Tag Archives: motherhood

Aug6

Preparing for the Push Off

Posted on August 6, 2016 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

I’ve been in denial about this for months.

It’s almost here. Three weeks from this past Thursday will be it. The day my first, my oldest son pushes off for college.

It started out subtly enough, the departing. In May, he had his final soccer game of his pre-college life. The U-19 league. So, soon after that last game I found myself repressing a lump in my throat as I confronted a simple thing. Just a swipe, really, but it felt as though my hand were made of iron and it was dragging along a magnet. Trying to move, trying to get my finger to drag over my laptop’s touchpad to deliberately press the “delete event” prompt from my family’s calendar and alerts for his soccer practice reminders.

I shouldn’t be so maudlin. I hadn’t been driving him to practice for months. He was a late-blooming driver. It was my pleasure to take him to practice or ride shotgun as he drove. Our conversations in the car varied from laughing about a Ben Bailey stand-up routine to talking about his friends, class work, or social disappointments. Sometimes it was just silence. Or really loud Kanye West. But those days are over. I no longer need to see the alerts on my phone about his practices. So I drag my right hand with my left hand to click “delete” on the alerts.

I don’t want to click “delete.” It is really hard to click delete on that alert.

I couldn’t possibly be prouder of the young man he’s become. He’s handsome, funny, really smart, creative, clever, sensitive, caring… all the things I wanted him to become. I didn’t do it though; he came with that software already installed. I suppose I helped him learn to use it, but we all know our kids are pre-formed before we get them.

I met him in the middle of the night more than 18 years ago. He was just eight pounds and almost 21 inches long. I remember, he was so quiet, the doctors thought there was something amiss. Perhaps he wasn’t breathing well. Maybe his brain was misfiring. But his eyes… his father knew he was just fine. His eyes were bright and blue-green and so serene. So calm and observant. “I knew those eyes the minute I saw them open,” his father said. “They were your eyes. They were just like yours…”

They put him in the “french fry warmer” as we called it, to keep him cozy. They invaded him with their suction devices and wiped him of his vernix. Soon he let them have it, a robust and brief goat-like bleat from that enormous head. It was just after midnight when he was born and I was totaled. I’d been dealing with dormant but annoying labor for about 25 hours. I wanted to see him.

They did their tests and pokes on him. They were stupid, I think now. “Haven’t you ever met a mellow baby?” I remember thinking about them the next day. “Look at him, he’s perfect…” I would sigh and stare at this beautiful son… “Connor. Hello.” I met him in the morning, around 4. It was dark and he was hungry, so I learned to try to breastfeed him. It took a few days, but we figured it out.

Look at him now! 5’10” and 150. Hair almost as dark as mine when I was his age and his big green eyes.

“You should write Batman’s in My Shower now, Mom,” he said about a month ago. Batman’s in My Shower is the title I decided to give to a memoir back when my boys were 10 years younger than they are now. I wanted to write about becoming a mother and how it’s changed me.

The title comes from the truth that in my bathroom shower for years was at least one Batman action figure for my sons to play with while they bathed. The book would be about how my life melded with theirs and how my space became theirs as we grew into one another and gradually apart from one another. I remember holding one of the boys while he played with the doll and I washed his hair and cleaned his little squirming body as he would have Batman and a squirting goldfish battle it out under the Water-pik shower head typhoon.

Washing a child in a shower is like trying to wash a hairless cat that won’t scratch your face off because it actually likes the water spraying in its face. The cat is animated, no doubt, but it’s not deadly and it’s writhing and hissing joyous coos of delight as the baby shampoo (remember that smell?) lathers and runs down their faces.

The sole remaining Batman has a layer of soap scum in his armpits and crotch; his cape is hard and stiff like a chamois that’s been hung in the sun. He’s covered in a layer of dried soap and hard water residue from years of torrential cleansing. He’s perfect.

I haven’t dared to write more than a page of BiMS because that would mean that I’ve crossed over a benchmark, that the “memoir” is activated because the moment is past; that the “mothering” is over. So I sit here, in wait. Wondering when the feelings of the intensity of his impending departure will pass and I will feel light and airy again.

“Raise your hands if you have a student who will be living on campus and you live in the area…” said the admissions person at new student / new parent orientation last week. Her eyes scanned the ballroom. At least 30 hands, including my own, went up; some sheepishly, some defiantly.

“Make no mistake. If it’s five minutes or five hours or across the street or across the country, your child is leaving home,” I almost broke out into tears at that moment. I had to keep it together. She was right, that hag. My kid is leaving home. He is about a good run’s distance, 4 miles, from home, but he’s not going to be here every day when I wake up. Nor will he be here when I avoid making dinner.

You see, Connor has been my wingman for better part of a third of my life. He has grounded me, helped me chill out, provided a better reason than a paycheck to get up every morning, and has generally made me a better person. He has made me a better mother for his brothers. He has made me a better friend to my friends and he has made me a better daughter to my parents. I don’t want to foist too much upon him because that’s not fair. I’ve done a lot of Work too, he just made it a fantastic reason to do it.

I’ve prepared him a bit I hope too. I stopped washing his clothes for him about four years ago. He’s got it down — brights with brights. He’s good at it. That transition began subtly enough too, and I will own that I’ve relapsed a few times. Like a junkie, I’ve slipped back into Mom-mode for him and folded his t-shirts or even turned them right-side-out when they come out of the dryer. I have to stop myself sometimes from unbending his jeans from of the mind-boggling twisted rebar-like clump they’ve morphed into as I heave the next crate of wet clothes into the dryer. Some articles are easier than others to let go. Socks for one… I would rather eat McDonald’s, no. I take that back. I would still sort his socks over eating McDonald’s.

My father said to me about two weeks ago that what I’m about to experience, my child leaving home for college, is in his estimation one of the most emotionally arduous and profound experiences in my parenting. “I don’t know what it’s like to watch a child leave for college from such a deeply loving and supportive home, so you’ll have to excuse me as I soak all this in vicariously,” he admitted during that conversation. “My own mother, she was difficult. I couldn’t wait to get out of there, but she made it awful hard on me. I never looked back,” he added, “when I left for school.”

I never left home for college. I went to university locally. It was part of my life I suppose: my mother needed my vigilance. I would’ve loved to have lived on campus. I remember visiting my friends who lived in the dorms. Music, “The Cult” was always playing and the halls smelled like popcorn, pot, ramen, vanilla body spray, coffee, patchouli, Dr. Pepper, Finesse shampoo… beer… I promised myself that if my kids ever wanted to live on campus — even if they went to school locally — that they would live on campus. I’m really glad we have chosen this.

I asked Connor about his own thoughts and impressions; if he’s ready to go, if he’s looking forward to it. “I’m excited. It’s nice though, to not want to leave, too. I’m lucky to be going, to be able to attend college, and I’m lucky to be not terribly ready to go… That it will be hard to go and nice to go… Does that make sense?”

He couldn’t have said it better.

I know I haven’t been writing here or personally anywhere is because of this. How do I go from being a hands-on, non-helicopter Mom of three to this? It is really perplexing. I bought a comforter set for his bed; sheets, pillows, all the towels and textiles. A 28-oz size bottle of Pert (his favorite) is in a bag and waiting for that first pump somewhere in his shower. Without a Batman, likely. I thought I was finished shopping and then I caught up with a bestie today who’s oldest son is also heading out soon for the first time (he’s very tight with my son) and I realized I don’t have pens for him. I didn’t buy pens or notebooks or a stapler. WHAT KIND OF A MOTHER SENDS HER KID OFF TO COLLEGE WITHOUT PENS??

I’ll tell you: the mother who really doesn’t want her kid to leave. Sure, he’s got a computer, but who needs that? We all know learning happens with a pen and paper. No. The “real learning” my son will experience will not be contained between the end papers of a textbook or in the hushed whirr of a hard drive. It’s waiting for him in the dormitory, in the lecture halls, at the dining hall, and in the random conversations with exhausted students in late-night study groups and eating fests.

