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Yard sale, a self own

It’s yard sale weekend in my town.

Ads have been placed. Maps were drawn up. Neighbors all around us have been setting up shop with GAP-like folding skills and designing their card tables and porch rails as if they contained the inventory of an Anthropologie.

The kids are giddy. They will canvas the neighborhood with glee. See, they have plans for a lemonade stand that would bankrupt Country Time if the snippets I’ve scrolled past in my Twitter feed are to be believed: 1) that municipalities across this great land are ticketing kid-run drink stands and 2). the lemon-powered-sugar mix magnate will pony up the cash little tykes will need to pay the fines.

Meanwhile, the husband has been stockpiling inventory his entire adult life for just this occasion. And like the hoarder he claims not to be, he will haul this stashed trash to the driveway in multiple trips, arrange the wares artfully, and refuse to barter under any circumstances.

You are looking at a five-gallon bucket of chains, man! Do you know how much you’d pay at LOWES?”

Of course, he is shrewd. And his junk, no matter how rusted and decrepit, retains value even at scrap metal prices.

But the real detritus is pretty much anything I would ever fold or fan out on a table.

The odd basket, a silly tchotchke, items of the one-use-wonder variety. Things that probably weren’t worth one dollar, let alone the twelve or more I had probably paid to cart them out of a store. A dull pair of scissors with handles that look like the Eiffel Tower and bruise the soft pads of your fingers. What a bargain.

It can feel a little too personal.

Let me tell you; it takes a certain mental fortitude to watch a stranger flip through a dusty milk-crate of your ’80s vinyl with an expression of disdain to realize your insides are made out of molten marshmallows.

I’ve had enough of this semi-annual setting up shop

with wares that become an irrefutable indictment of my life choices and my prowess as a consumer (or lack thereof).

“Just take it,” I’ll say to the browser who approaches ... I’m so sure she will make me an offer. ...

“No. I’m not interested in any of these bobble-head ducks. I was just wondering if you knew where Cortland Street is? The paper said they had antiques.”

I point in a southerly direction: “Go two blocks down, take a right and your fourth left. You won’t miss it.”

My favorite part comes at the end of the day - around three o’clock or so - when the cars don’t even bother to slow down to assess the trash/treasure ratio. That’s when you can take everything that’s remaining and drag it to the end of the driveway, dust your hands and be done.

Chances are, overnight the picker fairies will visit to disprove the theory that my stuff is so bad I can’t even give it away. Especially if they take the stuff and leave us the exquisite gift of empty boxes.

Don't let the bastards grind you down

The eighth-grade dance is coming up.

You know what that means right?

A sweet little ritual, with dancing and punch, that ends in fond memories of youth's splendor?

That was last week.

This week it means drama.

And torment.

It means a choreography of complicated steps that will undulate around dress selection and hairstyles and photo-perfect moments (to be virally shared on one of the grams or chats or other networks that bind our whole lives up in knots). It means invitations for pre-parties and post-parties will swirl in the web like a tangle and somehow disappear at the last possible moment like some form of cursed magic.

And some kids will sit it out, engaging in their first cake benders alone in their rooms with the saddest ballads they can pull into their playlists. Who needs a stupid dance, anyway?

Of course, "Cindy" will say something biting about "Jane," and people will say it's terrible but agree that they all secretly hate Jane. They use a cold shoulder as their filter. The "truth" becomes a blunt weapon.

Jane, no doubt, doesn't make things easy for herself. When she speaks her mind, unfiltered, it comes back to bite her. Few people, she's learning, can juggle these popularity batons because they are on fire.

The thick skin everyone's telling you about is really just a blister.

Please join me in a piece of spiced, chocolate cake if this sounds familiar.

I'm eating some now. Crumbs are gumming up my keyboard, which I should probably take as a sign.

Nothing good ever comes from venting.

Especially in a vice principal's office in 1984, where the best advice he could give me was in Latin: "nolite te bastardes carborundorum" - Don't let the bastards wear you down.

Harden yourself.

Which, no matter how much we hate it, is the best advice we can heed.

And I will have to do again because I am powerless to stop this seemingly putrid rite of passage, a phase of life that few people wish to relive but can't avoid if they have human children: The moment your best friend moves on without you, and you feel alone.

