Undoing

What will you do with yourself?

I don’t know if she had asked the question I was trying to answer, but I found myself drilling down into some complicated feelings about the space left over once my youngest child goes off to college. 

My mother-in-law is a sharp lady; she knows this would be a question for me and not her son. But I feel sharp, too. In all the wrong ways, perhaps. All edges and elbows. 

She shared her experiences and gave a tidbit of good advice: ” Reclaim something you had to give up.“ 

I hate how it sounds when it tumbles out of my mouth; how everything always sounds whenever I try to bend words into a shape that fits me: “I don’t feel like I sacrificed anything for my children.” 

As if I fear, by definition I won’t ever be able to fit into anything else. 

I try again: I never gave up anything that I truly loved. If anything, I found more and more things to do as the children grew into adolescents.

Even the word - adolescents - feels like a time when adults are supposed to step a few paces back. 

All of it felt like a surprise, or just a thing I learned about myself by giving new things a whirl. I learned new skills, made new friends, decided running was fun, and then started to volunteer.

She smiled, drew a breath and wondered if the transition would be easier for me since I could already fill my time with work, hobbies, and friends. 

Perhaps it’s the thousands of little tasks that mothers don’t exactly take for granted. We labor over them, as if they were entirely new life forms to cajole and nurture into recognizable shapes. 

Parenthood was just one part of the puzzlement. 

If anything, I gained so much more from navigating the ups and downs. The friction that comes from doing or delegating the work. 

It wasn’t always a joy, but it hardly felt like a burden either. Not that it was glamorous: There is always something that needs doing: the mountains of laundry, the piles of dishes, the “omg, how long has the cat vomit been steaming over there on the carpet?”

There will still be laundry, and dinners I clean up (because I don’t cook them), and pet messes that, while deeply unpleasant, won’t make me feel the physical urge to add to the upset. 

Which is to say, there will still be a husband … THE husband. A man who might need to be disabused of the notion that he, in any way, sacrificed me to the children. Or that I sacrificed him. Realizing instead that we are still on the same path, despite how it meanders and winds through time.

If there is a new frontier, I suppose it will have many familiar hills and valleys. It won’t be exotic or remote. We will come to realize it never really “left off” anywhere to pick up again. It’s just a journey we have been on together, marveling at all of the scenery changes. 

Supply Chains

 This place is a maze. 

I feel overwhelmed. 

All around me are giant metal racks containing pallets of merchandise. The shelves above are wrapped in layers of shrink, with their contents still visible if I squint.  The skids at eye level are fully accessible; the clinging plastic peeled away to reveal super-sized versions of things our grocery store sells, but for a price we assume is a significant savings. I notice the pallets of things overhead don’t match anything offered nearby.

This alone makes my head swim.

I can’t quite figure out the system that makes this place hum, but I suppose it includes market research and feasibility studies that prove even a cynic, such as myself, will travel a hundred miles or more outside our domestic domains - just to spend copious amounts of cash in this consumer-land amusement park.  

I’m not sure if we need any of it, but it’s something to do on vacation that feels both extravagant and frugal. So I follow my husband, who is driving the extra-wide cart. 

He shows delight at each turn. His face lit up at seeing reams of colorful sticky-note pads in sizes that fit the curve of his beefy hand when it’s gripping a pen. He chortles as he flings two of them into the cart. So far, he’s collected a few office supplies, a dozen razor blades, a pair of shorts, and a pillow-sized bag of dried fruit as we crest the first turn.  

I don’t seem to have the same luck as I try to focus on a list of supplies our college students desire: a water-filter pitcher, a mattress topper, and an inexpensive vacuum. 

It’s here somewhere, I presume, just in the wrong sizes and price points once located.

For those things, I resign to go elsewhere. Here I will settle on multi-packages of consumables like toothpaste, shave creams, soaps, tonics, sodas, and D vitamins.

I know these are things I can add to the cart without triggering my husband’s left eyebrow to lift a full inch higher than his right. More durable items require more dialogue and the potential for old wounds to resurface. 

