My Story: One of "Those" People

Things were better by the time I graduated from high school. I still had to balance my schedule carefully, and I was still confined to a wheelchair when I went shopping—but I had made great strides from the year before. I could walk up the stairs in my parents’ house without pain. College would be difficult for me, I knew, but I was confident that I could handle it. With care and caution, I knew I could put together a schedule that wasn’t too much for me. At least, I thought, I wouldn’t have to be one of “those people” whose health problems were serious enough to prevent them from higher education.

I packed my bags and drove across the country with my family. I was moving from big-town North Carolina to small-town Idaho; as the trees fell away to plains outside my car window, I could feel the homesickness growing.

My first year of college went smoothly. I took as light a schedule as I could while still being a full-time student. I missed so much class that I had to have a special letter from the office of disabilities giving me extra sick time, but I still managed to make it through my first two semesters with a near-perfect GPA and a journal filled with memories.

Not long after I began my third semester, my health started to decline again. I battled lung infection after lung infection, and my fatigue seemed worse every day. The previous summer, ballroom dancing had become my passion, and I’d spent hours each week dancing. Within a few weeks of the start of the new semester, I had to drop both of my dance classes. I was too out of breath to dance like I had just months before, and the exercise left me exhausted.

Still, I tried hard to live a normal life. I kept up with my classwork, stayed on top of my healthcare regimen so that I could take advantage of the energy I did have, and got a boyfriend. As fall passed into winter—always an early occurrence in southeast Idaho—things between the two of us began to get more serious. By the time I left for Christmas, Mahon had told me that he would like to marry me. By the end of January, we were engaged.

That spring, an outbreak of a particularly nasty strain of the flu went around my hometown. For nearly a month, I stayed in isolation and didn’t see any of my friends, for fear that I’d catch it. Ironically enough, weeks after everyone else had gotten better, I started showing symptoms. I ran a high fever for several weeks, losing fifteen pounds and developing a serious lung infection. I’d already been in the hospital once that year—a fairly routine annual event—but as the first flowers began to bloom in North Carolina, I found myself a hospital patient once more.

It quickly became clear that I wouldn’t be able to travel back to Idaho in the coming weeks, as I’d planned. My recovery was slow; I lay in bed for several weeks, unable to do much more than read light books and try to gain back all the weight I’d lost. Instead of catching a plane to Idaho to spend time with my fiancé—who was still in school—and plan a wedding, I was faced with the necessity of taking a medical deferment from the summer semester that I was supposed to be attending.

Suddenly, I had become one of “those people.” Frightening possibilities crowded through my mind, marching one after another like ants at a picnic. Would I be able to go back to school in the fall? Would I be able to finish school at all? Would I have to withdraw from school to take care of my health? I had always been driven, ambitious; I had spent my life looking forward to my undergraduate education, and I had loved the year and a half of school I had already completed. Each time I thought of the possibility that I might have to eventually withdraw, I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. I spent long afternoons that summer crying, mourning the dreams that I felt were slipping through my fingers.

By the time I got married late in August, I had had three hospital stays in the last six months. I found myself wondering if I would ever manage to crawl back from where I was now; was this the beginning of a decline I’d never be able to pull out of?

I did go back to school that autumn. Within the first two weeks, it was clear that the full-time schedule I had signed up for would be too much for me. I dropped one class, and then another, until I had pared my course load down to only two or three classes. Even then, I found myself missing class often, easily drained by the effort of keeping up with homework while adjusting to married life and a household of my own.

But always, the fear haunted me. I felt hounded by guilt—at taking such a light courseload, at all the times I felt I’d failed as a wife when I had to ask my husband to take care of me yet again, at the nagging feeling that maybe I should be pushing myself harder, be one of the people in inspirational commercials who accomplishes great things despite their setbacks. I was daunted by the prospect: Most days, I considered getting through my classes and getting dinner on the table to be a Herculean effort.

The fear, and the guilt, stayed with me, an insidious voice always present in the back of my mind.

It would be years before I learned how to silence that voice.

In this space, Cindy Baldwin will share her evolution---the ways she has come to accept the circumstances of her life with cystic fibrosis and find great contentment within them. You can read the beginning of her story here and here. 

From the Italian Lakes....

Dearest Clara,

I think one of the nicest surprises you can have is when you unexpectedly find yourself back somewhere that holds a special place in your heart.  Sometimes, places you loved just have a way of working themselves back into your life.  Six years ago, I met your father---long before he was your father, and before he was a husband even---in the Italian Lakes region.  Como . . . Lago di Garda . . . Lugano . . . we did them all.  But the one that's just a little more special is Lago Maggiore.  That's where he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife, and it has been one adventure after another for us ever since.

We have always wanted to go back, but we never pulled the trigger on the trip.  We said we would go for an anniversary . . . for a birthday . . . for a long weekend . . . but somehow something always got in the way.  Yet on this trip, which was not at all about Italy, the little town of Stresa, where we stayed after our engagement, just so happened  to be on our way as we were driving from Austria to France.  We couldn't help but stop to spend the night---in the same hotel no less. And it turns out it was worth the wait, since we were able to come with you.

In thinking about our very first trip there, here is what stands out in my mind:

• Always have some cash in your pocket: Believe it or not, while we were out on the lake, taking the ferries from island to island, we ran out of money.  We didn't think much of it, but it quickly became clear that credit cards were not going to get us on the last boat. We weighed our options between panhandling and swimming to shore; the latter lost out.  We will forever be grateful to that total stranger, and your father always makes sure he has some cash in his pocket when we leave home.
• Eat a big breakfast: No one does a breakfast like an Italian hotel---chances are you already paid for it with your room so take advantage.  Pick good proteins and fresh fruits, and a little roll in your bag for later comes in handy.  If you enjoy a nice leisurely and full breakfast, you can often skip lunch and make the most of your day out and about.  And don't forget a good cappuccino. Or two.
• A passegiata every night: The lakes aren't exactly bustling with nightlife, in the traditional sense.  No clubs here, but you'll find nearly the entire town taking a walk along the lake every evening before dinner.  That's a party to be part of.
• Admire pretty things . . . just because they are pretty: In this region, there are so many beautiful hotels, some would even call them over-the-top.  And you'll find some of the decorations to be excessive, maybe even unnecessary.  Just admire them for what they are: adornment.  The region is so beautiful, you can't blame people for trying to translate the visual feast of the view into their everyday surroundings.
• Take time to do nothing: The pace of life is entirely different around the lakes.  Days are calm, and there is nothing to hurry for.  Take in the view of the lake, enjoy a long walk, read a good book, have another coffee.  Or just sit and be.  You'll have time for it all here.  There will be hardly any obligations here---enjoy that rare freedom.