Really? Did I just write ‘the real learning … will not be contained between the end papers of a textbook’? Someone shove then trip me when I leave this room. I deserve it. Who knows where the real learning takes place? I hope it’s been taking place all along.

I expect I will be an emotional disaster worthy of FEMA assistance when I leave him on the 25th. Every time that damned song from “Narnia” comes on my playlist, “The Call,” I start to blubber and sob, really deep ugly crying. It’s not ok. When he walks in the room, I’m all super sunshine and smiles! No, I’m not, and he gets it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from witnessing my mother, it’s that “the show must go on, kid” mentality is a one-way ticket to Xanaxia. I expect the music at the dorms on drop-off day will be Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off” or some unknown genre which will pulsate and grind and moan. It will be played at a precise megahertz to annoy the shit out of aging parents and get them the hell off campus tout de suite.

There’s a part of me which needs to go for a drive, a long drive to, say, Charlottesville or somewhere similar so I can process the reality that he’s out. If he were a challenging kid or obstinate or disrespectful or basically horrid, this would be so much easier. He’s not. He’s a GEM of a human. I’ll be real with you, we argue at times, and I think it might be happening more a little now than it ever did, and I wonder if that’s because we know what’s coming.

Is it like one of those “distancing-prep” dynamics wherein people begin to isolate and curl into their corners before a big departure? I am not sure, we are pretty real with each other. He’s all-too ready at times to tell me I’m the reason we are SPEAKING LOUDLY AND CURTLY AT EACH OTHER.

Maybe not Charlottesville… Maybe I’ll go to the parking lot of his college and stalk him.

My youngest asked me the other day, “Do you think Connor will come home, Mom? You know, just to hang out…?” I honestly didn’t know what to say. I have no expectations. My youngest and my oldest are very similar in temperament. Five and a half years rests between them; we refer to those two as “the bookends” because they are so grounded and rational.

Connor needs this though, to have his own experiences, and I’m so happy for him that he will have them. I’m equally happy that my other sons will miss him a lot. My middle son is excited for him, and he’s really bummed out. “It will be weird around here, without him,” he said. “Like, for every morning of my life, he’s been here to play with or annoy or learn from. He’s taught me so much…” he turns away, stops talking and leaves the room. I start to well up. I know he’s welling up. It’s a frequent occurrence, these bloated, trailing-off conversations about Connor leaving for college.

We talk, we parents, about how we’re robbed of time with our kids. How they grow up and change so fast. How the days drag on but the years fly by… All the clichés and adages and truths. In the end though, we don’t want them here when they’re 33. We want them out and about and falling in love and starting their own families maybe or going to graduate school or getting married… we don’t want them in our basements. We don’t want them in their footie pajamas all their lives — EVEN IF we could have them at cute and floppy, sticky-fingered, sweet-smelling 22 months, all their lives, we wouldn’t want that. Not ever. Don’t tell me you would. “Just one more day… like this…” No. You want them to grow and learn and thrive and shave.

Another friend and I were talking last week. Her son who is Connor’s peer is her youngest of four. He and Connor “played soccer” together when they were five. He is leaving too, for a college five hours away. She was telling me about their conversation they had about his “drop off” at school. She said she asked him if he thought it would be like hers, when her parents helped her unpack her room and they made her bed, and put her posters on the wall and hung up her clothes in the closet… they met her roommate, and then they all went to dinner and walked around the town a little… then her parents spent the night in town and had breakfast in the morning together before they left her alone with her “new life.” She asked him if it would be like that for him or would it be the type of situation where they unpack their car, drop off the boxes and leave him in the dorm to figure it out. No lunch together, no walk around town, no overnight at the local Marriott. She waited, she said, her eyes uncertain, a twitch betraying her calm.

“He said, ‘It will be the second one, mom. Dump and drive. I’m ready. You’re ready. I’ll be back…'” and she sighed after she told me what he said, and we laughed about it, because it was so “him” to say that.

“But I’m not ready…” she said, quietly, her lips pursing as her eyes gazed around her roomy kitchen. Empty of chaos and crusted mac & cheese pans.

And the friends are leaving too. That’s a part of this gig that no one really tells you about: that when your kid takes off for college, his friends are likely doing that as well, so all those faces and sounds and cups you cleaned up and backpacks you danced around won’t regularly be in your way again, either. We’ve been blessed to know lots of his friends, and his girlfriend? Don’t even get me started. Every time I think of her leaving too … it’s not good. I am like Mike Myers playing Linda Richman and having to take a break during “Coffee Talk” and ask you all to tawk ahmonst y’seves becawse I’ve becohm verklempt.

Right now, it’s late. I’m up writing and he’s in the other room watching “Bob’s Burgers” and I can hear him snorting and giggling. It’s really late. He should be in bed.

I’ve got ~~20,~~ shit, 19 days before my father watches my son eagerly leave his home reluctantly. God help me. If it’s so good for him, why does it hurt so much?

Thank you.

Sep18

Sitting Shotgun — #Student #Drivers and the #Zen Pursuit of the #Mindfully Bitten Tongue

Posted on September 18, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

Despite my best intentions, I have ignored my writing ambitions. My life is no more complicated than usual, it’s just that right now, attending to my eldest is sincerely, a matter of life and death.

Is this a magnet of hate and assholes or a magnet of empathy and patience?
I wavered on getting this; naturally projecting my hope for self-awareness and awareness by others onto them. So far, it has been mostly encouraging. But there are assholes.

He is learning to drive.

I am supposed to be the teacher.

I find, true to my form, that I am also a student.

It all started out manageable enough in May. Maybe June. He is older than most kids getting their permits and he’s been very good to himself: he hasn’t rushed this at all, and for that I am eternally grateful. Living where we do, outside Washington, DC, endeavoring to turn left is akin to thrill seeking.

Drive in a Driveway, Park in a Parkway

I gave him the keys to our MassiveMobile, a 2-ton, 2004 Toyota Sequoia, 4WD SUV. In its defense, it’s smaller than a Chevy Suburban… I mean, those things are huge. (I like to skate the thin ice when judging others…), and we sat in the driveway for about 20 minutes (yes…) as he learned to shift in and out of gears and release the brake, roll the vehicle, stop the vehicle and depress the accelerator to get the vehicle back into position. We didn’t even touch “turning the steering wheel” until about 10 minutes in.

I gave only pointers and tips. No judgements. I put on my yoga teacher personae and imagined myself as Jesus or Buddha, gently querying, “What would it be like if you sat up a little taller, took a deep breath, softened your jaw, and considered using the brake before stripping the transmission and gunning the engine only to stand on the brake within five seconds in this confined space of 20 feet by 30 feet?”

After 20 minutes, he was done. I patted him on the back and he rolled up the windows and turned off the engine. Reminiscent of a scene in a Disney movie after a witch departs, the local fauna returned to its natural curiosities: squirrels dashed from branch to branch, birds hopped along the roadways, that creepy-looking famished coyote tip-toed through the fence slats.

“Any comments? Questions for me?” I asked, hopeful for what I still don’t know.

“It sure is responsive, that car. I mean, it’s massive and knowing what I do about physics, it takes a lot of energy to move AND stop it. It’s sensitive and just hanging out in the driveway going back and forth, trying to land smoothly on the R or the D is a lot,” he said. “I’m baked.”

His cheeks were a little flushed, which is his natural complexion, but I could tell his brain was tired, it affected his body: he looked like he does after a playing a tough guitar piece again and again.

To me, that counted: that was 20 minutes behind the wheel, so I told him to add it to his phone app.

We did that drill about ~~three~~ five more times, at his request, adding the steering wheel and more square footage to include going up and down our little private driveway as the incidences went on. He wanted 20 hours by the time school started. But he also wanted to drive every other day.