Thanks in part to my taking a chance on a $25 name-branded toaster that has since decided unknowably and seemingly on its own whether both sides of the bread would be toasted or whether one side would be scorched and the other left raw.  

“It wasn't the purchase,” He argues quite correctly. “It was you getting rid of the ugly old serviceable toaster that worked just fine.” 

The truth is, I hate it here.

Paying for the privilege of copping here. 

This place, its business model, the whole, proverbial, timeline. It feels like a more accurate Everest. 

Some outsized escapade that requires no small amount of training beforehand and a whole different kind of stamina to get through the judgments that abound at every turn: from the entry, to the aisles, and the checkout lines, and the reading of receipts. Because trust and bargains do not coexist. I always do some deep soul searching afterward, the whole path, like Everest, littered with excesses and detritus all along the way. 

A literal price hike that might cost us our souls. 

Nourishment for the soul

In the grocery store … near the baking aisle … are shelves filled with sauce packets. In essence, they are dry ingredients that when mixed with ordinary tap water and stirred until incorporated will leap-frog a roux and land you a sauce.

My parents — who were not chefs but never burned or broke the flour and butter base that will become a rich and flavorful gravy  — I am sure, would have given me a heaping measure of side-eye, not to mention curled-lip for tossing two packets of the stuff into my cart.

It goes against the grain.

Of all the things one should know, I can conjure my mother saying mid-lecture, is the simple act of making the thickening agent for a gravy from scratch. She (and my father, thanks to her practiced instruction) could do it in their sleep.

First they’d melt an amount of butter in a saucepan before adding an equal amount of flour, then whisking until the color they desired majestically appeared. Depending on what the savory sauce would be ladled over my mother could match white, beige or caramel brown as if she were cooking in a Pantone chart. They’d add a liquid … water, milk or broth and whisk constantly to prevent lumps. The heat would be medium or low, and they wouldn’t take their eyes off the task until the finished product was velvety and the exact consistency they intended.

I always thought there was something miraculous in that marinade. Divine intervention, however, it wasn’t. As I recall, my mother, a nurse by training, was ready and able to doctor the sauce if any accident, such as a burner’s heat being set too high, happened to occur. She could diagnose the problem and its treatment – adding water here or a sprinkle of thickener there – by intuition.

Similarly, my father, her sous chef,  could make the toughest piece of leftover meat melt in our mouths just by how he angled his knife. Unlike me, he could tell in the dimmest light, which way the grain was heading. No hesitation.

There was an economy to the procedure just as much as there was an economy to the product they plated up and set out on the kitchen table.

Those meals came vividly to life as I watched an episode of the FX show "The Bear" where chef Sydney Adamu doctors up a box of Hamburger Helper. As the episode progresses, we watch “Syd” balance the inexperience in other areas of her life with her surety and skills she possesses in the kitchen. As she connects with her young cousin and talks through the angst of living, I watch a recipe that brings nourishment of the soul and convenience come together in real time. A box of pasta. A packet of spices. A cup of water.  A squeeze of tomato paste. A smattering of toasted panko. A fresh nest of shredded cheddar cheese sprinkled over the top.

When Syd ladles two servings of her doctored Hamburger Helper into bowls and hands one to her young charge, I can almost feel the steam of that familiar comfort on my face.

Something about that scene reminded me of one of my favorite meals my mom used to make: fried rice using a box of Rice-a-Roni, leftover chicken or pork, and a scrambled egg. 

With just a dash of soy sauce, it was nourishment for the soul.

Sell outs

I was sleepy when I read the pitch in my inbox.

A civil liberties group had announced it would oppose efforts to dismiss a case it brought against the Consumer Product Safety Commission, its former commissioner, and the Department of Health and Human Services for daring to educate retailers about the dangers to infants posed by weighted baby blankets.

It was looking for journalists to take an interest and talk with their attorneys.