All my love,

Mom

Grief, love, and Joan Didion

As far as thieves go, grief is the greatest one. She robs us of the people we love, but—perhaps most achingly—she zaps our ability to imagine the future. Lose a place, a person, or a love and, suddenly, measurements of time become irrelevant. Grief warps time; she renders our plans for next week and dreams for the next vacation incongruous. As Joan Didion put it in The Year of Magical Thinking: 

"We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all."

For the grieving, imagining a future day of being is a triumph over that "as we will one day not be at all" that Didion describes. Imagining the future is an act of boldness. Didion herself, in a description of her husband's desires for their shared trip to Paris, associates the wishful imagination of a future with being alive:

"He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them, but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living."

My discontent with grief comes from its blocking my boundless want. By drawing strict lines between the living and those whom they lost, grief casts the world in harsh light. She makes it impossible to believe in forever. Instead, she injects a heinous pragmatism into sentiments that would rather be unadulterated by it.

***

My only antidote to that has been love -- the kind of love that floods every crack and fills the vacuums of loss with the promise of togetherness. I do not know Eleni and Stamati. I do not know anything about their love. All I know is that 46 years ago, on April 28, 1966, they felt something strong enough to carve it onto a brick on top of Lycabettus Hill, with all of Athens below serving as witness.

Maybe Eleni and Stamatis are now divorced. Or grieving. Or maybe they have been best friends all along. Or siblings.

What happened on April 28, 1966 on Lycabettus Hill is of little importance to me; rather, I am intrigued by Eleni and Stamatis' audacity. They left a bit of their heart printed so permanently onto a site in Athens that future travelers would have to experience it. That is the triumph of love over loss, of affection over grief, of dreaming over pain.

***

Like a band on its farewell tour, we loaded the car with wafers and pretzels and drove nearly 2,000 kilometers to say farewell to the country we called home and the home that housed our love. There are still wafer bits encrusted onto the map. Those were not the only tokens of the journey. Near the waterfalls of Banias, close to the Syrian border, he found a patch of wet cement. "E ♥ R" is still there.

I want us to go to Banias in 46 years. Or 32. 11? Next year? I want us to go to Banias at an undefined point in the future because love is the imagination of a future without an end point and, in that, it is a triumph over grief. I want to find us at Banias. If not the literal us, if not the "us" carved onto the cement, then the selves we once were.

In Lieu of a Tandem Bicycle

My fiancé commutes by bike most days. Roundtrip, it’s a five-mile ride, and from what I can tell, it’s uphill both ways. When I moved here to Atlanta from Boston in June, he’d been riding this route nearly every day for a year. Before that, he’d been riding in Boston, unphased by snow and ice and rain and groceries. There, he taught me how to ride in the city and waited patiently while I freaked out about traffic and potholes.

On Sunday, I surveyed the unfamiliar bike that had been borrowed on my behalf---I’d left my rusty Schwinn in Boston---and agreed to come along on his daily route. For the past few weeks, I’ve been busy trying to carve out a place for myself in this new-to-me city. In countless interviews and new-girl conversations, I’ve been trying to find a way to explain that I belong here too, as an individual, even though we’re in this together.

Finally, on Sunday, I decided it was time to catch a glimpse of the shape of his life---those mysterious pockets of “his life” scattered at the periphery of “our life,” which we’ve been working so diligently to arrange, together.

For him, riding is a way to get where you’re going, and fast. It’s about independence and shortcuts and bypassing traffic jams. For me, riding a bike is something I did as a child, meandering around the block, keeping to the sidewalk, never traveling much faster than a jog.

I have visions of the two us riding off into the sunset on our bikes. It’s a vision that’s soft around the edges, and in it, I’m wearing a chambray sundress that somehow never flies up or gets stuck in the wheels. Somehow I never have trouble keeping up with my handsome partner, and I certainly never sweat.

Our real life Sunday ride turned out to be a vision of another kind. Stephen cruised along effortlessly, perfectly suited up in his bike gear. I lagged behind, sweating and huffing the whole way, silently cursing the gods who created bicycles, and even worse, hills. My imaginary self would have made pleasant conversation (“What a lovely morning!”), but my real self could only muster the occasional pathetic squeak in response to check-ins as to whether I was still alive.

He looked at me with concern and a bit of remorse as I dragged myself and my bike up the very last hill.

“Maybe we should have started with a shorter ride?” He wondered out loud.

I quit panting long enough to shrug my shoulders. “Might be more fun on a tandem bike,” I offered, wading through the thickening summer heat.

Often it feels important and necessary to test my own limits and prove my own strength. Perhaps sometimes it’s simpler, though, and sweeter, to partner up, pedal in sync, and push through the hills and valleys together.

On (New) Marriage and the Ever-Elusive "Home"

Here on the Equals Project, and elsewhere—on my own blog, and in the musings of my favorite writers like Miranda Ward of A Literal Girl and Roxanne Krystalli of Stories of Conflict and Love—we talk of an elusive home. We explore what this thing, this state, this feeling means to us, is to us. If we have found it.

If it is not located on a map.

If, as Judy writes in Home Sweet Home, it is not a literal space to fix and construct.

If it shapeshifts as we change.

Or if it is the loved one that holds us, that anchor that keeps us afloat, wherever we may be in the world.

* * * * *

In Homelands, Miranda asks: What if home is just a memory that we carry with us?

In Home, Karey does not have a clear picture of home: "It still looks like my mom and smells like Oscar de la Renta and vanilla ice cream and chlorine and lilacs and cow manure. . . . It’s in the eyes of someone who has lost her world, someone who’s found it, and someone who’s trying her damnedest to get it all back."

In Wherever You Go, There You Are, Sarah describes her bicoastal identity—the pull of New York, but also her roots in California: "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.'"

In No Place Like Home (Wherever That Is), Shoko places home in quotation marks, which reminds me of Roxanne's piece, Home, in quotation marks, which led me earlier this spring to explore my own definitions of home and love, and how they intertwine—or if they are one and the same.

What if home is not the birthplace, the stacked bricks laden with memories, but the new place, filled with learning, with promise, and with love?

 * * * * *

In Roxanne's recent post on her blog, she refers to her explorations of home and away as a "serial infidelity to place," which also reminds me of Miranda's musings from last fall on a visit to London, and whether or not she could live there, and how it's interesting that even though she has a home in Oxford, she's still window-shopping for places to live.

So it appears that while we are all different, born and raised in different countries, living now in different places, or between places, or constantly on the go, we share a special something, a quality I sense in each of us and hear in our voices. We redefine ourselves with each stop, each state of stagnancy, but also with our movements and lapses of change. We ask these same questions over and over again, which both comfort and confuse. We are driven by such elusiveness—driven to inspiration but also to uncertainty, and maybe to loneliness, but certainly driven, period.

* * * * *

I do love the haze produced by these questions of home; it's the best kind of fog—a cloudiness I don't mind.

