"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. " Carl Sandburg
On weekend mornings, I make coffee and sit at my desk for a leisurely perusal of news and facebook. Inevitably, a post will catch my eye, and I'll write some long-winded-but-well-thought-out response to someone's throwaway comment that I might not have noticed later in the day. This morning, the post I took on belonged to my daughter. She'd listed ten things she thought would make the world end in 2012:
Rebecca Black
Walmart
Lady Gaga
Country Singers
Autotune
Desperate Housewives
The iPad
Ugg Boots
Nicki Minaj
Vin Diesel
We could argue with the merits of the list, but I'm sure my daughter doesn't believe the world will end or that Vin Diesel will be the cause of it. Frankly, if it does end, all those things will have contributed, just like taking one's first breath contributes to the taking of the last. But a facebook post doesn't call for that sort of existential philosophy.
As you can imagine, a provocative opinion (especially on a place like facebook, especially when one's friends are users of the items in said opinion) causes some to take umbrage. Is it necessary to hate on Gaga? Whoa, Watch the Nicki Minaj stuff! Come on—what's wrong with Walmart?
My kid has a good mind, and I'm sure she can articulate why these items and people could contribute to the end of the world—or at least the downfall of Western Civilization. But something she said struck me because it's something I expect from other facebook users, not my daughter. "I copied these things from my best friend's status—that doesn't necessarily mean I believe they're all bad."
Whoa.
So I'm copying my letter to her right here. It's my letter to you, too, and to your kids. The funny thing is that I don't feel unqualified to give the advice, even though I don't exactly fit the measure of success in this world. My house is so small that when the six band members come upstairs from the basement, I feel like I will explode. Yesterday, I spent $60 I didn't have on dinner and a museum admission, and I'm feeling panicky this morning. I have two inches of roots that I can't afford to make match to the rest of my hair. My weight loss breaks for Berger's cookies. And my eleven-year-old SUV is rust held together with bird shit.
Still, I make things with my hands, my heart, and my brain. I am fulfilled by my experiences. I try new things, eat delicious foods, go interesting places. I don't have the added stress of a job I loathe and a boss I hate or clients who treat me like a slave. I'm surrounded by beauty and by friends who make me laugh and animals that lick my face. And I suppose this is why.
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Here are some worthwhile tips about life.
Never JUST copy anything. Always make it your own. Look at Ted Brodysseus Merrill. He can play like the record, but he plays the song with his hair, too, and in pink clothing. Or like Brett Diamond, who plays leads by deadening notes on the neck.
If you don't like something, be open to changing your mind. I'm open to changing my mind about Nikki Minaj and Lady Gaga. Hasn't happened yet, but I'm open to it.
Don't let anyone bully you into changing your mind. See their point that yes, Gaga sings and plays well, but no, she's not your (or my) cup of tea. (Or, thankfully, soy latte. Blech.)
Spend your dollars at the places you think best represent your interests (i.e. not Walmart). Spend more to buy in your neighborhood, so stores stay open, and your house stays valuable. Doing so amounts to more dollars in your pocket eventually, when store owners tell others what a good person you are and help you get gigs and work, not where you are just an invisible nit not worthy of a clean restroom.
Never wear Ugg boots. You'll find plenty of cool boots that don't look like anyone else's hideous (Ugg--short for uggggggly) footwear. (See my beautiful turquoise cowboy boots with Frida Kahlo hearts on them, for example.)
The iPad is stupid, but it won't make the world end. Windows-based programs will do that.
Finally, while it's cool to dis Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black (and Ke$ha and Taylor $wift and all those mediocre-to-lousy YouTube stars), fight the genre by being the best you can be, practicing regularly, being prepared, and enjoying the hell out of all you do—whether it's saxophone, drums, guitar, vocals, writing, drawing, reading, school.
Stop the world from ending by being the reason for it to go on. I know you are mine.
Love,
The Crazy-Ass Bitch Who Buys You Shit and Cooks You Stuff and Drives Your Ass All Over Town
P.S. Country singers are STILL writing the best songs. Ignoring that fact will be of no help where numbers 1 and 7 are concerned.
- - - - - photos of a few things I love, top to bottom: new puppy, Jett; three of my Kims; Ted Merrill's awesome guitarring; Serena, the reason.
Today, my daughter, Hormonie, is thirteen. She may think January 6th, the Epiphany, is about her, but it’s all about me. Hermommie woke up looking like a Death Eater, the Dark Mark under each eye, evil roots black as night, and skin of—what else?—elder. Overnight, I became the parent of a teenager. A teenanger.
It won’t be all bad, will it? It could hardly be worse than last year. And there’s evidence that she’s outgrown her parseltongue. Last night, at dinner, she told me she loved me. And I didn’t even have to give her money.
But it’s not about her, a girl whose favorite bands are Pink Floyd, Sweet, and the Records, while other girls her age are drooling over Justin Bieber; a girl who can nail the sax solo in “Us and Them,” then hit the drums on “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” and then play the lead guitar on “Over the Hills and Far Away” and then sing “Use Somebody”—while drumming!—and sound like the record; a girl who is so quick witted that when I apologized yesterday for my foul language (“The crows are fucking amazing!”), she replied, “I don’t give a shit”; a girl who—wait! It’s not about her.
For Christmas this year, Serena got me a gift certificate for a facial. My appointment is today, but I doubt that even Gina’s powerful elderflower and polyjuice potion can turn back the withered, arthritic hands of time. I guess that's OK. Truth be told, I wear my marks of motherhood with pride (and just a dash of Photoshop magic).
All of this is just a fancy way to declare my continuing love for my daughter, despite her age and disposition, and to say, in the clearest way* that she will understand:
*Happy Birthday, Serena!
If you want to translate English to parseltongue, go to the parselmouth.
My daughter became a bat mitzvah a little over a week ago, and I can't find the words to describe how I feel about it: about our weekly meetings with the rabbi, about our growth individually and as a family, about our incredible daughter (who tie-dyed her own tallit and braided its fringes and who still managed to pull straight As despite adding Hebrew lessons and rabbi visits to her busy music schedule and her creature maintenance), and about the party my mother threw to celebrate this simcha with mishpucha.
I'm not sure why all my revelations emerge as sentimentality rather than wisdom, as cliché rather than poetry. I seem to be mourning. Our Wednesdays with the rabbi were some of the most sacred and treasured hours I've had in years, and putting together 120 hand-made programs kept me focused on something other than my ailments and my dying dog and my lack of employment. When it's all over, I find my bullies have been quietly building up arms and ammo against me. I am perched between kvelling and yelling, and my reflexes are sharp, despite my physical decrepitude.
I have nothing but this poem I stumbled through, verklempt, the Sunday my daughter became responsible for her own goodness, her godliness.
