3 Beautiful Things, for February 1st

February brings a newness you feel but shouldn't believe. Rounding the corner, it's happening beneath our feet. Rebirth, growth, the tiny signs of thaw.

3 Beautiful Things for February 1st

1 - Waiting for the bus at 8 something this morning, we see a family come to their curb about 500 feet before our stop. Mom waiting with child, she walks out to the middle of our country road and dances a funny dance, legs akimbo. Child doubles over for her craziness.

2 - Reading Kathryn Stockett's "The Help", an eerily real novel about black maids and the white women they work for. Stockett's voice, she was sprung from the latter, is an innate memory, she knows the dialect, the love tinged with deep, faraway regret, the voice of a black woman raising white children. This novel is my chance to imagine what could have been, freedom and individuality for Dowdell, the black woman who "raised me". I salute you, Dowdell.

3 - At basketball practice for 7th and 8th grade girls, a perfect snapshot of 'before' and 'after'. Girls and women, arms entwined, jumping for the same balls. Before: the gangly beautiful pre-adolescents; childlike, blossom, unopened. After: full and free, an unnameable knowing. On one court.

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.

REALLY, THE WORST

Parenting moments, they're stories we need to tell. There's some kind of unspoken mechanism between us parents, in that when we tell our parenting stories we purge them, and let them go - we do this with friends and strangers alike. There's an element of forgiveness that comes when we confess. Telling my parenting stories is the closest I come to understanding the power of a Catholic's Confession of Sins.

This small post is a wide acknowledgement of the terribly misguided parenting decision I made on Tuesday, when all I was trying to do was get John's attention.

As always, I've boiled it down to two kinds of people. I do this in every situation or scenario, it's a most convenient scything of any experience. In the New Now, the first kind of person is he who falls into a minor and, we hope, short-lived depression when he loses his job. The other kind tries to maintain a constant (!) and healthy (!) flow of communication about feelings, while remaining ebullient (!) and fun loving (!). Guess who's who?

So John's been laid a little fallow in his drag of a mood, trudging through the last couple of weeks, including Spring's early moments, Easter's traditional festivities. There've been people everywhere, and that's the problem. EVERYWHERE, we've had a revolving door (see "second kind of person" above). John's and my communications, over the last week or so, have gotten more and more caveperson-like, he has headed inward and I've sought solace by creating a carnival(!*!*!*!)

The parenting moment? After attempts at getting through to my husband, in a festive (!), fun-loving (!) way, to absolutely no avail, I decided to take a Type A personality's standard route to honesty, I employed Shock and Awe and announced over lunch to my 3 young children and 2 even younger nieces - with John as a witness - that WE COULD NOT CONTINUE THIS WAY, OUR MARRIAGE JUST COULDN'T TAKE IT, HE HAD TO TAKE IT ON THE ROAD... You can plug in the rest.

Oh yes, I got John's attention. Eldest child left the house in inconsolable tears, middle one positioned himself between his sputtering parents pleading for us to "hug", youngest cried out that she loved us both. Nieces sat without appetite, eyes like saucers (I have since told their parents that I'd help with the therapy bills.)

Did I mean what I said? Not remotely! I love John and I am toally committed, just a mite annoyed at his self-indulgent moodiness. I am Type A, that's for sure, but it is high time I realized that my Type A communication strategies don't necessarily speak to the audience.

We've made up, nobody's scared about where they'll be sleeping tonight. I made absolutely NO point, I bombed. Thanks for listening, I feel forgiven.

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.

MY CHILD'S BIRTHDAY

It’s been 3 weeks since John came home with no job. We’ve spent 3 weeks ringing every number and knocking on every door. We’ve bypassed the step containing shame and humiliation in favor of getting there before anyone else does. Our top priority, our daily agenda, our meaning of life is to make contact with people who have a job.

Tomorrow is our son’s 10th birthday. Read this post as permission to be a terrible parent while you go after those contacts. It is not Charlie’s fault that his birthday happens now, but oh how easy it is to wish he’d been born in June like the other two! Here’s how we’ve managed to pull off a birthday from the vacuum’s abyss.

Pre-layoff, we’d planned a night in New York City, climbing the wall at Chelsea Piers, renting a limo to take us to dinner at Jekyll & Hyde, 6 kids and the 5 of us. Post-layoff? Not going to happen. John absorbed the disappointment as totally personal (this will be a running theme) - we ran a close risk of allowing Charlie to blame it all on himself. As with many moments needing clarity since this all went down, I took John out for a hike in the woods near our house and I jumped in and brainstormed a bunch of cheaper alternatives. these included the ones Charlie wouldn’t go for - bowling, movies, ice skating…

What flew? We borrowed an air hockey table and are hosting the Charlie Hockey Tournament, complete with prizes (glow-in-the-dark footballs), pizza and SODA! We’ve got “Miracle” and “Mystery Alaska” to watch on TV. NHL ‘09 on the Playstation 3. The key selling point? Mom and the sisters have to clear out for the night. Works for me!

Here’s the thing - under any other circumstance we wouldn’t have hesitated to say “No Stretch Limo - you’re TEN!” But now, when John + I are dealing with our own sense of loss and lack of resource, saying NO feels like another nail in the coffin.

Friends, we cannot forget who we are in this process. Nor can we blame others for where we find ourselves. Especially not the kids, the ones in the passenger seat. My theory for tonight is this: in a pinch, serve ‘em soda!