At last...

The summer night we've been waiting for.  Midnight.  80 degrees.  Noisy cicadas chirp madly in the dry grasses just now warming in belated summer air.  This is Child One's last Shabbat before leaving for school.  Hurricane Irene may disrupt our perfectly planned journey.  But weeks of planning and preparation will not stand in the way of Child One's future.  There may be tears and hesitation and a bumpy road of fear ahead.  And that's just for Sig Other and me.  What awaits Child One, no one can anticipate.   My friend Jess looked Child One in the eye the other night across a bottle of wine and a soggy pizza and said, "I want to Freaky Friday with you so bad I can't stand it."  That about sums it up.  Shabbat Shalom to all.  And a special prayer to the hope for the future we send out into the world in the next week - we wish you well and hope for the best.

Pink, pink sheets...

There are brand new pink sheets in the wash right now.  One set of jersey, one of flannel.  Twin extra long as required by dormitory standards.  They are, of course, Child One’s sheets for college.  I’m washing them so they’ll be soft and smell of home when she puts them on her dorm room bed for the first time.  There’s no real need for me to wash them of course.  I have two housekeepers who could easily do the task and are expecting to fluff and fold in preparation for the packing and upcoming departure.  But I want to wash her sheets – want to feel the warmth as I fold them and smell what she’ll smell on her first night’s sleep at school. 

She is not excited to sleep on her new sheets – not excited to dive into the brand new shiny future that awaits her.  I find it hard to relate.  Like most 18 year olds of my generation, I couldn’t get out of the house fast enough – couldn’t wait to grow up – couldn’t wait to get away, to be an adult, to “start life” – that’s how I thought of it.   I could only dream of a fancy east coast school – could only dream of the world that eagerly awaits her.  But I never had to face the reality of what that meant.  Maybe I would have been scared – maybe I would have hesitated to fly across the country and dive into a world completely foreign.  I’ll never know.  It simply wasn’t an option.  But it is not only an option for Child One.  It is now her reality.

And Child One is nothing like me.  She does not want to leave the house, doesn’t want to grow up, has no interest in getting as fast and as far away as possible.  Its not that she isn’t excited about starting school – not that she isn’t looking forward to making new friends and tackling new academic challenges.  And it certainly isn’t as if she lacks gratitude or awareness.  She wants to embrace what lies ahead.  It’s just that she’d like us all to come along and embrace it with her.  But of course we can’t.  Of course she’ll have to take a deep breath and dive into the deep end on her own. And she’ll have pain and fear and anxiety as well as victory and great joy and success. 

Child One’s pre-college panic is not unlike Best Friend’s daughter N’s moment the other day.  Little N got an early lesson in charity as mother and daughter packed up binkies and a few infant toys and took them to a local hospital to share with children less fortunate.  N was cooperative and stoic during the packing and drop off but melted into a tortured tantrum later in the day.  She was having a hard time letting go, having a hard time moving beyond this phase of her life.  So, for her afternoon nap, her mother found an old binky in the back of a drawer – one that had escaped packing – and gave it to the hysterical child.  She calmed right away and fell quickly to sleep.

Child One is having just such a moment.  Child One would love nothing more than to keep all of her binkies – to hold on to this moment, to these friends, to this life of highschool relationships and dreams.  She does not want to pack it all up and move on to the next phase.  She knows she must – knows that she will forget about her binkies and begin to embrace a new life soon enough.

But tonight she is digging in.  And tonight I wash her sheets to make sure they smell like home.  I’ll stay up just a little late to fold them and pack them away so I know she has what she needs.  And maybe she’ll unpack them, two weeks and three thousand miles from here, and know that a little bit of home has followed her east and will always be with her wherever she goes.

The 168th Post in which Child One ACTUALLY turns 18 and Sig Other is inconsolable...

Raucous Bollywood celebrations aside, Child One’s actual birthday is today.  And notwithstanding her deeply held belief that the 4^th of July is a national holiday held in anticipation of her date of birth, this is the day, eighteen years ago when the little rosy cheeked, tow-headed girl entered the world. I wasn’t there that day.  I didn’t come into her life for many years after.  I feel weirdly guilty about that - an irrational guilt to be sure. But I take joy in her 18^th birthday nonetheless.

Sig Other, however, is inconsolable.  He moves from stoic lamentation to breast-beating sorrow with hummingbird-wing rapidity and desires only to stay at home and mope.  No celebration is appropriate, no declaration great enough, no gift big enough to express his feelings about his first born coming of age.  To watch him suffer, one would assume there was something terribly, terribly wrong. 