In its case against the government agencies, The New Civil Liberties Alliance contends that the agencies have made “unproven, unlawful attacks on weighted infant sleep products, (specifically in respect to their client’s wearable sleep blanket that contains weighted beans) because the agency had not conducted enough research to pursue rulemaking about the specific products it was warning against.

Does it matter that in June of 2023, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) said in a letter to the CPSC that the weighted products should NEVER be used on babies? Or that years of study about sleep safety for infants have generally concluded that infants should not be put to bed with blankets, pillows, or stuffed toys because suffocation from these items is a known and provable danger to children under the age of one?

No. Because this lawsuit isn’t about the safety of products or the protection of infants. It's a result of jettisoning regulations and consumer protections. It’s about the liberties of an individual – in this particular case, the freedom of an entrepreneurial mom to sell their million-dollar idea to as many people as possible with the help of a retailer like Target.

It's about keeping the government from using any agency or expertise to make any recommendations whatsoever.

Because your pediatrician telling you to do something you are free to ignore is one thing, but government regulatory agencies taking the warnings to heart and altering the marketplace to the potential for harm is somehow a bridge too far? 

It takes time to gather data about dangerous products, many of which remain on store shelves for years while data about their harms accumulate, "new" and "improved" dangerous items come to market every day.

For instance, inclined infant sleepers with a pitch of more than 10 degrees from horizontal have been banned in the United States, but only after more than 100 infant deaths linked to their use during the course of 13 years.

The sale of weighted blankets for use on infants is a relatively new and worrisome phenomenon, but experts' understanding of their dangers is built on experience with similar products. This case, if it prevails, will conclude that agencies can't make. Each new product will be a lawsuit that reinvents the wheel.

For instance, doctors know that standard blankets and bedding can be deadly to sleeping infants. Given an infant's physiology, the risks posed by weighted bedding are a predictable likelihood.   

Each new blanket is a new court case waiting to happen thanks to the 2024 Supreme Court decision to end the Chevron Deference Doctrine, which allowed courts to defer to the expertise of regulatory agencies.

We can’t stop harm.

We don't know if we can limit dangerous guns, stop concealed carry of weapons, or curtail the creation of ghost guns. And yet we are contemplating the legalization of silencers and bumpstocks.

We can't even slow it down.

All we'll be able to do is conduct our own "research" from a new wave of dubious information.

And if these lawsuits prevail, we may find the true experts unable to warn others about the dangers. 

It feels like our eyes should be wide open now.

Holding hearts

 I was working methodically through a list of heartbreaking tasks, and I felt frantic. 

Our beloved dog, who has spent the last 14 years as a gentle, loving presence in our home, was ready to leave us. And though we have gone through all the necessary steps, we were not prepared to let her go.

There had been suspicion. The gut feeling that something wasn’t right. There was something more than the aches and pains of old age. But it wasn’t until the vet called with the results that I saw the signs in sharp focus. 

Arrangements, as they say, had to be made. 

So I set the wheels in motion. As I headed off with one child to an orientation, my husband went to retrieve the other. We would meet again at the start of the weekend for one last full day. 

Afterward, the schedule would be unwavering. 

The dog would only be alone for a couple of hours, if that … there would be visitors checking in on her to say goodbye.

There was so much to do and so little time. When I returned home after dark, I couldn't see the pile of dirt my husband had excavated, but I knew exactly where it was just as surely as I knew I would forget once the hole was refilled, leveled off, and the grass allowed to grow back.

So I started to calculate. I tried to pick two points to anchor my vantage point ... as if I could ever internalize the coordinates. 

I tried another tack. 

If I stand with my back to this telephone pole … and walk seven paces diagonally toward the edge of the building straight ahead  … I find my feet at the edge of the abyss.

Of course, the hole isn’t endless. If I were to measure, my guess is the tape would read about four feet in all directions. When I allow myself to look down, I can see how carefully my husband has carved each edge.  

With the work done, I return to the house. Despite her discomfort, the dog had spent the night on patrol; at regular intervals, I heard her nails gently clicking out of our room, into the hallway where she would visit the children's rooms. She'd lie with them for a while before returning to us. 