The moment all the kindness in the world seems to get sucked out of a gaping hole in your armor.

It's a moment that can haunt your life forever, but mostly because if you are honest with yourself, there was a similar hurt that you put onto someone else, maybe without even knowing.

It’s a problem that doesn’t have a one-size solution.

The dance isn't the problem. Nor are the hopes and dreams and expectations. Meanness isn’t even the problem since it is relative (meaning your relatives are most certainly the perpetrators and mine are the victims and vice versa).

Everyone is nursing a wound.

Expectations are hard to control. Feelings are hard to untangle. But we are all in this mess together.

Everyone's hurting. Just ask a parent.

For right now, the best advice I can give her is: get dressed, get out there and dance like nobody’s watching even if it winds up on one of the tubes. Nolite carborundum.

Work, party

The weekend had arrived early. By Thursday our bags were packed and loaded into the car. The GPS clocked our arrival for sometime around midnight, but we’d pull into the deep woods of grandmother’s house in the neighborhood of one in the morning. Too late for anything more than to accordion ourselves out of the car and into the beds that awaited us, already made up and waiting. 

Perhaps we’ll unpack the car in the morning. The ultimate in early starts.

The children weren’t happy. 

Of course they love their grandmother. And Maine. And all the things that are familiar in their lazy-summer experience of our northernmost state, excluding the five hours of motion sickness they have to fight through to get there.

For this reason (and my general ineptitude) dinner wasn’t even a thought, let alone an afterthought.

It didn’t help that they were hungry as their stomachs started to settle and I hadn’t thought to brings snacks. I knew all the cupboards would be bare.

"You really are the worst mother ever,” my daughter says with glee. “Real mothers have all kinds of things in their bags in case of emergencies. Like lifesavers and packets of crackers and wallets.”

Darned kids. Forget your wallet one time and you’ll never hear the end of it.

Honestly, they have no idea how lucky they are to have a mother who is ill prepared.

They have had to be resourceful. They’ve had to problem solve. They’ve had to plan ahead … and around me.

They don’t see it quite that way … 

They’ve never been expected to do much of anything other than run, swim and play, and, on occasion, take their dirty dishes and put them near the sink. Asking them to load a dishwasher will provoke a panicked stare.

From their perspective, responsibilities come later. Once they are out of college and on their own. Right now they have an idyllic childhood to muster out of sea air and mosquito bites.

Now is the time for adults to take care of them; to make sure they get enough to eat and that they’re not playing with fire.

Except this trip -- one that commemorates 75 years of their grandmother’s life with the unveiling of her long awaited three-seasons room in her beloved year-round home — will require them to wear aprons and wait on tables.

Take orders and deliver meals to the big table. They will have to check in with guests to see if drinks should be replenished or if they've had enough of the sesame noodle salad. They will eat separately  … and in the ceiling-fanned comfort of the new room.

Maybe it’s to our credit that our children seem to be naturals at service. They’ve made place cards with menus inside they will mark with selections. They even seem to be having fun, as they deliver the meals with a smile. 

Invited guests marvel at the kids' efficiency and grace. Probably thankful their potatoes didn’t arrive with thumbprints.

But they were marvels.

They had circulated appetizers and taken beverage orders as if they were being paid in currency rather than good will.

My son had even affected the appearance of a snooty wine sommelier, who would judge you harshly for pairing salmon with merlot.

Even as they are sent out to the porch with their own dinners, they return at the sound of a bell, ready to be of service, to which we feel a little red faced. We had only meant to silence the table for an announcement, not summon the waitstaff.

Of course tomorrow they would be red-faced too, as we had plans to play with fire.

Literally … dragging brush from the woods onto the bonfire in the yard.

How do we sleep at night?

I can’t sleep. 

But I’m so tired. My heart keeps racing and my nerves are jangling in my head like bangles.

The ceiling fan stirs hot air above me but doesn’t add any pleasantries. It makes an odd sound, a metallic scrape, leaving me unsettled. How safe can that be?

I check my phone.

Nothing.

