Wish you were here

Seriously, I really I wish you were here. Not in a “Look at this beautiful postcard! You should be here having an umbrella-adorned cocktail with me,” way. In an “I’m crawling through dirt and spider webs in a dark basement and you should be here doing it instead,” way.  Not in a “This place is fantastic! You would love it,” way. In an “I’m ankle deep in sewage and trying to talk shop with a couple of burly plumbers,” way.

Wish you were here!

I should back up a bit . . . My husband does a lot of traveling for his work. He’s been gone four of the past six weeks. And when he’s gone, he’s really gone. He’s not in L.A. or Houston or anywhere that would involve a quick flight home if absolutely necessary. Oh no, he’s in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or, currently, China.

The travel in and of itself wouldn’t be so bad. Of course I miss him and so does our son. We would certainly rather have him home with us than constantly gone, but we’re thankful for the fact that there is work to be had, international as it may be. For the most part, Chester and I have become accustomed to Matt’s trips and while we don’t like them, we’re a pretty good, highly functioning little team when he’s gone. It isn’t the travel that’s a problem; it’s the fact that all sorts of issues arise during the travel. If something drastically difficult or trying is going to happen, it happens when Matt is gone and it happens almost every time he is gone. It’s a variation of Murphy’s Law – if anything can go wrong, it will – and it will be when your husband is far, far from home and you are keeping the house, your job and an extremely active child held together and moving forward on an unstable combination of sheer determination, crossed fingers, caffeine, pinot noir and popsicles. (The caffeine and pinot are for me; the popsicles are for Chester. Just to clarify, lest someone think I’m gorging myself on sugary frozen treats and letting my five year old drink wine.)

I used to think the catastrophes that occurred in Matt’s absence were a crazy coincidence, but at this point there are far too many to rationalize with such an innocent explanation. I’m convinced a dark force of the universe is at play. I’ve lost track of all the episodes. But these are some of the highlights (if that’s the right word).

Matt was on a trip when Chester’s first stomach flu struck at eight months old. Chester was playing quietly and happily in his Pack n’ Play, which, now that I think about it should have tipped me off that something was wrong. (That was the first and last time Chester was quiet or happy while confined to the Pack n’ Play.) I looked up from whatever I was doing just in time to see him puking. I had no idea such a tiny being could produce that much vomit. I spent the next hour trying to keep him from crawling into trouble, while I thoroughly cleaned the Pack n’ Play. I can’t imagine this task taking an hour now, but at the time I was profoundly sleep deprived and a psychotic new parent who was certain the world would end if everything was not 100% sanitized at all times.

Illness struck again while Matt was on the road shortly before Christmas when Chester was three and a half. Ah, the Christmas Fiasco of 2009, one of my all time-favorites. It all started when Chester woke up one morning with a nasty case of pink eye. I had a babysitter come over to watch him while I went to an evening meeting at work. I was just finishing around 7 p.m. when my phone rang. It was the babysitter: “Hi Ronda, this is Karen. You don’t need to rush home or anything, but I wanted to let you know that Chester has been throwing up every 15 minutes for a couple of hours now. You might want to pick up some of those Pedialyte popsicles.” By the time I arrived home, Pedialyte popsicles in hand, he had thrown up on the couch, on the floor, on the coffee table and all over himself multiple times. Karen had done her best to clean up and nearly every towel in the house was in the laundry room. By the time Chester stopped puking at 5 a.m. I hadn’t slept a wink and had done more loads of laundry than I could count. A couple of days later, he was on the mend and I thought we were out of the woods – another disaster dealt with. I was mistaken. Shortly after going to bed on Friday night, Chester woke up complaining of an “itchy leg.” I thought he was having a bizarre dream, but his complaining persisted. When I turned on the light to see what was going on, I found an angry, welted, red rash not only on his leg, but over his entire body. A phone call to the after-hours nurse and a lukewarm bath later, we were in the car, headed to the 24 hour pharmacy for Benadryl. We passed through a bar-hopping portion of town and I’ll never forget thinking, “It’s one in the morning! What are all these people doing out?” It took me a while, but I figured it out, “Oh yeah! Friday night . . . I remember that!”

About a year ago, we had another medical emergency involving impact to Chester’s head, repeated vomiting and an entire night at Children’s Hospital ER. The day started well; I took Chester to Rudy’s Barbershop for a haircut and then we headed across the street to Hot Mama’s Pizza. I frequented Hot Mama’s in my young, single days, so I love taking Chester there and marveling at the unexpected and wonderful changes life brings. Hot Mama’s is kid-friendly enough. It’s not the kind of place that passes out coloring sheets and crayons, but it’s a hole-in-the-wall, dive joint that plays good, loud music, and serves pizza and soda. What’s not to love? The only problem is the seating – high barstools are the only option. I tried to impress upon Chester the importance of sitting still and being careful. I know full well that “sit still” and “be careful” are incomprehensible phrases to the little boy brain, so I’m not sure why I bothered. Chester appeared to be listening. He looked at me, nodded his head and then proceeded to wiggle right off the stool, landing smack on his head on the concrete floor. After the initial panic and crying subsided, he seemed fine. Later that evening we met some friends for dinner. We had just ordered our food when Chester turned to me, said, “Mommy, I don’t feel good,” and barfed all over my shirt and the floor. I scooped him up and rushed to the bathroom, leaving our poor friends and the unlucky wait-staff to deal with the mess at the table. I peeled my shirt off and lamely attempted to rinse it in the sink. I wracked my brain about what to do: Wear the shirt? Nonchalantly proceed back to the table in a hot pink lace bra? Neither option seemed feasible. Finally it hit me – I had a coat at the table that was comprised of a shell and a liner. If I could get to the table and retrieve the coat, I could ditch my vomit-soaked shirt and simply wear the liner. I was thinking out loud and noticed Chester staring at me, wide-eyed. “Mommy?” he said, “You’re not going to go out there like THAT are you?” “No Chester,” I said, “I’ll have to put the wet shirt back on just to get out there and back.” He looked extremely relieved. “Oh good, because if you went out there like that, people would see your  . . . um, your . . . THOSE!” he said as he motioned in the general direction of my chest.

My plan worked and we managed to get through the rest of the dinner without incident. By the time we pulled into our driveway, I was blaming the whole episode on sugary snacks. We were minutes, if not seconds, from getting out of the car when Chester started puking again. After several more rounds, I got him tucked in and went to bed thinking it must be a stomach bug. It wasn’t until I was drifting off to sleep that I thought back to the fall off the stool and began wondering if there might be a connection. It worried me enough to get up and call the after-hours nurse who instructed us to go to the hospital immediately. We checked into Children’s Hospital ER at about 10 p.m. And then we waited, and waited, and waited while Chester puked into trash cans and bedpans. For whatever reason, every kid in the city was sick or injured on that particular night. To make a long story a little less long, there was a lot more waiting – waiting for an intake nurse, waiting for the resident doctor, waiting for the attending doctor, waiting for an MRI and waiting for results. Thankfully nothing was wrong with Chester’s adorable little head; it was just a coincidence that he came down with a stomach bug mere hours after a significant fall. We got home around 4 a.m. and a very short two hours later, Chester was up and ready to go as if nothing had ever happened. Of course.  

