The Baby of the Family

By Maggie May Ethridge The baby of the family. To this reader, such a romantic phrase, born of the hustle and bustle, tears and drama, warmth and love, laughter and insanity of book families: Amy from Little Women, Rilla from the Anne of Green Gables series, Ginny from the Weasley family in Harry Potter, Deborah Mitford from the fascinating Mitford Sisters (a real family, but stuffed into many books, just take a google).

In our family there is my husband Mr. Curry, myself, and our four children: Dakota, Ian, Lola, and the baby of the family- Ever Elizabeth. The last child with the most daring name, the only of our children whose middle name is a family name ( my beloved Grandmother Elizabeth, who passed away years ago ) the only of our children we had to fight to bring into this world. After years of secondary infertility and then a late miscarriage, we had our Ever. Dakota was 16 when she was born, old enough to have been her father himself, though thank god he was not. Thank god because he was—is, really—just a kid himself, and more so, more so, because Ever is the last turn of the machine over the diamond, giving it a radiance and depth otherwise left behind. And so it would be for whoever was the baby.

The baby of the family brings youth to wisdom, glee to happiness, ridiculousness to fun, an immediacy to a long tale. When we are weighted with our mechanisms and warbled complaints, she is the slap dash giggle, the hysterical fit of babyhood, the one who we all must take care of. While their Dad and I take care of all of them, the children all watch over her, so she becomes the one thing we can all agree on. When we are content, she is the gossamer of sunlight over the landscape---another layer of beautiful.

We waited so many years for her, and once she arrived, all her siblings moved in to cradle and coddle her, to tell Dad 'the baby is crying, pick her up!' to tell me 'the baby is too close to the stove.' A unified purpose: protect the baby from the inadequacies of our parents.

As the baby of the family, she drags with her blanket so many things into our home: cartoons long abandoned by the older kids are rediscovered, stuffed animals under the bed are yanked out and dusted off to be shared, hobbies shed are made new: remember when we used to love to sit on the skateboard?! The baby brings an instant nostalgia for children not yet grown up but not quite children anymore; they see their childhood in a new light, and faced with a complex and confusing world,  are suddenly made more deeply aware of the value of family. No longer simply there, our family is now creating the environment for The Baby—and although we are of course still doing this for them, they can now feel it, its worth, its beauty. In watching her grow up, they see how they themselves grew, and were valued, cherished, loved. A new pride begins to form.

As for the baby, she will watch as all the children grow up, she will be the one and only of the bunch to watch from a child's perspective as each sibling argues with us, the parents, as each sibling stakes claims of independence, burrows closer for reassurance, flies, fails, meets the world from the root of this family. When they are all grown and adult, she will be the keeper of all the secrets, the one who heard from the other room the sobs, the confessions, who saw the picked noses, the awkward attacks, the endless coming together, the  procession of bathroom and kitchen scenes, bedtime snuggles, smells and sounds of children and parents moving forward. Her presence, so unobtrusive and benign, will be taking in, and ultimately, she will shock us all as she recounts the stories and reveals her opinion, possibly scathing: Mom begged for X's respect instead of assuming it, Dad moved too quickly to shutting the talk down, Brother 1 was always complaining, Brother 2 was never paying attention . . . the rest of us will shuffle and raise our shoulders, looking at this girl child we see still illuminated in the late afternoon light of a child's day. Maybe one will say 'But you're just the baby of the family. You don't understand.' And surely like a million other babies of the family, she will resent the title, at the same time she secretly cherishes it, knowing that the 'just' in front of The Baby is not diminishing, but instead a title of great importance and power, like a tiny Queen.

Rocking a Baby in the Rain

I’m sitting on my parents porch listening to the drip, drip, drip from the storm that has just rolled through. I’m rocking, and the old wooden rocker is creaking, click, swoosh, click, swoosh, and I’m holding a baby. The baby looks like every other baby and yet, he's completely unique because he’s mine. And despite knowing that this is a great moment, I’m thinking about being somewhere else. We just put our house on the market again. I’m reminded how even when everything feels like it’s changing, some things are always the same. I was in that exact spot three years ago, rocking a baby, listening to the rain and thinking about moving. In some ways though, it feels like I have always been here, in this moment. Some part of me has always been a mother. Even when I told myself I would never have kids, I think this is where I was meant to end up.

Four years ago, when I left Chicago, my friends, my job, my life as I knew it---I wanted a change. I knew not what that change was, just that I yearned for something more, something different from the monotonous drone of the retail life (not that those Anthropologie discounts weren’t fun). So, in one tumultuous day, I decided, while waiting at the Midway airport cell phone parking area, with planes buzzing overhead, to leave and embrace change.

My friend asked us last night, “Where are you moving to?” We glanced nervously at each other and replied that we hadn’t a clue. Sure, we hadn't talked about a lot of places, most larger cities. And I had researched one in particular pretty thoroughly but there was still a long way to the finish line. We are jumping headlong into the unknown. And it's scary and wonderful all at the same time. Kind of like being a parent really.

It’s naïve to think everything will stay the same. I wonder if I will miss these days, this life, this me? But I know some part of me will be forever rocking a baby in the rain of the muggy deep south, and watching his rotund belly softly go in, out, in, out. This much I know is true.