For the rest of that day we binge-watched numbing TV while she softly snored. 

She wasn’t eating much anymore, but she gladly accepted bowl after bowl of chipped ice. She puts herself to bed at 9:30 and starts her patrol when we all turn in an hour later. 

It occurs to me that we may be stressing her out … what with all eyes and hands on her. I know I’m stressing myself out trying to find which of my seventeen makeup brushes matches the uncanny velvety softness of her ears. 

Time moves so much faster in the morning. The birds are singing. There is a breeze. I don’t want to be indoors. When the vet arrives, we are on the porch … the five of us. 

The dog is excited to see a new friend. She pulls herself to standing so she can check out the medical bag. She accepts treats. It doesn’t seem rushed, but only minutes pass between each step-by-carefully-explained-step, leading her quietly and gently away from us. 

When it’s over, I feel relief wash over me. I know grief will still visit on strange occasions: When she doesn’t come to greet us; when I can’t finish a snack and instinctively call out for her to collect the leftovers; or when I’ve vacuumed up the last of her hair from the floors.

She is at rest.

I don’t have to pace … I can plant a flowering bush … I can find the pink brush and pet the very top of its curve as gently as possible. She will be there.

Training Day

The sun hadn’t even breached the horizon as I pulled away from the house. It was five a.m. and we were heading to the Big Apple for a two-day orientation that would introduce my son to his new life as a university freshman come fall. 

I had the bright idea to take the train: Park and ride style. 

It seemed logical to acquaint the last one to leave the nest with the beauty and convenience of mass transit, which is why his surprise at the notion we would forgo the convenience of driving, fighting traffic, and vying for parking when we could let the train bring us there in one straight shot.

Logistically speaking, I was also banking on the idea that if he had the experience, he could be home in two hours using just two trains and his phone to summon us for a short commute from the station.

 Not that I had ever made that journey on my own. 

Wherever I visited the city that never sleeps, I have always followed someone else’s lead, marveling the whole way at how we managed to decipher which train went uptown and which went downtown. My friends would joke that my understanding of time and space would dissipate as if the work of an incantation and fairy dust as soon as the subway doors slid shut.

The walls of the station and its tunnels melted into a blur. There I’d be, stone sober but feeling the swimmy unsteadiness of being drunk as we rumbled on down the line. I squinted out of the grubby, scuffed windows, unable to read the station signs.

It always seemed like a miracle when my guide would rise out of their seat or shift their weight if we were strap hanging and announce, “This is us.”

“How did they know?” I would marvel, unable to decipher the words that filtered into the train car from the PA system, and obstinately unaware of the line map that lit up as each stop approached. 

I’m older now, if only a modicum wiser. It also helps that the phone in my pocket takes away most of the guesswork. 

It also helps that my advancing age seems to make me invisible.

This time, when I emerge from the underground and stand at the edge of the landing to gather my bearings before deciding which way the building numbers ascend, left or right … people don’t seem to mind … they just pass by as if I weren’t there.

Not that I don’t have plenty of opportunity to mortify my kid by gumming up the works:

In case we are keeping score, I should note the following: I couldn’t find the train reservation on my phone while the conductor waited to jam a green fare check card above our seats. Luckily, the boy remembered I had sent him the link and is not all thumbs as he searched his phone to retrieve it. 

Now, I almost redeemed myself when I managed to get us out of Penn Station and to the subway we needed, but in my chivalry of swiping the boy through the full-height turnstile turned into his chagrin when my second swipe didn’t allow me access.

 I might have swiped the equivalent of eight or ten rides to no avail before I noticed a set of jumpable turnstiles just over yonder. 

Of course, I swiped one more time, and by magic, the metal gave way and allowed me entrance. But the fun didn’t end … I got stuck not once but TWICE trying to get on the #2 train going downtown. I credit the kid for not running for the next car and pretending not to know me.

That would happen soon enough. They would whisk him off with others in his college cohort, and I would join the parents, who would be coached on how to support our kids without making a nuisance of ourselves. That it will be ok if they make mistakes.