Indeed, lately my head has floated about in this fog. So, so many things: engaged at the end of June, and then married to my beloved the day before the Fourth of July. Perhaps my mind hasn't been clouded, but is rather in the clouds. And I've been thinking a lot about my evolving definition of home, and how it continues to change now that my long-distance relationship has morphed into a marriage, here in San Francisco.

Can I finally remove the quotation marks, or place it in regular font and not in italics, because the person who has encapsulated this word is now physically next to me, each day?

Has my exploration of home come to an end?

As I read the words of the other women on the Equals Project and elsewhere, and their very different but very similar worlds, I know this is not possible; if anything, I continue on a trajectory in which the target continues to move, a bullseye that shifts as I, and my husband, grow together.

At the moment, that's all I know: that home continues to surprise and elude, that it can be many things and something unreachable at once, and that the one thing that matters right now is realizing this journey is no longer just mine, but ours.

He'd have me at Atwood.

Tell me, if you would, what each of these lists has in common.

1984, The Odyssey, Infinite Jest, Super Sad True Love Story. Lots of non-fiction, typically covering: history, science, or art/art theory. Neil deGrasse Tyson/Brian Greene/Richard Feynman. And biographies/autobiographies.

Just finished Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which is incredible. I am sappily fond of David Foster Wallace for many many reasons.

Confederacy of Dunces, Girl Curious Hair (surprised, wanted to really hate him), everything Salinger or Kundera.

Currently reading Life by Keith Richards and miscellaneous repair manuals. Some favorites: White Noise, Libra, Assassination Vacation, Shop Class as Soulcraft, Outliers.

All the Kings Men, The Man in the High Castle, 100 Years of Solitude, The Odyssey, Who Censored Roger Rabbit, The 1,001 Nights, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Catullus.

They are lists of books, it's true. And they're charmingly eclectic, up to a point. I mean, you have to admit that there's something adorable about a list that includes works by both Homer and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But look a little closer, and you might notice something missing: not one of these lists of favorite books includes a single novel written by a woman.

The common thread uniting these? They all herald from the OKCupid profiles of men who've either emailed me or caught my attention in the last few weeks. I haven't met any of these gentlemen in person yet, but they all seem perfectly nice, bright and open-minded. They are men who claim, either in their profiles or in the answers to their questions, a certain level of liberalism---even feminism. But nary a one lists a single book by a woman---not even a freaking short story---as among their favorites.

Whenever I get an email from a promising guy, I dread scrolling down to this part of his profile, knowing that pretty much every time I'm going to feel a twinge of disappointment in a man I otherwise find interesting. Why is it, I ask myself, that none of these men can be bothered to include a woman among their favorite authors? The likely answer, of course, is that they probably haven't read anything by a woman---with the possible exception of Doris Kearns Goodwin---since college. (Habits developed in childhood---which we've discussed before---follow people for life, kids.)

By contrast, here are the favorite books of some awesome, single, straight ladies in the same age range and geography:

A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan), Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), The Unnamed (Joshua Ferris).

I have favourites ranging from the Hitchhiker's Guide books to Jane Austen (cliche I know) to Stephen Fry's books.

Beckett, Plath, Hughes, Jack London, Brontës, Poe, Camus, Anthony Minghella's radio plays, Donne, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Strindberg, Thoreau, Marx, artists' journals (especially Munch), T.S. Eliot, Braudel, Benjamin.

Nabokov. Wells Tower. Lorrie Moore. Jennifer Egan. (Writing a list of books could take me forever and would only look boring on screen.)

The Handmaid's Tale, Middlesex, House of Mirth, I Capture The Castle, Persuasion, Grimm's Fairy Tales

This is hardly a scientific survey. But I can't help but think that when men---especially supposedly progressive, liberal, worth-dating men---can't be bothered to read women's writing (or, if nothing else, to cop to it online), we have yet another symptom of our still-yawning gender gap. (On the flip side of things, note the woman who feels the need to temper her love of Austen, one of the Western canon's greatest social satirists, with an aside noting how cliche her admiration is.)

I truly believe that "small" things like this are just the bubbles popping on the surface of a roiling body of sexist water, seemingly benign indicators of the ongoing wage gap (even more notable for women of color), the constant, unending street harassment women face on a daily basis, the one in four women who will be raped in their lifetimes---and on, and on, and on.

Plus, these dudes are missing out on some seriously awesome writing. Margaret Atwood is for real, bros. And would guarantee a reply email, to boot.

Inside the White Picket Fence

By Marni Zarr I met him in sophomore geometry. My head in the clouds over his best friend, the subject of which made easy fodder for conversation. Our instructor happened to be his basketball coach which miraculously made me privy to over the shoulder glances at his correct answers during tests thus saving me from failing. Happy that I had this advantage I was big on smiles and loved conversing with this insider who knew everything I wanted to know about my not so secret crush on his goofy yet charming friend.  In between the hand holding and break ups between his friend and I, the two of us grew into good pals. Hours spent with him on the phone, nothing said in coded whispers as was required with other friends.  I wasn’t afraid of my parent’s overhearing me as I spoke to him through the avocado kitchen rotary, only that our phone time would be cut off before I was ready to say good-bye. The curly cord a slinky in my hand, I’d wind it’s twisting loops through my toes while talking and daydream about compliments from the older girls in the P.E. locker room. One insisted I should be a foot model. The perfect shape and always polished, the only blemish a growing bunion on the right side, enough to squash that idea. My self doting thoughts were suddenly interrupted by his innocent question, “So what about going to the movies with me this weekend?”

My parents prejudices were a good cover-up for my own fear. I wasn’t totally comfortable with the thought of going on a date, although I considered him a friend, a black guy. Would people think he was my boyfriend? Would they stare and tag me with another accessory like my religion that I wasn’t comfortable carrying around? Did I want to say no but blame my parents prejudices as a shield for my own? How could I decline without hurting his feelings? All of these thoughts swirled in my head like an alphabet soup of questions whirring audibly in a blender, a jumble of words and feelings that in the end was so thick and unrecognizable my thoughts a messy mush. and then, the honest answer rose to the top, “ I can’t, I have to be sixteen to date.” Although valid, we both communicated the understood underlying truth with an awkward moment of silence.

Who knows what would have happened if I had been allowed to experience my first date with him. I could sense his feelings for me were different than mine for him, but his character spoke only of respect. I could have breached my parent’s rules and told them I was going to a movie with a girlfriend and met him there but didn’t. Instead I packed the incident neatly away, we stayed friends, I denied my feelings, and life went on with the blame pinned to my parents, folding my confusion neatly away to be dealt with later.

We remained friends while the dating excuse covered the dark truth until late winter. Still three months shy of my 16th birthday I successfully convinced my parents to lift the dating rule, “just this once.”  The most popular boy in high school, a year ahead of me had asked me out on a Valentine’s date.  Possessing perfect all American good boy looks with mischievous sparkly blue eyes and a California like carelessness to his confident athletic walk, he was the stud of the school. How I was chosen to be his valentine crush was never clear . . . to anyone. He was the boy on a pedestal. The one that everyone remembers.