All My Stories

Last year, the major networks shuttered their daytime soap operas. No more stolen babies, no more evil twins, no more iconic love stories between women and the men who once — like, a really long time ago when a whole different writing staff was in charge — raped them (yep, look it up). Despite their problematic stereotyping, absurdly contorted storylines, and frequent displays of amateur acting, I miss those daily hour-long escapes to Pine Valley and Llanview, where the drama was completely predictable and utterly engrossing. Soaps predated reality TV in their associations with cheap, empty-calorie, lowbrow entertainment. But as reality TV fans can surely attest, there’s a fabulous frivolity to the daytime story, a deliciousness in the tawdry soft-core sex scenes bathed in enough diffuse light to power a Barbara Walters clone farm, and a comfort in the constantly rehashed, recycled storytelling. I began watching soap operas with my mom when I was a little girl. I knew even then that the torrid love affairs and dynastic greed were totally inappropriate for my age, but I looked forward to our afternoons curled up on the couch together, talking over the dialogue to guess which plot twist the heavy-handed foreshadowing pointed to next or to revel in the epic on-again off-again romances of Luke and Laura, Nico and Cecily, and Tad and Dixie.

The soaps and many of their principal actors followed Mom and I from Atlanta to Tampa after my parents’ divorce. During the school year, I’d be home by 3pm so Mom and I could watch General Hospital together. I remember coming home one day and rushing to the living room to catch the unfolding saga of Bobbie and Tony Jones’s daughter, BJ, who was in a tragic school bus accident and pronounced brain dead, but whose healthy heart could now be transplanted into the ailing body of her sister, Maxie. Mom and I wept as we watched Tony hovering over Maxie’s chest, listening to the heartbeat of his dead daughter in the body of his now healing daughter (seriously). The scene plucked at some unrealized ache in both of us, a glimpse into the void of a parent without a child, a child without a parent. Of one of us without the other.

But the soaps and I go back even further. As the story goes, when my mom was eight months pregnant with me, she was watching All My Children, following the machinations of the grand dame of daytime TV, Erica Kane. My mom pondered the persona of Erica Kane and decided that she wanted her daughter to be tough, to make her own way in life, and “to be a bit of a bitch.” With this spark of (perhaps misguided) feminist empowerment, Mom made Erica Kane my namesake. Though Erica Kane’s “bitch” never really took root in me (try as I might), it did articulate Mom’s grasp of what it meant to be a successful, independent woman. As evidenced by her nine marriages, men were both necessary and ancillary to Erica Kane’s success. They were footholds in the mountains she climbed, but it was her strength and ambition (and over-the-lipline lipstick application) that got her to the top. Mom had no designs on beauty industry domination; all she wanted was a patch of happiness, a home and a life that she could be proud of. But on some fundamental level, she could not conceive of attaining that without a man as her stepping-stone. Lipsticked, bejeweled, and manipulative as they were, women like Erica Kane did offer an image of female empowerment, a glamorous diversion that surely helped many a bored housewife survive the tedium of rote domestic chores, fostering daydreams of international espionage, big hair, and a smoldering passion for . . . anything.

Luckily, there were other, more fruitful moral tales to be learned from the daytime serial:

1. When someone dies but the body is not recovered, that person will be back with a new identity and a score to settle.

2. If a murder is committed as a result of self-defense, don’t lie about it. This will only lead to an agonizingly drawn-out blackmail plotline when your nemesis learns of your crime, only to be resolved when said nemesis dies in a) a motorcycle accident, b) a natural disaster, or c) a shootout on a bridge wherein a body is never recovered (see number 1).

3. Relationships are complicated. Especially when you’re drugged and taken advantage of and then lie about it to your significant other, to whom you vowed on your wedding day, dressed in a sarong in a Hawaiian cave, to never withhold secrets from.

4. Villains can always be reformed, but the good don’t go bad — they go bat-shit crazy.

5. As a general rule, there’s a 75 percent likelihood that you have a twin but don’t know about it and that said twin will appear one day really pissed that you got everything he/she didn’t, and then he/she will dump your ass in a well and assume your identity.

6. The truth will set you free, so stop trying to cover up your black-market baby.

Sadly, number 4 proved true for my mom, too. Bad guys were always evolving into good guys on the soaps (see above re: the rapists-turned-lovers plotline). For the writers spinning yarns for the same popular characters year after year, this seemed a natural progression. By complicating the villains, trading in their black hats for gray ones, the producers got more bang for their actor bucks. Sometimes popular good guys went bad, but only by way of losing their minds. Their goodness was constantly putting them in peril, and you can only be dropped down a well, suffer amnesia, or be thought dead so many times before losing your grip. Mom was undeniably one of the good ones who suffered too much for one lifetime. Perhaps retreating inward was the only way to go.

So silly and apparently unprofitable (despite scores of awkward product placements) though they were, I miss the soaps and the life lessons they taught me. I miss characters with names that should be reserved for pets or rock formations, like Lucky and Ridge and Jagger. I miss the strange familiarity of turning on the TV years after watching these shows and seeing the same people looking slightly older, like aunts and uncles who visit every few years. I miss the writers’ random forays into paranormal plotlines and demon exorcism. Mostly, I miss the passing of another relic of my innocence and the person I shared it with, the person who knew all my misadventures, indiscretions, and affairs. The one person who knew all my stories.

Who's In Print

We're so excited to release a nearly-full list (we may have a few more people up our sleeves) of contributors to Equals in Print! We have 6 days to go to raise funds on Indiegogo. We here at Equals are deeply committed to providing a platform for women artists, writers, and illustrators to publish their work. This book is the first in a series of anthologies that will be gorgeous, well-written, and centered around topics that are both timeless and timely. Please spread the word about our Indiegogo campaign and help us bring Equals to print. As always, thank you for your support!