There has been a laundry list of other minor illnesses and injuries – I’ve thrown my back out twice in my life, both times in the past five years and both times when Matt was out of town – but not all of the bad luck that befalls us in Matt’s absence involves medical issues. Oh no, we’ve had ant infestations, clogged toilets, more flat tires than I can count and a fairly significant car accident to deal with.

Of all the ridiculous fiascos we’ve had, the most current has got to be one of the most dramatic and unbelievable. It ranks because of its one-two punch cruelty, its inclusion of things I hate (namely spiders, coldness and sewage) and its staggering financial impact. It all started last Sunday night after a long day of work. I arrived home to find Chester and his babysitter sitting in the dark. “There was a burning smell so we turned everything off,” Karen reported. I could definitely smell it, but I couldn’t figure out the source. An hour later, I noticed the house was getting colder and colder despite my repeated attempts to crank up the thermostat. A phone call to Matt in the middle of his work day in China confirmed that something must have gone wrong with the furnace. “You’re going to have to go down in the basement and check it out,” Matt calmly instructed. My response was an incredulous “WHAT?!” followed by a swift and firm, “No way!” Our basement is unfinished. (“Unfinished” is putting it nicely.) Half of the basement is concrete and exposed wood, the other half is earth, aka dirt, soil and all the creepy crawlies that live in it. Guess which half the furnace is in? I make a point of spending as little time as possible in our basement and would rather be subjected to all sorts of awfulness than venture into the dirt side. I steeled myself, grabbed a flashlight and outfitted Chester in his rain boots before we made the descent. With Matt on “Face Time” (as if he could protect me from spiders through our phones – the iPhone is an amazing device, but as far as I know, there is not yet an app for that), I did what I had to do. We determined something was definitely wrong and that we would have to suffer through a cold night and call the furnace people in the morning. My final task was to flip the furnace switch to “off.” Apparently there is some mercy, goodness and light in the world, because I was able to do it using a long dowel found in a corner of the basement, thus preventing me from crawling any further into the dirt. We bundled up and had a good space heater upstairs, but when we woke up in the morning, it was 28 degrees outside and 48 degrees inside our house. Brrrr.

I spent Monday morning waiting for the furnace guy to arrive and the afternoon waiting while he fixed it. The computer board was fried – literally a blackened, melted mess. The good news is that replacement parts were available. So, I got to spend $1,500 to repair my existing furnace, instead of $5,000 to purchase a new furnace, and it’s a good thing because the excitement was just beginning.

We had happy, warm, peaceful nights in our house Monday and Tuesday, and I actually thought I might have a chance of catching up at work before all hell broke loose Wednesday morning. Still bleary-eyed, I went into our downstairs bathroom and found myself ankle-deep in sewage – a very bad start to a day. I cleaned up the mess, plunged the toilet and it flushed just fine. Relieved, I tried one more flush to be sure – massive quantities of sewage once again spilled into my bathroom. Cursing and crying, I cleaned up again. “We’ll just have to use the upstairs bathroom until Daddy gets home and figures this out,” I told Chester. This is the kind of thing husbands are for, right? Before we left the house for the day, I ventured back into the downstairs bathroom one more time and . . . stepped into ankle-deep sewage. Clearly, a bigger problem than I had initially suspected. I rushed Chester to school, called the plumber, resigned myself to another missed day of work and waited.

It didn’t take long for the plumbers to figure out something significant was going on. Just how significant was unclear until they jack-hammered open a chunk of my driveway, dug up the main sewer line and cut it open. Well, actually they didn’t have to cut it open, the 87 year old, terra cotta pipe simply disintegrated. (Clay! What were the contractors of 1925 thinking?) A solid mass of roots and muck was revealed, packed so tight it was formed to the pipe’s exact size and shape. The pipe was breaking and clogged for most of the way to the street, where our sewer connects to the city system. The verdict was in – we need to replace the entire thing to the tune of $12,250. The grand total with tax is a whopping $13,463. I don’t know about most people but we don’t have that kind of money sitting around waiting to be spent on something as boring (and yet damnably necessary) as a sewer line. I gritted my teeth as I extended our home equity line of credit, futilely attempting to steady my breath and calm my churning stomach. All I can think about now is that we could have taken several exotic vacations that would have resulted in lifelong memories, or I could have acquired a drop-dead stunning piece of sparkle that would have delighted me forever. We could have purchased a new car to replace one of our rapidly aging ones. I’d even take replacing the roof (which we desperately need to do) over a new sewer line; at least you can SEE a roof. But no, instead, I dropped fifteen grand this week on a part for my furnace and a pipe that resides under the ground and carries poop. Glamour factor: Zero.

In summary, there is a dark force working against me. It causes disaster and destruction while Matt is traveling and I’m home alone trying to be a responsible home owner, a good mom and a competent professional at the same time. This would be worse if I thought Matt enjoyed being on the road, but I know he doesn’t. He crams his 6’6” frame into airplanes for crazy-long flights. He stays in hotels that are, at best, business-traveler-bland. He sleeps very little, stresses a lot and works like a madman. All the while very much wishing he could be home instead.

Of all the bad weeks that Chester and I have had while Matt is away, this has been one of the worst. So maybe “I wish you were here” isn’t the best way to express my sentiments. Heck, I don’t even want to be here! Why would I wish it on someone else? How about this instead . . .

I wish we were both there.

It's Grand

My family is a classic example of the modern norm: People moving far away from families of origin for school or jobs or other adventures, and then starting their own families in relative isolation from extended relatives. I currently live 500 miles from my parents and air travel isn’t a great option since they live two and a half hours from an airport of significant size. My husband’s parents live on the other side of the country and his siblings are scattered about as far and wide as you can get within the contiguous United States: Seattle, Columbus, Pittsburgh and Austin. I didn’t think much of this situation one way or the other until we had a child.

I have a fantastic relationship with my parents and I’ve always missed them, but now I miss them like crazy. I am insanely jealous of friends who have their parents down the street, in the next town or even within a couple of hours. I fantasize about how much easier my life would be if one of Chester’s grandmas were around to pick him up in a pinch, provide a much needed date night or spend a couple of hours with him so I could get to a yoga class on the weekend. And I’m not just envious of the built-in help that nearby grandparents provide; I’m also jealous of the time spent together and how it nurtures and benefits all the relationships involved.

