HEAVY TOLLS

Feature article in today's New York Times: "Job Woes Exacting Heavy Toll on Family Life". For those who have experienced job loss, the reality of these words is like a glass of cold water in the face. Our home life is described in mirror shards of detail on the national front page. The rational iota of our brains knows that grown up stresses trickle down and reside with our young ones. But in order to survive the New Now, we want desperately to believe the running refrain from those who aren't walking in our shoes. "A blessing", they often call it. They say: Being home offers the gift of time to enjoy and tend to our loved ones.

But Michael Luo's article refutes this rather useless mantra. Quantity time does not equate to quality time. Think about your last 10-hour drive kids 3-abreast across the back seat to visit the in-laws. I don't care how good your integrated car entertainment system is...

Now overlay the worry, the fear. The disorientation of losing your "space" by being given infinite amounts of it.

The "Heavy Tolls" article is read days after being popped with the latest unemployment report: 10.2% jobless. It's a one-two punch which throws the panorama of our national family circumstance into black + white. The job loss happens to us, but the effects are suffered by others. The others I'm talking about are those who didn't do anything to deserve this. Accident of birth, shared address.

It's the truth of parenting. Once we were owner-operators. We spent money, we owned the debt. We got drunk, we felt like shit. We spewed and fought, we kissed and made up. With a spouse, a family, these consequences are divided equally regardless of culpability. You feel like you have no control? Go inside your 10-year old.

No one is exempt from the pain and anger, the frustration and helplessness. It's been said that these kinds of experiences are character building, they teach lessons about what's important, about the moral rectitude of frugality. Those benefits are like pension monies, you realize them in your sixties. That is, if you haven't paid them out to survive along the way.

Resist. Relax. None of this is a blessing. But survive it intact, we must. The pay-now is to teach our children that we have what it takes to navigate the ship. A small ship, for a long journey.

Resource for survival: Heather T. Forbes Beyond Consequences Institute. Subscribe for a daily reflection aimed at the heart of resistance as it applies to parenting.

IN THE KITCHEN

Beating the pavement, making it happen, finding the angle. The way home from New York City today was the most vibrant pastiche of color. I'm doing what I can. I am a spouse, a partner, in the New Now.

The time is passing with each leaf as it drops. When it goes, it goes. When this time passes, it's gone.

Home, kids got here before me. Backpacks strewn and noise all around, in stereo. No school tomorrow. There's that effervescence of holiday, no rules, lots of potential.

What will they remember? That I came in from a day in the City and went upstairs to the computer? Or that I came in from a day in the City and turned on the oven, inviting sifters and stirrers to take their posts? There is no more creative place than in the kitchen.

Amy's Apple Pecan Cake

Adapted from Maida Heater's flourless apple cake

2 cups ground almonds

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

2 cups apples, peeled and chopped

1 stick butter (1/2 cup), room temperature

2 eggs

3/4 cup agave nectar - you can get this cheap at Trader Joe's, less cheap at a health food store

2 Tbsp plain yogurt

1 cup pecan pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk together almond meal, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon in a large bowl.

Cream butter and agave with hand mixer until light and fluffy. Fold in apples. Add eggs one at a time, stir in yogurt. Mix butter mixture with almond mixture. Mix in some of the pecans, if using. Sprinkle some on top.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Watch for pecans as they brown, they can burn in an instant. Pull the cake out when a toothpick comes out clean.

THE CITY

Our phone is ringing! And it's The Network. In these times, the most profound of concepts is the network. And thanks to our network, the phone is ringing.

I've just read "Netherlands" by Joseph O'Neill, which for my money is one of the most finely wrought novels of the year. Not just because it paints a richly layered portrait of the cultures I know and love best - England, Holland and New York. But because the story is told like a matrix. With these incredible yet diverse cities along the bottom axis, and every meaningful character profile along the side. The man, the woman, the family, the enigmatic friend. The portrait is of how each interacts and gets tangled up in their network, these cities, and how they survive.

Without the entanglements with people, we have no way out of the mire.

In the beginning, I arranged every minute into a social event putting John on stage. I invited, opened up, cooked for, laundered for, phoned, suggested, enticed and manipulated. I dumped my results on a desk and expected the opportunities to rise like gumbies and dance around John with exciting opportunities, offers of a hand, the answer. I did that for about a month. Until I crumbled in an exhausted heap for the weight of delivery. The truth is, this is not my search, it is not my job. And the more I work to deliver the gumbies I'm taking away from doing my own job, from raising my children, from caring for John and definitely from caring for myself.

The City, the notion of the City, was built on this concept of network. Cities were not haphazard, nor were they Utopian - they were architected out of "the belief in the real possibility of creating worlds of peace, order, beauty and well being. (That) people can, at times, all get along and build something bigger than themselves."

I'm quoting from a New York Times review of an exhibit in Washington DC's National Gallery of Art (1/30/09) called "Pride of Place: Dutch Cityscapes of the Golden Age". Washington couldn't seem farther away right now as our travel budget has been slashed to local driving and at-home entertainment, but if I could, I'd airlift to see this installation. Not only is it Holland, not only have I just read this amazing novel, but it is an examination in art and cartography of the City, as a living organism, a thought-out way of shoring up and ensuring the network. And it's not "the village" (as much as I respond to Hillary Clinton's expose' about what it takes), it's THE CITY. It's infinite in its possibility, and in the end, it'll be the City that provides the opportunity for all of us, to grow, and not to die trying.