Emily Johnston Anderson

Miho Aikawa Melanie Biehle

Meg Blocker

Samantha Marie Bohnert

Erin Boyle

Sarah Brysk Cohen

Maggie May Ethridge

Brooke Fitts Madeleine Forbes

Margaret Elysia Garcia

Shani Gilchrist

Kimberly Ellen Hall

Allyson Turner Kirkpatrick

Erin Loechner

Karey M. Mackin

Rebecca D. Martin

Emily Matchar

Liz Matsushita

Molly McIntyre

Liz Moody

Randon Billings Noble interviewing authors Andrea Barrett, Cheryl Strayed, and Pam Houston

Renee Pepmiller

Rhea St. Julien

Lisa Sanchez

Alison Schramm Kathleen Shannon

Samantha Shorey

Nina Sovich

Joy Netanya Thompson

Carrie Allen Tipton

Miranda Ward

XXXVII. Provence

A group of us out for an all-night downtown street party Aix. If you’re energetic enough to stay out late, this city reveals its international side in its student nightlife; French is mixed in with English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, German, and various Eastern European languages. In spite of the melting pot, we American women always seem to attract the most attention---half of it based on the idea that we’re easy to sleep with, half for other reasons. In a country known for its stick-thin women, my friend Anna often stands out for her big-boned Iowan frame. Tonight, she finds herself the target of a 20-something Frenchman, spurred on by booze and his friends’ laughter as he makes slurred, belligerent remarks about the size of Anna’s shirt. She doesn’t look at him or reply and we all try to ignore it at first, continuing to talk to each other more loudly than before. But something snaps for me.

You can fuck right off, I turn and hiss at him in French. His eyes widen and he takes a stumbled step backward. My angry defense is just as much for me as for Anna. Five years of silent frustration for being treated like an idiotic piece of meat on account of a set of ovaries and a foreign accent pours out in a string of acidic, vulgar phrases that I’ve known for years but never actually said to anyone. Whether it’s the ferocity in my voice or the surprise of being talked back to, the guy stops speaking and quickly walks away.

Amidst a chorus of OOH’s from my friends, none of us so sober ourselves, the memory of writing down swear words flickers through my mind---sitting in the small kitchen in Normandy with Madeleine spelling the sentences out for me, word for word. I’m glad her teaching didn’t go to waste.

9-to-5

My working life over the past year has been anything but simple. Creative, perhaps—especially in terms of scheduling. But simple? Absolutely not. When someone asks the dreaded question about what I do, I usually feel as if I’m being sucked into a vortex in which my mind races backwards over everything I’ve actually done in the previous week or so. Gleanings from that vortex vary drastically depending on the week, but may look something like this: blog posts, incoming mail, outgoing mail, email, phone, database, website, blog posts, other website, slow web, write something, footnotes, footnotes, nap, footnotes, bibliography, transliteration, tired, footnotes. Hmm.

Needless to say, I generally return from this cloud of confusion with nothing very satisfying to offer my interlocutor and instead respond with a question mark in my voice: “Publishing? Books, usually? Also, the internet?”

My journey into the working world began last year at this time when, armed with two consecutive diplomas, I strode with equal parts excitement and bewilderment out of the university gates and into the employment-seeking wilderness. The intervening months between then and now have been marked by a few shining moments of serendipity, a smattering of deep disappointments, and an unfailing stream of worry, fear, and self-doubt. If I could offer my one-year-ago self any advice, I would tell her to spend more time doing things and less time worrying about doing them. I would also tell her to stop submitting resumes to automated robots, start meeting real people, and just make something happen. She might have listened, though not without eyeing me suspiciously and worrying that my advice was completely biased and autobiographically motivated.

Since beginning this column last summer, I have wandered through the desert of too little work and the valley of too much. I have wondered about fostering creativity in work and play, and I have worried all the while about finding direction. I have managed an ever-evolving concoction of part-time and freelance work. I have copyedited books, written an essay, and helped make something happen.

In just a couple of weeks, my hazy vortex of work will crystallize into something a little more recognizable: a full-time job in book publishing (without the question mark). While the internet seems increasingly flooded with glamorous entrepreneurs and mysterious freelancers, I am trying to muster up some confidence as I march in the other direction—toward a lovely office with an finicky copy machine, Dunder Mifflin paper, friendly faces, and what seems remarkably like a 9-to-5 schedule.

I can think of a whole new set of questions to worry about (for example, what exactly does one do with an entire weekend?), but let’s leave those aside for now and get to work on making things happen, shall we?

What Are You Reading (offline, that is)?

On a mission to manifest ease, Ariana Pritchett works with creative entrepreneurs and change agents to get out of the overwhelm and cut the excess that is keeping them stuck.  She believes that in order to do great work and make big impact one must reduce the busy and hone the area of genius unique to you.  In her latest project, Launch Sessions she pairs up with designer and friend, Katrina McHugh, to simplify solo-preneur start-up through a four-week business launch program.   You can find her attempting to quiet the crazy all while being a mom, wife, business owner, sister, friend, urban farmer and amateur interior stylist.  For more on her and her crazy crew check out her blog.

After grad school I made a commitment to only read material that satisfied my soul and made me itch to turn the next page. Alas juggling a new child and business start-up meant that I found most of these satisfying page-turners at the magazine stand of the local grocer.

This commercial consumption continued for a few years until my friends joined forces and started a book club. At first I assumed book club would be an excuse to have dinner and chat about our lives, little did I know it would keep me on my literary toes and stimulate my mind, heart, and spirit.

What I love most about book club is that I read books I would never have thought to pick up. Our eight member group rotates hosts once a month, giving each of us an opportunity to make a book selection of our choosing.

The books have run the spectrum from fiction and non-fiction to classics and contemporary.  There has been so much food for thought, but of the over 45 books we have read these are the top 4 that are still with me long after the last page is turned.

1. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann – Storytelling at its finest. An intersection of characters on the streets of 1970s New York, reminding me that above all we just want to be seen and loved.