It doesn’t happen as much these days, but sometimes I swim into the murky waters of opinion when I believe I am right. It doesn’t matter that no one ever saves the other by trying to sink their ideas. No one seems to drown.

Guns piercing schools seems to be my trigger.

I’m arguing with a woman in Texas, whom I’ve never met but whose children share a digital universe with mine where they play and smile and pose for the camera.

We are venting our fears. Communicating ideas. But ultimately speaking into a void.

We are together in pain and worry and fear until ... we talk about solutions.

“We need to do something to stop this ... Don’t tell me gun control is the answer.”

“Guns don’t kill people. ...”

She tells me we have enough laws. Laws don’t protect people. Her husband tells me we need religion and corporal punishment and family values. They tell me we can’t stop people from killing people.

It’s the same argument playing out across generations all over the country. It’s a needle stuck in a groove.

They want tighter security. Better healthcare. More religion. Stronger accountability. Stricter parenting. More guns.

They also want to pay fewer taxes. And be free to be a responsible gun owner not under the burdens of more onerous oversight. The laws we have already say they are responsible gun owners and that is all the law will allow. 

They have the right to protect their own with guns.

I can’t express how crazy it seems to me that we can’t (or won’t) regulate guns the way we regulate cars. You know ... licensing and registration, insurance and periodic inspections, and regulations that hold manufacturers accountable. 

They've stood their ground the legislation of tighter safety controls in the name of privacy, a right we've relinquished for automobiles, air travel and single-box purchases of Pseudoephedrine. 

The results are indisputable:

Auto deaths are declining while gun deaths on the rise.

I argue that is the result of well-crafted laws.

It’s not as if we’ve done nothing. 

We have already fortified schools. We have stationed police in them. We have spent precious time from the business of education so that our kids can practice surviving.

We can add metal detectors and barbed wire and block out the windows. We can harden our schools and our children. But that is untenable.

Soon, I imagine, we’ll be strapping the staff with sidearms and subjecting our kids to mental health evaluations as a requirement of being admitted to the school building because crazy ideas will seem reasonable if you just repeat them over and over and over again. Like guns being an inviolable right.

Guns don't kill people.

The so-called responsible gun owners apparently don’t kill people either. But it seems from one shooting to the next, some of their children do.

But there are glimmers of hope.

Many of our children, from both sides of the political aisle, are raising their voices.

Last week hundreds of students and activists from New Yorkers Against Gun Violence rallied at the Capitol Building to urge the State Senate to pass a bill for Extreme Risk Prevention Orders before their legislative session ends in June.

The law would create a new type of court-issued protection order that allows family members and other domestic relations to seek the temporary removal of guns as well as the prohibition of firearm purchases when there is evidence the person poses a threat to themselves or others.

Laws of this type have already been enacted in eight other states, including Connecticut, California, Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Vermont and, Washington.

I can only hope our children keep using their voices ... and the ballot when they are old enough to vote.

I hope, for the sake of all of us, that our children win. 

They won't have to ask themselves how they sleep at night.

With every fiber of my being

The days are getting longer, the nights warmer, but nature still keeps us guessing.

What perils await?

Honestly, I thought quicksand would prove more detrimental to my life as an adult than the common mosquito, but here we are.

The ground has firmed up under my boots. Finally. The early spring sponge has been swished and swallowed by the roots of the fast-growing meadow grasses. I don't have to worry about losing a shoe to the bog.

The dogs in my pack bound through the new growth, disturbing songbirds as they rush past, using the same effort they would have to plow through the snow and the wet.

If there is a swath of swamp remaining, they will find it and come back to me reeking of dung and detritus. 

Everything in our path, including the path itself, seems lush and verdant. The colors are explosive. 

The pond is cool and inviting. Of course, the dogs will swim.

Emerging insects don’t buzz me as much as they collide with my sunglasses. Bounce off my face and into my hair. Down my neck.

I hate them. 

The breeze takes the lightest ones away. My guard is up, though. My shoulders tense. Every itch I sense makes me feel flea-bitten. Every freckle could be a tick.

I meant to bring insect repellant. I never remember it.

This is not my season.

The sun is warm until it slips behind clouds that conceal a torrent.

