“At the risk of being crass, Mum, you do realize that you kick ass, right?”
“I do, don’t I!” – C., Mum
A belated post on my Mum, because I spent yesterday talking on the phone to her and having dinner at my in-laws’, like a good daughter should!
1. Mum, you were horribly, obnoxiously right about piano lessons. I’m glad you sat on my head for ten years so I could realize I liked them. I wish I had practiced more.
2. Thanks for letting me quit ballet. I regret doing it and I miss it, but that teacher was evil. You got me out of a bad situation, and taught me long term the value of really knowing how much I can take.
3. You taught me how to cook. I’ll never love it, but let me tell you, when I put my mind to it, even you would be impressed with what I can whip up!
4. You taught me how to stand up for myself and that sometimes it’s necessary to be a vicious, biting wench when it comes to sticking up for friends, family, and principles.
5. You also taught me to be a lady, and that it was more than sitting up straight, keeping my elbows off the table, and knowing which fork to use with which course (even though you were pretty good about covering those too). It’s that my actions directly affect everyone I come in contact with, and I’d better behave accordingly. I’m still working on this one, but I have high hopes for myself.
6. You taught by example that my education doesn’t ever end, and must be aggressively sought throughout life. Three degrees, four kids, ten moves across countries and continents, two dogs, and Cambridge later, you’re still learning and teaching.
7. You taught me the importance of belief and faith, even when it’s unpopular and hard, and that no set of principles is worth having if it’s not worth questioning, struggling over, and occasionally taking that Indiana Jones step into nothing.
8. You always trusted me, with school, boys, work, high school, and my own opinions. You gave advice when I asked for it, and let me go my own merry way when I didn’t. This quiet confidence in me kept me straight like helicopter parenting never could. Clever you.
9. More Dior, less Disney. Best lesson ever.
I stand by what I said, Mum, you totally kick ass.
Love,
Your Not Quite Perfectly Ladylike But Getting There Thanks to You Daughter
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. – Friedrich Nietsche, Beyond Good and Evil
In 2001 my family lived on an American military base on a godforsaken little island in the middle of the Pacific ocean. The joys of government service, n’est pas?
My day began at 4:30am when I and two other kids attended an early morning meeting for teenagers. Only one of us had a driver’s license so we carpooled together to this meeting, back again to catch a bus at 6:30. The island was tiny but the roads were so bad that it took over an hour to get just 30 miles to our school. I got out of school at 2:30pm, then had soccer practice until 5pm, and then back onto the bus for a ride that zigzagged back home and took longer than the initial ride to school did. I stumbled through the doors sometime between 7 and 8pm, did homework, and fell into bed. I was a shockingly well behaved teenager, but in retrospect that might have been because I was consistently exhausted.
September 11, 2001 didn’t start out too differently. That morning I climbed yawning into the car and the three of us drove off to our meeting. As we passed through the gates we noticed far more men in camouflage than usual, but chalked it up to some sort of training exercise and weren’t too alarmed when the heavy bars slid shut behind us.
But when we got to our destination, the youth leader was standing outside her car. Shivering. On a tropical island. The three of us braced for bad news, but even we weren’t prepared to be told that the United States had apparently been attacked.
Remember, we lived on a base and our parents were employed in the military or government of various countries. A million thoughts ran through my head: Are we at war? Will my family be separated? Will they send me and my siblings away? Is it even safe to travel? We have dozens of planes and ships stationed here – are we a target? And then, finally, how will I get home?
We weren't let off the base for days. And those of us who didn't have work to distract us watched this, over and over again, for a week.
It turns out that the base had utterly shut down, we could get off, but they weren’t letting anyone back on. But we had a secret weapon, my Dad’s considerable rank. We called him and he escorted us on base, and when we were stopped at the gates and denied entry, my usually mild mannered father snapped, “This is my daughter and she is coming in.”
That was when the fear really hit me.
10 years later that fear has actually largely dissipated. The world is the way it is. The nature of my father’s profession meant that we were frequent travelers and though the fear of terrorists never stopped me from getting on a plane, it would a lie to say that it never intruded on my travel thoughts and plans. I grew up in government and military circles which has meant that for the past ten years much of the people I knew were at war or at least directly affected by it, and not in ways confined to CNN or BBC news blips.