In fact, there is nothing terribly wrong at all.  Child One has done exactly as asked.  She has grown up quite beautifully.  She has, with the greatest of both hesitation and grace, transformed from scared little girl to forthcoming young woman.  If you asked her, four years ago, about future plans, she would not have known how to answer.  She could not imagine leaving home, couldn’t imagine going to school out of town much less across the country and would never have thought of traveling the world on her own in search of adventure, education and justice.  Sig Other used to sit at the dinner table and repeat over and over again that it was her great fortune, not to mention her responsibility and obligation, to take advantage of the opportunity in front of her – to grasp at what had eluded us and strive for the possibility of better education, greater horizons, deeper experience.  Tears would stream down her face as he would look deep in her eyes and say, “you will graduate and leave us – you will go to a great school on the east coast and get an amazing education and meet interesting people and form deep relationships that will stay with you for the rest of your life.”  And she would say no – she would never leave home, would never go far away, would never want to be a grown up.  Yet here she is, 18 years old, about to leave for a summer volunteering at a school in Israel before starting her future at a fancy east coast school.  She has become all Sig Other ever hoped.   And all he can do is lament. 

“This is what you raised her for,” I say to him.  “This is what you insisted she do.  You’ve done an amazing job.  She is fulfilling every dream you had for her.”  “I know,” he says, “but I didn’t really mean it. I didn’t really want her to leave.”  He says this as we drive home from her birthday dinner and I imagine the evening before us – Sig Other sitting on the floor going through albums of baby pictures and listening to a mix-tape of Rafi and Paul Simon.  He doesn’t do this, of course.  He tucks his pain away and rather stoically goes to his office to fiddle with a faulty computer program.  But I know he is suffering.  I know he is in pain.  I feel guilty that we can’t sit on the floor with a bottle of wine and reminisce about her colicky infancy and adorable toddlerhood.    I wasn’t there for those moments.  I missed her first words and first steps and first taste of delicious rice cereal.  I’ve been there for my share of tears and vomiting and runny noses and pain – been there enough for lots of anxiety and some pain, a few hurt feelings and a few misunderstandings.  And of course for lots of cuddling and laughs and more joy than I could ever have imagined before she or Child Two or Sig Other entered my life.  But now I must go and console Sig Other and pet his head as he mourns the loss of his job well done.  

The 167th Post in which Child One turns 18.

Saturday night was Child One’s 18^th birthday party.  She wanted something smallish – she and her best friend celebrating together – about twenty people for a nice dinner.  She picked a theme – Indian – and she and her friends bought glamorous outfits.  I did their makeup and filled the house with incense and geraniums and richly colored Indian linens.  The henna tattoo artist arrived, the kids all put on their bindis and milled about to Sig Other’s rather raucous Bollywood soundtrack mix.  Sig Other and the other parents and I hovered as long as we could – soaking up as much gorgeous, hilarious, hormonally charged teenage time as possible before making what we had promised would be a brief exit.  Child One had never really invited us, you see.  “You can stay” is what she said when asked if were to be part of the festivities.  Not exactly a cozy invitation.  And we were never included on the Facebook Event Page, which apparently has replaced paper or even email as the Emily Post of social event planning.  So we made our own dinner plans – adult dinner plans – and knew that we’d be nearby and gone very briefly.

Child One and company were having a perfectly lovely time when we left.   The table was piled with food and Diet Pepsi and laughter.  An hour and a half later we returned to empty bottles of rock-gut vodka and beer strewn around the house.  An anonymous Italian girl showed up in a cab with three leggy friends and proceeded to vomit in our bathroom while an eager teen boy waited nearby desperate to take advantage of her and another boy took her pulse, spinning his own fantasy of an emergency room drop-off.  Couples made out in dark corners, others just sat around talking about their future – one was leaving the next day for Europe and then college, they’d said goodbye already to another the day before.  The night was warm and smelled of spilled beer and cigarettes, smoke from a hookah (which had magically appeared in our absence) hung heavy over conversation about anticipation, fear and excitement of change.   Some were drinking.  Some were not.  And as I walked the party with my basket they were brutally honest about who had done what and how much.  It’s a pretty mild crew (notwithstanding the anonymous Italian girl) and I was impressed by how forthcoming and easy they were about handing over their keys. 

And yes, I took their keys.  I am the evil shrew collecting keys of potentially drunk teenagers and hiding them in a basket underneath my bathroom sink.  I told them I would breathalyze them on their way out.  I lied, of course.  I don’t have a Breathalyzer.  But fear still drives the teenage brain and so keys were collected and slowly doled out (or not) as the night went on. Most slept on couches or blow up mattresses or corners of the floor strewn with blankets.  One was up before us, waiting at the counter when we rose for a cup of coffee and to share his particular account of the events of the evening.  The rest made do with juice and toast and whatever was in the house as Sig Other and I fled quickly to avoid the flutter of inevitably hung over and sleep deprived teens.  By the time we returned most were gone and Child One had the good sense to clean up empty bottles and whatever detritus remained from the night before. 