2. We the Animals by Justin Torres – A family of boys who push the Lord of the Flies envelope of what it means to be civilized.

3. Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro – One of the classics following a quiet man of character as the protagonist with whom I couldn’t help but fall in love.

4. The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers – Poetic and profound this is a war tale that reminded me once again the line between good and evil is not clear.

The five runners up are:

1. Olive Kitteridge

2. The Sense of an Ending

3. Zeitoun

4. Born to Run

5. Freedom

All Grown Up, Still Splitting Custody

Dear Sibyl,

I'm in my late thirties and my parents have been divorced since I was 5 years old. Growing up I never wanted my parents to get back together because I knew they didn't get along well. They did a great job of never trash talking each other to us kids, but the awkwardness and unlove was palpable between them.

My problem is, the older I've gotten, the more I wish we were one, maybe crazy, but unified family.  I split the holidays, getting some time with each parent, but if I want to have a spontaneous BBQ, I have to choose between my parents because its just too uncomfortable for everyone to be together. Then, I feel guilt on top of this because I prefer my father's company over my mom's. We just relate better to each other.

I guess my question is, are there other grown ups yearning for an un-divorced family, and what is your advice on handling choosing sides?

Help!

Torn In Two

Dear Torn In Two,

We're all grieving the family we don't have.

I have a picture of my parents in my living room, which was taken before I was born, in which they look so happy that I've considered they might be high.  Their faces squished together, both grinning, beautiful, and shining with love.  The pictures I have of them in later years are stilted, posed, in which they look like strangers to one another.

Growing up, I always wished my parents would get a divorce, because their unhappiness together fell over our house like a pallor, making everything muted, even celebratory times.  But they stuck it out, for one reason or another, and as an adult I realized that you never really know what happens between two people, even if you are living in the same house with them.

My father died when I was in college, so I never got to see what it would be like to get together with them as adults.  I find myself jealous of the parents who have grandparents around all the time, and seeing the way that my child responds to older adults, I wish I could give that to her.

But there are trade-offs to everything.  I hear from my friends who have active grandparents that they are often quite stressful to have around.  Also, I think everyone has to navigate their parents' relationship, whether they stayed together, or not.

So, Torn In Two, I don't think you are alone on this.  I think we could all use some time to grieve the happy families we wish we could have, and find acceptance for the one we’ve got.

What I suggest for your dilemma of choosing which parent to spend time with is this: make a monthly date with your mom, and stick to it, no matter what, on your end.  If she's the one to drop the ball, just wait until the following month to see her.  Then, you can let your get-togethers with your dad be more spontaneous, and you won't feel bad, because you have your standing date with your mom.

As for the guilt you feel for preferring his company, you need to let that go, as I'm sure you can find real reasons your dad and you are closer.  Guilt is spiritual cancer.  Radiate that shit with love.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

Lessons from Monticello...

Dearest Clara, You won’t find a shortage of wisdom coming from our Founding Fathers.  After all, they broke with every tradition of their time to put together one of the greatest homes for the freedoms that we enjoy.  Is it perfect? Not always, but just because something is an ongoing work in progress, doesn’t it make it irrelevant.  It just makes it something you have to do your part to improve.

But I’ll leave the lessons on democracy for the history books.  When we visited Monticello last week, the home of Thomas Jefferson, I first bristled at the fact that one could see the house only as part of a guided tour.  But in the end it turned out to be so valuable because seeing his home while hearing about who he was as an individual person brought forth its own lessons:

• Time spent in Paris is time well spent: Jefferson went as an Ambassador (well, as a “Minister”) and had some of his most formative ideas when in Paris — whether it was the structure of his house or his meals, he was inspired in so many ways.  Time in Paris isn’t always easy but it is nearly always formative in some way.
• A home is a place of learning too:  The house at Monticello is full of books and portraits and ideas that Jefferson didn’t necessarily agree with but the presence of those items invited discussions and opportunities to teach, especially as the house was full of visitors and children.  Having these items wasn’t about endorsement but about discussion, and about teaching individual different ideas so that they could formulate their own.
• “Meat is a condiment …to the vegetables that constitute my principal diet”: Good health comes from eating good vegetables.  You can eat meat or other indulgences, but when you count the balance of your day, make sure that vegetables and fruits constitute the bulk of what you consume.
• We will always live at the mercy of water:  Many people find themselves at water’s mercy because they live too close.  Jefferson found himself at water’s mercy because he was too far from a natural source for his farm.  So there were years of drought and years of difficulty, and the farm always had concern about water front and center.  I say this, not because you will likely be a farmer (though one never knows), but more to remind you to mindful of the power and importance of water.  It should be respected, and also taken care of – one of life’s luxuries is constant access to clean and reliable water.  People's lives will always depend on it.
• If you don’t invent it, adapt it: Thomas Jefferson wasn’t necessarily a noted inventor — but he was a master of taking things he saw used once and adapting for his own needs.  For example, Jefferson had tweaked the polygraph machine (the original copier) which was designed to enlarge or scale drawings, to produce copies of his letters, so that he always have one for himself.  It’s okay if you didn’t come up with the original idea, the real question is always how will you use what you have to make it your own?
• “Avoid taverns, drinkers, smokers, and idlers and dissipated persons generally… and you will find your path more easy and tranquil.": Jefferson gave this advice to his nephew, as he pursued studies in Philadelphia and it couldn’t be more true today.  Avoid those who attract and promote trouble, especially as you figure out your own path.  The tranquility of mind you’ll gain, you’ll use as you navigate your own way.