And now, 10 years later, the man who largely masterminded that day is dead.
It’s odd, especially since our hatred and fear of him has cooled somewhat. Mine has anyway. We’ve had other things to think about. Recessions, booms, elections, family, going to university, getting married, finding a job, etc. My life moved on while he hid in a mountain somewhere, hiding from half of the world and shunned even by some of his former allies who found that supporting him came at too frightening a cost (“Yes, of course we’re still pals, Osama, but the tanks are really mucking up the neighborhood so we’ll have to see less of each other…”). 10 years later an uprising of people, largely my age, overthrew tyrannical governments in his area of the world, or are still struggling to do so. They are the post 9/11 generation too.
Part of me thinks he should have had a trial and be made to face his victims. Part of me thinks that you can’t make a man who believes with all his soul that his vendetta of violence and blood is good realize that it is evil, no matter how many witnesses you call. Part of me thinks an assassination is a cowards way out, and part of me is fiercely glad he wasn’t treated like a leader or military commander but as the rogue operative he was. And part of me wonders if a man like him actually dies – he’s at the bottom of the sea, but his network is thriving and hate and ignorance are still winning in many parts of the world.
Frankly, happy in many ways as I am (and isn’t that an odd thing, to be happy because one man in six billion is dead!), it’s odd to live in a world without him. He epitomized treachery and evil, now he is gone. But not really. He is dead, his ideology is not.
“It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.”
~ Dylan Thomas
Buddy
Yes I know I sound narccissistic, but I need your help for school. What is your favorite childhood memory of me? I need to make a short story of it.
Gio
Probably all of our made up games we played on the trampoline
C.
I always liked jousting with those ridiculous bouncy-ball things.
Buddy
I need an exact memory to put into a story.
Gio
Then use the jousting one. Those were awesome
C.
What was our war cry again?
Gio
CHAAAAAAAAAAAARGE! Good times, good times…
Buddy
This isnt helping?
C.
Why not? Here’s your story. One day we were bored and Mom had banned us all from TV (we’d probably done something illegal). After she kicked us outside the three of us pouted, moped, and whined for a while before Gio picked up one of the bouncy balls. Me being the charming older sister that I am, decided to give chase on the other bouncy ball. You, four-year-old Buddy, were at the height of your knight-obsessed stage and recognized our idiocy for the potential genius of modernized jousting that it was. You ordered us to opposite sides of the yard to wait until you signaled, at which point we let out a battle cry and bounced with all our might at each other. First one dislodged lost. Thereafter every Sunday in the summer, we held tournaments.
Hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny.
Buddy
I cant write a whole page on “chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrge!!!”
It’s no secret that I’m a klutz but I exceeded myself this weekend. I kicked over a can of soda, stubbed my toe on J.’s textbooks, dropped his laptop (luckily on a sofa!), fell down the stairs at our flat, burned my hand making a (spectacular) sweet potato and brie flatbread, and somehow our HDMI cable isn’t working. I’m suspected, although I don’t know how this one could possibly be on me. Although the suspicion is justified. When visiting parents over Thanksgiving break, I picked up my mother’s laptop to check my email and the whole thing froze. I hadn’t even opened anything!
However, even I am not the supreme wrecker in our clan! That title belongs to Buddy. It was forever cemented when we were living in Brussels and about to move to the UK. Dad and Mum had gone over the Channel to look for housing and I was left in charge of the three younger kids for a few days. It passed largely without incident until the last day we were on our own.
Ah, Stone Age. How we miss thee...
Buddy wanted to watch a film on VHS (remember? Remember those days?) and had turned it on and inserted a tape when suddenly,
“C.!”
I was in the kitchen and ran out to find Buddy and Snickers staring opened mouth as a thick gray smoke poured from the machine’s tape flap. But this was no ordinary smoke! Instead of rising it sank heavily like stage fog and smelled vile.