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rock mitzvah (for Serena, with a nod to Frank O'Hara)
it was a quick trade: umbilical for patch cord my baby for bay-beh bay-beh bay-beh. thirteen meticulous whirls past the sun and she knows her way around a fret pattern even before she’s fingering the tallit’s fringe. the years are but a filmy dream that wakes up amid ancient tongue (we have nothing if not endurance) tremulous melody, pomp, and splendor when all I’ve done to date is sigh. bark. write. she must have flown here on the Puca’s back reckless brown tresses whipping in wind alighting at the bimah like a new angel.
I don’t see the crumbs of morning toast on nervous lips she bit to crimson don’t hear a skip in her smooth recitations. so do I mourn this loss of little girl or squash the selfish pangs and celebrate— with a very real laughter she’d be proud of— the way she wears her prayer shawl like wings?
Bur first, an interview with the Ripstick Queen, two and a half years ago.
Note: the helmet and wrist guards, the mother running beside the daughter to check for cars.
It was common knowledge that you didn’t have breakfast at the Morning Edition near Patterson Park unless you had three hours to spend. It’s not that it was too crowded—it was, but it was a narrow first floor of a rowhouse and held fifty people or so in church pews and wobbly, cast-out chairs. But it was quirky, and the food was delicious, and sometimes you were willing to wait, even though service was so bad it was obscene: a server would bring you a cup of coffee, set it down at your table, and look at you surprised when you asked for cream and sugar. Then she'd walk back for the cream, set it down at your table, then look at you surprised when you asked again for sugar, then walk back for the sugar, then set it down at your table and look at you surprised when you asked for a spoon to stir it all, then walk back for the spoon and only sometimes return.
Now imagine that you’re not at the Morning Edition for some ridiculously decadent French Toast but at the ER for x-rays and stitches after a terrible accident. You’d expect a little more from nurse. You get nice. You don't get efficient. There has to be a better way.
I'll back up. I had just turned dinner on, poured a Resurrection into a fancy glass, and sat down with my guitar to learn Radiohead's "No Surprises," when Marty came back too early from the park. Serena had fallen from her ripstick. Yes, a ripstick is a horrible piece of shit wheeled toy that I like to call “a skateboard—only dangerouser,” and she went speeding down a hill, sans helmet, sans wrist guards (not that either would have helped, as only luck spared her from a broken wrist and a brain injury). She was going too fast and dismounted, her left arm—her fret-playing arm—breaking, literally, her fall, and then her face stopped it the rest of the way. When we arrived at a local hospital's ER at 5:45, the waiting room was full. I’d forgotten what it was like here—hundreds of patients using the hospital’s emergency facility as a primary care physician—mostly because this hospital saved my life when I was in anaphylaxis after taking a dose of penicillin, and because of the hand clinic. If something was wrong with her hand, she needed to be at this place.
Serena’s face is bloody, her nose bruised, her jaw and arm too sore to move. I sign in, noting on the form next to “reason for visit” that she suffered a terrible fall in an accident. She was triaged quickly because the pair of young nurses was caught up, and she was given an ice pack for her face and told that she’d get a room as soon as one was available. More than an hour later, at 7:15, I started listening more carefully; everyone was told the same thing. So much for keeping hope and patients’ spirits alive.
The woman at registrar had told us to sit at her desk; she’d taken pity on Serena and was making phone calls trying to get her Tylenol and a room. She tells us we are going to “flex care,” as if that were some special kind of white-table-cloth restaurant that takes a little longer but has much better food. But we are still at her desk at 7:30. Finally, she gets up and cleans three rooms herself—the first (and only) sign of real initiative at the hospital—and takes us back to the Flex Care waiting room, where we wait after another fifteen minutes until the nurse comes.
Serena is given a preliminary glance—asked what hurts—and sent to x-ray. We wait there for ten minutes or so, and then Serena’s arm is x-rayed, and we are delivered back to the tiny cubbyhole to wait another half hour or so for the pediatrician. He is a cheerful Dutch guy who is pleased to tell us he studied under Serena’s pediatrician twenty years ago. The tools in our cubby don’t work, so he stretches them from the room next door, where a girl who’d had strep for more than a week and has been waiting for a doctor just a little longer than we were is being seen. That girl has had asthma since birth, and the doctor is incredulous that the mother has no asthma medicine at all, not even an emergency inhaler. The teen is told that her throat looks like strep, but test results would take two days, so she’s getting a shot of antibiotics. Two days? The ER doesn’t have a 20-minute strep test like every pediatrician’s office and Patient First on the planet? Really?
Our doctor says that Serena’s x-rays indicate a fracture, but he is waiting for confirmation from an orthopedist. He tells us a nurse will come and clean Serena’s wounds, and goes to sit at his desk and eat. He sits there for a good thirty minutes, while the nurse, who sees me lurking in the hallway and apologizes each time, saying, “I’m coming,” finally does come with an armload of stuff to clean up the blood that’s dripping from her chin and head.
I had to remind myself that the nurse was not the waitress. Yet she came to us with the coffee but not the cream, sugar, or spoon. She came with her hands full of things she needed, then left in search of things she forgot, gone a good ten minutes between, apologizing along the way. She wondered whether the triple antibiotic ointment she brought contained penicillin, despite the fact that it said “active ingredient: bacitracin” on the packet, and left for another ten minutes to find out. She put on the ointment, and we reminded her that she’d not cleaned Serena’s scraped knees, so she went back for the peroxide and water. And then she left to get more ointment. I don't blame her; she was the only nurse! It's the hospital's fault.
Where’s my fucking French Toast?
Last week, at Alonso’s, a popular restaurant and bar where I’ve been a customer nearly once a week for two years and have been treated kindly by most of the wait staff, we sat, on a busy Friday night, at a sticky, filthy spot at the bar for twenty minutes, unable to get the bartender’s attention—after taking twenty minutes to get served a beer—so I went behind the bar, grabbed a wet rag, bused the dirty dishes, and wiped the bar. It took seconds. The bartender hollered at me. Why? Because customers are not allowed behind the bar.
So how could this whole scenario been improved? I could've cleaned her myself. Marty’d already cleaned her before we arrived. This was three hours of bleeding. What about one of those triage nurses? Couldn’t they have cleaned her wounds after they took her blood pressure, in the room where they had all the equipment to do it, in a room that wasn’t being used by anyone but us because they were all caught up? What about the pediatrician in ER? Couldn’t he have done it quickly, before sitting down to dinner and waiting for the next underage patient, who didn’t show up until 9:30 p.m.?
There’s a bleeding, broken kid in the ER, and it’s just like a bad restaurant. Where’s my fucking coffee?