All nerves electric at the sound of the doorbell, awkward introductions were made and off we went down the front walkway to his pristine truck where he opened the door politely and I raised myself up and sat on the soft burnished brown velour seat. First stop, a weathered liquor store in a strip mall just outside the cozy confines of his country club community. I waited while he confidently strutted in and came out minutes later with a six-pack, gum and a pink plastic comb which became my souvenir of the evening.  I loved how he played with my hair and teased me with it as we listened to “The Cars”  cassette on his fancy stereo and drank the lukewarm bottled beer in the theatre parking lot. Three for him, two for me, time for the movie. We each popped a fresh stick of doublemint gum in our mouths and before getting out to walk around and open my door, hand resting softly on my thigh, he asked me to reach into his glove compartment so he could reapply more of his “Polo” cologne. My senses heightened to the first hints of sexual tension the scent was forever branded on my memory so that years later I could smell our song whenever it played and feel his hand as it went up my shirt.

After the movie, fully clothed but rolling in the cool winter grass of the church on the corner, we kissed and I assumed it was true love forever, hearts floating in my head I went home to dream about our wedding and how envious everyone would be as I walked down the aisle with the dream god of the high school universe.  Two weeks later, as the deities of high school often do, he moved on to new and easier waters. My elevated ego smarted from the fall, but I had the song “Just What I Needed” by The Cars and my light pink comb for comfort. Even if never allowed to pray at the feet of his graven image again I knew I had earned his blessing and to me that was timeless.

A few years ago I ran into a former high school friend at a neighborhood restaurant as I walked out the door. Turning at my name there was instant recognition in the hint of a smile, the way you see through someone’s voice and facial expressions and it transports you back in time. We started talking about our current lives, family, kids, jobs etc., the creamy pre-prepared information filling the space between high school graduation and now. The conversation turned to people we occasionally ran into from school and we shared short clips of what we knew or had heard.  His son was on the high school football team at a small school in California and being coached by another former classmate’s younger brother, small world. The topic of football sparked my curiosity about my long ago crush and the question rolled off my tongue with a wistful lilt. His face fell as he told me what he had heard a while back. This boy who many of us had assumed would go on to have it all, just as he did in school, grew up and had taken his own life. I couldn’t help but wonder if every one of us who had assisted him in rising to that highest spot of teen-age stardom hadn’t somehow contributed to his fall.

On Inequality

The night before my son was born, my wife and I were in the hospital at the beginning of a very long process. It was June 24, 2011, and the New York state legislature was preparing for a vote on a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in our adopted home state. The timing was pretty remarkable. My wife and I have been married since 2008, when our immediate families joined us at City Hall in Toronto, Ontario for our wedding. It was a funny limbo to live in, to be married in Canada, but not at home in New York. When we drove into Massachusetts, and said “married!” it often caused us to chuckle darkly. It’s weird enough to be able to buy beer in grocery stores in one state and not another, but to have your own family status legally change based on state boundaries is beyond weird.

The vote in the legislature was going to be close, and both of us had contacted our state senator, Steven Saland, a Republican, to state our hopes that he would vote for equality. In fact, I had called that very day while my wife packed up the last of her things for the hospital. I felt as though he might not even believe me, leaving a voice mail saying, “I’d like my son to be born to two married parents and you could make this happen.”

Of course, the ending of this story is well known.  The bill did in fact pass, and Senator Saland was one of the swing votes. His wife of forty-six years, according to him, “certainly lobbied him,” reported the New York Daily News. How fitting that my marriage was legally recognized partially because of the bond and influence within another marriage?

The moment when the bill passed, as we were up late in the hospital room felt almost ethereal.  Our son was about to enter the world at a remarkable moment in history, and not just History-with-a-capital-H but in our personal history. It felt fated, and I don’t feel that way very often, but even my cynicism couldn’t deny a certain sense of destiny.

Now that a year has passed, however, I no longer feel the blissful surprise of the legislature’s decision. I’m not satisfied with feeling as though I only have a handful of states in this country I can ever live in, with so many others officially off limits (I’m not taking that particular step backward). I realize how quickly this year passed and I know that the years will keep flying by and soon my son will have questions.

There’s no easy way to explain inequality. Why do some people have so much and others so little? Why do women still not make as much money as men for the same jobs? I teach Elie Wiesel’s Night to tenth graders every year and there’s always at least one who asks, “but why?” as the concept of a Jewish ghetto is introduced.  I have honed an answer to that question over time, but it never feels convincing. How will I explain to my son that our state sees us as a family, but our country does not?

I suppose I could show him all of the various tax returns that we had to have prepared: separate federal returns (which mean that my wife, in the eyes of the federal government, is a single mother), a joint “dummy” federal return to inform state returns, and a joint New York return.  I could explain that many people have had to endure a lack of family equality for as long as the United States has existed. We could talk about the Loving v. Virginia decision that will likely inform any decision the Supreme Court makes on the issue.

Fortunately for me, our little boy is not yet concerned with such things, not when there is water to splash and trucks to make go “vroom-vroom.” Someday, though, he will be. I am grateful to Governor Cuomo and New York’s lawmakers for validating our family and setting an example for the rest of the country, but I hope that this inequality, one that is anathema to what I believe to be “American,” is rectified before today’s children are adults who are appalled by the generations before.

Generosity in Marriage

Have you seen this wonderful article in the NY Times Magazine about how little acts of generosity are found to be prevalent in very happy marriages?

This article has been a good little reminder for me.

You see, my husband is a very, very self-sufficient man.  He takes care of things.  He makes the best meals I've ever had in my life.  He helps me with a multitude of tasks, it seems.  He will drop anything to do a little act of service for me.  He will do laundry by hand in a sink in a hotel, if need be.  The man doesn't need a lot of support to get by.  And, he's a happy man.  He whistles and sings while he works.

But, his wifey here is dedicating a lot of time to a project she calls A Blog About Love.  I'm working on this project full-time, from home.  And it has been such a whole-hearted effort that the day goes by quickly.  Time evaporates.  I let a lot of the tasks of the day go undone.  And before I know it, we're asking each other what we should do for dinner.

This article has reminded me how important it is to actively make time in my day for little acts of kindness for my sweet spouse.  I'm a master at loving, speaking kindly, being affectionate, being patient, offering gratitude, and giving moral support.  But a surprise dinner?  Folded clean laundry?  Breakfast before work?  These things don't happen often.  But I'm trying to change that.