It gets boring and true to human nature, our imaginations and ambitions crave more, want growth. I knew this was a good sign.

But for whom?

Soon we ambled over to the local elementary school. It being summer, no one was there except the custodians and maybe a couple administrators. I wasn’t ready for him to drive to the school, because doing so requires driving in a dedicated right lane (I see now how white-knuckled I was about it all, but I also think it was appropriate, these roads are really crazy here) for about 300 feet with traffic to the immediate left easily doing 50 mph. So I shuttled us there.

To me, being a “teacher” means being honest with yourself and hopefully catching yourself in moments of hypocrisy, those “do as I say, not as I do” episodes. As teachers, parents, humans, we have to be willing to change (become a student) when we are forced to eat our own dog food.

What?

I am human. Ergo, I am a hypocrite.

People don’t take a breath before they start the car. We are so automatic. I wonder what would happen if before resuming from every break or red light or stop sign that we would remind ourselves: Driving is a matter of life and death.

Around here, we are surrounded by entitled kids driving Mommy’s BMW X5 or Daddy’s Tesla, maybe even their own. Or worse: kids who are imagining that the 12-year-old Honda Civic with bald tires, blown shocks and hazy headlights are actually six-month-old Ferraris.

It being a D.C. suburb means we are also surrounded by immigrants, who are lovely people, but who likely learned to drive never, and have somehow sifted through the system of checks and balances that naive people like myself entrust to the audacious system of mutual road safety. And then there are moms, people just like I am. Distracted, breathless and barreling down the roads, sometimes not at all remembering how we got to the pasta aisle at Safeway, and not being able to find the car in the lot, yet somehow being mindful / guilt-ridden and programmed enough to bring our enviroBags to checkout.

I try not to say to him, “Everything you do on the road today can either help or hinder someone else,” even though I really want to. I try to say it to myself and then somehow synthesize it into a less Buddha-bullshit / more YouTube teenage way, in 140 or less characters.

dammit. over by seven characters. back to the editing room.

I wish there was Siri in our car. Or some sort of rational, onboard computer voice, in a soothing maternal tone that says things like, “I wonder what it would be like if you decided to brake maybe NOW instead of your typical two seconds after now…”

When my mother was alive, I distinctly recall her making all sorts of “eeeeilllllllluughhhhh” noises when my father or brother (or likely myself) would take a turn aggressively or take a turn at all. My mother was a horrid driver. To punish or nauseate my children (I almost got Dad to york about two weeks ago in fact), I like to step back in time by starting “Driving like Mimi.”

My youngest loves it; it’s like an amusement park ride for him. But he’s only 11 and he can’t see much beyond the dashboard or the hood of the SUV because he’s still quite wee. My older kids beg me to stop. So does my husband, and then a fortnight ago, my dad joined in the chorus. But it was the two-year anniversary of her death, and I felt it was a nice little nod to her… especially because I believe my father rode with her driving only a handful of times.

I digress.

After the elementary school parking lot in which I would intentionally panic about an imaginary squirrel or soccer ball or toddler or zombie entering the roadway (our pact was to gun it on the zombie), which we conquered five times in 45-miunute chunks, he was ready to take that dedicated right lane and merge into the speeding left lane traffic for another 200 feet and turn right onto out street.

We were both starting to feel the call of the “open road” — which is what he called the main road outside our little Hamlet when he was four. “Let’s go look at cars go by, on the open road,” he would say when he was very very small.

Blind Spots

I am keenly aware of my emotional need to put off his driving. While I have never stifled it, and I love that he’s going to the beat of his own drummer, I would absolutely be absolutely telling an absolute lie if I said that I’m groovy with the signs of his independence and his God-given, right-on-damned-time calls to spread his wings. I will not clip them, but I’m in no rush to provide an updraft.

To say that he has been the easiest child to raise, would be another lie. He is not “difficult” in the way that he is constantly obstinate or unruly; to the contrary, he is a beautifully sensitive and smart and sarcastic and kind person. It’s into that little white lie, that “good” kids are easier to raise, that we are drawn. He doesn’t really know too much from error; he doesn’t really know too much from failure; he doesn’t really know too much from struggle. That’s not because I’m a helicopter mom, I’m not. He’s just one of those guys who is observant, smart, patient and … well … maybe a little cautious.

I blame my mother.

Ha! That was snide. But she was with him most of his waking hours for his first year when I went back to work.

And it’s also that he’s just my first kid, and he broke the mold, so letting him go out there, into that “big bad world” is hard.

One day, at the parking lot, I had him get out of the car and walk around it. Count the steps required to circumnavigate its mass. I then asked him to give an additional ten feet around the sides and 80 feet off the front because we can’t control the tailgaters. “Imagine eight basketball posts and hoops lined up end-to-end in front of the car. That’s the space you need.”

I’m so full of shit. I don’t give that space. I think I might give half that space maybe 50 feet. I don’t tailgate, mostly because braking around here is half the drive. But I’ve also been driving for almost twice the length of his life (sweet God is that true?!) and my reflexes are cat-like. Rationalize rationalize rationalize…

It’s a long time coming: he is a good driver, he is diligent about his lane changes, but he doesn’t turn his body to scan behind the rolling tank’s clearance into a lane ahead of the SmartCar behind or beside us. (I HATE SMARTCARS… I know this might sound hypocritical to those of you who know me personally because we just got a MINI Cooper for our fun buggy, but I am human. I am weak.)

So instead of saying, “You really need to improve your upper body flexibility and give yourself [AND ME AS A TERRIFIED PASSENGER IN THIS CAR] space, and look behind you — THROUGH the [God damned] windows so we don’t kill someone…” I say, invoking my therapist who often started confrontational work with me by saying, ‘I wonder what it would be like…’ “Gee, maybe sitting up taller and getting more clearance between you and your forward traffic would give you more time to turn your body and look behind you before you switch lanes…[breeeeeeeatheeee…]”

So I have blind spots of my own. I don’t turn enough to see the moments coming on, the moments when he decides to hang with his buddies (who are lovely kids too) after a game; eat a little faster at the dinner table and escape a little sooner to his room or the basement; text a little more on his iDevice, only to shut it off when I near the 10-foot energy zone surrounding him. It’s at those moments I sustain a blow to my emotional solar-plexus, and double over a little with bittersweet appreciation: I’ve done a good job, this is what he’s supposed to do… he’s his own man. So why does it hurt so much?

Breathe.

Co-Driving as a Sympathetic Crash Test Dummy

You’ve read it a thousand times? Here’s one more truth: there’s a worn patch in the passenger seat foot well of my SUV. It’s from the imaginary brake. The arm rests have indentations and oil stains where my hands have gripped and squeezed and pressed and pulled. I think my body fits beautifully into the form I’ve created with my pressing away from the windshield, like a nice little sarcophagus — a “carcophagus!” for me to live in. I should wear my night guard when I ride with him.

He laughs about it. He knows I’m biting my tongue. He knows I’m doing my best to not blast him or react. It’s good for both of us. He thinks I’m a little too nervous. I think I like the car just the way it is: lacking any major dents anywhere, save for the puckers, skims and dips from his brothers’ errant kicks of a soccer ball at the speed of light.

So that whole thing about not texting while driving…. Don’t text while your kid is driving either.

After the high school parking lot and my mandated into and out of parking spaces; driving on strange grades and uneven terrain; in the rain; and navigating tight spaces, it was time for the big road. He drove us home from his high school. He waited his sweet time at that first right out of the safety of the school property, and I LOVE that about him: no one is going to rush this guy.