At 9:00, three hours and fifteen minutes after we had arrived, we are still waiting for a phone call or a visit from the orthopedist, and Serena is finally glowing with sticky ointment. I am blotting the blood drips from her chin with a tissue brought to us by the guy cleaning the rooms. At 9:30, we are sent for more x-rays, this time of the elbow, and the receptionist is talking on the phone for the first ten minutes, until I mention to Marty that no one would even know we were here if she didn’t finish her call. She hangs up and takes us back. She is the tech. She obviously doesn’t know that ER patients have been sitting for hours and hours before they reach her care.
We are back in our cubby at almost ten, and I’m threatening to leave. My back is killing me, my husband is asleep on the stretcher, and my daughter is crying again and saying fuck a lot. The doctor tells us, again, that the ortho “is coming,” but she’s been coming for the past hour, and the hospital’s not that big. It takes the nurse to tell us that “she’s in surgery, and we have no way of knowing when she’ll be finished.” But! But! You all keep saying she’s coming! As if she’s actually walking toward us! She’s not coming! She’s in surgery! Aware is different from coming! I understand aware! I want to leave, but the nurse reminds us of all the time we have invested. Do we invest ten minutes more or two hours more? Probably somewhere in between, the nurse tells us.
Is all this done to give the patient hope or shield them from the verbal hostility of frustrated patients? Is this the waitress soothing the ire of her hungry customers by telling us again and again that the food will be out shortly, that it’s next up, that she saw it back there, that it’s on the way out to us, even though the kitchen is short-staffed and has its attention on the six omelets that were easier to make than your fancy French Toast?
At last, the ortho arrives, and she spends nearly every moment of the next two hours working on Serena, stopping only to locate a cast saw because the one she had was overheating too quickly and burning Serena and to send us for a third and final, we hoped, x-ray. Fortunately, her break was set properly, and we are discharged. At midnight. Six hours and fifteen minutes after walking through the door.
Serena is just one patient. Some of the people who had arrived before or during our stay were parked on stretchers in the hallways with black eyes and bloody noses or zombiefied or comatose or just slumped over in alcoholic or drug-induced stupors. Or maybe they were just exhausted.
Let me say right now that everyone has been nice, kind, gentle, and generous. I know they were doing their best. And let me add that I haven't a clue about how to run a small business, much less an ER. I'm just a frustrated parent who saw countless missed opportunities to keep someone from waiting an hour for a glass of water. A woman got locked in the bathroom, and an alarm sounded and lights flashed, and the clean-up guy had nothing with which to open the bathroom door! He finally, and not in any real hurry (I guess he knew it wasn't a true emergency), located a screwdriver and opened the door. So I know they're understaffed and overworked (that same guy complained to us he was going on his twelfth hour of work, to which I replied that he was getting paid, and we were paying—not the same thing). I know they have a system. But things don't work this poorly at other hospitals, many of whom have hired independent consultants to fix things. I'm just suggesting that this is a hospital that needs fixing.
So what if the nurse helped one patient from start to finish, handing that patient over to the x-ray tech after cleaning the dripping blood from her chin, x-ray tech then handing the patient to the doctor while the nurse attends to the next patient, on and on until everyone is out of there or in the care of the appropriate specialist within an hour or two? Instead, there’s a waitress walking in and out of twenty cubbyhole rooms taking all the drink orders before putting a single one in, not returning to take the dinner orders until the drinks are up and delivered to each table. Where’s the manager? The food here is not worth suffering through the service.
The Morning Edition eventually closed, but we can make our own breakfast. We can’t stitch our own cuts, take x-rays, dispense pain relievers, set breaks, make casts. Still, it seems like the people who can would want to do it for grateful people, rather than tearful, weary, angry, powerless ones who feel so defeated by the system that they’re ready to walk out with serious injuries to become a drain on somebody else’s emergency room or worse—sit in the halls taking up space and being treated like they’re used to being treated—as though their lives don’t matter, which they believe. They are mostly alone and have no one to fight for them.
When we go in an ER broken, we do not expect to be broken even more. We don’t deserve it. So we either fix the ER (I am looking for a job!), or we wrap our children in foam peanuts and bubble wrap.
My daughter is about to become a bat mitzvah, literally translated, daughter of the commandments. It’s odd, if not ironic, because she’s already literally the daughter of two nonbelievers, as well as the granddaughter of two agnostic grandmothers and a quietly believing grandfather who hasn’t been to shul for the high holidays in more than a dozen years. And then there’s the matter of Serena having gone to Catholic School since she was three. (Free ham may be a stereotypical dilemma in that old joke, but believe me: for a Jew in Baltimore City, free Catholic school is no dilemma; it’s a no-brainer.)
I was never a bat mitzvah; I think my continued expression of doubt about a god who would allow the Holocaust got me invited to leave Temple Emmanuel’s Sunday school when I was eleven. I never looked back, never pined for any sort of god—other than the pine itself, which if not a deity is certainly omnipresent and tall enough to provide a foreboding reminder that someone big can whoop your ass if you’re not good. And that eternal can of whoopass seems to be humankind’s do-good motivator, else what’s a hell for?
But a few months ago, when my parents offered Serena the chance to learn some Hebrew for thirty minutes a week and have a party at the end of it, I left the choice up to her, with the caveat that once made, the choice could not be undone. If she has had any regrets each week when Norman comes to teach her a new part of the Hebrew she’ll read at the ceremony, they’re all vanished now.
We met Rabbi Geoff over dessert and coffee at my parents’ house. He informed us then that he wasn’t any kind of rent-a-rabbi, and if that’s what we wanted, well, we’d need to find somebody else. He expected more of a familial commitment—weekly, every other week at least. I worried whether Marty, who is already oversaturated with organized religion as a Catholic-school teacher, would balk. But we learned that evening about this new kind of Judaism called Reconstructionist, and we were interested. Though it seems a bit closer to Conservative than to the pick-and-choose Reform we’re used to, its secular humanism focus seemed to light a fire under us all. Instead of concentrating on the worship of a capital-g God, the Reconstructionists concentrate on how we can nurture our lower-case-g godliness. And so we return, once more, to the notion of doing unto others, simply because it’s the right thing to do, rather than because you fear eternal damnation.
September was such a busy month—what with Serena’s band, the Oxi-Morons, practicing five days a week to play out three times—that we could only commit to two meetings. Now we’re all practically begging to see Rabbi Geoff weekly.
I can’t describe what goes on in the large sitting room, which holds two sofas, a bunch of chairs, a coffee table, a piano, a couple of Jewish paintings, and a small table set up for coffee, which Geoff brews fresh so that the whole place smells good when we get there. I just know that we talk. We have a guided discussion about our participation in the world, about the things we love and the way we engage others, and we leave feeling lighter and refreshed, like we’ve sloughed off some dead skin.