All my love,

Mom

April Showers and May Flowers

Growing up spring always meant a trip to the nursery or garden shop to pick out flowers for the raised beds in my parent’s backyard.  My little sister and I would wander through the rows, navigating bags of mulch or potting soil and make suggestions to my mom about what we thought looked nice. My suggestions were often refuted as I almost always failed to pay attention to the sun/shade requirements.  In the end we’d each pick out a couple of pansies or black eyed susans that we particularly liked and then it was back home to plant.

Even as a child I never enjoyed playing in the dirt.  When it came to digging holes and placing our flowers in the raised beds, I always wanted work gloves and a large trowel.  Heaven help us all if I dug up a worm.  Our pansies and mums always looked so small, almost lonely in the large beds- spread apart and dug in.  But of course as the summer went on, they bloomed and spread out in a colorful sea.

I guess that’s why whenever April and May roll around and the stores begin putting out displays of flowers for planting I get a tiny tingle and start to consider.  Maybe this year I’ll put a couple flower pots out on the deck.  Maybe I’ll grow some herbs. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow with the skill of Martha Stewart.  The truth is I have a black thumb.  I have exactly one plant in my house, a bamboo that requires little to no care and only an inch of water.  Even that I’ve had some close calls with.  So I’ll continue to leave the planting to my parents who have moved on from flower gardens to vegetable.  I’ll gratefully enjoy the salsa and fresh asparagus when I visit and I’ll admire the flower displays from afar.

Anna Comnena: Byzantine Princess, Crusades Chronicler

I first became acquainted with this historical woman of the day because she was one of the only sources for describing a bunch of historical men. Isn’t that the way the historical cookie always crumbles?

Anna Comnena (1080 – c. 1153) was a Byzantine princess, the daughter of Emperor Alexius Comnenus I, and an eyewitness chronicler of the First Crusade and some of its most prominent Crusaders. In fact, it was her dad that invited those European macho men out East in the first place. It goes like this:

A SUPER SHORT SUMMARY OF THE FIRST CRUSADE Seljuk Turks were expanding out of Central Asia and into what we now know as the Middle East. The Byzantine Empire (Greek Orthodox, concentrated in modern day Turkey, capital Constantinople) started getting nervous. Though loathe to request help from Western Christendom (you know, Europe), who were Catholic, and probably kind of a pain about it, Alexius Comnenus finally felt like he had no other options. “Come over here and help us out, guys,” he said to the Pope. “We’re all Christian brothers and stuff.”

Pope Urban II got excited, because as usual the Church was having a lot of problems in Europe, and having one big CAUSE tends to make problems disappear (or at least go temporarily invisible). So he made this big speech in 1095 and announced that everyone should go on Crusade to the Holy Land. Your soul would get saved, yada yada yada.

So Crusaders poured out of what is now France, and Germany, and England, and Italy, and walked/rode horses all the way to what is now Turkey, and some of them killed a lot of innocent people on the way in what were probably fits of zealotry and testosterone, and then the leaders got to Constantinople by 1097 and (mostly) pledged loyalty to Alexius. They had cool names like Godfrey and Baldwin and Bohemond. Anna provides descriptions of all of them in her chronicle.

But they really wanted to do other things besides just save the Byzantines. Like what was in it for them? So they poured into Syria and Palestine and set up Crusader castles and some of them stayed for like a hundred years or more (their progeny, of course. Though I do like to picture like the Indiana Jones guy sitting around in a fortress in the mountains crumbling to dust). Oh and they also killed more people.

The end. (Until the Second Crusade.)

---

Anyway. Anna provides the only Byzantine-eye view to this whole saga, in a chronicle she wrote of her father’s reign, the Alexiad. In this she reminds me of Dmitri Nabokov or Christopher Tolkien—forever in their father’s literary shadow, translating his old stuff, writing down reminiscences, safeguarding his estate. Celebrity fathers, ya know?

But Anna was more than just a woman who wrote about men that historians care about, though this is probably why her memory has been kept alive so long. She was also accomplished and educated, serving as a physician in a hospital her father had built for her, specializing in, apparently, gout.

She also had designs on the throne. At the age of fourteen she married Nicephorus of Bryennium, and as her father approached death, she conspired with her mother Irene to have her husband named the next emperor instead of her good-for-nothing brother John. However, she was outmaneuvered, and on his deathbed Alexius blessed John as his successor.

Later, she was busted for conspiracy to commit regicide or its twelfth-century Byzantine equivalent, and spent the rest of her life in a convent. This is where she hunkered down and wrote the Alexiad. Which ended up not being a bad use of her time.

So as a woman of the medieval Byzantine court, she was able to carve out an occupation, some expertise, a decent education (although she was forbidden from reading classical poetry because it was indecent), and even came thisclose to becoming Empress, courtesy her own ambition and wile. We don’t know a ton about her, but what we know is pretty impressive.

Though why do these stories always have to end in a convent?

Don't Forget Jerusalem

Five days in Israel don’t seem a long time, and indeed they are not. Nonetheless, Israel State is quite small (barely bigger than New Jersey), so you don’t need weeks to visit the most important sites. The only essentials are a car (a GPS is unnecessary, directions are clear and easy so a good map will do) and lots of curiosity. As I prepared to come back to Milan, I started thinking about the best things I saw (or felt, or tasted), and I realized that when there’s too much on the table, it’s best to make a list to avoid forgetting. And this is definitely a trip I don’t want to forget anything about. So, not necessarily in order of importance, here’s my list.

1. Coexistence of many religions. As a Catholic, what I felt wasn’t only the spirit of my own religion; it was a universal feeling, of acceptance, of struggle and hope. More than a pilgrimage to the roots of Catholicism, I thought I was learning a very important lesson about many ancient faiths.

