Happiness cost averaging

It turns out a person can buy happiness. Sure, it has a limited shelf life. This happiness one is able to procure for a price only lasts for the amount of time you are shopping and roughly 58 minutes after purchase.

I'm not saying that's always a negative.

For some, the thrill of this particular drug may be the status of luxury alone. For others, the excitement may reside in the inverse cost-to-enjoyment ratio of said tangible find.

But for an even rarer breed, there is the delight of the inconceivable: Clothing based on a dare.

And that is where I found myself one evening last week, trailing after two teenage girls in search of the most outrageous things they could cajole each other to wear, if only under the rose-color lighting and ominously noted "monitoring" of the mall store dressing rooms.

Teen One and Teen Two, occupying opposite mirrored cubicles, spent what seemed like hours flinging one garment over the tops of doors in mock exasperation.

This one wasn't the right fit. That one wasn't the right color. This one was just too ridiculous for words.

"Switch."

They weren't complaining as much as they were compelling each other to venture out into the wild world of absurd fashion. The game is to find the best of the worst and to wear it proudly.

Faux fur, pleather, plaid, puce.

Bring it on.

Anything that inspires the gagging noises they could cough up between jovial twitters, all the better.

They're following the script, playing their designated role in the dressing room drama unfolding: "Who wore it best?"

I may be in the audience, but I cannot judge.

The list of things money bought that I can say with confidence brought happiness along in tow is a relatively brief one. It includes ordinary items imprinted with memories.

A pocket knife, a set of towels, a knickknack I never display. A toy she played with, or a shirt he wore. A photograph strip spit from a machine from before the days of diapers.

These things I may lose track of for a time, but when happened on again they will bring my mind back to a place as if it traveled there by rail.

Whatever guilt I have saved up for lack of fiscal discipline I spend on enjoying small moments.

Like this one.

Where my daughter holds a dress she does not need; looks toward a friend who tells her she looks beautiful in it; and watches her mother, as her mother nods once in agreement. "Will you wear it?"

The question is always hanging above her head.

She knows accepting the terms comes without much of a penalty.The garment might hang like a flag in her closet. It may cycle among her favorite outfits or just gather dust. It's a question that doesn't have a straightforward answer that will be held against her.

Instead, she chooses to put the dress back on the rack, where, in her memory, it will stay even as fashion seasons change.

Happiness can be silly or serious; it can be tangible or ethereal. It may not be permanent, but one can conjure it out of thin air without much investment at all.

The stuffed horse of the apocalypse

The horse's glassy eyes stared straight at me. Someone had pushed the three-foot tall, plushy relic of two early childhoods nose-to-nose with me as I slept.

"Butterscotch," we'd called her, and apparently she was now my charge.

I look around my home -- a mix of old and older, encapsulated in a structure that echoes a similar span of time -- and I see the field of damage caused by life's mostly harmless hurricanes.

When I step on the discarded carcasses littering the way forward, they squeak.

Or they squish.

Or they scrunch down into a soft, flat carpet of fabric I will refuse to launder on principal.

Such is the nature of motherhood.

Room to room, wall to wall, wherever I turn there are the many remnants of an ongoing if not an entirely adorable storm.

The flotsam and jetsam of experimentation.

I imagine it's not unlike the 23,000-and-counting pieces of aeronautical junk floating in space; Clouding the view of Hubble.

"How many hours does it take to bake an inch-wide brownie with a lightbulb?" my eldest asks.

The question didn't come from thin air.

Curled up with a blanket and viewing screen, and next to a growing pile of empty wrappers, she was watching reruns of  "Friends."

She had gotten to the part where Monica Geller admitted the temptation of uncooked batter was always too great to overcome the wait time on her EZ-Bake oven. 

And she thought it was funny but ultimately unbelievable: How could anyone enjoy the runny consistency of uncooked batter with raw eggs?

"Four hours seems right," said my daughter; no doubt talking to the screen though I was sitting right beside her. "I made a sad little cupcake in one of those toys once with my friend, Amy. I remember it took four hours to bake! I never understood why we couldn't just use the real oven."

There were so many reasons why.

Toys are fun.

And distracting.

And physical reminders of our position in society. They help you grow up and remind you you were once a child.

Not to mention the point that your poor mother didn't have to worry about industrial accidents or fingertip burns.

"I'm glad I never had one," she says, again to the empty space between us. "It seems like such a waste."

I can't help but be annoyed.

"Unlike the rock polisher? Or the plastic ceramics wheel? Or the science kit that got used exactly once each?"

She jumped as if she hadn't seen me sitting there in the same room at the end of her couch. As if I were a pillow propped against the furniture that speaks.

"It's not as if I asked for any of those things," she said with all of the truth and a single grain of salt.

These gifts - still taking up residence on shelves and in closets - all failures of excess: Pretty boxes to wrap and unwrap on special occasions. 

But there were successes.

There was the inflatable water slide (finally retired after umpteen years and numerous fabric patches) and that rideable pony, which was blank staring me right in the eye.