Yesterday I made bacon and eggs for breakfast.  This is a small feat, I know.  But that night when we said our husband and wife prayers together, he said, "I'm thankful for all the kind things my wife did for me today."  He noticed!  Oh, what a sweetheart.  Tonight I'm making tin foil dinners, because I know he likes the way I make them.  And I picked up a nice, ripe mango at the market as he loooves mangos and appreciates that I know how to cut them, which is not his favorite thing to do.

So, dear readers, maybe you're experts in doing little generous acts of kindness for your spouse?  Maybe you have an idea or two up your sleeve?  Do share!  Together we can all inspire each other to make our marriages/relationships a little sweeter.

A Dream and the Time

Editor's note: This is the second piece in an ongoing series about Mairead's quest to become a nurse in a resource poor area with an NGO. You can read her first post here. 

My mantra for 2012: I have no idea what I'm doing.

Seriously, I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. And it's funny that I have this opportunity to write about my utter up in the air state of being because people keep saying "You should write a book." Well, this isn't exactly a book, but here you go.

My husband (soon to be ex) and I moved to London in September 2011. We came because we were both enrolled in a course in tropical medicine for nursing that would give us the training to work in resource poor areas of the world, which was the ultimate goal for both of us---or so I thought. I'll back up a bit to approximately a year and a half before we arrived. At that point we had been married for about 2 years, together for 7 years, and both of us in our 30's. We were living in San Francisco and were in the beginning phases of thinking about buying a place---a two bedroom place where we could raise a child. Then I found this absolutely amazing program in London that taught you how to diagnose malaria under a microscope, deliver a baby in the field, manage war wounds, establish a refugee camp during a crisis, etc. How freaking awesome does all of that sound? In literally one nano second all thoughts and ambitions to have a child, buy a place, and settle down were erased from my mind.

I'd like to believe that I was going to have a smooth approach to asking my hubby if we could abandon the plans of baby and home ownership---you know, like let him walk in the door first. But that's not quite how it went. I don't know why, but I happened to meet him outside of our apartment building, and before I could stop myself, I blurted out about the course in tropical medicine and moving to London. And can you believe it, just like that he was on board with me!

Now I'll fast forward to the last 6 to 8 months. We split up. He went back to San Francisco 3 days after we finished our course. It turns out working abroad in impoverished areas for long amounts of time isn't his dream. It was mine and has been since I was 17. His was plan A: settling down and starting a family. Absolutely 100% a normal reasonable thing to want with your wife of 4 years when you're 36 years old. Unfortunately, I just couldn't do it. And to be fair that wasn't the foundation of our split. In my mind the relationship had been going in a downward spiral for at least a year and a half before we left because of core communication issues. We almost didn't get married because of these issues. But we loved each other and really wanted to make it work. We were in therapy on and off for five years and tried as best as we each knew how. We kicked that horse until it was dead and then we jumped on it in stillettos and kicked it some more.

But I digress. Back to how I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

I'm 33 and with a slow, steady, all of a sudden, I'm going through a separation in a new country without my close friends or family. I don't have a constant job, have no work satisfaction even when I do work, am essentially living on my savings which in London is suckypoo with an emphasis on the sucky and the poo, and for the first time in nearly 10 years, I have to live with roommates. I've gone from being the queen of my own domain to having a room in a house with an unemployed 23 year old who plays video games all day and another couple who are in their early to mid twenties. Who feels like hot shit?! Not me.

What I am hoping will happen is that by November I will have gotten a job abroad to work with an NGO in . . . to be honest I don't care where it is or what I'll be doing. As long as I'm working in a resource poor country with a little bit of famine, an obselete health care system, some malaria, raging HIV, or a civil war, I'd be a happy camper. You'd think organizations would be jumping at the chance to find people who are willing to work in these situations where they are risking their lives, sanity, and health! Apparently not. Apparently we're a dime a dozen.

I cannot get a job and it is definitely not for lack of trying. And to a certain extent, I have a hard time believing it's from lack of skills and qualifications. I've been a nurse for ten years. For three of those I was a travel nurse, which in the briefest of explanations means I can work in a variety of settings with minimal orientation. My specialty is oncology, which though is not like being in the ER or ICU, I deal with some sick, sick patients that need acute complex management. I've travelled extensively in developing countries and am no stranger to different cultures and being without creature comforts. I started a temporary clinic in a tsunami resettlement camp in Sri Lanka. I have a diploma in tropical medicine for nursing from a world renowned school. I have passion and determination like you wouldn't believe. What else do they want?

To answer my own question, they want you to have already run a health system in a developing country, have advanced language skills in French and/or Arabic, have extensive IT knowledge, and know how to drive a manual transmission. The positions I'm applying for are aimed at nurses right? It seems like they're looking for IT managers from French or Arabic countries that drive a manual. In all honesty, I can absolutely see the benefit of hiring someone with all those skills, but that is one tall order to fill.

But I will keep trying; I will not give up. As I see it, life is not worth living unless you have a goal, a dream, a passion. This is mine. How am I to go back to San Francisco and work with onocology patients who would give anything to have the time and capability to carry out their life's ambition? I could easily go back home in a moment's notice and be with my close support group, have a satisfying job, and make a good income, but I know, I just know, I would be so disappointed in myself for giving up. So I'm not done yet and I'm going to stick it out over here. I start a permanent job in the field of oncology next week that will take me through November. I hope by that point, the gods of fate will have started to like me again and something I apply for will pan out. If not, the next step is to go to the country I want to work in first and try to get hired locally. If I'm right on their doorstep, it may be harder to turn down my charms.

I'm lucky: I've got a dream and I have the time.

One of the Worst Parts About Getting a Divorce: Telling Children

Telling people about the divorce was excruciating.

Even after it was no longer 'new' news to me, it was still sad to tell people who were hearing it for the first time.  A year later, some people still hadn't heard---perhaps they were old friends returning to Brooklyn for a visit.  And then I'd have to tell them.  It was heartbreaking every time.

But nothing compared to telling children about the divorce.

Nothing broke my heart more throughout the entire thing.

We had some nieces and nephews.  We had close relationships with many of the youth in Brooklyn---mainly through church.  And we knew my boss's sweet children very well, too.  I hated telling them all.

Soon after the divorce, I went to St. Barth's with my boss and his family.  My ex-husband normally would accompany me on those trips, as well.  But this time it was just me.  The children (and all their friends) were very confused about why he wasn't there.  One of the children's parents had told them that we had "broken up."  I guess this was the best way to explain it to a 5-year old girl.  Another little girl said to me, "Mara, my friend told me that I wasn't supposed to ask you something . . . but is it ok if I still ask you?  Is it true that you broke up?  It just can't be true and I don't believe it, so I had to ask you."  She was the saddest, sweetest little 5-year old ever as she asked me this question.

I told her that it was true.  But that I was doing really well and that I was still really happy and that I was going to carry on and still have a good and happy life.

