms for me to hold her and proceeds to cling to me like a chimp for the remainder of the evening, it brings some secret satisfaction.  The selfish side of me is relieved when she demonstrates a touch of separation anxiety, howling when I leave the room.  I want her to be securely attached, but I also want to know she prefers me to anyone and won't forget that during the many hours I am away.

I am proud of my work and know it is critical to my identity to have a holistic sense of self.  I recognize it is good for my daughter to establish her independence and be cared for by many different loving adults.  I reaffirm that I want to be her primary and central model of a woman with a career.  This doesn't mean I don't cry at my desk mulling the fact that she might take her first steps today and I could miss it.  This is the fulsome experience of the modern woman/parent.

In my view, it is not so much about figuring out how to have it all as it is being happily immersed in what you are doing at any given moment.  I think anyone who presents as having each domain of life under control is hiding something or is teetering on the brink.  I respect and appreciate the women in my life who admit to questioning their many roles and evaluating their health and sanity with respect to each of them.

By 10:17 PM I had done nothing but write this piece and pump 5 ounces of breast milk before I packed it in for the night.  Then again, I guess that is something.

Photo of Sarah: Buck Ennis for Crain's New York Business.

XII. Savoie

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

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

Reaching for Sweet Things

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, she will say, that will be fine.