In an instant, my clothes are too warm and then not warm enough.

The heat in the air is already hinting at an oppressive summer. 

I am afraid to dig out the garments that would suit this emerging weather.

The big question of course being: Will the things I tucked away to hibernate still fit?

On humans, winter doesn’t have the same slimming effect it has on bears. We widen into new soft and flabby skins. 

A part of me wonders why I save these clothes I shuffle semi-annually from bed to bureau. Week in, week out, I wear the same four things: Something old, Something new, Something borrowed Something blue ... 

Even if I am spared the expense of an entire wardrobe replacement for size, I will spend similar capital trying to mitigate the shock of my winter faded flesh.

I will try a few lotions and tinctures before giving up and buying a new pair of drugstore sunglasses to protect myself from the milky white glare of my skin reflecting back at me in the mirror.

Not that there won’t be pleasant surprises in the totes that have grown dusty under my bed. I am nothing if not sentimental.

For example, last year I’d forgotten about those coffee-colored yoga pants I’d practically lived in the summer before. I’ve lost track of how many years I’ve had them. Ten years at least. Somewhere between Kid Number One and Kid Number Two. They never wrinkle, stain or fade.

In them, I can salute the sun in the morning and kick sand at the beach as the sun sets.

I smile at the irony. There’s no way those fibers are natural.

Mother's Day

Can I mow the lawn?

The boy, with his mop of artfully tousled hair and permanent marker tattoos creeping over his skin, barreled into the house, dropped his bags and gear and various sport-related brick-a-brack and set off to find me:

MAAAAAAAAAAAAA? MAAAAA!? Can I mow the lawn?

You’d think I’d hit pay-dirt ... or that my daughter had finally read “Tom Sawyer” and had improvised a fence-painting scene of her own.

“You want to cut the grass?” I had to ask lest my ears deceive me.

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug, not entirely remembering the events of last season when the jewel blue electric mower was not only new but also a novelty. 

We had all marveled at the effortless, push-button start; the fume free and surprisingly quiet purr of its motor; and the impressive cut of its mowing jib.

We did not, however, anticipate how hard it would be to push has grass clippings filled up it’s bag attachment. 

A few passes with the thing and it became evident the activity of mowing the lawn could replace any thought of visiting a gym.

The boy couldn’t even manage a single pass without nearly hyperventilating. 

I felt a little sorry for him. For years we had been spoiled by an ancient riding mower (even though it needed to be jump started and had long ago stopped being able to go in reverse). We soon became reacquainted with the hard work of the landscaping Sisyphus because even as this pretty, new mower roared to life on demand, it did not have self-propelled handling.

The boy never had the chance to drive that old clunker around the yard, turning our lawn into his own private NASCAR track and having a Tom Sawyer experience of chores. He was too young. 

With this push mower, he was starting on the ground floor. 

And apparently working his way into the basement: Two wiggly horizontal passes of our narrow front lawn and the boy was red-faced and panting.

“This is hard,” he huffed, not a little disgruntled at the fact that I was watching him from the comfort of a lounge chair on the front porch.

“Pace yourself,” I coached. “Stiffen your abs, angle your upper body, bend a little more forward and plant one foot in front of the other. Don’t forget to breathe.”

Half a pass more and the mower sat abandoned in the middle of the lawn. 

“I’m going to practice pitching,” he said somewhat melodically before running off into the backyard; unbothered by a job left unfinished.

His young mind, back then, unable to wrap itself around the notion that “work” isn’t always equal parts fun. 

I expected as much. And once I finished my coffee, I’d go out there and take a few swipes myself.

I’ve also had to adjust to the pace and charge of the new device.

 The battery will die a few passes before completion, and its recharging will take just enough time for me to do two loads of laundry and vacuum the pool before I can return to the lawn. (Not that I will EVER vacuum the pool). 

Instead, I will make more coffee and sit on the porch listening to the thud of the kid's baseballs against the backstop. 

The quick fix

The doorknob clunks to the floor for the zillionth time. I can hear it roll the entire length of the teenager’s uneven room.

An exasperated gush of air claws its way through her larynx as she announces her displeasure.

“Stupid door! When are you going to fix it?”