Images of our parents returning to a burned out shell of a home catapulted me across the room. I yanked the plug from the wall, stumbled outside carrying the whole machine, and put in on our stone patio where all four of us hovered at a safe distance and watched smoke trickle from it. After the panic subsided and the trance ended, we rounded on the hapless Buddy.
“What did you do?”
“We could have died!”
“Mum’s going to murder you!”
Poor Buddy.
“I didn’t do anything! I just put a tape in! I’m sorry!”
Luckily an hour later the whole thing was extremely funny and when the parents returned we reenacted the whole thing with a great deal of flair. Nobody could explain the physics, electronics, or mechanics of the affair, so we just chalked it up to good old genetics.
“If it keeps up, man will atrophy all his limbs but the push-button finger.”
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
One of my brothers-in-law works for Motorolla, thus the family often benefits from new phones – sometimes for testing, sometimes just because he’s nice like that.
Saturday evening (the night of the Self Imposed Inquisition) I was having a girl’s night at Fairy’s house with GS, Sadie, and Elle and we were discussing Pieter’s homecoming later this month. He’s been abroad for a long while and the moment he gets back, they are turning him right about and all going on a trip to France, Belgium, and Switzerland – lucky devils!
Anyway, the subject turned to things he will need, quand il retourne aux Etats-Unis, after his extended jaunt and naturally enough the subject turned to phones. He’s resuming his business studies and my godmother wanted to know whether he would need a smart phone for his program. Which discussion segued naturally into a debate about whether smart phones are necessary in today’s society.
Pictured: my techno nightmare.
I said that although I think someday they will be, we’re not there yet. At least I’m not. I use my phone for talking to people and occasional text messaging (I’m old school and prefer to have actual conversations with people, and not just sound bytes) but not too much else. That and I lose it constantly. If it were up to me, we might never have moved on from stone tablets.
In fact, the analogy I used went like this: “Smart phones are like laser hair removal. I’d love it, but it’s way too pricey. A few years from now I’ll probably leap on the bandwagon late, but it will be cheaper. They’ll have come up with something newer and shinier to do the same job.” Verbatim. These are the sorts of deep discussions we have.
C. Canis Minor – classical philosopher.
And wouldn’t you know it, Sunday we had a family dinner with J.’s clan. Present was a sister-in-law visiting from Chicago, the one who happens to be married to the same brother mentioned above. And guess what presents she arrived with?
The irony of it.
So now I’m trying to figure out this fancy new interface and touch screen, terrified that any second now I’m going to push a button that will cause our phone bill to soar to several thousand dollars a month. Or that I’ll drop it. In a fit of paranoia I had to entire rearrange my purse so that my new phone has its own compartment and can’t get scratched by keys, lipstick, or any other paraphernalia.
“Guilt is the price we pay for doing what we are going to do anyway.” – Isabelle Holland
We went to dinner with J.’s parents over the weekend and afterwards, after shooing the men off, my mother-in-law and I took in some shopping and talked a bit about friends, family, and the upcoming move to grad school.
It was good to get her take on it all, because I appreciate her points of view – usually she’s right. But at one point, when talking about the move itself, which will be across the country/state, she started to tear up…and I froze, like the culturally confused, emotionally stunted useless lump that I am. Because naturally I felt that somehow it was all my fault. That I had lured her son into my bizarre world of regular continent-hopping, complicated familial relationship, and wanderlust, and out of a stable clan homestead away from all he holds dear. Heavy, Catholic-style-self-flagellating, corrosive guilt swamped me.
Of course I know that this is purely in my head. Both my in-laws are extremely supportive, fantastic people and they are just sad because most of their kids have already moved further away than is convenient, and now J. is too, and J.’s the baby, etc. But still, somehow I feel as if I’ve mucked up. Actually, technically, J. did . He picked the schools, but that didn’t matter. If he hadn’t married me he’d never have been encouraged in this rash sort of behavior like leaving native states – to say nothing of countries! “This,” my inner demon cackles, “is All Your Fault. Homewrecker.”
J. of course finds my angst hilarious.
” I made her cry,” I exploded the second we left my godparents house where we’d been visiting.
“No you didn’t.”
