Sorry...

It turns out that the best way to start writing again is simply to start writing again.  The 45^th year approaches rapidly and I realize I’ve abandoned computer for pursuits all work related.  And while work is a flourishing and happy place at present, my inner life may be atrophying at a pace too rapid to notice.  Certainly I am less interesting at a dinner party than I was in the blog prolific days of the 43^rd year and when hours were spent contemplating navels and books and articles rather than screenplays about superheroes and monsters.  Still though, Child One and Two grow and remain fascinating fodder – the world of being the Evil Step challenges daily and Sig Other remains the present and entertaining love of my life.  So I will attempt, in spite of the continued onslaught of work, to return to The 43^rd Year, as I approach my 45^th…

We got in!!!

One thing I may have failed to mention as we waited for Mr. Tufts (or Misters Brown, Amherst or Barnard) is the unique and perhaps misguided way in which we, the collective parents of Child One, felt that WE were waiting to hear from colleges.  So much so, in fact, that we had to discuss the rules as they pertained to incoming mail.  And even though we discussed said rules, I felt quite sure that I would find myself home early from work on one of critical days, and if I should find myself wandering toward the mailbox I care little about and pay almost no heed most of the year, and IF I should happen upon an envelope from one of the many fancy, high-end universities Child One applied to, I MIGHT, just might, be inclined to open said envelope despite rules of normal acceptable social engagement that suggest I respect Child One’s right to open her own mail – the mail addressed to HER that holds information about HER future – not mine, not Sig Other’s, and certainly not Child Two’s. 

But that was just silly.  There was no scenario in which said mail was to sit, unopened on a countertop for an hour or perhaps more while Child One meandered around from school to friend to whatever activity struck her at the moment.  There was no scenario in which I would have been able to tolerate our collective future hanging in the balance whilst a simple piece of flimsy paper floated between us and our future fantasy.  And I certainly could not, and would not, accept that it would be somehow inappropriate for me to open an envelope which holds the future of Child One.   And so very strict rules were laid out to which Sig Other and I were sworn to adhere.

But of course, the rules were made only AFTER a specific breach – a breach that occurred innocently enough, but which revealed all there is to understand about applying to college in the modern age of parenting.  A few weeks ago, Sig Other made an urgent call to me in the office.  He asked me if I was sitting down and I, anticipating news of death or disease, was quite pleased to hear the drama was simply that Child One had been accepted to one of the schools of her choice.  This acceptance came much earlier than we were meant to officially hear from any college and quite out of the blue.  Sig Other told me that he was looking through the mail and noticed a rather thin envelope addressed to Child One from one of the colleges in question.  “And you opened it?” I asked rather harshly.  “Of course,” he replied, “it was a thin envelope so I assumed it was a note saying we’d made an error on our application.” 

And there it was.  A statement so innocent and yet so loaded.  “Our application.”  Not the application of Child One.  Not an application made by a young woman trying to determine her future on her own.  Rather, an application made by Child One, by Sig Other, and I suppose by Ex-Wife and me too.  WE all applied to college – several really.  And WE all were waiting to hear from seven universities until just recently. 

Now we’ve heard.  WE got in some places and got rejected (yes, I said REJECTED) from others.  And now we wait whilst Child One ponders and weighs her decisions.  Now we wait and try hard not to influence too much in one direction or other – recognizing that this is HER decision, after all.  Not ours.  Our future hangs in the balance with her but she alone will decide where she’ll go to school.  I can only cross my fingers and hope its one simple plane ride away…

Waiting for Mr. Brown...

Or Mr. Tufts, Wesleyan or Amherst.  Or really any one of the fancy East Coast colleges Child One applied to.   This is the moment for highschool seniors everywhere to experience anxiety, stress and fear.  And for parents of highschool seniors – particularly those of us who are, perhaps, a little too involved in the lives of our children – to wring our hands, soothe furrowed brows and act as if we don’t share the anxiety, stress and fear.  And this is the moment when I remember all those moments at the end of last year – all those moments when we struggled through the dread disease, “Mediocrity.”