Rabbi Geoff gives Serena homework—what’s a tallit? what’s a mitzvah?—so we usually start with a discussion of that. We go over points on a handout, like it’s school, and Serena’s not the only one who participates. But dang, is she ever smart. We discover things about each other (Marty is a thinker, Serena is a feeler, I’m a doer), and we continue our discussion on the drive home.
This week’s lesson was about the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, and what they mean and what are good and bad reasons for following them. Because it’s not so much the commandments (we’re not going to light any Sabbath candles; that’s not who we are) but the intention behind them (lighting those candles says stop, breathe, reflect; work is done).
During our meeting, a black father and son came into the church-slash-synagogue (even the shared building is more than symbolic). They were about twenty minutes early for their discussion group with the rabbi, but Geoff invited them to hang out and wait anywhere in the building. Instead of wandering around, they pulled up a chair and joined in, obviously unaware this was our time. I was initially taken aback—that they just came in and joined us and that the rabbi didn’t tell them he meant anywhere else in the building—but I realized this is exactly what I love so much about being there. Intention. What better way to understand people than to discuss, together, the intention to be good people in the world.
We left the second meeting feeling the same way as the first, looking forward to coming back for another 90 minutes of philosophical thought. It’s luxurious to think! It's luxurious to discuss, to marry abstract thought to concrete action. It's luxurious to put away all the technology and think and talk, to have this preplanned time, like a massage appointment, without feeling the need to rush away to the next chore. For that hour or so, we engage each other, and our minds meet. It’s as if they are holding each other’s hands and singing Kumbaya. I’m not being sarcastic. I mean Kumbaya, “come by here,” as it was traditionally sung to represent both a human and a spiritual meeting. I wouldn't mind adding a guitar and a fire, maybe a beer, but it's delicious as is.
Look, I’m not ready to run off and join a synagogue; I still have my doubts as to whether organized religion, even one that seems to focus on a secular humanism, albeit with a Jewish bent, does good. But I don’t feel any kind of conflicted about my daughter becoming a daughter of the commandments, especially when some of those commandments can be expressed with a commitment to recycling and giving to charity.
And I like the idea that my daughter now has some sort of spiritual guidance available to her. For almost thirteen years, we’ve answered Serena’s religious questions and educated her about traditions and customs as openly and without prejudice as we could, but I want her to come into her own beliefs the way I came into mine, and I am grateful, and somewhat relieved, that she now has someone who can coax her gently into godliness. And she's excited, too, because she has always felt apart from the Catholic community, in whose buildings she spends so many hours a day.
I am especially proud to be the mother of this daughter of the commandments.
My daughter is running for student council president. I'm torn. She's a great kid who will do a great job. But when will she have the time?
I used to tsk at all those moms out there with multiple kids and a mini-van, moms who had a full-time job just in carting their kids around. My best friend has two children in two different schools many miles apart. The son plays a sport that practices an hour away, takes a weekly instrument lesson, has hockey games on the weekend; he's also in a band with Serena. The daughter has high-school stuff. But their mom works more than thirty hours a week and has little help from her soon-to-be ex-husband, who lives an hour away. How she doesn't melt down is beyond my comprehension. I melt down just making this list.
Yesterday was the first full band practice in weeks (the Oxi-morons have six members). Afterward, the parents sat down at the table to schedule rehearsals; they have a paying gig coming up. The nine-year-old drummer lives an hour north but goes to the same school as four of the kids; the ten-year-old bassist lives twenty minutes away but goes to a different school and has a math tutor, an instrument lesson, and Arena Rock rehearsal at School of Rock each week—as well as two working parents who can't get him here. Two kids have music lessons and soccer, and one of them is on the Tom Petty show at SoR. Serena gave up her soccer, reluctantly, realizing that she couldn't fit it in among the two weekly SoR (Tom Petty and Led Zeppelin) rehearsals; the once-weekly TWIGS saxophone clinic, guitar lessons, and bat mitzvah lessons; and the daily practice for each thing, in addition to weekday homework, band practice, and daily care for a bearded dragons. What do we do if she becomes president?
I've seen all those articles about over-achieving kids, parents who push their sons and daughters to be all they can be before their sixteenth birthday; I still tsk at them. But sometimes the parents are pushing the kids to drop something. Heaven knows we don't want to be their chauffeurs. How do you choose a thing to take away? Sports are good for kids' bodies, and music is good for their minds—and both teach teamwork, cooperation, good sportsmanship, and things I find so much more useful to them than homework.
Serena has been sick for three weeks; I've been down for two. We finally had a spare moment Sunday morning, and I took us to Patient First. We returned with two antibiotic prescriptions—hers for strep, mine for a sinus infection. After yesterday's band practice, the girl sat at the kitchen table watching a rerun of a dumb sit-com on Disney—one of the shows about kids with no parents or magic parents or parents so rich they're on a perpetual cruise. My husband hates that she watches it and gave her the usual raft of crap about it.
I had to remind him of all the things she does well, including the fact that she's a straight-A student who can play Pink Floyd's "Us and Them" on saxophone—and that she did much of it for the first three weeks of school while having strep and a cold! So what if she wants to veg out in front of the TV or play a game on the computer? So what if there's a witch riding a bicycle through the smelly-socks air in her room?
This morning, I fed her Throat Soother tea, oatmeal, and a banana. She didn't have time to drink all the tea or eat any of the banana. And right now, she's giving the speech she worked on until 9:00 p.m. yesterday, and then the kids will vote. My fingers are crossed. If she wins, she goes to meet the mayor. If she doesn't, it's one less thing to do. May she get the thing she needs.
Today, I nearly suffocated in my daughter’s room, buried alive under a mountain of clothing, a lot of it gorgeous, most of it too small. Half still had tags; the other half was barely worn because my daughter prefers to wear the same pair of shorts and the same Beatles t-shirt every day. After she’s worn something else, she drops it on the floor of her closet, where it soon becomes buried under the next thing that’s not her favorite shorts. For two hours this morning, she tried on everything, every single piece of clothing, including costumes appropriated for School of Rock shows. As the hills of shirts, pants, dresses, and school clothes eroded, new mountains formed—these marked for uniform exchange night or a friend's daughter or her cousins. I filled paper shopping bags until they tore. The air in Serena's room was suddenly oppressive, mixed with fabric chemical smell and anxious lizard smell and stress armpit smell—mine and hers. We had to take a break before tackling the drawers.
This is part of our back-to-school ritual. So are wondering whether we skipped this back-to-school ritual last year and lamenting the brisk disappearance of summer vacation. What too-moist beast ate the days? Yet when I look back on the friendships I forged in three short months, the places I visited1, the pictures I took, the nose I pierced, the concerts2 and meals and leisurely drinks I enjoyed, I feel fulfilled and lucky.