 

2. Oranges and lemons. Juices are not cheap (life isn’t cheap in general, mostly as costly as in Italy, or at least this was my impression), but for the equivalent of $4/$5 you can get the most flavorful juice. I found it very helpful after a long day wandering in heat, or even for breakfast. It gave me the energy and the salts I needed.

3. Feeling that you are part of something historic and important. It’s not easy for foreigners to understand what living in Jerusalem means, and what being a part of those religions’ history is. Struggle, triumph, being a victim or a victor. Longing for peace and compromise for it. Places that belong to everyone and are equally important to everyone.

4. Old city shopping. How good it feels to just wander around inside the Old City walls. After the first day there, I was happy–I was actually able to find the same places again, and it felt like a victory! From Muslim to Christian to Jewish symbols, the challenge consists of getting past the more touristy places and looking for the hidden corners. So, instead of buying any memento along the Via Dolorosa, with its countless souvenir shops, I bought candles and rosary beads in the ancient site where Jesus was kept imprisoned, a cave below the ground level where taking pictures is forbidden, and at least I felt that I was contributing a little to the site’s maintenance.

5. Real hummus. How delicious! Abu Shukri restaurant was suggested on the guide (I rely on Fodor’s, the best!) as the place where they make the best hummus in town, and it definitely was. It’s in the heart of the Old City, and while it lacks in decor, it has a local clientele that confirms its superior quality. I got hummus with pine nut, and Husband opted for hummus with . . . hummus (chickpeas).

6. Friday night walk. On Friday nights, the city is full of life. We walked to the Western Wall, and this is what we found. Families gathered in prayers and children chanting all together.

7. The parades of monks, nuns and other religious types in their various robes and hoods.

8. The zest for life. Jerusalem is not only what you see inside the walls of the Old City; outside the walls it’s a very young and vibrant place, full of life, restaurants and shops. As far as I could see, the best time to enjoy the pulse of life is on Thursday nights. Listening to live music and watching dances on the street while eating shawarma (a mix of meats wrapped in pita bread, so yummy) was relaxing and fun. On Fridays nights instead, everything is closed, as the population gets ready for Shabbat, the day of rest. So don’t expect to find anything opened on Saturday morning. The only place we found for breakfast was a service area on the highway, on our way to Nazareth, and it was packed!

 

 

This isn’t a comprehensive list, of course. It’s inadequate, incomplete. And it’s only about Jerusalem. All of the other places we saw (Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberias, Haifa) deserve their own lists. I am looking forward to another trip there, I feel like there’s so much more to learn.

shaking things up.

I'm a creature of habit. I like to set up structures for myself and work within them. I’ve never had much trouble shifting my routines when things begin to feel stale, but having at least some kind of repetition from day to day helps me to feel productive and centered.

In the mornings I walk. Sometimes my walks are long and meandering and sometimes they are quick, a way to get somewhere. After my walk, I write. I sip tea and punch out sentences and edit photographs along the way. In the afternoons, if there are errands to run for work, I do those. The precise details of my days vary, but mostly they include traces of something familiar.

Traveling to find flower blossoms in the middle of the week is not part of my usual rhythm.

Last week, on Thursday, I boarded a train to go deeper into Brooklyn. Habits are hard to break and so I rode an accidental stop in the direction of Manhattan before circling back around. I got off at Grand Army Plaza and padded down Flatbush Avenue in search of cherry blossoms. 

Inside the gates of Brooklyn Botanic Garden the trees were at their peak. Festooned in giant puffs of pink, they looked like creatures out of Jim Henson’s studio. I half expected them to break into song.

Below them, whole packs of tiny humans were shaking up their daily routine. 

Teachers and chaperones made attempts at order.

“Line up; you're still in school, you know.”

But under the cherry blossoms on a mid-week morning at the end of April, there's no such thing as the regular routine.

"It smells like heaven here, " said one little girl. And of course I believed her.

A New Perspective

Once, I called my Dad from New York.  It was the middle of December, and I’d been living in the city for three months. “Dad,” I said.  “I woke up this morning feeling so bummed, and I don’t know why.”

“Mmm,” he said.  “SAD.”

“I know.” I nodded into the phone, and stuck my lower lip out further, as if he could see it.  “It is sad.  And I felt stupid cuz it was for no reason, but I thought I could call you because you’re my dad, so you have to care.”

“Well,” my dad said.  “That’s debatable, but I was talking about SAD.  Seasonal Affective Disorder.”

It was my first winter outside of California or Arizona; that is, it was my first winter.  I spent awhile half listening to my father explain Seasonal Affective Disorder, and then awhile Googling it.  Like most ailments I look up online, I had most of the symptoms:  oversleeping?  I never woke up before my alarm.  Social withdrawal?  Who in their right mind would brave the gusting wind and snow to meet up with friends?  Weight gain? Well, wasn’t that just my body’s way of trying to stay warm for winter?

Because it made me feel better to say that I had something, I bought a blue light lamp that sat on my desk.  Supposedly, this was supposed to mimic sun, making my poor, confused brain think I wasn’t spending much of my year in a climate mostly uninhabitable to humans, breathing in the breath of a thousand coworkers, only going outside during the pitch dark mornings and evenings during my commute.  Did my brain think I was on a sunny beach in the Caribbean?  I’m not sure.  Did having the bright blue light shining in my eyes make me feel like I was doing something to help myself?  Let’s go with yes, although not enough for me to forget it at the office when, that summer, I left the company.

Fast forward to the next winter.  This time, I was in London, at a latitude---God forbid---even further north than New York.  In London, I’d peek out my window and find that night had fallen at 3 pm.  In London, the snow was pretty the first day and freezing and slippery for the following forty-eight.  When people asked me if I was enjoying London, I would tell them that the grey cloud layer that lay over the city like a reverse blanket was making it awfully hard to go out and explore. I’m sure I’d like London, I’d say, if I felt like I could see it.