Child One periodically came down with Mediocrity during the application process. Mediocrity doesn’t manifest as a fever or vomiting, but is often accompanied by sniffles and tears. Mostly, Mediocrity is accompanied by conversation about college – where she’ll get in, where she won’t.  Of course, not getting in to a particular college is known as “rejection.”  Which, by very definition, means that getting in is equivalent to “acceptance.”  And since Child One is applying to schools I could only dream of at her age, acceptance to any of them feels like something with very little relation to mediocrity to me.  But I don’t breathe Child One’s rarified private school air and I don’t occupy her self-motivated, driven, competitive shoes.  And so it doesn’t matter one bit that I would be happy with whatever school she goes to.  It doesn’t matter that Sig Other is incredibly proud of her no matter what.  What matters is that somehow if she doesn’t get in to the top top top of her choices, she will feel like a failure.

Of course it is true that of the seven schools, one is considered better than the other six.  It is also true that neither Sig Other nor myself expect her to get into said school.  And there is one of the seven that is, of those very high-ranking, very specialized schools, that could be considered to be sort of at the bottom of what is still a tippy top, fancy-pants list.   When Sig Other and I ask Child One what would happen if she got accepted to the last of the very elite seven, she answers that she will feel mediocre.

A quiet beat follows her response and a look passes between us – between two people who have spent their whole lives working hard and feeling mediocre – two people who have very little interest in belonging to clubs that would have us as members and two people who strive to constantly be more – more successful, more interesting, more interested.  And we start to laugh.  Child One is sort of indignant so we explain.  We didn’t soothe or chide or pretend that we didn’t understand.  We do understand.  All too well.  So we say, sort of simultaneously, “oh shit – we did it to her.”   Somehow the gene – the “I’m mediocre” gene - passed biologically through her father and perhaps through the ether from me, leaving Child One stuck in a world in which she’ll never be quite good enough.  I’m not sure it’s a bad thing.  I’m not sure anyone who I admire ever feels completely and totally up to snuff.  But it sure sucks watching your kid – your brilliant, hard-working, beautiful, ambitious, shiny kid – suffer ridiculous breast-beating insecurity and know that somehow you couldn’t break the cycle – couldn’t end generations of mediocrity on her behalf. 

I’m hopeful Child Two will escape it.  He’s oddly incredibly pleased with himself most of the time.  True he has moments and bouts and can’t help comparing himself to his sister, particularly now that they’re in the same school and her shadow looms large over him.  But I often catch him looking in the mirror and sort of winking at himself.  And he mostly speaks with the confidence and maturity of a kid far beyond his age.  It isn’t an easy road, the one in front of him.  Between Sig Other and Child One, he surely must feel the pressure to succeed.  But hopefully we’ve given him enough room to be different, to be his own dude, to define himself in his own way.  And since so far he’s chosen to veer away from every road his sister has travelled (she rides horses, he can’t stand them, she played piano, he chose drums), perhaps the road of mediocrity will elude him.

In the meantime, Sig Other and I will wring our hands and wait by the mailbox...

The wind began to pitch...

The house to switch.  Child One and I, on our own with Sig Other far away across the country, huddle safely in our abode as unseasonable wind rattles the windows and shakes the doors.  It’s crazy out there.  I imagine myself as Dorothy – battened down in a house rocked by wicked witches and wacky winds.

I’d say its an October wind but for the fact that its March.  A Fall wind makes LA weird and a little sexy.  But it’s March. And so I’m feeling rather upside down.  Fall wind blows crazy hot air, keeps dogs up at night, stirs the restless from their beds, keeps the anxious on edge.  This is the wind that Southern California owns – the Scirocco of the continental US.  But tonite is different – wilder, colder, more unusual – an unpredicted storm blowing through and keeping us up on what should be a cozy night.

Crazy wind has always kept me up.  Child Two, more sensitive than most to others’ moods, noted early on that wind makes me cranky.  “Uh oh,” he’d say, “its windles.  Not good,”  And I’d know he was talking about me and my moods.  He’s right of course.   Wind has always make me cranky, put me on edge, upended my sleep, my mood, my sense of well-being.  Its as though somehow I believe that wind is a sign – a harbinger – of some unbelievable doom. 