That’s from my mom too. In some amazing ways, she got through to him: that while the world is populated, you have to take care of yourself. Now, in all fairness, she took that self-interest of herself for herself and by herself to extreme self-guided levels, but somehow it distilled to him in a kinder and smarter way. I’m a born codependent: when not self-aware, I will try to please others until I pass out. Not my eldest. He’s a great teacher, and so I hear myself say to him, because this is life and death, “You have all the time you need. Dial back, let the cars go and bask in the relative safety of that STUDENT DRIVER magnet on the back of our death missile.”

Because of his nature to observe and assess and learn before stepping outside the lines, he is methodical. At right turns on red, if you’re behind him, you’ll know it: he stops to a full body-lurching-forward-against-the-seat-belt stop and then goes. This is because of me. I told him, “A right on red, means you stop on that red. I’ve gotten burned for it. So, you stop, don’t roll through.” I know fully well, and I’ve explained to him, that in time he will develop his own style and with experience he will begin to cut corners, turn wider, and blow off or assume rules for himself.

Once he got to 12 hours behind the wheel with me, I promised him he could drive the Cooper at his high school’s parking lot.

Kid in a candy store. This is a turbocharged rolling bathtub.

He couldn’t contain himself. He said it’s like a go-kart. He loves it. It’s fast, it’s nimble. Everything you need to see is right there. “I thought the Sequoia was responsive… holy cow…” he said, doing his best to censor himself and refrain from enthusiastic and humbling epithets.

“Well, yes and no. They’re both responsive in their own respective and proportional ways. I’m letting you drive it because you will likely need to learn how. There could be an instance wherein Dad or I get a headache or feel unwell or have an injury and you will need to drive. Your driving this or any car, just like for me, is a luxury, not an entitlement.” (“P’shaw,” says my inner craven Mario Andretti.)

Driving home from that session in the high school parking lot with the Cooper, he waved to let someone in ahead of him while we were rolling. The Cooper lurched to the right because he used his left hand and then back to the left because he corrected. Thank God it’s a narrow little matchbox.

“HOLY GODCHRISTJESUS! DON’T EVER DO THAT AGAIN….” Like ~~a despot~~ Joan Crawford, I dictated.

“WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!” he hissed, all full of himself as we coasted along, as vulnerable as a newborn kitten. I was SERIOUSLY doubting my choice to let him take us home and he was totally pissed at my reaction, something I’ve heretofore been pretty good at suppressing.

I paused. Took a couple breaths. Placed my tongue in the roof of my mouth and released my jaw.

Don’t fight with the kid behind the wheel.

“Something else. You’re to keep both hands on the wheel. It’s not even been an hour in this car, and you aren’t ready to ‘wave people into the lane…'” I said all huffy and eye-rolly and impatient. Not at all like Jesus. But Jesus didn’t ride with his son in a MINI Cooper in Fairfax County. “That driver will have to wait. You had the right of way. You were already in the traffic, moving along and you’re not Jesus… there was no one behind you, there was space for that car and while I think that driver was counting on it, you waved it in… When we are on our street, I will show you how to ‘double-flash’ a driver in ahead of you… by the way, the double flash is something I don’t think you’ll see in your driver’s manual; it’s sort of like a wink and a nod, a part of the driver’s patois… The beauty of it is that you keep both hands on the wheel…”

He’d checked out. I was the enemy for that instance.

There are assholes. Sometimes it’s me when I’m not like Jesus.

He encountered an asshole the other night. We were driving home from soccer practice pick-up. Because I prefer the Cooper, and I’m a born codependent, I let him drive the Cooper. This is where I have literally had to stop and examine my own head. “It’s not about what you want to ride in, Molly, it’s about what’s safest, Molly.” My husband the other night said, “The Cooper is a treat for him. Not a given…” and that was that. I thank God for my husband.

He stopped on red to take a right turn. The asshole behind us, likely came close to driving into us, stood on his horn. Turns out the asshole is a known asshole to my family and when we had the chance moments later, I stood my ground and chewed him up and spat him out. I was simply returning the favor from five years ago when he was an asshole in front of my children at the pool, and I reminded him by telling him he started it five years ago, and that vengeance was mine and right and just and OHHHH!! how the tables have turned…. I have a whole post written about that incident at the right on red and its ensuing carnival, but I’m not sure I’m going to share it on the blog. My husband is convinced this asshole knew it was my car because he remarked on it to my husband one night… I am feeling the pull to write more about this here, but I will ignore it.

No Better Teacher than Experience.

We can read all the Dr. Spock, watch all the Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, Dr. Who we want and we will never be able to impart to others any wisdom we’ve gained therein. The only real teacher is experience. About three weeks ago, we were in the Sequoia and the road was slick and shiny from a recent rain. The clouds had parted, so it was also steamy and reflecting the low sun. We were heading west, into the sun, at about 6:30pm. I was doing my best to speak intentionally about the reflection, the glare and traffic lights being a nice idea, but when conditions are like this, you really need to watch the tail lights of the cars ahead of you.

I aggressively depicted the intersection we were approaching: it had SIX right-hand portals to either enter the main road or to exit the main road. Two of the six were actual streets, each with their own traffic light (yes, within 100 feet of each other); the other four in/outlets were for a gas station, a McDonald’s and two shared spots to enter the shopping center housing everything else. It’s a shitstorm waiting to happen and it needs some serious re-engineering, but that won’t happen because peeps gots to be getting’ gas and fries, yo…

In an instant, we were upon it.

“Back off the gas… coast…. Watch the tail lights… WATCH THE TAIL LIGHTS. COAST…. brrrrreaaaaaakkkk…..” I stopped talking. He wasn’t listening.

We were coasting in, all laaaa-deee-daaaa to our doom.

Something, like God knows what, had his attention. So I shouted, “USE THE FUCKING BRAKE, NOW….” and he said, “I was… I was… ” and I said, “MORE. PLEEEEEASE…” and he found himself standing on it.

The antilock brakes squinting their little eyes, turning away and bracing for impact… and we stopped.

About four feet from the bumper of the Mercedes in front of us, our SUV was diving and recoiling from its submission to Newtonian law. My son, that sweet angel with big green eyes, dimples and a smile to die for, looked at me and said, “Ok. Are you happy? We stopped.”

Ohhhhhhmmmmmmm Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo …. Aad Guray Nameh Sat Guray Nameh Guru Deveh Nahmeh…. Ra Ma Da Sa…. I went full-on Kundalini yoga: doing my inner chanting to spare myself, and the world, my fierce upset.

I breathed in, my nostrils flaring and pursed my lips, nodded and said, “Yes. You managed that well. That was intense. This is a death missile.” It was at this same shitstorm place where the asshole almost drove into us two weeks later. Irony? No.

Later that first night, he said, “You were right. I should have stopped sooner. I should not have relied on the traffic light. I should have been smarter…. You were right: nothing you say will teach me, it’s the experience…” Later that second night, he said, “You’re right. That intersection is a mess. It could have been me driving into someone else…”

I’m still popping Zantacs like they’re tic-tacs.

My son has waited this long to drive because he is aware of many things, the tension on the road being one of them, but most importantly because he hasn’t needed to drive to socialize. I read an article in the Washington Post recently about a trend depicting Americans falling out of love with their cars. Some suggest the trend is driven by gas prices, some suppose Über, ZipCar and the sharing economy, a trend toward living in cities, others confidently assert it’s because of hand-held devices and that our socializing is virtual and we don’t need to “see” our friends in order to hang with them.

Given my son’s predilections for his iPad at times and the ensuing bursts of laughter from chats he’s enjoying with this friends, I can totally concur with the article. Given my son’s pediatrician’s deep interest in my children’s’ appropriate need for an active and real and tangible social life, I can say that if my son is out on the road, he’s seeing other people. Even if we skirt the the “Avatar” film’s “I see you” see-you, it could be enough.

Logging hours. The Openometer

As I mentioned earlier, my son wanted 20 hours by the time school started. He’s at about 18 and we’ve been in school for two weeks now. It’s not easy to log hours around here because everything is quite nearby. However, the resumption of soccer season has required driving to and from practice, so it’s starting to add up.