Within the past few weeks, though, something magical has happened.  Tentatively, the sun began showing its face, finally casting away the clouds to blatantly, brightly hog the bright blue sky.  People began spilling out of their houses to fill park benches; pubs began dragging heavy wooden tables onto sidewalks and streets and roofs and alleyways---anywhere, really, which qualifies as outside.  I went to the grocery store the other day and found it closed when I arrived.  “Sorry,” the manager mouthed, pointing to the sign he’d just hung in the window.  “We close at eight.”  Eight?  I looked at the time on my phone, then up at the perfectly sunny day, then down at my phone again.  Even the sun loves London in the summer, it seems; it refuses to pack it in and call it a night.

A new London began to emerge, and with it, a new me.  I was suddenly energized in the morning.  I was eager to strap on my shoes and wander down canals, discovering the new parks that pop up in every corner of this city.  I sat at outdoor cafes and laughed as my hair became dusted with a snow shower of falling flowers from a nearby cherry tree.  I watched the sun set from the top of Primrose hill, and looked past the green grass to the shining city below me, lit amber as the sun slid beyond the horizon at near nine at night, and I thought: so this is London.

SAD?  I don’t know about that.  But suddenly, I’m finding it much easier to be happy.

Preview Spreads!

Have you pre-ordered your print copy of Equals yet? We're releasing a few spreads today so you can see what you're getting. You can look forward to clean layouts, gorgeous photos, and incredible writing by some of our favorite authors. We have less than 2 weeks left for our indiegogo campaign, and only have 1/3 of the funds left to raise. Thanks for your support!

Lilacs and The Things We Lose.

After everyone left town following my mother’s funeral, one of the things left behind was a mix cd that held all of her favorite songs. It's maybe the truest part of her that I have left, since she never wrote anything or found a way to say, "this is who I was." It's a different kind of hurt, as I've grown older, to lose a person---not just the figure of my mother.  I wish I knew how she was funny or how she was sad; if there were things she lost that she never stopped missing. Mother’s day comes every year when the lilacs are blooming. They were her favorite spring flower. My childhood friends would bring her bunches of them on the days my mother drove us to school. Wrapped in wet paper towels, the lilac's woody stems would be nestled into the cup holder. She planted a lilac tree out in our back garden too, in the corner, at the meeting of the fence lines. In May, the Oregon rain would cling to the clusters of clover shaped flowers. The leaves folding, the branches bent under the wealth of it.

The second song on her cd is "Our House" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. "I'll light the fire," it begins, "you put the flowers in the vase, that you bought yesterday." Most of the verses are about simple blessings like that, about rest and light and illuminated windows. But, it's the last line that gets me every time: "life use to be so hard / now everything is easy because of you."

Those words help me understand the life that I remember with her and the home my parents made together. They both wanted to build a place better than the one they'd known. So, they painted the walls white and covered them with wainscoting. No unkind words were ever spoken. She turned on the table lamps to keep out the dark and set lilacs on the dining room table. And on the first warm day of Spring, she would open the French doors, put on her reeboks and windex the windows. From the living room, she'd play that song onto the patio. Even the neighbors could hear it coming from our house.

Everything is Beautiful

I suppose I should start at the beginning. You want to hear the birth story, right? Whether I used drugs or did it au naturale? Was there water involved? A midwife or doctor? (Birth has become so politicized). Well, I’m not going to do that. You can imagine the details and I’ll just skip to the ending---I brought home a healthy baby boy on March 5^th, one week before my toddler turned three. We named him Dash Oliver. No, we didn’t have any underlying reason. I gave my husband the parameters: one syllable, kind of vaguely preppy sounding? And he came up with Dash all on his own.

I should tell you that everything is so, so very different with this one. Everything I thought I knew before doesn’t matter. I should tell you that for the first time, it is easy. Perhaps even enjoyable? I wake up and his rounded baby cheeks greet me. He is a sweet bedfellow, all smiles and coos. I want to dress him in only white, pure and clean. I am reminded that you don’t need all the accouterments that are marketed to new moms. Just some diapers and a boob. Did I mention that I am breastfeeding this time around? Don’t worry, I won’t judge you if you didn’t, or can’t, or even don’t want to. I’ve been there. But this time, with this baby, I am breastfeeding, and co-sleeping too. It has been going well, mostly enjoyable, but mostly it just . . . is. People ask how the nursing is going, and I squint my eyes and tilt my head, “Well, I guess?” He’s eating and gaining weight and I am only slightly less exhausted than I was with bottles. I am reminded how children choose their own parenting philosophies. At the hospital, while I was trying to decide whether to breastfeed this time, the nurses kept mentioning how “he just loves the boob” and “this little guy decided he wanted to be breastfed!” I liked that. I liked that for once they didn’t make it about me, the mom. My first rarely snuggled and had a terrible latch from the beginning, and this one? Completely different in every way. Will it be like this the rest of their lives? This marveling at how genes could combine in such different varieties?

I want to grasp these early days and hold them tight. Every day he grows bigger and smiles more. My heart bursts. I tell my husband, “Did Charley smile this much? I don’t think he did.” He says he did. But I think perhaps it was the postpartum depression fogging my brain. I can’t remember any smiles because I wasn’t smiling. But this time, this time I have that new mother glow of happiness. I overflow with joy. There is none of that angry, resentful feeling I carried for so long with Charley and I am glad. Is this what those mothers at the library were feeling when I used to bring Charley after crying all morning? Those moms with the sappy grins on their faces that I just couldn’t understand. It’s as if the depression left a scar on my soul, deep and jagged, and Dash allows it to heal. Every day is better than the last. I’m not sure I will be able to say that forever. But every day is bittersweet as well since I know this will be my last. Who knows, I might just be the next controversial extended breastfeeding mom! Life is beautiful and so unexpected.