But no such doom came tonite.  Not for Child One and myself.  We are snugged in.  Alpha and Beta seem unperturbed by the turbulent air.  Were it truly a storm I imagine the two of them upended by anxiety – running to and fro, back and forth around the house and howling in even pitch with the whipping wind.  And yet they display no such angst.  Beta Dog is snuggled sweetly beside me, head on pillow and arm thrown across as though reaching for me as Sig Other would.  Alpha lays quietly on her couch – queen of her domain and blissfully unaware of the chaos around her.  They, the both of them, are blessed with deep sleep rather than deep thoughts – one being an incontrovertible inhibitor of the other.  I envy them simplicity and bliss.  I envy them their zen.  I remain awake – Dorothy on a windy eve, hoping my house doesn’t fall on a wicked witch but liking the idea of new red shoes.

I’ve not written in months – been buried in work and in life – happy but unavailable – to my computer, to my family and friends, to myself.  So here I emerge, like a groundhog looking for my shadow and finding only an unseasonable tempest – I’m likely to disappear under ground for longer than I’d like but happy to poke my head out albeit briefly.    And for once, I’m grateful for the wind, grateful to be kept up, if only for a moment, and given the time to write…

OUCH!!!

There’s a nasty bruise on my left knee.  And one three inches down on my shin.  Those are nothing compared to the one just under my arm and the other that’s finally going away on my right knuckle. I didn’t fall down a stairwell.  Sig Other has not taken to beating me.  These are war wounds – evidence of a weekend spent on the battle field of twelve year old boys and grown men – evidence of paintball.

Child Two loves paintball.  And so, for his 12^th birthday, rather than his weekly solo sojourn to the fields, he asked for a private paintball party that included his friends, his family, and most specifically ME.  It was a big deal to him that I play and I was convinced it was his opportunity to take a shot at his stepmother although he did spend a great deal of time helping me choose my gear and talking me through strategy on the field.  And in spite of excuses and protest, I found myself last Sunday sporting a protective vest, double hats, a balaclava and a mask and heading out onto a dusty battlefield.  I didn’t get hit in any of my protective gear, of course.  I only got hit in exposed areas.  And in spite of double pants and multi-layered shirts, I bear the wounds of combat and wear them proudly.

Twelve year old boys, one on one, can be lovely.  And Child Two, for the most part, has nice friends.  There’s the polite boy who thanked me periodically, the tall handsome one we call “Slutty J” cuz he’s had three girlfriends in the half year of school so far (we can’t quite yet grock what it means to have a girlfriend in 6^th grade but we’ve put Child Two on the case and hope for an answer quite soon), the handsome twins, and a few others whose names I kept forgetting.

I’ve always been better at remembering Child One’s friends – perhaps because she spends more time with us, perhaps because she’s more social and talks about them more or perhaps because they’re girls and therefore more familiar to me as types (the silly cheerleader, the insecure slut, the brilliant nerd, the flirty artist).  The truth is, I’m not terribly used to boys and boy things.  I grew up sisters and my family was largely female identified.  We baked and had art projects.  I was sort of tomboyish but only because I played softball and volleyball (girl sports but still sporty in my house).  We referred to my grandparent’s house as “going to Grandma’s” and when we visited my mother’s sister and her husband we “went to Aunt Ruth’s house”.  My mother has no brothers, my father had no brothers. 

Child Two spends more time with Ex-Wife.  We see him on weekends, for holidays and occasionally during the week.  And mostly, Child Two is a solo act.  He’s terribly popular at school but has never been one for play-dates or sleepovers.  Over the years he’s brought a friend or two around.  But truly, I’ve never been much good at remembering their names or really getting to know them.  A day with a pack of them was an eye opener: twelve year old boys, one on one, can be lovely.  Twelve year old boys in a pack take on a whole different persona.  Lovely, polite, interesting young men become foul-mouthed little jerks in the blink of an eye.  Hot–headed competitiveness and raucous combat yielded a moment or two of aggressive swearing and some brash attitude.  And there were definitely moments when I thought about turning in my weapons and waiting out the party on the bus.