As I listen to all the reassuring words and constructive tips, I think there might be hope for me yet. I text the kid to see how he’s faring, and that maybe he should lead the way home after the program concludes the next day. 

He sends me a shrug emoji and tells me his phone is nearly dead. He didn’t bring the charger.

I can’t help but laugh. I guess I’ll see him when he figures it out. 

The Graduates

 She feels so small when I hug her goodbye. 

It surprises me because she usually fills whatever room she inhabits with an outsized personality. I forget that her physical form is quite petite.

I’m not the hugging type, but with the kids, I embrace this hypocrisy. Usually holding on a few beats too long …for them … as we part.

These days, we greet each other this way, too.

“Enough, Mom! I’ll be here all week.”

My daughter came home from college (she attends practically year-round) to watch her brother graduate from high school. And to razz him about his friends, and his hair, and his clothes, despite the fact that she readily admits each and every article of his is on point.

In no small part, the result of his acquiescence to her guidance.

She loves him. She doesn’t want him to bear the burden of bad style if she can help it.  He loves her right back. So he lets her dress him up, unlike when they were kids. 

It was a quick week packed to the gills with activities: There were rehearsals, dinners, and other formalities that culminated in a strangely wonderful, if not rain-soaked, commencement. As we huddled together atop folding chairs and under two leaky umbrellas we had only brought, thankfully, because of a deeply held superstition that their mere presence in our possession would protect us from an uncertain deluge.

There was also a family gathering, bitter and sweet, that was happening simultaneously. We did that, too, no matter how groggy we would be from the road, we were up for that trip. ... And another trip to the train. Pick up. And to the airport. Drop off. It would go on like this until we head home again in the wee hours of the night.

The car is lively. The kids trade playing DJ with their Spotify lists as if it were the 80s and they had just assembled a most excellent mixtape … just for me. They converse about their lives and their plans for the summer. They sing along with the radio and razz each other during intermissions by belting out songs they once loved that have since lost their luster and esteem.  

I drink it in. I'm not sure how long this bubbly nectar will continue to flow. The banter is easy now, but one ill-timed statement could tank it. Sending us all into an uncomfortable silence and then into our own personal entertainment hubs, which will be silent only to me, the driver.

But that’s always the challenge, isn’t it? Conversation? So many loaded subjects that can dislodge the balance. 

I take care, especially while I’m driving, not to steer directly into any of them. Not even when my daughter reminded me to speed up, or pass this car, or watch out for that truck …

I smile and oblige. Listen more than talk. Keep my eyes and my mind on the road. 

The student becomes the professor.

When the ride is over, she exits the car. We help her gather her things and balance them on her still-small frame so she doesn’t topple over as she schleps them away. She stops for a hug. She is still small despite all the baggage she’s now dragging around.

It’s a group hug now, and it’s lasting too long. 

“Enough, Mom! I’ll be back in August.”

Preaching to the choir

My friends and I were sussing out a minor dilemma: Which protest would we be attending? 

It was a foregone conclusion; not an “if” but “where“ and a “when.“

During a flurry of texts, we discussed schedules and timing and the philosophical calculations of where we’d see the best return on our investment.  

For various reasons … perhaps the drumbeat of opinion-page observations ... we found ourselves in this predicament, where somehow, beliefs based on norms and facts are as valid as those based on conspiracy theory and bias ...

And it was on us to change hearts and minds with posterboard and paint.

It’s all in the tone… or the humor.

Perhaps it also explains why we cling to the idea that we shouldn’t be preaching to the choir. 

That, it seems, is all about pitch.

Our group triangulated. We consulted the interwebs and learned the possibilities of platforms and places to protest were near endless. We could head to Albany and mingle with thousands of kindred, sign-waving souls.  Or we could pick a venue closer to home. Wake up late and meander over to a sleepy little town, where the same dozen people gather near the four-way stop to complain about the government (part time).  