While my husband was on his annual retreat in Zion Canyon, Utah, his personal mecca, from where he sent us amazing letters, we were each supposed to write a song to be played upon his return. Serena started some complicated piece about Freddie Kruger. Marty played some chords he didn’t commit to memory. But I did my assignment with gusto, writing what I call “The Country-ass Song.” The lyrics start like this:
You keep moonshine whiskey on the kitchen sink So when you’re doin’ the dishes you can take a drink And wash it all away Like you try to do every day
Spy your girl through the window on the tire swing You always told your baby she could do anything But so could you And this is what you choose to do
So no regrets, no tears Throw in the towel Toss back a few more beers.
It’s not autobiographical. Well, the beers part, maybe. But I do like my days. Even today. Especially today. This kind of purge and reorganization is spiritually cleansing and enlightening (note to relatives and friends: don’t buy the girl anything pink or with any kind of heart or flower or bow). Sure, summer’s a tough act to follow—this weekend alone is jam packed with concerts and dinners and lunches and company. But autumn always kicks ass!
Now, post-ritualistic closet upheaval, I feel more ready to let go of the summer of 2010, one of the hottest summers on record; the summer of Resurrection in a can; the summer of a bouffant ‘do and Hairspray at the pool; of running five miles again; of dinner and drinks with my homegirl, Sheri Booker, and our agent, Betsy Lerner; sushi with Bahhhhhhhb’s drummer; crabcakes with Monica Mansfield. So long, summer of poetry and music and friends and one delightful, glittery gem twinkling beside my nostril.
Shameless Plugs
1I spent the perfect amount of time at the beach—with my sister’s family and my daughter, as well as with a new friend, Betsy Merrill. I overcame my fear of flying to attend the Madison, Wisconsin wedding celebration of a dear friend, Gabi Helfert, overcoming severe stage fright to play her and her new partner (and my new dear friend), Joey Johannsen, a song. I stayed with a beautiful woman, Lee Davenport, whom I met online, and visited with the talented printmaker, Tracy Ducasse, my funniest friend , Teena, and the beautiful writer, Carrie Kilman. People visited me, too—like Janer and Joy, two pals from back when the Internet was only just invented! My house has been full of love this summer. One good pal, Monica Mansfield, examined my old dog, Cleo, and brought her medicine; instant love right there. And Gail Dragon was my buddy for an overnighter, seeing Jason Ager at a tea house before driving home to North Carolina. I relished my time with BFFs, too—Kim Webster, Kim Stanbro.
2Peter Frampton, Yes, Bahhhhhhhb (Bob Schneider, for the uninitiated), Taylor and Evan, Justin Trawick (this Friday, 8x10, CD release!), Jason Ager, The Dead [Fucking] Weather(!). And the best: I watched my daughter nail sax, guitar, and vocals on The Beatles and Pink Floyd, and I watched her band, the Oxi-Morons, play a block party. Oh, and she plays again Saturday and Sunday at Angel's Rock bar, the hits of 1970, followed Sunday by Marah!
For breakfast Monday morning I cook my daughter oatmeal perfect ratio of salt to sugar to oats served with teaspoon, splash of cream because I am a bad mother out of milk since Friday.
I scrub the teakettle shiny again detail the gas stove’s nooks hose down the sticky laminate and bad wife guilt and shame for this dirty house its understocked larder.
I break down at the supermarket cartful of milk and cheese paused beyond the baby food asking the floor what a good mom would have done these twelve years four months and seven days.
A large kitchen picture hides the haphazard hashes of inches random intervals from toddler to ‘tween whenever I looked up mid-preoccupation to notice her size and breadth and depth the bigness of will and spirit.
Sometimes I pull the picture down and stare at months of marks wonder what we did that day and why I put her back against that wall and whether she was happy then and whether we had milk.
I told a friend I was having a bit of an identity crisis. I’m not sure what I am—an author, a photographer, a mosaic artist, just another creative Libra with undiag- nosed adult ADD. She asked how I wanted to be known. I don’t even have to think about the answer. I am a writer. It’s like skin on a body; you can’t detach yourself from it without stinging, burning, bleeding out. I stopped writing in 1997, and I didn’t sleep for five years.
It seems I could feel that way about photography, too. I’m never without my camera—sometimes because I want to capture the essence of a thing with words later, but more because I don’t feel like I see as fully without it. Photographs verify and fortify and rectify my vision—even enhance it. (Amazing how much of a bird you can see by zooming in with a 300mm lens.) But take my camera away, and, although I’ll flounder a bit, I’ll still be me to my core. I’ll still sleep.
I rarely go somewhere just for the pictures of an event, but almost every interesting thing I've done in my life is for the writing of it. If you are a writer, you do things—interesting things—things other than playing endless rounds of Bejewelled Blitz and posting status updates. In November, I drove members of Bob Schneider’s band to their hotel and back to the venue, an unglamorous thing for a fan to do, just so I could write about the experience. I went to Rock & Roll Fantasy Camp for a day two summers ago as part of a writing project. I enrolled my daughter in the School of Rock and went to Ladies Rock Camp for three days last summer for the same writing project. It’s why I meet people for coffee. It's why I ask questions. I land a photo shoot for an interesting person, and before we book the session, I’m interviewing my subject, trying to parlay our meeting into a story. I am a dog, and everything outside of myself is, potentially, a bone.
I guess the crisis is less with my own identity than it is with experiences. Photography subjects are endless—flowers in drizzle are always beautiful, my dog Chance is always handsome. But I have nothing to do right now, nowhere to go; I have nothing to say. I’ve been sitting around for the past few dreary, chilly, rainy days wallowing in the miserable sitting. I am a shapeless blob at my kitchen table wondering who I am, staring at a spot on the wall.
From the time I was six years old, I would ask my mother to give me a subject, and she’d say something like, “Write a poem about the dog." And I would. She'd point and say, "Write a poem about that spot on the wall.” And I would.
I’m all grown up, but I still feel like I need someone to tell me what to write. Agents and editors are often unwilling, and my mom isn't much help in that area anymore. Lately, I can't even write a poem on my own; my last five were composed around a bunch of random words donated by my friends on Facebook.
So here I sit, with an open call to the universe, waiting, prepared, ready with all the perfect words, all my soldiers, my children. Here I sit, staring at this spot on the wall. The spot where I’ve recorded my daughter’s height for the last eight years of her life.
My mother worked outside the home before any other mother I knew. She was a school teacher when I was little. Later, she took a job with some architects, as a secretary, sure, but she always did more. She made the firm smarter, more grammatical, prettier. When a few of the architects left to start their own businesses, my mother went with one of them. She’s been the other half of her firm for three decades.