The Cooper has something fun called an “Openometer” which is a gauge that measures how long you’ve driven the car with the convertible top down. We have had the car since the beginning of August, and have recently logged 35 hours of open driving. This includes a four-hour road trip to a beautiful wedding last weekend, but excludes an entire week we were away in Connecticut. I am the primary driver, so I can drive it during the day when the kids are in school.

huge and tiny.

But we are talking about fun little car to ride in; not a giant SUV to train in. What this means, is that in order for my son to acquire the hours he needs to engender his independence, I need to be less codependent, think of his safety and experiences rather than my interest to be in a fun car and have him like me more. I have to let him spend more time with him behind the wheel: when we get milk, for drives to the barber shop, to fill up the tank…. It’s very time consuming; I’ve literally stopped myself from jumping into the driver’s seat many times, just so we can “get there.” But this only foils his growth. He prefers the Sequoia over my husband’s car, a Toyota Avalon, something we affectionately refer to as the “Old Man Car.” He loves that he can see so much and feel much safer in the SUV.

So it goes… in order to let these kids become more of themselves, we have to let go of a lot of ourselves, and become a better person that we think we are. For me, that means becoming more like Jesus: a 21st Century female Jesus who is trusting and more gentle; who refrains from playing The Killers at a deafening volume while her son is driving, and who is just plain more patient.

This was a long post. I hope you enjoyed it.

Thank you.

Jul17

A #Mocha Thing Happened on the Way In to The #Ritz

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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Over the 4th of July weekend, my family and I jaunted up to Philadelphia to see my nephew race in the “Independence Day Regatta” on the Schuykill River. My dad was there too, it was a family thing, reminding me of my many weekends spent at boathouses as a child watching the rowers glide by.

We left home around 5:45 and, got to the river around 8:30am to watch his qualifying heats, then we all went to the Ritz-Carlton to check in.

Before you start thinking I’m dripping with cash, let me edify you: we are not. We aren’t doing much traveling this summer and decided to splurge on ourselves for a weekend.

It was a splurge. Trust me.

What happened to me, however, was so “Mom’s holiday from home” -esque (read: no such thing as a mother’s holiday from home, even at the Ritz).

After we pulled up to the valet parking (in our 11-year-old super trusty MomCar / SUV) we started to unload our hansom. My kids are not seasoned travelers. For our 2.5 hour jaunt up to Philly, they packed as though we were planning to leave Earth and never return. Pop-tarts, blankets, pillows, water, extra things…

It was just 180 minutes in the car.

Along an interstate highway.

Traveling between three major metropolitan areas.

We unload.

Because my children learned all their best practices from me, I have my shit to get out of the car: my drinking vessels, my Kindle, my car / lap pillow upon which my hands rest whilst I read my Kindle, my reading glasses, my new prescription sunglasses, my new prescription seeing glasses, my mini-fridge, and my apocalypse gear.

Just for an overnight, mind you.

It reminded me of the countless times my family and I would cross the border into Canada as a child, listening to the questions from the Canadian Customs officer, among them, “and how long will you be staying in Fort Erie?”

“Just an overnight…” and the officer would surveil through the glass windows of our loaded Volvo wagon, rest back on his heels, take in a breath and say, “Ok…” and wave us through.

As I was putting my rations in a duck cloth bag, my catastrophe-grade travel coffee mug (which my beloved gave me last Christmas) managed to leak the recently begotten mocha latte I bought from an amped-up sales dude at the Peet’s Coffee nestled inside the Maryland House rest stop. Unbeknownst to me, mocha latte was forming burnt-sienna coronas all over the Ritz’s marble floor as well. I was a 21st Century Gretel, instead of breadcrumbs, it’s a latte. I’m a little ashamed… my decanter has been a super reliable device. So I blame the Ritz. All that pressure to be poised. Anyone would leak.

However, it wasn’t until we had walked in through the breathtaking three-story, marble lobby with its dozen or so 30-feet, 4′ columns and gleaming crystal chandeliers that I managed to smell the experience before seeing it. “Mocha?” my nose said… I looked down and witnessed the dark chocolate watery fluid flow through the seams in the bag… A further glance down revealed it had dotted my son’s seersucker pillowcase.

“MOM!” He sort of hissed at me, with as much class as possible, in the lobby. “My pilllllllowwwwwwww….” The bellman noticed what was going on and I asked him where the nearest restroom was. He directed me. I unhooked the soppy bag from the luggage trolley weighed down with our steam trunks and rucksacks, and I was gone.

A trail of mocha latte giving me away.

My husband, who was smiling and nodding, dealing with the front desk and being handed his flute of complimentary champagne upon check-in, was oblivious to my “situation.” My other children were getting their bottled water and chocolates from a statuesque hand servant bearing a tray with all manner of vittles for the travel weary 1%.

Like scullery maid, I got nothing.

To the left, down the hall on the left… restroom.

It was not a room of rest.

Not for me.

Oh, it was glorious: byzantine marble everywhere, byzantine byzantine everywhere. Gold handles, paper hand towels so thick you’d think they were deerskin. My destination was a bank of sinks. Two to be exact, the farthest from the doorway possible.

With a murky mocha trail behind me, I dropped my leaky bag into the sink basin, and exhaled.

Out came all my items. First, the travel mug, that little shit. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know HOW it happened, but my mug betrayed me.

judas. et tu, Stanley?

Then the eyeglass cases, all three of them. Two are hard and one is soft. The soft one looked like a biscotti, dipped in the mocha. Then the Kindle, its polka-dotted case besmirched by Peet’s coffee. Then the pillow and my headphones (forgot about those), and then my water bottle: containing Tazo passion tea and a now-clump of chia seeds.

I have my wits about me: I know this is not a real issue, a true tragedy. I know it’s not bankruptcy or cancer. I get it: I was in the bathroom of a Ritz-Carlton. But just… it sucked. I didn’t know about the free champagne until my kids asked me later, “Mom! Did you get your champagne? They were giving it away to adults in the lobby when they checked in …”

So I started to stake my turf in the bathroom. I turned with my back to the corner, eyeing all I could claim, reasonably, as I imagined a meth addict would as she scoped out where would be the best place to … do whatever it is meth addicts do in public restrooms.

In the sink on the left went all the most inoffensive things that were covered in sticky, opaque, and overpriced coffee.

In the sink on the right went the bag.

To the left of the left sink was the stacked chamois-like disposable hand towels.

I took two.

Then four.

Recalling crisis data from my early motherhood days, I determined to go after the biggest, the source spill first. Dabbing furiously at the interior of my duck cloth bag, I realized my endeavor was feckless. The bag had a liner, which was all cotton, but which was also coated in sizing which makes it semi-impervious, causing the mocha to bead and collect, like quicksilver.

I had to turn the bag inside out. I was wearing white. I started out wearing white. I felt like Peter Graves in a 1960s Mission Impossible episode trying to defuse a bomb. Carefully turning the bag inside out and daring to not to let the now almost-funky smelling mocha spray all over my white shorts and dress shirt, I held it like dirty diaper dusted with uranium.

Get more napkins.

Dab dab dab…

Now, we can begin to rinse.

The faucet. Not the right kind of faucet. It was an infrared faucet. I had to get my hands directly beneath the faucet, just so, and hold them there in order to manifest a flow of water.

I was begging the water to flow.

But I had to turn the bag to get the other areas cleaned too.

But the faucet would turn off.

And then on.

And then off.

And then not back on.

And then stay on.

But I needed it off. I wasn’t positioned correctly.

It would turn on when I didn’t need it to and turn off when I needed it on.

And then off.

And then on.

And off.

And still off.

Off some more.

On?

No. Off.

Was I a meth addict?

Yet?

Same with the soap dispenser. It was automatic.