My mom recently headed home after a wonderful week and a half visit. I had a rather obvious, but profound nonetheless, realization the night before she left. We were having dinner at our neighborhood Thai restaurant. Chester and my mom were laughing and playing on their side of the table, Matt and I were having a pleasant conversation on our side. It felt so natural and normal and good, and it hit me like a ton of bricks, “Wow, this is how it was for the vast majority of history!” (Maybe not eating lemongrass tofu and drinking Singha, but the extended family part.)

While the nuclear-family-in-relative-isolation trend is recent considering the course of human history, I’m not the first generation in my family to do it this way. For most of my childhood, we didn’t live near any of my grandparents either. There was a brief stretch of living two or three doors down the street from my mom’s parents when I was around four years old, and I still remember it, these 30-some years later, as a charmed time.

We lived several states away from my dad’s parents – I can probably count the times I saw my dad’s father on one hand. We only visited my grandma every few summers, and because she ran a bar for a living and slept during the days, I didn’t see her much. When I was eleven years old, we moved to my dad’s hometown where his mother lived. Even then, I only saw her occasionally – mostly on holidays – and we were never close. She came across as judgmental and seemed to care far more about her Daschund than any human-being in her life. As an adult, I’ve heard stories about her – how she spent whole summers as a young girl trekking through the Oregon wilderness on a horse, for example – that make me wish I had gotten to know her better.

I had a close relationship with both of my mom’s parents, but my grandpa Chester and I had a special bond to say the least. The year or two we lived next to them was truly magical for me. I loved being able to run down the street and see my grandpa any time I wanted. I told him secrets. We built towers and cities out of blocks. We played “Barrel of Monkeys,”  “High Card Takes the Trick,” and “Go Fish.” We grew pollywogs in my plastic pool. We made trips to A&W for root beer floats. He was particularly fond of taking walks and I was always willing to tag along – he had a way of making a simple jaunt around the neighborhood seem like a grand adventure. To put it simply, my grandpa was the coolest, most fun person in the universe as far as I was concerned. He even had a “hook” instead of a right hand. It was like having the kindest and most loving pirate in the world as my very own grandpa. What could be better than that, for crying out loud?! (Answer: nothing.) He occupied a place in my heart and a status in my mind that no one else could fill, not then and not since. 

Me and my Grandpa Chester

  

When we moved to Brookings, Oregon in 1983, my mom’s parents decided to move there too. Any anxiety I felt about being the new girl, in a new town was completely overshadowed by the excitement of living near my grandpa again. I couldn’t wait to sleep over at their house on the weekends, explore new walking routes and have all sorts of adventures. It was, indeed, as wonderful as I had hoped . . . for a few short months. My opportunity to live near my grandpa again ended tragically and much, much too soon when my grandpa took his own life. After that, my grandma moved to California to be near my uncle. She passed away about five years later when I was in high school. I never got to know her very well – when my grandpa was alive, I was attached at the hip to him. After he died, my grandma was (understandably) depressed. She cried every time she called our house and that was difficult for a self-absorbed teenage girl to handle in an empathetic manner. I got into the habit of passing her off to my mom as quickly as I could when I did end up with one of her calls.

I don’t think a day has gone by in my life that I haven’t thought of and missed my grandpa. The emotions have gone back and forth over the years from shock to confusion to anger to sadness, but mostly I just miss him and wonder what my life and our relationship would have been like had he been around long enough to know me as a teenager, a college student, an adult. I still admire him and hope that he would be proud of me. When I had my son, there was no question that he would be named after his great grandpa. There is a photo in my son’s room of my grandpa wearing his signature cowboy hat. Chester asks about him a lot “Where is his arm?” (Good question. He lost it in a farming accident.) “Was he a cowboy?” (Yes, he was.) “Did he ever see me?” (Sadly, no, he did not.)

Given my relationship with my grandpa Chester, it has been fascinating and emotional to watch the relationship develop between my son Chester and my mom. To say they are “close” is a gross understatement of reality. They are like two peas in a pod. Seeing the two of them together is like watching my own memories – it’s as if they are a reflection, a remnant, a recreation of my grandpa and me. I could just sit and watch them together for hours, and I’d very much like to do it more often than two or three times a year.

Chester and his "Grammy" (aka my mom)

Chester was not happy when my mom left after this most recent visit. He took to calling her “Grammy” during her stay and for days he made tearful demands for her . . .

“Chester, what would you like for dinner?”

“I want my Grammy?!”

“Have a good day at school. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Will Grammy be with you when you pick me up?”

“No, Chester, Grandma had to go home.”

“I want Grammy!”

“OK, Chester it’s time for your bath.”

“I want Grammy!”

“Hey Chester, do you want to watch a movie with me?”

“I want Grammy!”

You get the idea. It has been a little over a week now and he has finally settled back into day-to-day life without “Grammy,” but we all miss her and the easy happiness that seemed to flow when she was here.

Chester doesn’t get to see my parents nearly enough, and he has even fewer opportunities to see Matt’s parents. We live on opposite sides of the country, which makes frequent visits problematic for a number of reasons, both financial and logistical. The times Chester has spent with his “Grandma and Grandpa B” have been truly wonderful. He was immediately drawn to my father-in-law the first time they saw each other when Chester was a year old. I will never forget him sitting in Grandpa B’s lap, pulling and snapping his suspenders over and over again with smiles and giggles of delight. Since our last visit with them a year ago, Grandpa B and Chester have a running joke about potato chips and Chester’s reluctance (OK, downright refusal) to share them.

Matt’s mom is the quintessential grandma in the spoiling sense. If there were such a thing, she would be the undefeated, world champion of doting grandmas. She adores Chester and makes everything all about him (in a beautiful, self-esteem-nurturing way). When we visited them last Thanksgiving, Grandma B kept telling him “Chester, this is YOUR party! This is all for you.” He was eating it up and Matt and I kept shooting each other this-is-really-sweet-but-he-is-going-to-be-unbearable-when-we-go-home looks. One day, while they were snuggled up on the couch together watching a cartoon, she said it again, “Chester, this is YOUR party. You are the STAR!” He thought for a few seconds and said, “If I’m the star, does that mean everybody else is just ornaments?” Now if that isn’t how a grandma is supposed to make you feel, I don’t know what is.

Fortunately, the love runs deep in all directions between Chester and his grandparents; deep enough to translate through cards and emails and phone calls and sharing photos via the internet. I still wish we got to see them all more often and I dream of how wonderful it would be to have them living close by. For now we’re counting the days until we go to “Grammy” and grandpa’s house for Christmas, and I’m not-so-subtly reminding my mom that there are many lovely homes available for sale, right here in our neighborhood.   