My mom taught me the maxim: old is good, new is bad. It fits in so many areas of life. Old houses are better built than new ones. Old appliances were made to last. Old furniture has style and character. Even the methods we use now to make jobs easy tend to complicate life. Mom’s partner, Dick, doesn’t use any kind of CAD system to design houses he’s built for people like Brooks Robinson; he drafts by hand. He prints in draftsman’s block, doesn’t need no stinkin’ font. My mom still has an IBM Selectric typewriter at her office. Nothing beats it for typing an envelope.
I’ve been thinking a lot about old things, and not just because of the new lines on my face, the new grey wires poking from my head. I think we’ve traded a lot of our soul for modern, for fast, for instant gratification. We can get the answers to anything so quickly that we’ve lost our ability to hold a thought, nurture a question. It’s good for the sentence, but it’s not so good for standing in line or for saving up for something special. It does nothing for discipline. We are spoiled.
Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I complained, again, that it was a day of cooking and cleaning, rather than a day of pampering. I made two quiches and a cake for brunch at my sister’s; she, in turn, shopped, cleaned, set the table, entertained. Is this the way it’s supposed to be? Where’s my special bouquet, my sterling silver bird skull pendant, my gift certificate for a fabulous tin belt buckle at Studio C? (As Woody Allen declared in an essay on phrase origins, “Where are my bellows and fruit, eh? All I rate is fiddlesticks!”)
I had been led to believe, by the new Mother’s Day Machine, that the second Sunday in May was supposed to bring me a card, a pedicure, some flowers, and a restaurant meal. But that’s not what Appalachian mom Anna Jarvis had in mind when she lobbied presidents for the national holiday. It’s not what her daughter wanted, either; before her death, she admitted regretting that Mother’s Day had become a holiday at all, if it was just going to be a way for florists and greeting card companies and restaurateurs to profit.
I know. Bah humbug. Mother's Day detractors are just like those decrying the commercialization of Christmas. But every time I heard from or delivered to someone a "Happy Mother's Day" greeting, I couldn't help but recall the movie Brazil, in which it's always Christmas, and everyone has some fancy-wrapped gift at the ready.
But is there anything I don’t have that I truly need or want or have room to store? And what could be a better gift than my daughter having learned “I Love Playing With Fire,” by the Runaways, just because I was a fan? Every day, my house is full of the music I love played by the people I love. Did I really need a new belt? I have a dozen that fit around my old, smaller waist.
After typing my husband’s school work and begging my daughter to wear something nice and take the ponytail out of her hair, after baking my grandmother’s sour cream cake, after wolfing down food I shouldn’t ought to have et (but which was delicious), and listening to the kids in my life play old Beatles and Doors songs together, my not-yet-three-year-old nephew, Marcus, on air drums with two plastic forks, I did what any old mother might appreciate. I went to Target for some hair dye, sunless tanner, and Slim Fast. I came home to my old house, drank a beer, dyed my hair, and slathered my dry skin with moisturizing sunless tanner, mentally preparing myself for a couple weeks of dietary discipline so that I may take advantage of a fabulous and too-long-neglected wardrobe.
I do believe, at least in the philosophic sense, that old *is better than new,** but it can use a facelift or a tuneup or a fresh coat of paint every now and again.
*not too old **not necessarily where technology is concerned
This is where it starts to get hairy, literally. On Wednesday, my eleven-year-old daughter became—whisper it—twelve.
On Twelfth Night, the anniversary of my own epiphany, Serena Joy Utah Miller began her after-dinner chores by dropping my new butter dish. It was an accident of course, but I was a little loud about it; I’d finally replaced the one my husband chipped in 1995.* The lid of the new dish was unharmed, but I tossed it in the trash along with the bottom in a heap of exasperation, then restored the chipped pink butter dish, a wedding gift to us, to its former spot of glory on the counter.
The next night, while cleaning up from dinner (the previous night’s leftovers of beef stew and cheese bread), Serena dropped the lid of the old butter dish, which shattered into tiny pieces on the tile floor. We all erupted momentarily, under the impression that our daughter was spending too much time watching TV and playing games on the computer, because clearly she’d lost her ability to pay attention to what she’s doing.
Then it hit me: the yelling, the inattentiveness, the rolled eyes, the appearance of humiliation when we speak to her friends, and the kicker—Wockenfuss chocolates for breakfast. I smiled the all-knowing mom smile, fished the blue lid out of the trash, washed it, and placed it on the pink base. (Now I have a hideous, mismatched butter dish, and, with my luck, no one will break it.) I decided Serena should call her band Butter Finger. She cried. As I hugged her, I wondered how much longer she’d let me.
Unlike eleven, twelve is not merely “one louder.” It is what Bob Schneider posted as his Facebook status update and what the tabloids have called Lindsay Lohan and her ilk: a drama tornado. The way I deal with anything these days in this, the year of my annoying positivity (which, incidentally, is lost on my family) is to write a song about it.
“Hurricane Serena blew into town / like a hundred cannonballs / she touched down / now she’s raining axe handles / and barn doors / and I can’t find my little girl anymore.” Chorus: “a drama tornado / whisked away my daughter / dropped a house upon her / now she is a goner.”
Last night, after some random disagreement, I gave her a belated birthday present—the DVD of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. She said, “You didn’t need to get me anything. The Les Paul is sort of holding me over.” I saw a glimmer of my daughter under all that brand-spanking-new twelve-ness. Then she looked down at the movie in her hand and, in a moment of perfect self-realization, declared, “Oh my God! I am Hormone-y Granger!”
I am still waiting for the Dark Mark to appear, waiting for the Hairy Potters to dazzle her with their magic, waiting for her to choose some creep I’ll call “He Who Must Not Be Named.” But it won’t be long. The boy who asked her to the dance surprised her with a set of guitar strings and designer picks. And I hear things breaking in the distance. And 15 chocolates are now missing from the Wockenfuss box.
* We still argue about who's responsible, like it matters when you've been together for 27 years. (He is.)
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P.S. If you like my writing and can spare a minute, please vote for me. I'm not exactly a Mommy blogger (and I hate popularity contests because I'm unpopular), but what I write is informed by motherhood, as well as wifeliness, writership, and rockerism.
In the following story, the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Photos are for illustration purposes only and do not depict actual persons or television shows.
A friend of mine, Mary, is a little stressed out. In addition to her nearly full-time career, she has two kids in different schools, both involved in sports and artistic endeavors, and her husband is mostly away.