“I contributed! I’m a horrible daughter-in-law! I’m encouraging you to go to some of the top schools in the world, supporting your decision fully, and I’m awful because of it!”
“Not exactly,” he soothed.
I was not to be dissuaded. When debating whether to buy gas we decided against it because it was raining. “Like your mother’s tears!” I wailed. “She’s just going to miss us,” J. offered. “Because I’m an academic Jezebel who’s lured you away,” I cried, digging around in my purse for a hair shirt. “We’re close and it’s hard to see us move away,” he tried finally. “But I want to go somewhere else…I hate myself for it!” I probably would have leapt from the car to a quick death had the idea occurred to me then instead of just now.
Nearly two years as an exemplary daughter-in-law, torpedoed by a single crushing failure: I made my mother-in-law cry.
“Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right.” – Oprah Winfrey
A decade, dears. There have been revolutions, wars, natural disasters. There have been cures for diseases, leaps in technology, triumphs of humanity. The iPod is approaching its 10th anniversary. I’m 10 years on since starting high school…where does time go, exactly?
A big decade for me, all things considered. Lots of good stuff happened, some bad as well but surprisingly little in comparison I find (which belies all my complaining, shhh). My small galaxy of people had a pretty stellar year too. Jane had to move three times in one year as she and her husband struggled with the economy, jobs, and life, but now they seem pretty settled (and much closer to me than California!). Janssen had a lovely little girl. Wise is about to follow Jannsen’s maternal lead any second now and her husband got a clerkship post that they are thrilled about. Hennessy got married and bought a house. Sav is graduating and her husband got into the grad school of his choice – hurray! Venice moved (which I’m still not over) but it was the right choice for her and Val and they have a bright future ahead. Peregrine also moved back to DC, has a fabulous job and a very special – but sadly top secret – project she’s working on. Scarlett is in grad school in New York, dealing with personal demons (aren’t we all?) but doing so with her usual clear-eyed honesty and personal flair. Angel got a great new job. Margot is having some truly heinous battles in the teaching craft, but I’ve never seen her more awesome, (which, if you knew her, you would realize is a statement of gargantuan proportions). Dad retired, Mum got a job teaching at university and they moved to the US to enjoy retirement (by which I mean, Dad flung himself into manual labor to turn a patch of East Coast backwoods into an estate). Gio graduated high school and is on to uni himself. Buddy and Snickers started at a new school in a new country and are doing swimmingly.
Next year will find J. graduated and off to grad school, goodness knows where. Most likely we’ll be moving as all but one of the schools he’s applied to are in different states and/or countries. 2011 will be a year of adventures and I’m thrilled. It’s been too long since I’ve had one.
Obligatory Goals:
Shop less.
Eat better.
Save more.
Exercise longer.
Love harder.
Complain less.
Anticipate more.
Hope the New Year brings you all the adventures you desire, kittens. See you on the other side.
Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.
~Jim Davis
Hello, darlings. All alive out there, no major holiday-induced injuries? Good. We spent this holiday with J.’s family. Wrestling with nephews, performing in a small Christmas concert organized by nieces, and eating!
Honestly, I can’t remember eating so much anytime in recent memory. I struggle with eating enough, I just don’t get hungry very often – much to the confusion of my husband who marvels that I can survive on a diet that’s a fraction of his. Small amounts of food fill a small body up…usually.
No more pie! Just leave me!
I went completely overboard this weekend! Cinnamon Pecan French Toast, ham and piles of western potatoes (meaning slathered in sour cream, cheese, and onions), my culinary genius sister-in-law’s baked ziti, and not nearly enough salad. To say nothing of the goodies that came in stockings. And the candy scattered all over three houses. Oh dear.
Which, as you may have guessed, means that the obligatory New Year’s diet starts a bit sooner this year. The combined forces of Birth Control, laziness, and the all-consuming desire I have to hibernate in winter have turned my physique inside out and that ends today!
The town is one street long and almost all of the buildings look as if they were built in a previous century.
The children’s clothing store in town is called “Sugarbritches.”
Mail is delivered by Land Rover.