Old houses. Don’t let anyone tell you their ghosts aren’t real. The true specter of their terror, however, is untold trips to hardware stores as one repair leads to an indefinite number of others.

I smile. I know what her father’s answer will be: he’s scheduled all minor household repairs for somewhere between finishing the window trim and gutting the kitchen. Quite possibly between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. on the next Tuesday in Never.

You are, of course, always free to attempt the repair yourself.

Which is not bad advice for two reasons: the first being that thing that inevitably happens when menfolk see their gender counterparts rifling through a toolbox, looking for a screwdriver. They find the seventeen hours they need for the job and take over. In no time at all that wonky thing that’s been plaguing your dreams for the last fortnight will get fixed.

Or ...

Through trial and error, you learn that tightening the whosamawhatsits with the dinkus isn’t nearly as complicated as you thought it might be.

For all other things there is YouTube.

Which is where I find myself often, just scrolling around, trying to solve the mysteries of life:

Q: Will mulch attract ticks? A: Maybe not the mulch itself, but the warm, moist environment it maintains might.

Q: How can I sharpen these fabric scissors my kids used on paper? A: fold a piece of tin foil eight times and cut through it eight times at a 15-degree angle. You will be amazed.

Q: How do you stop a dog from jumping? A: Don’t pay her any attention until she’s keeping her four feet on the floor. Stop looking for quick fixes.

Q: What’s school serving for lunch on Thursday, May 10th? A: Grilled cheese, tomato or chicken noodle soup and broccoli. Go pack them lunch, you lazy bones.

Q: Why does the expensive cordless vacuum cleaner I bought pulse and stop working when I just cleaned out the canisters and, there don’t appear to be any other blockages?

At which point, some smiling YouTube dad, sent me on what seemed like a 12-month odyssey wherein he would explain the intricacies involved in remedying this high-end suction failure but assuring me the problem could be fixed in 30 seconds!

Thirty. Seconds!

He began this 12-minute journey by explaining in detail the trouble I had already experienced. He even went to the effort of recreating the sound the machine was making through the magic of ventriloquism.

Er-errrr-Er-errrr ... Er-errrr-Er-errrr ... Er-errrr-Er-errrr ... Er-errrr-Er-errrr!

Oh, he was good. I barely saw his lips move.

But for the love of Pete, get to the point. What’s the problem with this dumb vacuum cleaner?

“See this bit here? It is a filter. Now, it may not look like it’s clogged but you will see rivers of mud flow through the thing once you hold it under the tap and give it a good wring out.

"Afterward all you need to do is just let it dry for 24 hours, and you’ll be good to go.”

Wait a minute?

Did he just say rinse the filter and let it dry for 24 hours? How is that a 30-second fix?

At least we have an extra few hours to fix the doorknob.

Smiling is my favorite

I always hated when people told me to smile.

You know what I mean. Strangers – usually grown men – telling a young woman to smile as they pass by on the street. They think nothing of it; to them, it's just friendly advice so that that stranger might look more attractive, or seem approachable and available … to them: A stranger on the street.

In alphabetical order: Alone, Approachable, Attractive, Available … all of the things that can be dangerous when you find yourself in a dark alley or -- in my neighborhood back-in-the-day – walking home all by your lonesome at 3 p.m. on a Thursday.

The idea of “Hello,” or “Nice Day” or just a silent smile of their own without the demand of a response, never occurred to them?

I suppose it's just as well … A stranger who tells you to smile for them (if you aren't paying them to take your picture) is a pretty good indicator of a creep we should seek to avoid.

Of course, I'm bringing this up because I am pushing a birthday of monumental proportion, or so I'm told. And birthdays are the watch-pots that have a tendency to boil over while you're standing over the stove.

Now, I won't tell you which birthday I'm not celebrating … you can just keep on thinking 27 because that's where I stopped counting (two years before my own mother ditched the accounting of her chronological age). You can probably guess it's been a while since anyone has told me what to do with my expressions.

Which, I have to say, is one of the genuine benefits of getting older.

And – hold your pearls – smiling has become my favorite.