I Rock(ed)

Apparently last weekend was the Weekend of the Rock Show. Somehow I missed it and no one bothered to tell me. But, in the interest of honesty, my weekend wouldn’t have looked any different had I been in the know, so it doesn’t really matter. Friday night rolled around and all I wanted to do was go to bed early. As I sat on the couch, too tired to drag myself to bed, I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed. An astonishing number of people were at Key Arena seeing Journey, Foreigner and Night Ranger; some were enjoying Ryan Adams at Benaroya Hall and still others were gearing up for Death Cab for Cutie on Saturday. Heck, someone’s ten year old daughter was rocking out at a Taylor Swift show. Me? I really wanted to stay up and watch the premiere of Pearl Jam Twenty, Cameron Crowe’s new documentary with never-before-seen archival footage on PBS. Sadly, I didn’t want to stay up and watch it nearly as much as I wanted to go to bed. I know. I rock.

     

I wasn’t always so lame when it comes to rock shows. In fact, I’ve spent far more than my fair share of time experiencing live music . . . in dark clubs with sticky floors, in stadiums with terrible acoustics and at festivals with Honey Buckets and lemon-fights. (Does anyone else remember the Frankfurter lemonade lemon-fights that were de rigueur at Seattle area outdoor rock festivals in the mid-nineties?) I moved to Seattle at a great time in the storied Seattle music scene. I arrived two and a half months after the death of Kurt Cobain, so I was a little late for the grunge explosion, but there were still plenty of fantastic things happening, especially for a girl who had spent the previous four years in sleepy Corvallis, Oregon. During my early and mid-twenties, I practically lived at Seattle’s best music venues of the era: the Crocodile Café, RCKCNDY, The Off Ramp, Moe’s Mo’ Rockin’ Cafe and the OK Hotel.

It used to be that I wouldn’t miss a great rock show. (Well, except for that time I foolishly decided to stay in my dorm room and study for a midterm instead of seeing Nirvana at a small venue right after the release of Nevermind. That was some fantastic decision-making right there.) I drove ten hours, round-trip, through the night to see Morrissey. I stood in line for three hours in the snow (no kidding) to get tickets for Smashing Pumpkins at the Moore Theater in the days when they could have sold out the Key Arena. I devoted hours to studying the Bumbershoot line-up each year and spent all day, every day at Seattle’s famous music festival. (Keep in mind that this was back when Bumbershoot lasted a full four days, not the measly, wimpy three days that it currently spans.) I never missed a Lollapalooza or an Endfest, and I made regular trips to the Gorge, fighting horrendous traffic and exerting super-human effort to stay awake on the drive home.

Ah, those were the days. Time has passed (as it does) and things have changed (as they do). These days, I can’t even get motivated to give up a couple of hours of sleep to watch a rock documentary while seated comfortably on my own couch. What has happened to rocker Ronda? I attribute my descent into live music apathy to three factors: 1) I am old, 2) I got burned out, and 3) I give at the office.

Number one: I am old

“I am old” put more accurately is “I am in a phase of life where I have significant responsibilities that do not happily coexist with a rock and roll life style.” Among my responsibilities are a demanding job that requires me to work late nights regularly (see number three below) and a demanding young child who requires me to wake up early in the morning. Are you seeing the pattern that makes staying out late at a rock show, stumbling home in the wee hours and waking up with a hangover and ringing ears a problem? It works when you’re in your 20’s and don’t have a kid or a job where the buck stops with you; not so much when you’re in your late 30’s and have both. Like I said, I’m old.

Number two: I got burned out

As my equally live-show-apathetic husband said recently, “I’ve been there and done that, and not just a little bit – I’ve done a lot of it. In fact, I did so much of it, for so long, I was beginning to lose my dignity.” I don’t know if he was losing his dignity, but he has seen quite a few rock concerts. He set the bar high with his first – The Rolling Stones, “Some Girls” tour at Chicago’s Soldier Field in 1978 when he was barely 15. That’s a tough one to beat. (I sent him a text asking what year it was and which tour. Two simple questions and I got an instantaneous, enthusiastic and lengthy reply claiming it was, and I quote, “the best day of my teenage life,” citing the exact day – July 8 – and providing me with the set list. In case you’re wondering: Let It Rock, Honky Tonk Women, Lies, All Down the Line, Starfucker, When the Whip Comes Down, Tumbling Dice, Beast of Burden, Just My Imagination, Shattered, Respectable, Far Away Eyes, Love in Vain, Happy, Sweet Little Sixteen, Brown Sugar and Jumping Jack Flash.) As if his first concert wasn’t enough to be jealous of, he was in attendance at Pearl Jam’s famed 1992 concert at the Moore Theater - the one in the Even Flow video. The list goes on like that for many years and many concerts.

While my rock show resume is nothing like Matt’s, I’ve also been there and done that quite a bit. My first show was INXS on the “X” tour in 1991. Not the Rolling Stones, but certainly a solid first concert. At a particularly amazing Violent Femmes concert in 1992, I didn’t notice or bother to care that I was getting squished against the barrier at the front of the stage so hard that I woke up the next morning in excruciating pain with a giant black bruise across my hips and belly. I’ve seen great shows and bad shows. I cherished every time (and there were many) that I watched Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley sing from his precarious perch atop a monitor – each time thinking it would be the last. I saw Sonic Youth at their worst – Thurston Moore so wasted he couldn’t stand up, much less play – and at their best – the extended noise jams for which they are so well known. I saw Jane’s Addiction play a small venue in Salem, Oregon, where the show lasted maybe 20 minutes because Perry Farrell kept yelling insults at the audience before storming off stage. I’ve seen Pearl Jam and Peter Gabriel more times than I can count. I’ve seen unbelievably amazing shows like David Byrne and unbelievably awful shows like Bush opening for No Doubt at the Tacoma Dome (the ticket was free, in my defense). Anyway, the point is, after many years of rock concert-going, I realized I could only crowd surf and mosh and have bloody tampons flung at me from stage (yes, it actually happened at an L7 concert) so many times before it all started to blend together and lose its luster.

Number three: I give at the office

I’m a performing arts presenter. Putting on shows is what I do, day in and day out. Now granted, the shows I’m doing aren’t Alice in Chains at the Off Ramp or REM at the Gorge, but I do see and hear a lot of music. I’m accustomed to listening to demos for about two minutes tops or watching live showcases at conferences that last twelve minutes, so it’s no surprise that when I’m an hour into a show as an audience member my mind starts wandering. All I can think about is whether the band is easy to work with or if they are a pain-in-the-ass. I find myself wondering what their hospitality rider entailed. Did they request all raw, organic, local foods or did they insist on fried chicken? Did they demand one hundred pre-cut orange slices or did they want their fruit whole, uncut and unpeeled? Did they need obscure British throat lozenges? Were they adamant that they needed access to the venue from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. the night before the show? Did they accuse the presenter of being racist because he or she foolishly forgot to provide properly sized dinner plates? Yes, each and every one of these scenarios has, in fact, happened to me. As a result of my experience as a presenter, I have both a short live music attention span and a lot of show-related baggage.