“Fuck it.” I said to myself.

Harkening back, for some really strange reason, I heard the last few lines of the Serenity Prayer’s “… and the wisdom to know the difference…”

I decided to work on the things I could.

More paper towels… and I started to clean off the eyeglass cases and the Kindle and the pillow.

I’m full on now… GSD: getting shit done. In the zone.

Never mind I’m a mom in the bathroom of a 5-star luxury hotel… cleaning out my travel bag in the marble sinks … constantly checking my clothes to make sure they’re not getting filthy, cleaning the cabinets beneath the sinks and wiping down the counter… suffering under the whims of the infrared faucets and LiquiSoap dispensers… there are no holidays for mothers…

Scrub a dub, making progress … In walks four of the most beautiful women, all related, I’ve ever seen in one place.

My hair… it’s in a “bun” but Medusa style; my arms are covered in soap and my gear is taking up one sink while my canvas bag is inside out, dripping brown goo into the sink to my right. I swear I look like a meth addict. A new one. One who’s not totally savvy to carrying shit around in canvas bags.

Two empty sinks and my vast unease separate me from the other women.

“Mmmm… it smells good in here. Like a Starbucks…” says one of the younger girls.

“Peet’s. From Maryland House.” I say. With no irony whatsoever.

The mother of the group, she turns and smiles.

“What?”

“Peet’s coffee. It’s a mocha latte. I got it in Maryland. It’s all over my bag here. I’m cleaning myself up. I’ve been here for about 10 or 15 minutes…. Feels like an hour. It’s hard. These faucets… they don’t stay on…”

“Oh, yeah. They’re the infrared ones…” said one of the daughters.

“Yes. They are. They’re moody little minxes too…” I said. Trying to laugh. Trying not to cry. “My family is upstairs in our rooms. We just got here. My mocha leaked all over the lobby and I had to come in here to clean up…All over my son’s pillow case too, here.” I hold it up to show it to them. (WONDERING: WHY DID I DO THAT?) Watery mocha drips onto the floor again. I grab another towel and wipe down the floor again. “I think I got it all…”

“This is one of the times I’m really wishing I had a daughter right now, because she could’ve come in here with me and likely one of us would’ve gotten someone to help us…”

The mother squats down with me, looks at me and says, “How can I help you? I know you don’t know us, but we could stay here with your things while you get assistance… This is no way to start a holiday weekend…”

I wanted to cry. She saw that. She was about my age, maybe a little older. Her daughters were about 19, 20. Her sister was there too.

“No. I’ll stay. Thanks. Could you ask someone from Housekeeping to bring a plastic laundry bag to me? So I can clean this up in the privacy of my suite? So I can work with a faucet that stays on and soap that doesn’t stop flowing?” I asked, relieved that someone saw me and heard me. Feeling like a human again. I figured a plastic laundry bag in the Ritz isn’t such an insane concept.

She knew what I was talking about. “I’ll do just that. A plastic laundry bag… I’m on my way…” And she did. Her daughters smiled at me, wisely kept their distance. Who knows what else could manage to spill from my bag… and they all left the room.

I felt as if I sent up a flare. RESCUERS!

Two minutes later, which seemed like an eternity, a tiny 30-ish year-old woman from Housekeeping came in, empty handed (AGGGHGH! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!) and with a face full of confusion and … contempt? Did I recognize contempt in her squinted eyes, sneer and open mouth? As though I was interrupting her from something super NOT housekeeping-y? Did I look that bad?!

“What is it that you need? I didn’t understand. A plastic bag?” She asked.

“Yes. As you can see here, I’m a little compromised. I need a bag. A plastic laundry bag? Like the kind people use after they swim? Or even a garbage bag. Like that one beside you. I don’t care. Something to put all this in so it doesn’t drip …” Now I was looking at her with contempt: YOU STUPID LITTLE GIRL.

My inner Walter Mitty wanted to add “…Or I could just let it drip all over your lobby and elevator and hallways.”

Just then, my husband texted me. “Where are you?”

“Rest room.”

“Are you OK?”

“I need a plastic bag. It’s a mess.”

“Oh.”

“Housekeeping is getting one. What’s our room number?”

“We are in 802 and 803.”

Who knows what he thought was going on… He later told me he feared I’d soiled my armor. I had to laugh.

In less than a minute, she returned. With the bag. And she watched me pack up my mocha shit and then walked away. Leaving me in the restroom to wipe down her counter.

I needed champagne. I wasn’t about to ask for it, because I didn’t know they were giving it away in the first place.

I ascended to 803. It was a lovely room. With a huge bathroom with a bar of soap and a tub. The water stayed on when you turned it on. I went to work. Again.

“Mom? Did you get your champagne?” Thing 2, who is now 14 and two inches taller than I am, asked enthusiastically. “They were giving it away in the lobby…”

I sighed. Looking up from the tub, I turned to him and said, “No. I’ve been in the bathroom… it’s a long story.”

“Here?” He asked, incredulously.

“Ha. No. In the lobby… ”

“All this time? With the coffee? Alone?”

“Yes. Alone. Until a lovely mother with sympathetic eyes came to my rescue and did me a favor.”

I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I just wanted to clean up and get out. It was only noon. We had a nice weekend in front of us.

The bed was lovely and the room was noisy. The windows aren’t insulated against the sound of traffic in a city as large and as active as Philadelphia. The chocolate on the pillows was tasty. When we left, on the Fourth, the door staff couldn’t tell us how to get out of town (because the roads were all closed off due to Independence Day parades). That was a little surprising. Two people had to tell us how to get out of town and they sort of couldn’t agree. Other door staff were practically high-fiving each other over photos on their smart phones. And thinking back, the bellman who first noticed the mocha spill should’ve taken care of the whole thing right there. I would’ve GLADLY paid $50 in cleaning fees to avoid the feckless attempts in the lobby bathroom.

There were a few more lapses in professionalism and hospitality that I couldn’t really believe I was witnessing in an operation as lauded and as supposedly fine-tuned as the Ritz-Carlton. For instance, when we sat in the lobby after tooling around the city and visiting Reading Terminal Market, one of the staffers placed a menu on the table we were seated around and said nothing. Ever. We all looked at each other and blew him off. We were already guests in the hotel. So if you’re going to propose an item on the menu, invite us to enjoy our stay and let you know if we’d like to order something… It all felt very entitled: as though WE were imposing.

On the way home from the weekend, my husband and I decided to call the local property leadership to discuss it with management. If I were in that business, I’d want to know.

I’d need to know.

I called, and the woman who answered the phone ran through her courteous opening script and then I said, “Yes, I’d like to speak with a manager please.”

She flatly asked. “Which one?”

Suddenly I thought I was dealing with the housekeeping woman. Her crisp on the phone right there was enough to push me into third gear.

“I suppose the general manager, thanks.”

Her response, “Mmmm, oh-kaaaay….”

My jaw hit the floor.

So I left the general manager a message. But later, I thought, “What if this attitude is endemic at this location? What if the manager is part of the problem?” I really hated the way the receptionist treated me.

I went up a notch. To corporate. Y’see, the thing is: when you make a reservation through the toll-free number for staying at ANY Ritz-Carlton, you will deal with calm, modulated, highly polished and exquisite hospitality engineers. “My pleasure,” and “Of course Mrs. Field,” and “Absolutely, not a problem,” and “Please hold for a moment while I connect your call” and “Is there anything else I can do for you?” and “We look forward to seeing you on July 3 ….” are all part of the code and the culture one would EXPECT from a R-C experience.

Not here. Not Philadelphia. Things got downgraded to a Best Western, or worse, Red Roof Inn attitude.