The youth in Brooklyn that we knew were teenagers.  They looked up to us a lot---and I hated having them see a divorce firsthand when they needed as many good examples of marriage as they could get.  But I decided that I would do everything I could to show them that marriage and living a good life were still as important as ever to me.  They often heard me talking about how much I valued marriage and how important it was to be a good spouse.  And they were very much on my mind as I moved forward and decided how I was going to live my life.

And now a lot of them read my blog :)

What has it been like for you to explain divorce to kids?  Do you have any tips for others?

(photo:  Jeanloup Sieffe, 1963, via Mignonette)

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.

The Best Marriage Advice I've Ever Gotten (From my Mother-in-Law)

I remember, early on in my relationship with Jordy, my husband, when we were still in the throes of courtship and absolutely batshit for each other, drawing a picture explaining my feelings for him. Earlier that day, we had been walking along the beach in San Diego on a road trip to Mexico, as cheesy as it sounds, talking about what it was like to be together. For him, being with me was like having his watch. Whenever he wasn't wearing his watch, he said, he was half-looking for it until it was safely back on his wrist. For me, being with him was like having lived my life with one thumb, and now having two. I imagine that if you had only one thumb, you could do most of the things that a two-thumbed person could, and wouldn't notice the difference unless you then magically grew another thumb, in which case it might feel like a huge relief to finally be able to give two thumbs up, and break yourself out of the world of mild enthusiasm.

It turns out that when you equate being with your boyfriend to having two thumbs instead of one, people dole out lots of advice, since they don't want to be the ones on the other end of the phone when you go back to one-thumbedness. Take it slowly; be on your guard; he's too nice to be for real. I think that the phrase "In one ear and out the other" was invented specifically for advice. In my lifetime, I've heard mountains of it, yet can remember very little of what people have told me. There is one salient piece of advice, though, that has stuck through the years, and has taken on new meaning as time has worn on. You might not believe me when I say this (though you would if you knew her), but the best marriage advice that I've ever gotten was from my mother-in-law, Jeanie, who is an exquisite example of a human being.

I can't remember when in my relationship with Jordy this came up, and whether Jeanie told it directly to me or if it was hearsay, but Jordy and I have referred back to it as I changed careers, he went from medical school to a grueling residency program, we welcomed our daughter and faced the challenges of fitting parenthood into our relationship, and as we watched our friends face life's inevitable hardships. The advice is this: It never gets easier.

Funny that the best piece of marriage advice isn't about marriage itself, but about who you choose to marry. In the end, life can be pretty shitty and hard, so you better marry someone who feels like your second thumb. This little gem is also not as grim as it seems when you first hear it. It doesn't mean that your life together doesn't get better, doesn't get happier, doesn't get more fun and more fulfilling. On the contrary, equating ease with happiness, fun, and fulfillment almost sets us up for failure. As much as we want things to be easy, the world has different plans for us. However, if we want things to be happy, fun, and fulfilling . . . Well, a lot of that comes down to our choices. It's easy to weather fun times together no matter who you're with; the hard times, not so much. Given that hurdles in life are inevitable, choosing the right person to face them with is phenomenally important. The most difficult part about this is that (in my experience at least) you don't know whether the person you're with is the perfectly right person until . . . until you just know. If I had it all to do over again, I would keep Jeanie's advice in my head. I don't think I would have done anything any differently (after all, every relationship serves its purpose and imparts its lessons), but it would have made letting go of some people WAY easier, because I would know that if we couldn't face the world together at 20, the world at 30 would crush us.

It never gets easier, but it gets better, for sure. On every count, I feel closer to my husband than I ever have, and I love him more deeply each day than I did the day before. Our life is, in many ways, better than it was when we got married. We're a bit more settled, happier in our daily careers, and have ironed out (for the most part) the details of living together. But as we're getting older, the challenges that life has thrown our way, and the sacrifices that we're having to make for each other and for our family are only getting larger, harder, more seemingly insurmountable. Our relationship has been challenged more in the last four years than it ever was before that. And if those years are any indication, that's not the end of it.

Who would have known that day on the beach what we would face in the years ahead. A year of long-distance making-it-work, cross-country moves, illnesses, loss, mountains of change. It was easier then, just me and him, but it's better now, with me and him and the life we're building together. Because luckily, I married my second thumb. And I can thank his mother for giving me that perspective.

Notes on (Not) Unplugging

Until recently, my relationship had been a long distance one. When my boyfriend arrived in California, my Internet suddenly shrunk. A dimension of it disappeared, and so did my longing. I no longer had to sift through a sea of status updates and tweets and ceaseless chatter to reach him, or send a WhatsApp message to greet him when I woke up. And, since my day was his night—as San Francisco and Cairo are nine hours apart—we no longer had to schedule Skype chats in our overlapping waking hours. And so, it has been one month of being together in the same city. Amid all of this change, and being able to talk face-to-face each day, I wonder: are my online habits changing?

* * *

To unplug. To log off. To take a break from technology, to reimmerse ourselves in the real world, to put our phones down and talk to the person sitting in front of us, to connect and experience a moment the old-fashioned way. I read variations of this discussion everywhere, from Pico Iyer's "The Joy of Quiet" " to Sherry Turkle's "The Flight From Conversation" to comments on a recent post on my blog on information overload and my inability to write.

But these actions of "unplugging" and "logging off" just don't mean much anymore.

At the beginning of last year, when I began writing about my online friendships, my Internet worlds, and place and space in a digital world, I lived in two separate spheres, online and off. I felt my way through both worlds, navigating from one to the other and maintaining two selves, real and virtual.

But these worlds have since merged, and these words—real, virtual, online, offline, plugged, unplugged—have lost their meaning. The distinction between physical and digital has blurred, and I don't think there is a plug to pull to maneuver from one sphere to the other. Now, when I follow discussions on digital dualism—the perspective that our online and offline worlds are separate—I identify instead with views in favor of an augmented reality, where the physical and the digital, and atoms and bits, are enmeshed.

I think about this shift in me—how I confidently wrote last year about living in two distinct spheres, switching my virtual persona on as if putting on a hat, yet today operate freely and fearlessly in an ever-changing space with no such boundaries. And I sense that my relationship, which blossomed over the Internet and was nurtured by GMail and Twitter and WhatsApp and Skype for a year, forced me to acclimate to this fused world.

In our long distance spell, we created a space just for us online, where emailing and @replying felt just as special as holding hands and kissing. Maybe this is an exaggeration, but when we relied solely on the Internet to maintain our relationship, all of our actions, gestures, and conversations—whether by typing or touching, on screen or in the flesh—weighed the same.

Now that the main person with whom I communicated online shares my physical space, my Internet continues to morph. It has become something more than what it has been—more than a portal through which we have connected when geography has divided us, more than an online space of information and ideas and networks to which I connect with various devices. Because now that he is on this side of the world, sitting in the same room as me, I haven't abandoned, nor do I devalue, this online mode we've gotten so used to—I don't treat his texts or emails as less important than our face-to-face conversations.