She wakes her son, Ken, for school every day at about 7; he’s usually quick to get ready, and they’re a family of late sleepers, so that’s the last possible minute. One day, Mary calls to him from the other room and gets in the shower. He is of an age that he shouldn’t have to be watched, but you know how that goes; at 7:15, he is still in bed. Mary doesn’t hear him stirring and sees that he’s still asleep. “Get UP!” she screams. “It’s time for school! Get up NOW or else!”
“Or else what, Mom,” Ken calls back before he promptly falls back asleep.
Mary yells again. “Get UP NOW, or I’m gonna come in there and beat your butt!”
“Hahaha, Mom. I’d love to see that!” her son yells back, cackling. He doesn’t budge.
At 7:30, the boy is still in bed, and his mom is yelling again, “I mean it! I’m not kidding! Don’t mess with me! Get up NOW! I swear if you are not up in the next few seconds, I am coming in there to beat your butt!”
Ken erupts into spasms of laughter. “I’d like to see that! Yup, I’d sure like to see you do that! Hahahaha, Mom. Good one, Mom.” And at 7:40, Mary goes in the room and plants a good whallop on his tiny rear end right through his covers, and leaves the room with an extra "Now GET UP" for good measure.
The boy shrieks. “You hit me! Mom! Mom, you really hit me!” He gets up and dresses quickly, though obviously still in shock, alternating between mutters and bursts of yelling. “Mom, it still stings, Mom! It stings from where you REALLY! HIT! ME!”
Mary is now downstairs in her kitchen, facing a new dilemma: what to feed her kid for lunch. Ken had recently declared a disinterest in sandwiches, so Mary had begun packing peanut butter crackers and yogurt. Now the yogurt is coming home nearly uneaten, and there's not much left to give him. “Will you eat peanut butter?” Mary calls to the still-muttering boy. He feels the sting of messing with her, so he asks nicely if she'll put some marshmallows on it.
I am close to tears from laughing at my friend's hysterical tale, but I suck air through my teeth when she gets to the bread. Mary's a little disgusted and embarrassed; she's surprised I'm laughing, as if this were an example of parenting gone horribly wrong. “I was looking at the kitchen counter. My mom was just here, and she did the shopping and bought white bread. So here I am, spreading peanut butter and marshmallows on top of Wonder Bread after having just beaten my kid. Could I be any more white trash?”
Sure. She whooped him through the covers, after all—not with a wet hand. And although the bread pushes it just to the edge, she would have to be missing some teeth and living in a trailer park in West Virginia, and even then she wouldn't make an episode of Springer.
We all have our bad-mommy moments. I yell too much, and I cuss (I could fund Serena's college education with my contributions to the swear jar). I spend too much time on the computer. I sometimes feed the girl cereal for dinner when my husband’s not home. But I pick her up and drop her off on time, make nutritious meals, and grunt disapprovingly when she wears her pants too short or her shirt has a stain on it. I pay attention to her hygiene. I clean the poop from her creature's cage and sit alone in the car next to a bag of crickets every week because she has a tough schedule. I sometimes put the contents of her drawers, her closet, and beneath the bed in a mountain on her floor—something I learned from my own good mom. But I’ve never left her anywhere (unless you count the time I almost drove off from the Target parking lot while she stood banging on the window of the locked back door—a fluke), and I only make her rub my feet when they really, really hurt (usually in exchange for something, like a delayed bedtime so she can watch Law & Order SVU or, her favorite, Criminal Minds).
Roseanne Barr used to say, “I figure by the time my husband comes home at night, if those kids are still alive, I’ve done my job.” While both history and news are full of fucked up parents and damaged children, it's still funny in the proper perspective. After all, a smack on the rump and makeshift fluffernutter on Wonder Bread are not going to put our kids in therapy or give them a movie of the week.
Still, next time, Mary, you'd better use whole wheat.
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Do you have a BMM? What is the most embarrassing thing you've ever done, the thing that you were sure made you the worst mom on the planet?
When my daughter left the house this morning in her school uniform, she was carrying far too many things: a backpack, a hoodie, her lunch box, a 20-ounce water bottle dangling from the handle, a book, and a magazine. It wasn’t just any book, either; it was a heavy one, the sixth Harry Potter, which she reads voraciously. I looked at her, stuff in each hand, on her back, slung over her shoulder, and hanging off her head and thought how uncomfortable and bogged down she seemed. I wore a fanny pack exclusively for about twenty years (until I was robbed of it at gunpoint—another story) because I loathe carrying things. I wanted to relieve her of some less-necessary stuff, but it was all imperative.
The magazine leaving the house with her was the latest Musician’s Friend catalog, which we’d all given the slow once-over. Serena has read it again and again, always with vigor. On the first pass, she said, “Guess which guitar I want.” She’s been angling for an SG—Gibson, not Epiphone, because she’s a brand snob—but since we saw It Might Get Loud, she has eyes only for the double-neck. So I guessed right.
This morning, with all the stuff she carried, why did she add the burden of the catalog? “Because I like looking at guitars. I like dreaming about guitars,” she said, with the kind of fluttery-eyed ecstasy she used to reserve only for my cooking.
I think I’ve lost my daughter to rock and roll.
I am grateful that it’s only rock and roll (and I like it too). And though I know that in the not-distant-enough future, she could easily be making that face over a boy, I can see her on a Gretsch poster, hair and eyebrows ala Brooke Shields, with the caption: Nothing comes between me and my Hollow-body Electromatic.
Well, a mom can dream.
Serena’s first complete sentence, besides “Mommy, diaper, have it?” which she asked at the pediatrician’s office when he didn’t believe my fourteen-month-old child knew over 100 words (“OK, never mind, I believe you,” he said after the diaper sentence), was this: “Hi, boy, kiss you?” The first time she used it was in the Safeway, and she promptly chased the boy out of line, arms outstretched more like a zombie kissing machine than an awkward toddler.
My girl spent the rest of her first decade finding a way to hang with the boys. For the first five years, that meant eschewing Barbie dolls for Legos and trucks and creepy pirate-y toys with a billion pieces. For the next five, it meant never wearing a dress or her hair down. We had to shop in the boys’ department, or she wouldn’t wear it—even t-shirts with skulls.
But I feel the strong, strong wind of change. The other day, Serena got in the car and couldn’t wait to tell me that her math teacher had played them a Heart song—“Dog and Butterfly”—a song we both used to play and sing. Heart is Serena’s current favorite band—and not just because she likes the music but because a girl plays the acoustic intro to “Crazy on You,” and it’s hard. One of her best friends for nine years said, “Ew, what is that awful music?” She shot him the look of are-you-crazy-or-just-lame? and said, “It’s Heart!” at which time he rested his case. She just shook her head. “He doesn’t know anything,” she told me.