But, for the most part, the day went smoothly.  Shaggy-haired Twin gave me combat tips and Slutty J checked in on me as I rubbed my sore knuckle.  Whatever testosterone raged on the field calmed itself by lunchtime and by the time each boy was returned to his respective parent at the end of the day he had returned to the sweet, sleepy child we’d received.  The paintball party was a massive success.  And spending the day with boys, spending the day with Child Two in his favorite environment – a place where he’s transformed from our brilliant, sweet, funny son to a hardcore warrior – was a treat. 

On the bus home, filthy and exhausted, I finally understood that the invitation to play with Child Two wasn’t so much about the joy he got out of my humiliation (although that certainly was a kick for him) nor was it really even an opportunity for him to shoot at me (although he certainly did that as well).  Mostly, it was an invitation to glimpse behind the curtain.  Child Two was inviting me, inviting all of us, to experience a side of him we don’t see on a daily basis – the side of him that is embraced by a group of older boys and men who see him not as a sensitive, bright, engaged young man, but as a fellow soldier and colleague in arms.  Spending the day on the field, getting to know him, getting to know the world of boys, was an invitation to a magical world of mystery, intrigue and, apparently, bruises.  And one that I will cherish long after my battle scars disappear.

Apologies...

For having written so little in so long and for my first post back after over a month being sort of morose and self indulgent.  I will return, I promise, with some wit and wisdom.  This, being the first post of 2011, I beg your indulgence and forgiveness and welcome you to the second half of my 44th Year...

Almost 15

Child Two loves the snow.  I’m not sure we realized just how much until this past week when we visited my familial cabin in the woods in Lake Tahoe.  There, Child Two bounced around in fresh powder, made snow angels, discovered his inner snowboarder and sledded down the neighborhood streets before the plows came to do what must be done on snowy passageways.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the boy so joyous – it was as though he was a fish who just discovered the joys of the open sea or a puppy let loose in a field of bouncing balls.  Child Two took to the snow like a duck to water, pouncing into drifts and throwing himself joyously into virgin fields of white powder with abandon.  The trip, it turns out, was slightly trickier for me. 

Almost forty years ago I put on my first pair of skis – they were wooden with cable bindings.  I had red leather lace up boots and bamboo poles.  I’m sure I complained about the cold and the shlep, but for the next twenty years or so, I bombed down mountainsides regardless of weather or conditions, first with my father and then with my best girlfriend.  I tackled slopes of any level and in any location.  And then, about twenty years ago, I moved to Los Angeles.  I was making little money and could barely afford rent much less the now expensive sport and I realized two terribly important things: first, that my best ski companion had always been my father and he was now dead; second, skiing is cold and uncomfortable and expensive.  I had bad circulation and no money.  And so I quit – cold turkey – no more skiing.  And that was it.  For twenty years. 

Then along came Sig Other who decided, just a few weeks ago, that I should get back on the horse (the horse, in this case, being a pair of skis).  For reasons I am still pondering, I relented, and Sig Other, Child Two and I packed up ridiculous amounts of gear and flew north to my family cabin.  We arrived in a near blizzard and muscled through blustery snow in a rented Yukon XL.  Four days of spectacular skiing and crazy snowstorms yielded fun and happy exhaustion.  Skiing, it turns out, is sort of like riding a bicycle and after twenty years off the boards, my muscle memory did not fail and I was back at it, knee deep in powder in no time.  For four days we bombed down slopes until finally, on our last day, we took it a little easy and ended up back at the house before sunset.  Child Two had been aching to sled, so I took him for a walk in the neighborhood in search of the perfect hill while Sig Other relaxed by the fire with an aggressive game of online Scrabble.  Child Two lugged a red plastic toboggan from the garage.  I wielded an orange plastic disc.  I wasn’t thinking really, as we wandered around looking for a place to slide.  