But I was left wondering about how Sig Other and I deal with the issue of underage drinking vs. the way other parents do or vs. my own childhood.  In my teenage years, we would never have partied in a house with adults present.  We’d wait for any parent to leave town and invade like marauding booze bandits.  We thought nothing of raiding the liquor cabinet once we’d run out of whatever screw top wine or malt liquor we could buy with fake IDs flimsy as tissue paper.  And then we’d get in our cars – drunk as skunks and risk the drive rather than risk the wrath of a parent who knew the truth.   This was in the early 80s.  Meatballs was one of my favorite movies. There was one song – the theme song of the movie – that went like this: “We are the CITs so pity us, the kids are brats the food is hideous.  We’re gonna smoke and drink and fool around (we’re nookie bound), we’re Northstar CITs!.”  For some reason this song popped into my head as I thought about Child One’s 18^th Bollywood Birthday Blowout.  There we were, at home with Child One and friends – and there they were smoking and drinking and fooling around.  And if they weren’t’ smoking and drinking and fooling around at our house, they’d be smoking and drinking and fooling around elsewhere.  So better here, in the relative safety of our home, I suppose, than out in the world and on the streets. 

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

I love my birthday.   In fact, it’s my favorite day of the year.  I can make my birthday last a week, sometimes even a month.  I’ve planned lavish parties and weekends away, been feted by Sig Other with surprise parties and outrageous gifts.  But this year I made no plans.  This year I decided to lay low.  This year belonged to Child One’s graduation from high school, and 18^th birthday and departure for college.  It belongs to Child Two as he prepares for his Bar Mitzvah.  It belongs to the backyard remodel and to a busy work schedule.  It does not belong, I decided, to me.  And so I planned nothing.  But it turns out that even with no plans, even with no fancy invitation, no perfect plan, no elaborate announcement, my birthday was as good a day as any I could have imagined. 

Beta Dog woke me with plaintive love and urgent snuggling, Alpha Dog, as always, woke up needing to go to the vet.  Sig Other wowed me with the perfect gift, and the day continued with flowers to make a funeral home jealous, cakes and gifts and lovely phone calls. I got emails with hilarious poems and facebook posts from around the globe, a delicious dinner, far too much wine and sweet gifts from the children.  It was, all told, a perfect day.

And now it’s here – the 45^th Year.  I’m halfway to ninety and still have yet to find a better name for this blog.  I have no fear of growing older.  No hesitation to share my true age.  No phobia related to the forward march of time.  I quite like it actually.  I revel in my older lady status.  I like being the wise old sage, the broad, the ol’ lady.  Notwithstanding posts about saggy arms and wrinkled skin, I have no complaints about the passage of time.  Thanks to all who made the transition to my next forty-five years a smooth one.  Happy Birthday to me.

We interrupt this roadtrip...

To bring you graduation. 

Child One, clinging desperately to her childhood, donned cap and gown and, in spite of tears and protestations, walked elegantly toward adulthood last night.  Ex-Wife and Sig Other’s work of almost eighteen years, mine of almost nine, culminated with more of a whimper than a bang.  Ceremony was sweet and heartfelt, too long and too short all at once.  The chubby little bouncy girl is now an elegant giraffe in diamonds and heels – all legs and smiles and tears.  We’ve done what we can.  She goes into the world a bright, educated, inquisitive human with purpose.  She is the future – a future focused on justice and ethical behavior and kindness.  The world is unquestionably a better place for having her in it. 

And yet I’m sure I’ve failed dramatically.  I’m sure she does not have the right tools to fend for herself.  I’m sure that with all of the private school education and intellectual athleticism, things very basic and banal have been washed over.  So I sat at graduation, pretending to listen to someone else’s child speak, and made a mental list of all the things I will review with her this summer: how to do laundry, the proper way to make a bed, the best tips for college grocery shopping and what to keep in the little dorm fridge, how much aspirin and vitamin B to take to avoid a hangover (though its unlikely this will be her issue).  I make this list and know she knows all of these things.  But I do it anyway as it soothes me and makes me feel somehow useful.  

Tomorrow we’ll wake at the crack of dawn to get back on the road for the last day of the ALC ride.  But today we are parents of a high school graduate.  Proud and a little melancholy.

Road from Paso Robles to Santa Maria. Day Four.

Pismo Beach

Off the beaten path - Guadalupe, CA

Las Alamos, CA - south of Santa Maria

Wildflowers in Los Alamos