It seems the Internet has become part of us—a layer that floats in our home. I thought it had disappeared—that I didn't need it anymore—but I sense this dimension of communication and interaction will always be there, whether or not we share the same time zone.

Feminism: A tragedy in 3 acts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Sock Animals That Saved My Life

When my first husband very resolutely told me that he no longer loved me & started voicing his more-determined-than-ever desire to end our marriage, it was a very strange time in our household!  I knew this time it was different than I'd ever seen before.  I knew it really, really was coming to an end this time and at that point, there really was nothing I could possibly do to stop it.  But in those last few months when he was figuring out how and when to end it, somehow our previous lifestyle pretty much continued.  He'd meet me at the train after work and we'd go for burgers, we'd explore our neighborhood, spend time with friends, spend time together at home, laugh, and enjoy conversation and music, etc.  So much of these last few months appeared very much normal.  I think it was due to his sense of relief at knowing he was freeing himself of a situation he didn't want to be in, and also due to my desire to no longer react to his behavior (I had just learned that tidbit in the year prior).  And, we were still best friends.  But, despite all that, it was still a very sad time because we were no longer meeting up for dinner as husband and wife, but as two people whose lives were on the brink of parting ways. And so . . . I started making sock animals---tons & tons of them.  Every night after work I'd come home and he'd be on the computer and I'd start sewing my little heart out on the couch, so my mind could be focused on something other than this man who was about to leave me.  Those sock animals saved my life during that time.  You can't be upset about anything when you're making a sock animal by hand.  Well, the knots and threads and broken needles and raw finger tips might make you want to cuss; but you really can't be moping about anything else while you're trying to figure out what the cute little bugger's face is going to look like.  So I made 'em.  And I put a lot of heart and soul into them.  And they got me through nearly an entire summer of living under the same roof with my husband who was making plans to leave.  At the end of the summer, I had already given away plenty of animals, but also had a bundle of 10 of them for my sweet nieces and nephews who I was going to see at my parents' 40th Wedding Anniversary out west.  My husband was supposed to be on that plane with me.  But instead, I was on a plane with 10 little animals sobbing---with tears and snot just pouring out of my face---as I had just said goodbye to him at the curb for the very last time.  He soon was on a plane to Australia, never to return to New York.  Without a doubt, giving those animals to my nieces and nephews and feeling some joy by doing so, was one of the greatest blessings of my life.

If I can pass on any advice to you today, it is to find a little hobby, especially if your life is difficult right now for any reason.  I am telling you, a hobby will ease the burden and give your heart and mind a rest.  And, it will be fun.  (Yes, even if there isn't much good going on your life, you can still feel some enjoyment.)

Do you have any hobbies that you love that help to ease your burdens or stress?  I'd love to hear.  And I'm sure I'll be adding them to my fantasy list of hobbies  :)

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.

I Thought I was a Good Lover

After 30 years, I thought I was a good lover.

I thought I was kind, loving, thoughtful, non-judgmental, accepting, patient, and knew how to put up with someone’s ups and downs over and over and over, without turning my back on them.  I gave so much of myself to my relationships.  I thought I was doing my part.

But during that marriage, I realized there was something really wrong with the way I loved.

It was subtle and beneath the surface.  But oh so crucial.

I was too often basing my self-worth, my well-being and my happiness on my partner.

In other words, if he did not feel loving for a day or a week or a month or a year, I felt a sting.  I took his behavior personally.  And over time, my own sense of peace & wellness began to hang by a thread.  I would begin to question every bit of goodness that I had in me as it seemed it wasn't good enough for him.  I would even try to become a woman that he might love.  I tried to be someone different than I was.  Essentially, I was relying on him to hand to me approval, happiness, worth.  I was waiting for him to love me, so I could feel whole again.  Do any of you love in this way?  I have noticed that it is so common . . . perhaps it is even the norm.

Discovering this about myself has been one of the biggest life changers for me.   Every single day I am thankful for that experience and that I became aware that there was such a better way to live and a better way to show love.  It’s completely different.  And it’s so beautiful to me that I even started a blog called A BLOG ABOUT LOVE.  :)

And so, today I’ll pass along three ways I love differently . . . these made all the difference to me in my life then, as my 1^st marriage was ending, and now, in my new, wonderful marriage:

-I take responsibility for my own self-worth and my own happiness.   I do not hand this over to anyone else to provide this for me, as it’s not their job.   So no matter how much I “love” someone, my self-worth and happiness is not dependent on them, their moods, or their behavior.  This lovingly relieves them of any pressure; it relieves them of the duty of being responsible for my happiness.  One really beautiful side effect?  I get to still have self worth and wellness and offer someone the best of myself, even if they are not having a good day.

-I have learned how to be at peace with my trials.  In fact, I embrace them.  I see them as a great opportunity to learn.  I view everything life throws at me, good and bad, as an opportunity to grow.  It’s really wonderful to learn how to do this.  And my motivation for doing this is love for my spouse and love for myself.  There’s nothing more wonderful than a partner who is full of positive energy and at peace with their lives, even in the face of a trial.

-I don’t view marriage as a place to get my needs fulfilled; I see it as a sacred place to carry out my own development as a person.   It’s a place to develop the attributes of love, kindness, hope, charity, etc.  These are the virtues I already want to develop in this lifetime.  And what a perfect place to develop them . . . in a marriage, with a man that I already want to love in the best way possible.

Over the years, have any of you learned some ways to love in a healthier way?  I’d love to hear.

(photo credit: Melanie Mauer) 

The Art and Science of Becoming a Mother

Last year, at 37 years old, I underwent fertility treatments. After three failed rounds of intra-uterine insemination, my husband and I got incredibly lucky with a single, successful course of in-vitro fertilization.  Our treasure of a baby daughter, Isadora Rose, was born on 12/28/2011. Motherhood fits me like a glove and is something I have wanted from my first memories of childhood.   I used to mother every living thing and inanimate object in my midst.  I once ruined my coveted Babar and Celeste dolls after having coated their trunks in Chapstick “in case they got dry lips.”  I even sustained a macerated bottom lip when my brother’s pet turtle clamped on to my mouth…you see, I had dropped him while trying to feed him and leaned in to kiss his little face in apology.  You get the idea.

So it might surprise you that at age 22, I had an abortion.  My circumstances at the time were likely similar to many middle-class women who make that choice.  I was fresh out of college, living with two friends in Berkeley, CA.  I had one of my first highly challenging social work jobs on the way to graduate school.  I was also still occasionally sleeping with my ex-boyfriend from college.  In my personal life, unlike my educational and professional trajectory, I was vulnerable and I was in more than a bit of denial.  I had a rocky road with this ex that included a brief engagement and at least two breakups.  And then it happened – I got pregnant.