Now, lest I come across as completely jaded and lame, I’m happy to report that I do still occasionally get out to concerts for leisure, and sometimes I even surprise myself by having a great time. It was just two years ago in Boise, Idaho (of all places) where I saw a Gogol Bordello show that completely blew my mind. I danced and drank (PBRs no less) excessively. I left sweat-drenched, with my ears ringing and a smile on my face, thinking “Now THAT’S a rock concert!” I see Neko Case any chance I get. Her poetic lyrics and gorgeous voice (I read a great review somewhere that said she sounds like the tortured ghost of Patsy Cline) never fail to leave me practically weeping over the beauty of it all. While I do go out and see shows for fun, these days most of my amazing music moments happen at the shows I present – seeing Suzanne Vega perform “Tom’s Diner” for a group of high school students so transfixed you could have heard a pin drop, watching Al Stewart sing “Year of the Cat” or Arlo Guthrie do “This Land is Your Land” in my tiny little venue, witnessing the Blind Boys of Alabama bring an audience to their feet in joyful dancing – these moments fill my heart with hope and happiness that live music still speaks to my soul.

More often than not though, even at a show that’s really great, when I get past the twelve minutes of a typical showcase, my feeling is “Yep, I’ve got it. I came, I saw, I rocked. Can I go home and go to bed now?”

Did you hear the one about the mermaid and the whale?

Autumn is, without a doubt, my favorite season and it was a beautiful fall morning in Seattle – gray, slightly misty and chilly enough for a cozy sweater and boots.  My morning was great.  Pandora treated me well during my trip to the gym. (I’ve long suspected that a great Led Zeppelin song has near magical capabilities and now I know that it can specifically take a treadmill run from “meh” to amazing.) I got lots of hugs and kisses from my sweet son, and there is really nothing better than that, and my commute was “easy, peasy, lemon squeezy” as Chester would say.

I parked my car and had a brief “driveway moment” as I finished listening to the ever-fabulous Dolly Parton beg Jolene not to steal her man, even though she can. After obtaining my beloved morning chai latte, I contentedly settled in at my desk. When I logged in for my routine pre-work Facebook check-in, I saw something that bothered me – the Mermaid versus Whale story – on several friends’ pages. I’ve seen it, in various iterations and settings, a number of times over the past year or so.  In case you haven’t read it, or need a reminder, here it is: 

Recently, in a large city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tanned woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said: THIS SUMMER DO YOU WANT TO BE A MERMAID OR A WHALE? A middle aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious
humans). They have active sex lives, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales that they raise with great tenderness. They have a wonderful time with dolphins, stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Barren Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and have virtually no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world. Mermaids don’t exist. If they did, they would be lining up outside the offices of psychoanalysts due to identity crisis: Fish or human? They don’t have sex lives because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? They cannot bear children. And who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store? Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad. The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only
skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my
kids, a good dinner with my husband and a coffee with my friends. With time we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room it distributes out to the rest of our bodies.  So we aren’t fat, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy.

So there you have it, Mermaid versus Whale.  Every time I see this piece, it is inevitably followed by innumerable comments agreeing that it would be far better to be a whale than a mermaid, proclaiming what a beautiful sentiment it is and thanking whoever posted it for sharing. And every time I see this piece, it irritates me.  Here’s why:

“Whale” is the wrong answer.  So is “mermaid.”  The right answer to the question “Who would you rather be?” is “Me.”  I don’t want to be a whale, I don’t want to be a mermaid, and I’m tired of the false dichotomy that this story and others like it creates.  Yes, we are in an age where our brutally pervasive media heavily influences standards of beauty.  People come in all shapes and colors and sizes, and there are many variations of beauty.  We should celebrate that without putting down any of those shapes and sizes of people, including the skinny ones.

I’m thin.  It’s partially my genes, but it’s also because I am thoughtful about what I eat and I exercise regularly.  I do those things not because I’m obsessed with obtaining a mass-media-defined ideal of beauty, but because I want to feel good and be healthy.  And guess what?  I enjoy every second of all of it.  I love eating reasonable quantities of healthy foods because they taste good and make me feel energetic and well.  Exercise is at the very heart of my existence – physical activity is where I clear my mind, release stress, give thanks for everything good in my life, refocus and have a plain, old good, entertaining time.

Why do pieces like Mermaid versus Whale imply that being thin means being miserable? Mermaids may not exist, but happy, healthy, thin women do. I’m not lonely and sad. I don’t have identity issues. I have wonderful dinners with my husband and coffee with great friends. I have a beautiful son and I eat ice cream with him plenty. We also do lots of other fun things together like take walks, ride bikes and play tag. Eating ice cream isn’t the only way to have fun for heaven’s sake. I don’t eat ice cream every night and I don’t eat a gallon of it at a time, because I don’t need to do that to have fun and it wouldn’t be healthy.  Sure, eating ice cream is enjoyable. The same could be said of smoking. I don’t smoke because it isn’t healthy for my body and I don’t eat ice cream in great quantities because it isn’t healthy either.

I’m all for broader definitions of beauty, especially since so much of what makes someone beautiful is who they are and not what they look like. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Haven’t we all had the experience of thinking someone was gorgeous and then, after having gotten to know them, found ourselves wondering why we ever thought they were attractive? Or, conversely, meeting someone who didn’t catch our eye at first, but who became absolutely breathtaking after getting to know them?

Some years ago I attended a conference where performer/inspirational humorist David Roche spoke during a plenary luncheon. Because I served on the board of the organization at the time, I sat at the board table with our speaker throughout lunch. Mr. Roche was born with a severe facial disfigurement – the kind of disfigurement that is difficult to handle because you don’t quite know how to look at him without noticing it and being afraid that you are obviously noticing it and either over or under-compensating for noticing it. Lunch felt somewhat awkward as a result. As the meal wrapped up, Mr. Roche took to the stage and began telling his story – and what an amazing and touching story it was. A half-hour later, several hundred people were on their feet, with tears in their eyes, giving Mr. Roche a standing ovation. When he returned to our table, I noticed something strange – it wasn’t awkward to look at him anymore. After discovering how beautiful he is on the inside, it was almost impossible to pay any attention at all to his external disfigurement. Mr. Roche’s message was that we all have elements of darkness or ugliness to deal with. That ugliness can be hidden when it’s on the inside. He considers his disfigured face a gift, because his challenge is on the outside where he is forced to deal with it.

So no, you don’t have to be skinny to be beautiful, or tall or tan or without deformities for that matter. Beauty isn’t narrow; it’s broad and it should be defined more broadly by society, but we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to be unhealthy. Let’s not kid ourselves. The fact is that many people in our modern society eat terribly unhealthy foods in ridiculously large quantities and exercise very little.  Obesity is a health issue of epidemic proportions in our country. So while it’s great to embrace diversity in our definition of beauty, let’s not confuse that with celebrating and perpetuating unhealthy habits. Women don’t “gain weight because they accumulate so much information and wisdom in their heads that it distributes to the rest of their bodies.” Please. We all know perfectly well that isn’t the way it works, and while a fat person can certainly be cultured, educated, happy, and even beautiful, sometimes we need to call a spade a spade.