Granted, I realized this because I am vain and as unlikely to employ the skills of a plastic surgeon as I am to get my roots done in a timely manner. A smile is the most inexpensive yet effective facelift I can muster.

But I feel I must let you know … as a public service, not as a demand: Smiling has been a fairly eye-opening endeavor (though not literally; literally it makes me a little squinty, but that's for another column).

Have you seen a senior light up when you look them in the eye and just smile? It doesn't matter if it's a “fine morning” or the “worst weather we're having,” the temperature out there is something we all share in some degree of a stake.

You don't have to dig any deeper.

You don't have to carry their groceries or help them find where the store managers have moved the cornflakes this week. You don't have to do anything.

But you might feel some tension in your body loosen. You might start to see that some things, at least, aren't as bleak as the talking heads on TV or your friends on “facebonk” make it seem.

But just like I've begun to look forward to getting at least one hundred and fourteen “Happy Birthdays” typed at me from the social network on the anniversary of the day I was born, I've come to realize that as an exercise, even disingenuous smiling somehow becomes bona fide with practice and repetition.

But you'll have to find out for yourself. It's not my place to tell you to smile.

God willing

God willing

In my heart, I am a liberal. The “L word,” defined in my mind, is quite simply the belief in providing safety nets wherever possible, even if people claim they don’t need them or won’t avail themselves.

I might also be a little bit communist ... like the characters in the English nunneries on Netflix and the hippy communities of Hollywood romantic comedies, where prosperity is measured in the abundance of song and zany hallucinations.

I might even be a little bit conservative, owing to depression-era ancestors who understood the intricacies of having cake and eating it, too. Or as my grandmother would say: “If you save your money, you’ll have money.”

Officially, though, I am nothing.

I have no declaration, in part, because of employment and the desire to be a mirror of objectivity. And in part, because I don’t want to decide.

To this day I have never voted in a primary election.

Not that it matters when you get to kick sand on a beach in Maine for a few weeks a year. Or brush its crust off your kids or throw sticks along its length as your dog races seagulls into the surf.

You count yourself lucky if you can look out onto the world and marvel at its gifts. A vast number of people cannot avail themselves.

The ocean is bigger than all of us.

Walking dogs on Gooch's Beach, 7 a.m. That’s where I first ran into Barbara Bush. So many dogs ago. 

She was walking behind an English spaniel (not Millie), and I was hoping my soon-to-be husband’s dog, Maggie, wouldn’t chase after them. I was sure the Secret Service wouldn’t take chances with a former First Lady being rushed by an uncouth mutt.

My dog took off barking. And of course, ran straight at them with purpose and the horrible deep-chested bark that had often made my heart leap into my throat.

But when she got to them, my dog quieted, slowed down and circled back to me. Neither Mrs. Bush nor her escort batted an eye.

Dogs. On a beach. It’s what they do.

There wasn’t anything unique about that encounter. Every morning of our vacation, every year for nearly two decades, I’d see the former First Lady at 7 a.m., walking her dogs.

As the years passed, everything about these walks seemed the same. Only our dogs changed: Mine were ever-so-slightly more observant of voice commands; hers got smaller in size. In time, she followed them with the assistance of a walker.

If we ever spoke to one another, it was cordial and in passing. I would apologize for my overzealous cur, and she would reassure me that she took no offense. She'd even joke that her "little rats deserved to be eaten.”

She was funny. And kind. And the stories about her around town reflected those attributes.

One time, though, I dared to take a picture of our worlds meeting on that beach. My entourage – my father and sister – had found themselves walking alongside Mrs. Bush’s entourage (a member of her family and a secret service agent).

And I, with my long lens, weathered the blistering stare of the detail as he spoke into his watch so that I could freeze this moment in time.

Over my objections, my dad had a copy of that photo framed, and he sent it to her with a note describing how much he loved Maine, and that beach, and being in that moment with her.

In time, a reply came back, thanking him for the gesture. Agreeing the place was special and hoping we’d all get back to it again next summer, God willing.

Go pave the driveway

The state of my car is appalling.

Dog hair and detritus everywhere.

I'm not even going a hazard a guess as to how to classify the sticky substance between the middle row of seats or what solvent would make it disappear.