It really was surprising. At first, I thought, “Oh… we all make mistakes…” and then I started to remember how demoralized I felt in that restroom waging war against those faucets and then the attitude on that housekeeper. Then I began to think about our hotel bill, and how much we were looking forward to our stay and how exciting it would be for my kids 11, 14, and 17 to stay in a Ritz-Carlton (my first time was last week!)! And that I wanted to try a robe… maybe buy one…

There is a romance behind that brand. A promise and an expectation that you will be treated with care and pampered. None of that happened.

When I called corporate I did get the kid-glove treatment. The manager on the phone was perfection. He never interrupted me, he waited for me to pause and then asked me if I had anything else to add, and he couldn’t apologize enough. I told him we didn’t get to wear a bathrobe, that there weren’t any in our room, our our kids’ room, and I could hear him gasp. Then I told him about the lobby experience with the silent waiter. Then I hit him with a right hook: “I didn’t get any complimentary champagne. Ever.” And it was as though he were strangling a teddy bear on the other end of the line.

The next day, the executive assistant of the Philadelphia general manager called on his behalf. I suspect she also heard from the manager at corporate and did a little background investigation on her own. We had a wonderful conversation. I had just come back from a glorious row on the Occoquan and the weather was perfection.

In retrospect I feel like I did the right thing. We need to stand up for ourselves. We easily dropped a grand that weekend.

Two days later, my husband received a note from the EA, she wrote of her conversation with me, calling me “quite lovely” (gushing) and thanked us for our valuable feedback. She also added 50,000 points to our Marriott Rewards account, which is effectively a total reimbursement for the rooms we stayed in at the Philadelphia location. So good on them.

I’d like to go back. I’ve had tea and brunch at a few of the Ritz-Carltons here. They’ve all been really lovely experiences. I want to say that this one was the exception to the rule.

The next day, Thing 2 and I decided to grab a milkshake from the McDonald’s drive-thru after running a litany of errands. The young man on the other end of the order intercom was STELLAR. He said, “My pleasure” after every opportunity and then, “Your total is 50,000 Marriott points…” [just kidding.] Please drive forward.” When we got to him, he was super professional, sincere and grateful for the work. My son noted, “He has better manners than those dudes at the Ritz….”

True that.

So let this be a reminder: 1) there is no such thing as a holiday for mothers and 2) tell people what’s on your mind.

Thank you.

Apr6

When We Run Out of Bandwidth We Can Always Reboot

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

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I’m sitting outside on our brick walk-up on the first truly nice day of spring. The sun is out, still a little weak, as it’s only April, but the air is a gorgeous 75˚ and perfect humidity, if there is any at all. On either side of me are three boxwoods and they’re making this strange fizzing sound, as if they could foam and the thin suds popped almost as soon as they were formed. I remember this phenomenon from last spring, and I went to search it online. The guessed causes ranged from insect infestation (of which I could find no evidence) to the warming of the sap in the wee branches exchanging moisture from the roots with nourishment from the warming sunlight, now eight minutes old. Always eight minutes old.

While the air temperature is warm, the breezes waft through the bushes and over the mulched garden beds, ushering along with it much tiny pouches of cooler air reminding me that we are still very early into the season. Sparrows, starlings, cardinals and finches are serenading, well, alarming their peers of the presence of my nine-year-old yet still-frisky gray cat, Gandalf. He’s still an impressive hunter, if not part-time resident of our home. He cheats on us with the pet-less, empty-nesters across the way. His reclusive and more loyal sister, Beezer, is black. She has come out of her hibernation. She’s never had kittens, but she has this strange sack-like stomach which sways from side to side as she saunters from house to house, rolling in the dust created from pulverized stones which were applied to the street during the recent ice storms. I always say she needs liposuction.

Ours is a quiet street. We live on what’s called a “pipestem,” or private street along which anywhere from three to fourteen houses are nestled in my 32-year-old bucolic neighborhood of more than 6,000 families. It was originally supposed to be the home of Dulles Airport. Congress put the kibosh on that. Instead of the airport, now we’re in the flight path. Sometimes they are so close, I can see the logo of those massive intercontinental jets as they circle above my end of the county.

I’m sitting outside, not just for my own enjoyment, but to serve as sentry as my youngest son rides his bike up and down our private street. He is eleven now. He rides in his Batman shirt and khaki cargo pants without a care in the world, without looking both ways. Without watching out for parked cars and cats and swooping birds. He speeds up hidden driveways closest to the main street and whips his nimble hand-me-down blue and silver bike around in a tight 180˚ preparing to vaunt himself, yet carelessly again, back into the main feed of the driveway.

The neighbors do not mind, but they are not home. They are at work.

Work.

I have considered, with more weight than the previous time, my return to it. To don a suit (do women still wear suits to the office? Are there still offices?), wear sensible heels, have sensible hair and attend sensible meetings — all with the noble intent to help conjure funds to pay for the next stage of my parental life: college tuition for our oldest son. And then our middle son. And then our third son.

I read an article in the New York Times this morning about why college costs so much. My outcome was not relief, a sense of “gotcha! now you colleges will tone down your lack of federal funding rhetoric and tuitions will recede!” but rather great discouragement; there is no way to shut down that business machine. And that’s what it is … a business. I don’t know who said the original sentiment, but the watered-down version of it at MCI where I used to work in corporate communications was this: “Create the need and then sell the answer.” I’m not pooping on college. I definitely see its value and its importance for a life well lived; so much of what you learn in college doth not come from books.

We attended a college financial aid night at the high school about three months ago in the dead of winter. We braved 12˚ plus winds for 300 yards from our car to the building to listen to a knowledgeable man from Georgetown University’s financial aid office talk about things that make no sense to me: that if we paid the tuition for my son to attend my alma mater at $23,000, we could conceivably get financial aid for him to attend Georgetown for basically the same amount thanks, to the benefits. My school is no slouch, but it’s not Georgetown. Couple that with the fact that our of-age son did well enough blindly on his SATs to get into several very good schools. But SATs and GPAs and ACTs aren’t enough for a white, American, middle-class, highly intelligent, book-smart, socially affable, male to be admitted (not “get into”) a good school anymore. He has to be regal, and somehow disadvantaged.

Back to creating the need: I read in the comments of the NYT article that the nation needs college educated kids to survive in the future. But the college costs are insane. That “low skill” labor jobs aren’t what’s going to carry this nation. That no one wants those jobs. Yet they, too, are absolutely needed for the future (who’s going to pave the roads?! who is going to catch the fish? who’s going to fix the cars? the planes? so many good jobs are out there!). There was also the sad acknowledgement that a college degree also doesn’t guarantee a competitive edge in the workforce. But it’s non-negoatiable; a college education is non-negotiable, it’s a must-have. Yet the tuition is insane. But the schools don’t need the money. But it’s become a business. But kids have to have a college education… But it’s super expensive… Am I repeating myself?!

Heck yeah I am.

So I started to whirl out of control over the last few days. Panicking. WHATTHEFUCKAREWEGOINGTODO? HOWCANWESTILLEATANDPAYFORCOLLEGE? HOWWILLWEDOTHIS? WHATABOUTCOMMUNITYCOLLEGE? WHATABOUTHISFUTURE? AREWEFUCKINGHISFUTUREALREADY? WHATBOUTHISBROTHERS? IHAVETOGETAJOB. IHAVETOGETAJOB. THEREISNOBOOKINMETHATWILLSAVEUS. JESUS. WEARESOFUCKED.

I started to run out of bandwidth. And to prove it, to prove that I had literally run out of mental space to be a sane and nonreactive person, I picked on the only person in my life who is nice enough to come back for more, because that’s the kid of guy he is: my husband. I created chaos. It wasn’t just him that I went after. I went after myself, in a really yucky and sad way. I said and thought things about myself that I would never say to or about another human being (well, maybe Hitler). It’s a very thin line, I learned –again– between picking on yourself and kicking yourself in the ass. After two days I figured out that I was creating a shitstorm for myself and that my anger vented at my husband was really about me. But why? Why did I pick him? Well, to deflect, and keep the heat off progress of course. If I create a shitstorm, I have to clean that up and feel sorry for myself some more. If I simply act and do the appropriate thing, where’s the fun in that? It’s about growing up, dammit.