A lot of people seem to think the Mermaid versus Whale piece is about celebrating beauty in all its forms. I don’t think so. If you have to put one form down to elevate another, you’re not celebrating beauty at all. In fact, putting others down to make yourself feel or appear better is actually pretty ugly.

When I returned to my job after three and a half months of maternity leave, I weighed less than I did before I was pregnant. I didn’t do anything unusual to make that happen – I ate and exercised sensibly both during and after my pregnancy. On my first day back at the office, a woman who had begun working for my organization while I was gone saw me for the first time. Before even introducing herself, she loudly proclaimed, “Oh, you must be Ronda. I HATE you!” and walked away. I had no clue who she was or what she was talking about. Some other co-workers witnessed the scene and explained that she knew I had recently had a baby and was referring to the fact that I was so thin after just a few months. Something similar happened at a friend’s wedding when my son was five weeks old, and it continues to happen in dressing rooms, grocery stores and coffee shops. I think these people have the strange notion that they are paying me some sort of bizarre compliment. Note to all of them: proclaiming you “hate” someone with a tone of disgust and an eye roll does not make them feel good. The same goes for insinuating that someone is obsessed with being thin over having a healthy, happy life and taking care of their children with “great tenderness.” I’m pretty sure I’d be thought of as an awful person if I approached an acquaintance or a stranger and announced, “Oh my God, you’re SO fat. You must eat everything in sight. I HATE you!” So why is it okay for someone I barely know to say to me, “Oh my God, you’re SO skinny. I HATE you!”?         

We shouldn’t buy into the very narrow definitions of beauty that the media perpetuates.  We also shouldn’t combat those definitions by attacking and putting down the body types that the media seems to hold up as the standard of beauty.  By doing that, we’re being just as judgmental as the media we’re complaining about. So please, stop setting up dichotomies between fat and thin, tall and short, pale and dark, young and old, mermaid and whale.  We should all just choose to be ourselves – our best, healthiest, happiest selves.  That would be truly beautiful.

Ronda and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Annoying Day

It has been a very annoying day.  Before I begin ranting about the super-annoying events of my very annoying day, let me offer a disclaimer for those of you who are not well-versed in the children’s literature genre.  The title of this blog entry is a nod to the book “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” so please, no accusations that I’m being overly dramatic.  Not that I’ve ever been accused of that before.

It’s raining today, and it’s not the typical light Seattle drizzle.  This is pouring down rain, the kind where you actually get pretty wet if you go out in it without a hood or an umbrella or one of those clear, plastic head-scarf-things that little old ladies wear.  The rain in and of itself does not annoy me.  I’ve lived in Seattle for nearly two decades now, which means I’ve pretty much earned my “Not Only Can I Handle Rain, But I Actually Really Like It” badge.  The problem for me today is that I didn’t have a jacket with a hood – at least not one that worked with my outfit.  I do not own a clear, plastic head-scarf-thing, because, while I might not be what you’d call a “spring chicken” anymore, I’m not THAT old.  And, while I most definitely own at least a half-dozen understated (read: solid black or grey) adult umbrellas, I could not find a single one of them this morning.  “Do you know where any of the umbrellas are?!” I yelled to Matt as I attempted the near impossible feat of carrying my purse, my gym bag, my lunch and Chester’s backpack to the car, while simultaneously herding Chester toward the door.   Being pressed for time as usual, I didn’t wait for a reply and simply began loading the car.  Just as I finished, Matt, appeared on the porch, triumphantly holding up . . . Chester’s teeny-tiny robot umbrella.  I gave him the “Are you kidding?” look.  He was not.

I can only hope the people who saw me using it today chuckled and thought, “Oh, look at that poor mom who couldn’t find one of her own umbrellas to use this morning as she was frantically rushing her child out the door to make it to school on time.” instead of, “Oh my God.  Look at her.  She thinks she’s being all hip and ironic, carrying a child’s umbrella.  What an idiot” or even worse, “Aw, look at that developmentally disabled woman.  How cute is it that she’s using that little robot umbrella?”

The problem with an itsy-bitsy child’s umbrella (besides the fact that it is emblazoned with primary colored robots, of course) is that it doesn’t provide a lot of coverage.  So, despite looking like a cross between a frazzled mom, a Harajuku girl gone wrong and someone from the neighborhood group home, I still got fairly wet.  See previous description of pouring down rain.  Combine this with the fact that I am WAY overdue for a haircut and it makes for a very, very bad hair day.  I think we can all agree that there isn’t much more annoying than a bad hair day; especially when it involves looking like Tom Petty after a particularly sweaty concert or being submerged in a dunk tank.

Don't get me wrong, I love Tom Petty's music, but his hair is not really the look I'm going for.

I know for a fact that I look like a drowned rat version of Tom Petty today because I had more than enough time to stare at myself in the sun visor mirror of my car.  My commute is typically 25-30 minutes.  Today it took well over an hour thanks to Semi-Truck versus Compact Car.  I’m not sure who won the battle, but I can tell you it was not the hundreds of commuters who sat stranded on the rainy road as the minutes of their morning tortuously ticked by.  Stand-still traffic is almost as annoying as bad hair.

At last, I inched past the fender-bender and traffic began moving again.  I took a deep, cleansing breath and silently, cheerfully promised myself the day would begin looking up.  Sadly, right then, I happened to look up and see a billboard promoting some new TV program starring Zooey Deschanel.  I really don’t know anything about her as an actress, but I find her incredibly annoying and here’s why: Zooey Deschanel is to eyes what Renee Zellweger is to lips.  Renee Zellweger is constantly puckering her lips in photographs and on film, leading us to believe that her lips naturally fall that way.  Well they don’t.  Lips don’t do that unless their owner is puckering them.  Ms. Deschanel displays the same behavior, but with her eyes.  Why does she insist on opening them so freakishly wide when she is photographed?  Seriously, it looks weird.  We get it already; you have great big, pretty, blue eyes; you don’t have to beat us over the head with it.

At this point, my only hope for recovery was the hot, creamy perfection that is my morning chai latte.  My prospects for saving the day seemed promising as I approached the Starbucks near my office.  I could see through the windows that only two people were in line.  “Yes!”  I thought, “My luck is turning around."  Unfortunately, I was mistaken.  The first person in line turned out to be a former employee and wasn’t so much ordering as she was having “old home week” at the counter. 

“Oh my GOD!  I haven’t seen you in FOREVER!” one of the baristas shrieked.

“I know, right?!  How ARE you?!” she replied.

Another current employee emerges from the back room and more shrieks of delight ensue.

“Hey you!  You better get over here and give me a hug right this every second!”

More screaming, giggling and lots of hugging happen.

The current employees shower the former employee with compliments, “Oh my GOD! You look fantastic!”

I was trying to be patient, I really was, but all I wanted to do was say, “Oh my GOD!  I’d hate to see how fat your ass was before if you look fantastic now.”  That and perhaps strangle her.