Music has always been a litmus test for couples, so it’s probably not uncommon, even for a ‘tween girl, to start clicking her tongue and rolling her eyes over some boy’s (or parent’s) unsophisticated, undereducated tastes. And I’m glad she’s made this her priority rather than, say, soccer, which she declared three years ago was her “life.” And rather than using her guitar to play the boys, she is more concerned with outplaying them.
I think that what surprised me was the look in her eyes. It’s going to be hard for my lasagna and stuffed peppers to share that look of rapture with pictures of fancy guitars, even when they look as hot as the new rainbow SG Zoot. Oh, baby!
But I'd rather she get that way over a guitar than a man, like her mom. Oh, baby!
After our annual Mother's Day brunch, with nine Millers and vonBriesens crammed together in a too-small space (which caused me to eat only half of my eggs), I took some photos of my sister, and then I went for a walk. I had a live radio interview at 2:30, so I walked fast.
During my hobble around the 'hood, I talked with neighbors about The Shooting, told a group of folks congregating by a garden which flower was a tulip (my attempt at humor, and they laughed), and heard a song by The Parlotones that choked me up. It was a free download from some music site I joined so that I could get free songs. Few of them ever move me like this one. I replayed it about four times so that I wouldn't forget my idea about how I would spend the majority of my Mother's Day, though I expected it to only usurp an hour. (Ha!)
I'm sure the lyrics do not fit precisely, but you'll have to grant me some poetic license.
I know most of the kids in this slide show—some from my daughter's school, some relatives. I threw in a few baby pictures, too—my sister, me, my husband. And I added a shot of my friend, Jennifer König, who had new reason to celebrate this Hallmark holiday.
In a new commercial, a doctor tells a baby, "Congratulations! It's a mommy!"
“I liked my old fun Mom.” That’s what my daughter said to me while I was brushing my teeth and moaning in agony last night, after having gotten a spinal cortisone shot.
Part of me felt sorry for her, having to watch me suffer every day and cry, unable to do anything to comfort me. Part of me felt ashamed for letting my daughter see my cry so often (to my credit, she was supposed to have been in bed, where I had just kissed her goodnight). But the third part of me—because we are all divided in thirds—thought: I used to be fun?
There is nothing easy about constant pain. Years ago, my husband asked me why I was so angry, why I yell all the time instead of just answering a question. I told him that’s the way I was raised, that my family answered loudly (a notion my mother objected to on the phone today, just before she screamed at my father, and then she had to admit it). I realized later that chronic pain simply makes a person cranky. Remember that pain chart? I’m truly always at that five, and being at a five takes its toll.
Being at a nine stresses out everyone, even the people who don’t love you. Even the doctors. Yesterday, at the pain clinic, I cried a dozen times. Everyone who worked there was cheerful and sympathetic; they see people like me all day, every day, and even if they can’t relate, they understand.
But the doctor suggested, before giving me my shot, that I go on Cymbalta. He said that in low doses, it helps chronic pain. It also takes the edge off the depression and anxiety that go with pain. He thinks that it, in conjunction with the shot, will provide just the relief I may need. He said the same thing to my husband, though with Marty, the doctor called them “mood swings” and said he could see that I was suffering from those, too.
Part of me thought that doctor was getting major kickbacks from the drug company! Marty had three samples in his briefcase. Another part of me thought he was really trying to help. How good of him to inform my husband (don’t worry: I indicated on my privacy form that the doctors could talk to my husband without fear of a lawsuit) about my misery, impress upon him how much physical and emotional distress I have suffered.
But that third part of me—because we are all divided in thirds—thought: Men! They just have to stick together, don’t they? This is the kind of doctor who would give some nice drugs to the husband of a woman in labor. He’s the kind of scientist who invented a drug for PMS. Oh, hey, it helps the women primarily, but don’t be surprised to find, on that mile-long patient information sheet—that one of the side effects of Cymbalta (besides diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, tiredness, blurred vision, tinnitus, and general brain numbness) is “happier husband.”
The shot hurt. Don’t let anyone tell you it is only mildly uncomfortable. It hurt, and then it hurt all night. That’s why I was crying while brushing my teeth (and inhaling my Advair and watching TV and sleeping). And I’m told I won’t begin to feel relief until three to eight days from administration of the shot.
This morning, though, I woke up without that achy feeling of having slept wrong all night. I got out of bed without the painful, halting wrench. I walked into the bathroom smoothly, without the feeling that my tailbone was carrying a lead anchor. I took the stairs with only one foot on each tread and walked briskly to the kitchen, where I announced my decreased pain to everyone. Even on the deck this morning, practicing walking, I shouted to my neighbor, “I can walk!” and she noticed, from that far away, that I was standing up straighter.
No one could have been more relieved than my daughter. The other day, I took her to Rock School and used one of the lesson rooms to lie on my back with my legs on a chair. Another mom noticed and told me she, too, is suffering from a herniated disk. When Serena finished her lesson, she overhead the mother telling me how she’d been alternately yelling at her kids and crying for several weeks. I could see my daughter’s ears perk up.
When we left the building, she asked me, “Doesn’t it make you feel better to know that someone else has the same thing?”
Because pain turns off nearly all of your normal better instincts (like when two skinny girls tell you they're on diets, and you compare the diet instead of saying, "Are you crazy, you skinny things?), I said no, it didn’t please me to know someone else was miserable. It didn’t ease my pain at all and only made me feel sadder.
“Well, it sure makes me feel better.”
I realize now that she’s been frightened for these few weeks—worried that I had some awful disease and was going to be crippled or dead or, worse, like this forever. Mean. Sad. Old. Unfun.
I hope this is the beginning of the end of my back pain. I don’t think any of us can take it anymore. I walked by a mirror this morning and almost didn’t recognize the profile of the woman reflected in it. What had happened to the hunched over crone, the witch who carried an apple to the front door of the seven dwarfs? Granted, she had some great hair, but she walked like a hag.
I never want to see her again.
This morning, I put on my underpants without holding the dresser. I practically hopped into them. Maybe soon I’ll be able to jump into my Fun Mom suit.
We could argue with the merits of the list, but I'm sure my daughter doesn't believe the world will end or that Vin Diesel will be the cause of it. Frankly, if it does end, all those things will have contributed, just like taking one's first breath contributes to the taking of the last. But a facebook post doesn't call for that sort of existential philosophy. 
So I'm copying my letter to her right here. It's my letter to you, too, and to your kids. The funny thing is that I don't feel unqualified to give the advice, even though I don't exactly fit the measure of success in this world. My house is so small that when the six band members come upstairs from the basement, I feel like I will explode. Yesterday, I spent $60 I didn't have on dinner and a museum admission, and I'm feeling panicky this morning. I have two inches of roots that I can't afford to make match to the rest of my hair. My weight loss breaks for Berger's cookies. And my eleven-year-old SUV is rust held together with bird shit.