Reflecting back on who I was at 22 unearths many complicated feelings.  I vacillate between feeling a tremendous amount of compassion for who I was then and being harshly critical of a young woman with all the advantages to know better.   Mostly, I want to tell my younger self to hang in there until the next decade when things would get infinitely less awful.

Despite my lifelong desire to have a child, I knew that at that moment, I was in no position to do so.  I was not emotionally or financially ready.  I did not have a reliable partner.  I had dreams of furthering my education and becoming a clinical social worker.  Of course, I had more resources at my disposal than most, but I understood that this was not the time for me to become a mother.   Still, it was not remotely an easy decision to end the pregnancy.  Growing up in a socially and politically liberal family (in which I could count on support no matter which way I chose) served to bolster my confidence, but it did not take the weight off my shoulders.

As I carefully considered my options, the reality of my situation crystallized.  I asked myself the tough questions – Could a person who had been careless about birth control really be trusted to raise a child?  Could a person who still had to borrow a portion of the rent from her parents support a family?  Could a person who struggled to disentangle from an utterly inappropriate relationship be a model for a child?   Ultimately, I decided the instrumentals were workable – I could secure another job, I could garner additional financial support, I could move home, etc. – but where I was in my emotional development made the kind of parenting I always had in mind a long-shot.

As a person who had long fantasized about bringing a child into this world, with all the attendant joys and responsibilities, I wanted to offer a baby nothing short of every opportunity.  At 22, decent parenting was certainly within my grasp (in fact I had known many fantastic young, single mothers), but excellent parenting was not…I simply wasn’t there yet.  This is to say nothing of what having a child would mean for my own educational and professional prospects.

The debate in this country about reproductive freedom is almost always oversimplified.  Being pro-choice does not mean being cavalier about abortion.  Even though abortion was the right choice for me, it is diminishing to imagine I took the decision lightly.  In fact, I had the luxury of considering all angles and being intentional about my choice.  So many women, because of socio-economic, religious or cultural constraints do not have the same control over their lives.

And here is the truth about my life after the abortion: The ex in question responded negatively to the pregnancy and essentially disappeared, confirming my assessment of having an unreliable partner.  I applied and was accepted to my graduate school of choice.  I went on to establish a successful social work career, albeit one in which I would have struggled mightily to provide for a child.  And I continued to make huge mistakes in relationships until I was finally ready, at age 34, to be with the right person and to nurture a marriage.

When I discovered that I would require fertility treatments to become pregnant all those years later, I was understandably baffled and immediately reflected back to that “missed opportunity” at age 22.  For the first time since, I engaged in magical thinking about the abortion: ‘I squandered my one chance at having a baby.’  In my lowest moment, I even wondered if I “deserved” another chance at a child – maybe somehow I was being punished.  Mercifully, it all worked out as it should and with the full capacities of an adult woman with a career, relationship security and the emotional stability requisite for parenting, I had a child.

I have experienced painful challenges on both ends of the procreative spectrum.  The choice to have an abortion was gut wrenching, particularly in light of my lifelong desire to become a mother.  Later, the choice to undergo fertility treatments was heartbreaking and the process grueling.  It can be argued that these were the two most critical decisions of my life.  I am grateful that the power to make them ultimately rested in my hands.

Welcome!

It was a dark and stormy night—no really, it was.  Our boutique creative agency YOU + ME* was in need of a retreat/vision quest/mini sabbatical/whatever you want to call it and we decided the perfect location was Salt Lake City in January.  We weren’t there to seek inspiration at Sundance or on the slopes (though that would have been a solid plan following the storm that blew through town).  Instead, we flew three quarters of the way across the country to attend the Altitude Summit, lovingly referred to as Alt, a design and social media conference that attracts creative powerhouses from all over the country. If you think boondoggle when you hear conference, it might not be obvious why we expected to forge a bold new path for our business from the lobby of the Grand America Hotel.  But forge we did.  It was time to step away from the glare of our computer screens and into the warm glow of shiny notebooks and neon pencils.   We wanted to liberate our brains from practical matters like business taxes and invoicing systems and let our minds wander toward our biggest dreams and grandest plans.  Most importantly, we needed to meaningfully connect—with old pals, new friends, and each other.

Over the course of our four-day trip, we had a blast (um, as you can see), extended our wheelhouse with a few new tricks, and figured out the next step on our never-ending quest to create a business that reflects our values and leads to fulfilling personal and professional lives. We stayed up late into the night discussing the fact that our internet circles are closing, rather than widening, comparing our experiences of the world, and chatting about our desire to connect women to each other in ways that extend beyond what our houses and weddings look like, what we cook for our families, and how we conceive of and present our outer selves. We downed coffee after coffee contemplating the fact that the online world has been one in which women have been framed as tearing each other down rather than building each other up. We lamented the dearth of online content for women that acknowledges that we are more than our outfits, our homes, and our consumption habits.

From that, the Equals Project was born.

And it looks like others have been thinking along the same lines. From the growing "Things I'm Afraid to Tell You" movement among bloggers, to the focus on meaningful gatherings in Kinfolk magazine, to people sharing incredibly thoughtful stories online with the sole intention of helping other people achieve happiness, it's clear that the internet is evolving from a place where we store and showcase our (often-unattainable) goals into a place where we can be real, multi-dimensional people. As we slow down and think about what we are really consuming on the internet, it seems as if we as a society are aching for meaning and process, rather than destinations and results. We hope you will find here a collection of stories, discussions, and art from women across the country (and across the world) that compels you to think, contribute your own stories and thoughts, and most of all, to act.

We are more than what we can cook, we are more than what we can create, more than our makeup, our jewelry, our aesthetic tastes. We are people with complex ideas, and conflicting thoughts, who read, travel, discuss, do, and make. We are people who are influenced and inspired by the women who came before us, and we aspire to create something greater than the sum of our parts.

After many months of work, tellingly accompanied by more grins than swear words, it’s finally time for us to make the Equals Project a reality.  We still have to pinch ourselves a little bit when we think of the talent, the stories, and the passion found among this amazing group of contributors and collaborators.  And we only get more excited when we think of how the Equals Project will be interpreted in print early next year.  We've also taken to jumping up and cheering on an hourly basis when we think about kicking off Equals Does, our philanthropic call to action--money is not the only tool for making a difference in the world.  In a short while, we’ll be announcing our first project representing Equals Does and featuring a series of inspiring projects that share a similar spirit. If you’re interested in supporting the Equals Project, you’re in luck:

• Follow us on facebook and twitter for regular updates
• Share The Equals Project with your friends, family, and every nice person you meet
• Contribute your writing, photography, or video (see submission guidelines)
• Send us a story of how you’ve used your skills, talents, or sheer gumption as a force for good in the world

Let's continue this conversation and get to know each other better, shall we?

Warmly,

Elisabeth & Miya