Half an hour away are some of the most gorgeous Georgian colonial era homes I’ve ever seen, each still with massive tracts of land attached.
One of our neighbors is named William Luck (not William, not Mr. Luck, he is always addressed by his full nomenclature) and he is utterly incomprehensible – my parents have to lip read to try and make out his conversation – but he’s welcome to hunt on our land whenever he wants.
The local barbeque joint is called Smokin’ Eddy’s, and apparently it’s to die for.
Strangely enough there is also a Portuguese resteraunt in town (who’da thunk it?).
Driving through the woods, is a surreal experience because, as Peregrine pointed out, it genuinely looks like someone with a chainsaw is going to leap out at you at any moment.
There is a hyperactive neighbor boy who is a pathological exaggerator (he has played in the NFL, trained with the marines, runs forty miles each morning before breakfast, and parachuted out of an airplane because teenage girls were chasing him in a lust hazed frenzy. Etc.).
It takes three people nearly a whole day to clear our lawn of leaves.
“My outer child is holding my inner adult hostage.” – Unknown
I have this problem. Going home to see family. Desperate for my family to think of me as a Real Live Grownup, before every visit I agonize over what to wear, debate whether or not I should get a more mature looking haircut to make me look older, and lecture myself very firmly to avoid bratty behavior, and so forth.
"Where's C.?" "Drat! We must have left her in Calais! Should we go back?" "Nah. We'll see her at Christmas."
See, a couple of weeks after I turned 18, my parents shot off to Belgium leaving me with my grandparents to fend largely for myself. I got myself off to university in the States and all settled in needing only rides to and from airports. I didn’t see my family for six months until Christmas. And then not again until I went home to work for the summer. Ditto the next year. My junior year I stayed in the States for most of the summer except for a two week holiday home to England and didn’t go home for Christmas at all.
My point? Lots of people, like J., leave near enough to their families that they grow up (fully) with them. All the major milestones are covered and both child and parents can transition through the chrysalis stage and watch the child-butterfly emerge into adulthood pretty seamlessly. (This is in ideal circumstances, I know it’s not as easy for everyone, but bear with me).
Alternatively, I go bumbling along more or less on my own gumption for huge stretches of time, growing up and developing into an adult, but largely out of view from my parents. Then, when I do finally get to see them, I’ve none of the requisite adult child skills or abilities to interact maturely with them. I slip into bad habits from six years ago, ones that (I could have sworn) I’d outgrown.
The real irony is that my parents do think of me as a Real Live Grownup, this inadequacy I feel is strictly in my head. My parents are fantastic, they’ve never treated as if I were younger, stupider, or less capable than I am. The problem is me. When I go home, I’m seized with the desire to wrestle with my siblings, pout when I don’t get my way, and roll my eyes at individual family members. An exact copy of me as a snotty 17 year old. Because I literally don’t know how to act 24 around them. It’s disgraceful.
I imagine there is some disconnect for them as well. After all, in one year I graduated, got a job, and got engaged, and planned a wedding completely apart from them. They were great sports about it all, but I wonder if they ever feel like they’re scrambling to catch up on me too?
Note: not six and eight anymore.
It’s getting better, but I’m really still an idiot in a lot of ways. See, this disproportionate view of development goes in the opposite direction as well. When I moved out, my sister was six, she’s now 13. Gio is a freshman at university right now, both he and Buddy are several feet taller than me and eat acres of food just to keep alive. When I moved out, my father was still in the midst of a nice, international career, my mum was mostly still raising kids. Now Dad is retired and Mum is teaching Western Civilization at university.
Where my family is concerned, I will probably never be a Real Live Grownup. The sense of constant vertigo is too strong. In my head, my brothers are still shorter than me, my sister is practically an infant, and my parents are at very different places in their lives. Coming home and looking two feet up into Buddy’s eyes or sharing clothes with my sister or visiting a new house (usually in a completely new country) is just too much to keep up with.
It’s just as well. Being a kid in my family isn’t too bad!
A belated post on my Mum, because I spent yesterday talking on the phone to her and having dinner at my in-laws’, like a good daughter should!
Small Dog Syndrome 