I had been in the car by myself for the better part of an hour, driving from one errand to another, listening lazily to the sounds straining out of the pop music radio station my daughter prefers.

I might have been amused by the constant banter of the DJ duo discussing bad dates with their listening audience. Everything about it felt familiar. Even the talk formula, intermittently interrupted by one of seven hit songs, presumably played in rotation, seemed like old hat.

But as I drove, my mind was churning a mixture of past, present and future banalities as anesthetizing as the airwave testimonies fueling this perennial battle of the sexes.

Truthfully, I hadn't been paying attention until I hit snow. (Yes, there was actual snow ... this winter refuses to retreat) but it was the radio static that transformed figurative pain into literal pain.

I changed channels.

NPR.

A woman with precise diction and a chuckle in her voice proceeded to lay out the problems with kids today:

Their parents.

Hovercrafts

Helicopters ...

Snow plows ...

Pushovers ...

Absentee ...

We know where we are on the spectrum.

A part of me wished I was not white-knuckling behind a steering wheel so I could let my eyes glaze over.

I could tell from the way her words flowed with a practiced flair into clear and chiseled points that this was more than a radio interview. Perhaps it was the subtle, yet distinctive sound of live studio-audience laughter punctuating her pauses that made me realize I was listening to a clip from a TED Talk.

I briefly wondered what the speaker looked like, imagined her pacing a stage wearing elegant but comfortable attire. I made a mental note to listen for the host to repeat her name so I could Google it later.

I never caught her name, but I imagined if I scoured the Interwebs for any of the above-mentioned search words I'd find no fewer than 7,000,010 potential scholars.

Far too few of us, our esteemed speaker noted with observances during her years of experience in academia, can walk sturdily in the place we need to be as molders of the future: a narrow little pathway she called “Authoritative Parenting.”

Usually, we end up on either side of the divide: the strict disciplinarians wind up on Authoritarian Avenue, and the friend-zoned parents wind up on Doormat Street, both of which are presumably dead ends in the game of Chutes and Ladders to Success.

Authoritative parents, however, are perfectly balanced between dictatorship and fairyland, which might mean they rule their little fiefdoms with a magic wand.

Not that I would ever bet bitcoin on any of that being even remotely true.

But as a person of a certain age, with a certain set of expectations and cultural pressures, I have continued to listen, hoping this stray voice in the wilderness will hand over the key to the universe, and she does: All we need is unconditional love … and chores.

Chores, like taking out the garbage or doing the laundry.

Paving the driveway. Anything that teaches children to look at their surroundings and predict what needs doing.

Look junior, a pothole. Fill it with tar.

It couldn't be easier. Chores! A simple and attainable plan.

I don't need to sweat all this big stuff. I don't have to worry that colleges won't accept my children if they walked out of school to protest gun laws when they were in middle school. Or that life won't be worth living if they don't play a sport or learn a second language while they play piano and develop a scalable model for a disruptive economic driver using only code.

I just need to get them to clean my car.

Parlez vous français? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My daughter noticed it first. The city was a ghost town.

As we passed over the Champlain Bridge on a midday Monday, she remarked about the construction equipment seemingly abandoned.

“Isn’t it creepy,” she wondered aloud, “there doesn’t seem to be a
single soul anywhere?”

As we made our way into Montreal to celebrate spring break with a four-day holiday, I wondered if the Quebec province was celebrating a holiday of its own.

“Nope. I already checked.”

Then the only explanations I could come up with were a zombie apocalypse or an alien abduction.

Which, let’s face it, wouldn’t exactly surprise me considering my past history of planning our way through travel.

This diminutive vacation had been off to a rocky start from even before we’d arrived.

We’d been delayed at the border unexpectedly. Our car waved into a concrete slot while three uniformed men asked us to exit and stand at the curb.

“Take your hands out of your pockets, please,” asked one of the officials, whose voice didn’t make “please” sound in any way pleasant.

She had been excited to spend a few days exploring a foreign city. She had envisioned eating gravy-drenched fries and practicing her middle-school French for a stunned an appreciative audience.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her the minute she said “Bonjour,” her host would switch to English, having detected our native language expertly. She’d find out soon enough.