But just up the street from our family cabin in Tahoe is where my father died.  It’s a house directly behind ours, two blocks up.   The house belonged to friends and we’d been their guests for summers and winters of my childhood.  My parents fell in love with the area and, when they could finally afford it, bought a lot here and set about building their dream vacation house.  It was, to the best of my knowledge, my father’s greatest dream to build his own house – a house where his wife and daughters could spend time in the place he loved best.  And so our friends offered their house to him as he set about the task of building our home from the ground up – just him and a guy named Chuck.  Dad started in the spring of ’81 when the snow thawed. The plan was that he’d live in our friend’s house while he built ours and we would join him when school let out for the summer to help in the task of raising walls and hammering nails and painting wherever we could.  The plan was to complete the house before the first snow of that winter.    

But it was not to be.  A few months into the build, on the last day of school and just before we were to join him, my father died in the house up the hill from ours.  Peacefully we hope and just short of seeing the completion of his big dream.  My mother made sure the dream was made complete – she hired a contractor to carry out their original plans and the house was built as he would have wanted. 

For many years I defined myself first as the girl whose father died when she was fourteen – eight days shy of her fifteenth birthday.  Whatever else I was or wanted to be trailed far behind that simple fact.   Years passed as I struggled to shed that definition – to move past it to a sense of self that lived outside of childhood trauma.  And I did.  Two divorces and a good deal of therapy later and I can now pin my neuroses on other psychological traumas.  But I grew out of, or so I thought, being jus the girl whose father died when she was fourteen.    

And for years I avoided this house.  No one else in my family avoids it.  They like it.  They like coming here and living my father’s dream – reveling in the knowledge that this is what he would most like, this is what he would have wanted – families united around a fireplace, a game of Scrabble, a puzzle completed, a meal cooked together.  And after years of pestering and cajoling, Sig Other finally got me to come here.  Child Two should see the mountains, have a chance to try snowboarding, go on vacation by the lake.  And I went along.

And so I found myself, four days into my vacation, after Child Two had joined throngs of kids as they belly-flopped and slipped and slid down the unplowed road soaked through and happy, walking though the neighborhood.  I found myself walking past our old friend’s house up the street – the house where my father died.  Our friends don’t own it anymore.  The kids grew up and moved all over the country and keeping the house no longer made sense.  But there it was, a little spruced up, a little fancier and now owned by someone I don’t know.  And I recognized it just the same.  I remembered the smell of the upstairs bedroom – sort of a lofty attic filled with dumpy bunkbeds where the kids all slept.  I remember the smell of Bisquick pancakes smothered in Aunt Jemima served with Oscar Meyer bacon for breakfast – our parents cooking in long underwear and sweaters and getting us all ready for a long day on the slopes.  And I remember looking through the window from the front porch into the living room and through to the master bedroom – the room where my father died. 

His body was long gone by the time I last looked through that window, almost thirty years ago now.  But I could imagine how he was laying – was I told how he looked when he was found?  Did my mother say he was on the bed, on his back, legs crossed at the ankles as they always were when he napped?  Were his hands behind his head as he lay in repose?  I’m not sure.  But that’s the image I have – the image of his legs crossed at the ankles, visible from that front porch window only from just above the knee down.  And that’s what I thought about today as I walked by the house with Child Two.

“There’s the house where my father died,” I told him.  I’m not sure why I said it.  It wasn’t necessary and I hope it didn’t freak him out.  “Does it make you very sad” he asked.  No, I lied.  I didn’t know it was a lie in the moment.  In that moment I thought I was just walking by a house I used to know in a neighborhood I used to frequent.  But hours later, after dinner, sitting by the fire trying to read a book, I started to cry.  Coming back here, it turns out, turned me back into the girl whose entire identity could be defined by the fact that her father died when she was fourteen – eight days before her fifteenth birthday.

I’m home now, a little sore and wrung out by muscles exercised in mind and body not used for the past two decades.  And its Sig Other’s birthday today.  He is 48 – the age my father was when he died.  I’m glad I went to Tahoe, glad I skied, glad I stayed in the home my father built.  But it will always be a challenge for me, always be fraught with the bitter and the sweet.  And I will always think of myself, when I’m in that house, as the girl whose father died when she was fourteen – eight days before her fifteenth birthday…