Next up was a couple, a perfect example of what I like to call “Starbucks Shoppers.”  These people don’t have any idea what they want to order and they don’t give it any thought until they are at the counter.  Never mind that they’ve likely spent at least two or three minutes in line, staring straight at the drink menus and pastry case.  When the cashier inquires “What can I get started for you?” they seem surprised, caught off guard even. 

“Oh my goodness, this nice young lady wants to take our order, Bill.”

“Hmmm . . . well, let’s see . . . what do they have.”

They absent-mindedly peruse the pastry case.

“Um, I guess I’ll have a  . . . I’ll take an old fashioned donut,” the woman says (I’ll call her Jill) "and then maybe . . . . A vanilla latte.”

“What size would you like,” asks the barista.

“What size?!” Jill ponders,  “Oh boy, what size?  Hmmm . . . ”

“Uh . . . well . . . um . . . make it a tall, I suppose.”

“You always wish you had more,” reminds Bill.

“Actually, you know what, let’s go with a grande.  Can I get a grande?”

“Sure, a grande vanilla latte and an old fashioned donut.  Will that be all?” asks the unbelievably patient barista.

“Um, yeah, but . . . actually, forget about the donut, I’ll get a coffee cake instead.  And do you have sugar-free vanilla?  Can you make that a sugar free vanilla latte?”

You get the idea.  By the time they were done ordering, it was all I could do to keep myself from beating them senseless with my tiny robot umbrella. 

I finally arrived in the office, cranky and desperately needing to pee.  “Please don’t sneeze, please don’t sneeze,” I silently begged myself as I raced to the bathroom, where I made the next annoying discovery of the day.  My pants are missing their button.  This was not the case when I put them on at my house.  I distinctly remember buttoning my pants, which were too loose, causing me to add a belt.  How does a button that is fastening loose pants and that is held in place by a belt just randomly jump ship?  Where did we go our separate ways?  At Chester’s school?  In my car?  As I squirmed in line at Starbucks?  I will never know.  All I do know is that fussing with button-less pants all day is . . . you guessed it, annoying.

I went to the gym at lunch.  This is usually a highlight of my day, despite my gym having the dumbest women’s locker room in the world.  The genius who designed this thing created tiny cubicles, only big enough for two people to stand in, and then lined them with rows and rows of lockers.  In the middle of each pod of lockers is an itty-bitty bench, probably only two feet long.  Now, I said two people can stand in each area – that is assuming they are both fairly small people and that they are close enough friends to not care about being in extremely close proximity to each other while getting naked.  I followed my friend Dea into the locker room today and paused at the mirror to gawk at my Tom Petty hair.  Finally, unable to bear the horror any longer, I tore myself away and headed to the first locker pod.  There was a nearly naked woman there.  Upon noticing what looked like Dea’s hair and a tattoo on the same shoulder that Dea has a tattoo, I began to squeeze in next to the panty-only-clad woman.  Just as my hip brushed hers, I noticed that her tattoo was a cluster of stars, while Dea’s is a butterfly.  Star girl gave me an annoyed look (now I’m even passing my annoying day onto unsuspecting, innocent others) as I scurried to the next pod, muttering my apologies.  There I found the actual Dea and began the annoying process of getting undressed and redressed within the confines of a small box shared with another person and a useless little bench.  I know the dimensions of this ridiculous space well and have developed an uncanny knack for functioning within it.  Much like Houdini escaping from a locked box while bound in chains, I can magically move within the space.  But today there was an unexpected obstacle for which I was unprepared: someone had left a locker door open.  I pulled my shirt off and felt a sharp crack as the back of my head smacked into it.  Was I seriously injured?  No.  Was I at a whole new level of annoyance?  Yes. 

The annoying just kept coming all day long.  No serious problems; nothing truly distressing or awful, just annoying, annoying and more annoying.  Each time, I tried to remain positive.  I tried to acknowledge the annoyance bubbling up inside me and let it go.  I thought I could de-sour and maybe even sweeten, but after the locker incident, it was over.  My day was officially annoying.  “Ronda and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Annoying Day.”

Can you spare me the change?

My son started kindergarten last week.  Kindergarten!  I have no idea how this could have happened already, but it has.  It isn’t like it crept up on me.  I spent a lot of time preparing for it.  Hours were invested in researching schools, visiting schools, applying to schools, building cost-comparison spreadsheets for schools, and finally, choosing a school.  Then, in the weeks leading up to the fateful first day, I fretted about how Chester would handle the transition.  I did plenty of worrying about Chester (because I’m his mom and that’s what moms do), but I didn’t worry about myself and apparently that was an error.  I completely failed to realize what a difficult transition kindergarten was going to be FOR ME. 

Chester on his first day of kindergarten. 

Me on Chester's first day of kindergarten.

I expected leaving Chester’s preschool to be difficult and it was.  He has been going there since he was three months old and it has been a special place for our whole family.  Chester went through each classroom at the center, so we knew practically every one.  When we walked through the halls, everybody said hello.  When I pulled into the parking lot each day, it felt like I was home.  As we said goodbye on Chester’s final day, I felt a sense of loss and grief for the chapter we were closing.  A couple of slices of pizza and a scoop of ice cream later, I was feeling like I was through the worst of it.  Closing a chapter would be much more difficult than the adventure of beginning a new one, right?  Wrong.

The past week has been surprisingly angst-filled, emotional and downright exhausting for me.  I’ve felt like that awkward person at the party who doesn’t know anyone.  I’ve wracked my brain wondering what Chester is doing and how he is feeling at every minute of every day.  I’ve worried that his new teachers don’t know him yet and might pigeon-hole him into a persona that he is not.  I’ve gotten lost in daydreams of Chester as a baby and snapped out of them into stereotypical “My baby is growing up!” tears.  I’ve longed for the familiarity of my old commute and have been absent-mindedly taking the carpool lanes even though Chester is no longer my commuting companion. 

I like to think of myself as an adventurous and spontaneous person, but the last week has made me wonder if I’m not actually more of a hardcore creature of habit and stability junky.   Compared to many of my peers who have undertaken cross country moves, launched new careers, bought second houses and had second and even third kids, my life seems like a bastion of stability. 

Despite the fact that I’ve been in the same house, in the same city, with the same job for a decade, and even longer in some cases, I don’t think I’m THAT change averse.  I’ve been through some major changes in my life.  I went to kindergarten myself once upon a time, after all.  I don’t remember it being so dramatic when it was me.  I honestly don’t even remember my first day of kindergarten and I only have a couple of clear memories of the whole year.  Both of which, on a side note, are amazingly indicative of how the rest of my academic life would progress.  I remember the thrill of learning to read.  Figuring out that I could put the letters of the alphabet together in different combinations to make an unlimited number of words was an exciting discovery, and it was the beginning of my enduring love for school.  On the flip side, I also remember my very first encounter with the severe stress that school had the ability to inflict on me.  During some sort of standardized test, I came across a question I couldn’t answer and became so distraught that I began to cry.  Somewhere in my five year old brain I knew that my stress-induced reaction far exceeded what the situation called for and I was embarrassed by that.  When my teacher asked me what was wrong, I didn’t want to admit the truth, so I told her I was upset because my uncle died.  My little white lie worked like a charm, except I spent the rest of the year living in constant fear that my teacher would talk to my mom and express her sympathy for the passing of my mom’s brother when he was, in fact, very much alive and well.