Some resources for networking: http://www.womenatwork.com/, http://www.momcorps.com/

THE END OF THE LINE FOR SUV'S

Front page of the New York Times today, the leading photo was of a bundled up worker waving an American flag at what is presumably the last of a line of SUVs parading out from a closing plant in Wisconsin. The city-sized plant facility off in the background, the image illicits remorse and pity, a little bit of grief even, as the black, 17 ft long Chevy Tahoe mumurs by under the windy banner, the stars and stripes.

Plant closes, people lose their jobs, town loses its identity, its motor. It is tragic, sad, life will not be the same for thousands of people in these kinds of towns. But SUVs, they’re a ranch on wheels, have surely seen their day. 1999: John wanted one, so badly. Two kids, two dogs, more kids predicted - more, more, more. I always scoffed, the shape those cars take on the road to me is just gross, over-consumptive, everything non-European about us reflected in a car. So American. Now, with our new awareness of gas and its tolls, that grossness takes the shape of needless expense even to those who a little bit shamefully still drive them; the car in the category of fleets of roaring snowmobiles and plates so full of food they edge the salt, pepper and white vase of carnations off the table.

Explain my definition of ”gross” to the people who live in Janesville Wisconsin and I’ll wager they’d throw back a few more examples to make me avert my eyes, here in my suburban east coast kitchen. I love a Prius, they laugh at Priuses, no traction in the snow, nowhere to put the garbage barrel when you have to get to the dump. I was in line for a souped-up Highlander hybrid before John lost his job. Now, $600 a month for a car? We put snowtires on my 2000 station wagon for $542 and agree that it navigates the weather just fine. Our economic decisions not only don’t help the environment, they don’t help the folks out in Motor City either. But we’re taking steps that bring us closer to the other. Snow tires resonate for all of us, neither a Prius nor a bevy of snowmobiles ever will.

It’s almost the end of the year and my strange American survival mechanism, the one led by Hope, says that it’ll all be different once we have a 9 at the end of our xx/xx/xxxx. Obama and his dream team are on the way, and just the Hope factor will change everything for the better. I pray it will.

But - What what about me and my dream of a hybrid? What will become of the snowmobile driver in Janesville? What’s in store for that town, that vast and eery facility once vibrating with vast and eery motor cars? We will continue speaking a different language. We want sophisticated, high level answers to this global problem, I’m picturing a Janesvillean will want answers that put parts and pieces back in their hands. How will we take care of eachother, who will get the attention, who will get the jobs? When?

MONDAY MORNING

Monday morning is a bear. Always. No matter whether you work or don’t work. Monday morning exists to remind you of exactly who you are today, and you can’t run from it.

Our Monday morning was Charlie, long off his birthday weekend and feeling the worse for wear, giving us hell for breathing. Today’s Monday was realizing that a dear friend and sister of sorts is making a huge life change, leaving our life together in Amsterdam to revisit her own life in the Phillippines. When I remembered that this was her week to go I cried with all the pent up memories of when we lived together and co-loved my children during our 5 years in Amsterdam. After the tearfest I heard a bang and the Christmas tree fell flat on its ornamented face - water, glass, soggy presents everywhere.

I did my usual “JOOOOOOHN” and what do you know, he came down the stairs. He’s home to help me deal with domestic mishaps. Moodily and distractedly we mopped up and I muttered how it’s “our bad luck". John stepped on the jagged glittery point of a hanging star. He refused the Neosporin, then left the house.

Today I’m seeing signs. The tree fell - just a symbol of our bleak and jobless status on Christmas. When OH YEAH the phone rings and it’s the Vet confirming Leo the Lion’s 2nd puppy appointment, not a recruiter or an interested employer looking for exactly what John can do. A desolate sign that the human providers in the household are not on the radar screen of anyone, Leo the Lion is the one getting the phone calls.

My friend Suzanne said to me this morning that when she and Bob were navigating these same waters last year she played the role of Desperation Monitor - vetting each interaction (call, email, interview) with the question: “Are you feeling desperate?” Like when we were single, she recalled, when we really wanted a boyfriend, men would run the other way sensing the desperation a mile away.

Can you enjoy it right now? Can there be any down time? Can you find the joy, the silly moment? If not, can you sit and be quiet? Can you light a fire or make a collage or show your Partner or your children something pretty? Thinking we see the signs is pure and simple BUNK. There are no signs. It’s life as usual. We’re just not people as usual. The more sense we can talk to ourselves, the faster a surprise will come.

TALKING TO YOU FROM THE NO JOB VACUUM

Here we are. No matter how it happens, when you or your Partner loses a job, the ground disappears from underneath and the one and only thing you know for certain is this: YOU ARE STILL BREATHING.

This blog is a call-out to help come to terms with it. It’ll be one step at a time, and we’ll go all over the process map to cope through it all.

Look for music and food (even though I know songs sound dissonant and food tastes horrible); look for parenting and family coping skills (raise your hand if you’re feeling like the grim reaper in work-out clothes); listen for a little humor in the darkest of moments.

I’m doing this because I’m here with you. I think we can find hope and community in these tough times. During the long nights right after John lost his awesome job I’d lie awake and talk to myself, I’d plead with whoever helps us through endless nights to “meet me where I am”.

Through it all came the idea of this blog. I’m meeting you where you are. You’re not alone, so GO, tell your friends!
Charlotte