My daughter didn’t want to watch the latex-gloved inspectors paw through our things, so we took them up on their offer to take a seat inside a cement block building to stay out of the weather.

We had planned to see the old city, visit some museums and explore the Biodome, a museum of the environment that, as a google search would confirm, was not one in the same with the Biosphère, a similarly themed museum made from the 1967 World’s Fair pavilion designed by Buckminster Fuller.

Neither of which would be open during our stay.

It turned out the dome had shuttered for a complete renovation the day we arrived, leaving a gaping hole in our itinerary. The rest of the city seemed to be in a similar state of hibernation.

Everything seemed to be “ferme.”

We started to understand once we went into one shop and found that it spiraled into a city underground.

While it seemed a the survivors of the zombie apocalypse staggered around outside as Winter refused to concede Spring, life bustled under the streets and through buildings that connected, blending commuter trains with the retail terrain.

It felt ... how do you say?

Mort Vivant?

I think I may be too cynical for travel. Too fearful of being the illiterate who can only get lost. This trip has only reinforced my resolve to limit my surroundings to the familiar.

Back at our concrete shack at the border we sat behind a table and avoided looking in the direction of our car by translating a sign on the wall bearing the likeness of the saddest raccoon known to man:

“La Rage!”

“Ne jamais toucher à une chauve-souris, qu’elle soit vivante ou morte.”

“Rabies!

“Never touch a bat, be it alive or dead.”

It’s hard to deny that everything sounds better in French. And probably look better with a photo of a raccoon, too.

One of the inspectors motions to us as he walked to the table. When he arrived, he unleashed a torrent of words that cascaded around us in beautiful nonsense.

I cock my head and raise my shoulders as my daughter proudly used her French:

“Je ne paux pas parler français.”

“I do not speak French.”

He smiled and points to our car.

“Enjoy your stay in Canada.”

Waiting for the bump

It was the cutest thing: Two squirrels scurrying across the street as if they were a pair of teacup-sized dogs that had broken free of their people and gone off to play.

Rolling, tumbling, and then stretching out fully - as if in flight - they performed these and other varmint gymnastics until they were safely on the other side.

For a few moments, as I waited at the stop sign, I thought of how adorable this impromptu act seemed, and how I kind of miss the squirrels while they are laying low during their winter siestas.

But then they returned to the center of the road with full and equal vigor, heading straight into the path of my car and uncertain doom.

Squirrels being squirrelly and all, the certainty of a traffic-related demise can be offset by the quick and limber directional changes they exhibit that border on the magical.

As a driver, however, I know my response is limited to one of only two possibilities: the unwise and reactionary change of course that could impact other drivers; or the tensing of body parts and the momentary closing of eyes as I wait for the stomach-churning bump under my tires.

I always choose the latter.

No bump. I open my eyes. No rear view of a tiny corpse. Safe again.

I can relax, thankful for the agility of squirrels.

It occurs to me that parenting can feel a little like white-knuckling through an alleyway full of darting squirrels.

Obviously, these kids have no idea what they are doing. Boldly starting out on their journeys, doubling and even tripling back before darting back into harm's way.

We count ourselves lucky if we don’t feel or witness the bump.

Lately, though, I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that our kids may not be the only ones playing the part of the squirrels in this anthropomorphic flight of fancy.

We parents are also chasing our tails in some panicked state of industriousness.

Sure we have intuition. A nature to nurture. But our real-world experience with raising children is limited to how we were raised.

When you think about it, parenting feels like tackling a never-ending circle of tasks we would rather do differently than our parents if we could just stop hearing their voices coming out of our mouths.

Of course, nature would have it that we are always wrong. I know you can’t hear me, but the voice I used in the last sentence was not tinged with sarcasm.

We humans get it wrong. A lot. And probably throughout recorded history we have always made mistakes that we just haven't acknowledged.

We zigged, perhaps, when we should have zagged.

Maybe these mistaken turns lead to places we ought not go, or perhaps they lead us to safety. If we are lucky - and many of us are - the bump we experience in the road won’t prove lethal. But the thing that I think makes us most squirrel-like is the speed at which we venture forth into this great unknown.

It really is the cutest thing.