We could wear a Resist shirt at the Pride Parade, or a Rainbow on Flag Day. We could donate to any number of charity causes. We didn't even have to stay together. We could venture out on our own.

Truly, no small part of me wanted to simply walk through my little corner of the community and embody resistance by wearing my usual weekend garb and a happy face. 

My closely held beliefs would be easily recognizable from all the anxious pacing and the home brewed coffee I tote around in my favorite mug. 

But I didn’t want to be alone any more than I wanted to be among rivals.

I was reminded of the time I opened my door and just listened to what two young Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were trying to fulfill their mission of proselytizing, had to say. 

I had no feasible plan to convert them to my particular denomination of secular humanism, but I was committed to blunting my edge of the cold, cruel world the folks who sent them knew they'd face the minute they started ringing the doorbells of the heathens. No one likes being told their going to hell.

I offered them coffee and conversation instead.

One fewer door slammed in their face.

Of course, all this was on my mind as I carried my sign to the edge of the road, and squeezed between a few folks whose slogans were way more clever than mine.

It turned out to be a pleasant afternoon … surrounded by like minds –  a closely woven community knit wider.  Setting ourselves free from our silos by seeing our numbers rise.

On the occasion when the angry world passed by, squealing their tires and yelling taunts, I felt protected by the crowd.

We don’t need to make the heathens answer our cold call, but we may need to remind the choir they aren’t singing into a void.

We don’t need to fight every battle. But we do need to hold onto our beliefs and exercise a little faith in shared humanity. We need to stick together.

Sign of the Times

The sign confused a lot of folks.

At first glance, it resembled a Gadsden flag: a coiled rattlesnake – often associated with distrust of government and the defense of individual liberty – on a bright yellow field.

Only the snake wasn’t arranged like a sprung spring … it writhed in the shape of a womb.

My husband had painted the sign a short time after the Supreme Court rescinded the understanding that women were considered equal under the Constitution and deserving of autonomy. 

He called it a gift and posted it in front of our house next to a sign I had painted two years earlier, (kNOw Justice, kNOw Peace).

The signs had lived at the edge of our driveway for about three years withstanding all kinds of weather, including the furtive complaints to town elders about its potential to violate ordinances concerning political signage.

Elders, to their credit, who would tell them they didn’t have to agree to understand the difference between the enforcement of general guidelines for electioneering during a cyclical “silly season,” and what is required for the preservation of protected speech.

It enticed people to honk their horns in solidarity … or rage … at all hours of the day and night.

Until, in the wee hours of the new Trumpian term, the sign disappeared. 

I presumed it had been carried off by one (or more) of the previously affronted. It was impossible to know for sure, since our neighbors’ American Flag, blowing in the wind that night,  obstructed the field of vision of their Ring camera, which had reliably shown the edge of our yard, and often revealed the unsavory truth about which of our “neighbors” gave middle fingers to the signs and which of our damaged packages had been perfectly fine until they had been literally kicked to the curb by the delivery driver.

Not that it mattered.

When the world didn’t stop on its axis at the idea of women’s private health decisions being criminalized, how could I be surprised by an overheard offhand comment: “I wouldn’t want to be married to the woman who makes him live with a uterus sign.”

In place of umbrage, I felt something akin to agreement.

“The feeling, I can assure you, is mutual.”

Not that it mattered what he thought. 

I wasn’t married to him. 

Still, it made me realize how nice it is to live with a man who isn’t squeamish about his partner being just that -  a partner. He is a man who believes that feminism simply means women are human beings deserving of self-determination.

He brought that same philosophy to parenting; we didn’t always see eye to eye but we hashed out disagreements with love and civility. 

We didn’t always put up a united front, but we could always talk it out and if nothing else, agree to disagree. 

Which, according to a new Gallup Poll, the gender gap between important rights like abortion is increasing by its widest margin yet.

I can’t imagine a world in which our children don’t see their partners as deserving of basic healthcare. I do hope they will be better, wiser, and more compassionate because they had parents who were true partners.

Happy Father’s Day to the true partners among us.