The stuffed horse of the apocalypse.

No place worth getting

We meandered through summer with neither care nor plan.

Truth be told, I felt bad about this; my apparent “unparenting.”

Plans are good I suppose if you can make or follow them. Especially good if you can change those plans quickly and without strife.

He stands by the curb, my son; waiting on the bus. He is finally scrubbed of the summer's dirt, although it will take a few days before the fair stamp on his arm, which allowed him full access to carnival rides, cracks and starts to peel. His badge of courage ... and privilege.

He is certain this year will be the best one yet. He likes his teacher. Likes the first week's lesson plan, which promised a temporary moratorium on homework and a gradual reintroduction during the forthcoming weeks. He is looking forward to learning to play an instrument. He chose trumpet.

"There's a special way you have to blow into the nozzle," he tells me with

equal parts wonder and excitement. 

I laugh. "I think the first thing you'll learn is the mouth piece is NOT called a nozzle."

He doesn't care that I laugh. Or that I correct him. Or he doesn't seem to care.

He is changing. Maturing.

More able to say what he means and to mean what he says, which has signaled his eagerness to try new things, leaving old ones behind when he's ready …

Whether I am or not.

Over the summer, he traded his martial arts whites for a flag football uniform, and somehow his body changed to match his new sport.

The skinny little kid who got off the school bus last June is gone; replaced by a square-shouldered boy, now tall and brave enough to ride every ride at least once. 

Now he lines up with a new team of boys, waiting for a ball of a different shape to fly in his direction. The new challenge: catch it and run toward a new goal line. 

"Coach calls it 'turn and burn,' don't think about it, just run with it."

It's hard for me not to think about it.

So many moving parts. So many things can go wrong. Turning off the mind and taking that first step is a daunting task. 

Having a plan helps, but it doesn't prevent a person from getting sacked ...

Or whatever term they put to the tearing off a person's flags. 

This is just a game. It's easy to reattach the colors and start again. 

They are a team now, with a good coach who will make them see opportunity in their weaknesses. If they are successful, win or lose, players will smile and thump each others' backs. They will leave happy and tired and motivated to do better next time.

That's the hope, anyway. 

The reality, of course, is not always as

lofty. Disappointment can be crushing, and crushing injuries don't heal easily. 

But that's my fear. A fear I'm trying not to project.

Of course, it's too soon to lose hope. 

He's still small, I suppose, and there is no place worth getting that has you walking in a straight line.

Reading, Righting and Relics

I pushed the wonky-wheeled cart around the office supplies store and stubbed my toe. Again. I've lost track of how many trips this latest one makes, though I could count the years and multiply by two. Each trip extracting a little more blood.

The boy's list is simple, still.

Pencils, paper, notebooks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Her list, however, is explicit. And she, like all peers in her age group, is loathe to deviate from its parameters.

In addition to the ream of paper and horde of pencils she could lash together into a raft with the laces she's removed from all her shoes (it's not a style-thing she assures me), she also requires tissues and paper towels and ball point pens that don't leak. 

She will need folders and page tabs and correction fluid. Highlighters and permanent markers and one's that will erase with a dry cloth. 

She selects each item as if it were a cog in a machine.

The color-coded notebooks and binders I'm sure I bought last year are somehow all wrong for this year's scholarly pursuits. Too thin. They must be replaced with larger examples.

As too will the calculator required for last year's honors math, be traded for a more expensive version, which she assures me will last her through high school. How clever that the $99 graphing calculator comes in jewel tones.

"My brother can have my old one," she says with all the graciousness of a girl who never gets her supplies second hand or chooses drab colors.

Who am I to judge the function or fashion? I'm just the one wielding the plastic card to pay for it all. Sadly, the store is out of models colored black or dark gray.

"It's really worth the investment," she coos, hinting at all the calculations she will make with her turquoise-colored device. "Look. It's even rechargeable."

I laugh.

Just the other day I'd been busy staring off into my phone, pretending the last-minute rush of back-to-school spending was a deluge I could avoid when a story popped up from 3,700-year-old Babylonia.

It seems a recent study of a device discovered near the turn of the 20th century -- a pressed-clay tablet known as Plimpton 322 -- contains hints on figuring out complex trigonometry problems three-thousand years ahead of its time. And it has some mathematicians wondering if the ancient calculator could have lessons for modern day students since its calculations use ratios rather than angles.

Of course, it has others wondering what's the agenda?

To sell some other theory? Creating solutions to problems that don't really exist?

This isn't really new.

We're always trying to reinvent the wheel, aren't we?

When mathematicians fight, apparently, you get a knock-down-drag-out over whether base 60 is better than base 10.

When mother and daughter fight it's over whether a fancy new cerulean graphing calculator is better than last year's gray one. ... or even a sand-colored lump of clay from centuries ago.

I know which one of us will win.

The only question remaining is whether this pretty device will become a hand-me-down or a relic.

Time will tell.