Then there’s my own shit in my head to deal with. I’ve written about it here: the panic about my personal future and following and not crapping on my own dreams: to write.

To bring this idea closer to my own soul, to allow the kindnesses and compliments of readers and friends to actually sink in and not simply run off my skin only to drip into little puddles beneath my fingertips and pool around my feet or soak the linings of my shoes I have begun to read the eminently readable War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I learned about that book after listening to Steven Pressfield’s podcast on The Accidental Creative. His book is a breezy little tome, broken up into very brief segments or chapters or utterances (sometimes just a paragraph long) about Resistance.

Seth Godin refers to Resistance as The Troll Inside Your Head. Pressfield says that Resistance is that thing inside us which stops us all from being healthier, ending a sick relationship, allowing creativity and living better. In its early pages I learned that Pressfield not only has a ritual (I’ve heard SO MUCH ABOUT THAT NEED FOR A RITUAL… OK…I get it…) but he also has a zone, an altar, if you will, dedicated to his writing or his creativity. He is disciplined. I used to be very disciplined. Then I had kids. That threw that bathtub right out the window. But my kids are older now. Creating a ritual and an altar does not seem quite so rife with failure anymore. He talks about not setting a word limit or a time limit on his writing and that when he starts to lose his thought, then he knows he’s done for the day. He’s very reasonable.

Pressfield makes a very compelling case about Resistance and why it wins so often. Pressfield makes us dig very deeply to uncover why we let Resistance in.

We let Resistance in because we find it easier to be afraid than to be courageous. He draws comparisons between Resistance and self-sabotage. He wrote something about how it’s even a form of sabotage against our peers, about how the worst act of treason against them we can commit is to better ourselves or get this: we subconsciously halt the betterment of others because we don’t want to be stuck with ourselves. He used an oft-cited story of the fate which befalls the crab who dares to leave the stock pot and how the others will dismember it to prevent its liberation.

You have to own your stuff when you read this book. In order to grow from it, you MUST be willing to stare yourself in the mirror and admit when you were a crab who tried to pull the fleeing one back in: are you the friend of someone who is striving for weight loss who offers him cake or makes little jabs at her progress? Or are you the one who puts out a spread of fruit and vegetables and offers water instead of soda or wine?

That made me think back to a time in my life with my mother when as much as I wanted her to be healthy and sober and available to me, I was also (this is a big confession) weak and terrified that her recovery would require me to be softer and kinder and vulnerable to her. That I would lose my enemy. That I would lose my edge. Part of it was teenage girlhood. I better understand my role in my sins against her and with that, not so much a sense of guilt, but an awareness of my fears and my false power.

I am so grateful that my go-to response was NOT guilt for the first time in my life.

It’s not like I spiked her cokes or swapped her tylenol with valium. Guilt has no place in that dynamic because ultimately, I had no power over her. What I was guilty of, if anything, was thinking I had any role in hoping for as well as fearing any sense of recovery for her. It’s hard for me to convey to you without sounding like a shrew how truly difficult it was between us, when things were difficult. To do so brings to mind that poem about the little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead: that when she was bad, she was really really awful. So I really try to avoid talking about it all. But doing that solves nothing either, other than makes me feel like I have to shut up and that makes me mad. I have found that when I simply accept things as they were that I don’t feel compelled to be pissed off about it all. I have to remember that.

Reading Pressfield allowed me to see my baser, more unkind and craven self from those days. Surprisingly, it has bolstered me. I see how far I’ve come! I also see myself less as a victim of hers or of circumstances and more as a participant, albeit a reluctant and confused one. I was not a young child when I had those fears of my mother’s success; I was running out of bandwidth then. I was an adolescent, on the verge of bursting from my pent-up rage against circumstances I had yet to fully understand but only sensed their state of frustration.

My middle son is now that age when I first began to understand what was going on — what was really going on — in my family. We were about to move to Virginia, uprooting my mother. My older brother had mentally left for college, I was poised to repeat 8th grade (due to low attendance and a few dozen tardies) and it was utter emotional and logistical chaos. I see my middle son now and as much as he hates school (boy!) he goes. Every day. He is more intellectually present now and his grades are improving. He understands that all of this is his responsibility (we provide the stable home life and he does the work). It has required a lot of attention on my husband’s and my behalf to keep him remotely on track, but nowhere along the line do I find myself sabotaging his efforts and secretly wanting him to slide.

My oldest son is the age when I started to become emotionally unglued; that when I actively hated my mother and defiantly rose against and mocked any belief in her proposals of recovery. It was likely my disbelief and emotional garrisoning was all I could muster as she was a virulent strain of artist, alcoholic and depressive narcissist. In retrospect, I think it was a survival skill. I was out of bandwidth.

Pressfield goes on to talk about how to overcome Resistance. How we need to be ready for it and to learn from it. There are pages awaiting me which prescribe a future without Resistance and I can’t wait to get to them. I’m in the section now where he could not shake the sense of a need to write nonfiction. That he simply couldn’t bear to write fiction yet and that he felt like a fraud for thinking himself worthy of giving perspective and advice to anyone who dared to read his words.

Man, can I relate to that. And yet he did it anyway. And I’m so grateful. Should I ever go in that direction in a cohesive sense with an all-out book, you won’t catch me daring to say I’ve accumulated the requisite letters after my name to make me worthy of dispensing advice. I can’t shake the feeling though that there’s no way to write fiction, ever, for me until I bang out something which is entirely nonfiction.

I can feel myself on the precipice. This is unlike any other sense of thrust or self-trust or self-belief I’ve ever felt.

I have considered writing when the kids are at school. But I busy myself with other things which I would categorize as Resistance. But not today. Today, I am aware. It’s like being on a financial budget: don’t needlessly spend the money if you want to have it later. Be smart about how you spend your time. Try to not run out of bandwidth. But if you do, be OK with it. Reboot. We can always reboot.

So I’ve come semi-circle about the returning to work thing. Watching my son ride his bike up and down our street mandates that I be home when he is. I have seven more years of this. I don’t think of that with regret though, as if I am trapped here. That is the mistake lots of us make. We are not trapped here. It’s a matter of perspective. Even a castle in the Alps can feel like a prison.

Ideally, I’d like part-time writing and editing work. Nothing too fancy. Just something to help the blow in a couple years. Pay for a vacation. To a place which requires an airplane ride, a rental car and abuts turquoise water. Wouldn’t that be nice? College will happen. We will figure it out. We will have to. Everyone manages to figure it out. By the time our youngest is finished I will be dead. hahahahaaaaaa.aa….aaaaaahhhh ….mmmm.

No. I will be 56. NINE YEARS, BABY! And it will ALL BE OVER! That’s almost dead. I joke. Fifty-six is the beginning of the salad days, my friends.

But for now, I sit here still. My shadow extends a good twenty feet to my right as the sun, still eight minutes old, is setting to my left. The boys have gone inside. The boxwoods are still fizzing. The birds are beginning their night songs and my cats have retreated to nap in preparation for their nocturnal missions. The liberated cherry blossom petals are rolling and tumbling along the ground, propelled by the breezes of alternating pockets of cool and warm air. They dance and twirl as if they are children on a playground, chasing a soccer ball. It’s truly magical. The issue at hand for me is to turn this love of observation into something I can share with the world, not just on this blog, but bigger.

The wind has picked up and now pollen is bombing my keyboard and screen, and my laptop battery is at 9% remaining. This is good. What a glorious day. … and there goes the ice cream truck on the main street its warped-78rpm version of “Dixie” and “Camptown Races” blaring out the yogurt-cup-sized tweeter.

Thank you.