I am thrilled and honored to be writing in this space again all about motherhood and identity. Two kids is an adventure and the journey is life-altering.

Information vs. Overload

If I retained one thing from my high school economics class, it was the concept of diminishing marginal utility. Apparently, the pizza analogy really captured my attention. It went something like this (please forgive this former English major if she is totally botching it): You stop into a pizza shop for lunch and buy yourself a slice. You are really hungry, and that slice is incredible. It is worth way more to you than the three dollars you spent on it. You decide to go for a second slice, which is also pretty satisfying and worth the price. By the time you’ve gone back for a third slice, you are feeling pretty neutral about it going down the hatch. After that point, additional slices equal pain, not pleasure, and they will no longer hold value for you (until lunchtime tomorrow).

Sometimes I wonder if this concept could be applied in some way to the problem of information overload. Imagine that the product is information and the cost is the time spent consuming it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve opened a browser in search of information or inspiration, only to find later that I’ve taken in more than I really needed or wanted, or spent too much valuable time, well, “browsing.” Depending on the question I’m trying to answer or how I’m feeling on a given day, there is a certain point at which the amount of information I’m taking in is no longer worth the time I’m spending consuming it. Unfortunately, it can be such a challenge to acknowledge when I’ve hit that point and release myself from the vortex of the screen.

There’s another challenge, which has to do with the intersection of the quality of the information we encounter, the order in which we encounter it, and our energy levels at various points throughout the day. For example, if I come across an incredibly beautiful and inspiring essay—exactly the sort of essay I had been looking for—at the very end of the day, I am probably too tired to really enjoy and process it. On the other hand, if I have spent the first precious hours of the morning flipping through a near-stranger’s endless collection of vacation photos, perhaps the quality of the information consumed was not equal to the nature and quantity of the time spent on it.

Many services and applications are coming up with welcome possibilities to help us manage the fire hose of information. Increasingly powerful search engines bring us closer to finding what we’re really looking for, and various forms of curation and personalization help bring content that may have more value to our attention first. Still, I often feel as though it really comes down to me, my browser, and my will power. Even a genius search engine and a fabulous curator can’t tell me when enough is enough, those extra slices are just giving me a stomach ache, and one more article is only going to tip the scale of my time in the wrong direction. There is enough incredible information in this world to fill lifetimes; it’s up to me to decide how much of it I can really handle in this one.

xxxvi. normandie

I used to have these fantasies of Fréd and I falling in love and living in Paris in a tiny apartment in the quartier latin. We would survive off of cigarettes and coffee and sex. I would take classes at the Sorbonne, and he would write stories and novels. We would walk along the Seine and frequent dark, smoky bars at night. It was the kind of romantic ideal that I spent the first 20 years or so of my life carefully cultivating, a fantasy that I’d pieced together from reading too many books and watching too many movies set in Paris. For years, though, I thought that maybe, maybe there was a chance that it could come true.

Fréd is still one of my best French friends. He is one of those people I can go years without seeing in person and, when we do meet again, pick right back up with where we left off. I’m fairly certain now that he is gay, but the fantasy was still nice while it lasted.

___

[You can read all of the Postcards from France here.] 

May.

Just the word makes me anxious, or rather, I should say anxious-excited. May.

I can’t remember May without a major life transition. In May of 2009, I said a tearful airport goodbye as I moved to Honduras. The same situation repeated itself in May of 2010, although with different people and a different country. In May of 2011, I took my first cross-country solo road trip. Although terrified of spending 2,000 miles alone with just an atlas, I found a sense of peace-in-transition accompanied by Country Roads and Wagon Wheel. I arrived in Boston, stored my belongings, and moved to Peru for the summer. In May of 2007, I left my college campus and transitioned into the working world. In May of 2006, I moved to France for the summer. The list goes on and on, but always, there is May 2005, when I transitioned to being fatherless.

Here we are again---nearing the middle of May.

May 2013. The giant pink flowers blossoming across campus signal the period of transition, the beginning of summer. Like each May before it, this May will also be full of goodbyes and life transitions. May 19^th will mark the last time I will transition from school to the next step. Even as a child, May required a transition from school to endless summer days. Although at that age---the longer days meant more time for make-believe worlds to unfold between the trees and gardens in my family’s backyard. Perhaps this feeling of a sense of freedom from childhood should be re-kindled, as this summer appears to expand in a timeless manner.

In-transition.

I cherish the space that opens up when we are in transition. With one foot in the life I had been living and one foot in the next life, nostalgia mixes with excitement and hope in a way that makes me feel alive. Moments feel more colorful, last minutes with friends more meaningful, decisions to jump on a plane to who-knows-where more daring, and even, our communities seem more forgiving---allowing us to leave, grow, and love them from a distance. In the past my “in transition” times have included one backpack, adventure, and plane tickets. However, this May is different.

As I take one step out of my current life and community, I am not sure where I will be taking the next step. This May requires a new comfort with a lack of a plan, an attempt at finding comfort in standing still. It is a new type of transition, changing life phases without changing location, quite yet. How do you lean into a transition without physically packing all your belongings? Or knowing what you will be moving next?  I hope the endless summer days will allow the space for this period of “in-transition” to settle and for quiet moments to unfold in which some of the bigger questions can be answered.

In celebration.

May 20^th is the yearly marker of the passing of my father and the years of healing that have taken place since then. This year will mark eight years since he died, and in some ways, eight years of feeling like I am in-transition. Hopefully this year’s transition, though standing still, will allow for a new, peaceful form of celebration.