Lest anyone think kindergarten was the last major transition in my life, I can identify some others.  My family moved to a different state in 6^th grade.  That was huge and although I recall some apprehension, I was mostly thrilled with the adventure of it all.  Leaving home for college was certainly a significant change, but again, I approached it with eager anticipation.  I couldn’t wait to move to the heart of a major city right out of college even though I had previously only lived in rural towns.  And there certainly have been other changes and adventures in my personal and professional life – graduate school, getting married and becoming a parent to name a few.  In general, I think I’ve handled most of these transitions, even the big ones, better than sending my child to kindergarten. 

So I’ve been pondering, what’s going on with this particular transition?  My current conclusion is that two things are at play.  The first is pretty straightforward: change is hard.  Even if the change at hand is wonderful and exciting, it still involves, well . . . change.  Change brings newness, unfamiliarity, uncertainty and, worst of all, loss of control.  I know, I know, I’ve heard all the lectures about how control is an illusion, but it’s an illusion I thoroughly enjoy and therefore choose to embrace, thank you very much.  With kindergarten, Chester’s world just expanded a little further beyond the one he shares with me.  That’s a good thing, but it makes the control freak part of my brain scream “Loss of control!  Red alert!  Loss of control!  Danger!  Loss of control!”

For example, I no longer know the exact classroom schedule like I did when Chester was in pre-school and because they don’t send home a detailed daily report in kindergarten, I have to rely on a five year old boy for my information.  This experience ranges from confusing to completely hopeless.  It goes one of two ways.  Like this:

“How was your day?” I ask.

“Good,” Chester replies flatly. 

“What did you do?” I inquire.

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Did you do anything fun?” I persist.

“I can’t remember, Mom.”

Or, like this:

“How was your day?” I ask.

“It was good.  We played dirty yard in P.E. and the balls were garbage like if you had a party at your house and there was garbage and you had to throw it in the other person’s yard.  It was a party where there were helicopters.  Not big helicopters but littler ones.  And there were like a hundred million and six of them and they all landed on our porch and then they exploded “KABOOM!”  And I rided them but then they started shooting poisonous and they bruke, I mean broke.  Then there was Luke, he’s in after-care with me, but not in my same class, he’s in the other after-care, but I was still reading with him and he was at the party too.  And I don’t have to ask to go to the bathroom because I was signed out all day because I wasn’t signed in, but I just have to find a buddy to go with first.  Oh and mommy, I want those brown, crunchy crackers in my lunch – the ones that Eleanor has.”

I’m either left completely in the dark with zero information or overloaded with a confusing jumble of possibly real information mixed with crazy fantasy.  As if those two scenarios weren’t bad enough, Chester came up with a new response that nearly stopped my poor, frazzled mommy heart:

“How was your day?” I asked.

“TERRIBLE!” he groaned like he was about to cry.

I stopped in my tracks.  “Oh no, Chester, what happened?”

Long pause.

“Ah ha ha, just kidding!”

Chester the comedian.  Hilarious.

I also felt a great sense of comfort and control at Chester’s daycare/preschool because of the bond I had developed with many of the other parents.  I reminded myself that it took time to create those relationships and it would simply take time again.  I was doing great with that mantra until it occurred to me that one important thing I had in common with all the other moms at Chester’s daycare might not be the case at his new school:  We all worked; that’s why our kids were in daycare.  I had a mild panic attack when I received a group email from a mom at Chester’s new school letting everyone know that she was organizing an ADO (that’s “after drop-off”) workout group.  “After drop-off workout group,” I groaned.  “Who are these people and don’t they WORK?!”  Thus began visions of every other mom spending hours in the classroom each day, developing the kind of deep relationships with teachers that I could never hope to cultivate.  Well, I must sheepishly confess that I had a little lesson in making assumptions when I found out the ADO workout organizer not only works, but is a doctor.  So I’m not the only “working” mom, whew. 

In addition to all the plain old newness and uncertainty I’m dealing with, there is another dynamic: the uniquely emotional nature of parenting.  Of all the challenges of parenting, I was, and continue to be, least prepared for the emotional exhaustion.  When I was pregnant, I had myself all psyched up for the physical exhaustion.  Of course I never could have imagined how bad the physical exhaustion was going to be, but I had some sense that it was coming.  What nobody warned me about, probably because it’s impossible to describe without experiencing it, is just how emotional it is being a parent.  I had no idea how much I would care, how profoundly I would worry and how deeply I would love.  Change involving Chester really is much, much harder than change that simply impacts me.  Sending Chester to kindergarten has been much more harrowing than going to kindergarten myself.  Thinking of Chester having a bad day is far more awful than having my own bad day.

When Chester was a baby and I was overcome with the intensity of emotion I was feeling, I told myself that surely it would fade a bit as he got older.  I was very wrong and now, more than ever, I realize that the overwhelming emotions of parenting will never go away.  As I fought back my tears dropping off Chester at kindergarten, I thought of a friend who admitted to crying after sending her daughter off for the first day of high school.  “Oh my God,” I said as it dawned on me, “this is never going to end.”  I’m going to be emotionally strung-out for the rest of my life – fraught with worry, bursting with happiness, battered by the bitter-sweetness of constant change.  That’s parenthood, I guess. 

I’m excited about Chester’s new school.  I really think it’s going to be great for him and a wonderful place for our family, but the newness is still hard.  I feel like I’m being exposed to sunlight for the first time – everything is too bright, too loud and too fast.  I remember feeling this way when I brought Chester home from the hospital after he was born.  Every nerve feels over-stimulated and raw.  Nothing is on auto-pilot and it’s exhausting.  The good news is that it’s getting better already.  We are meeting wonderful families and teachers and administrators who are going out of their way to make us feel welcomed.  The new routine is starting to feel “routine,” and, as a result, I’m finding myself able to think more rationally, accept the challenge of change and, dare I say, even enjoy it.

When we arrived to pick Chester up from the after school program at the end of the first day of kindergarten, the kids were outside on the playground.  I searched the play structure and didn’t see Chester.  I scanned the whole play yard and didn’t see Chester.  Just as I was beginning to shift into irrational panic (“Oh my God, I knew this was going to happen!  They lost my child on the first day!”), I spotted him.  He was way off in a corner of the chain link fence, playing with an older boy.  They were bent down, concentrating intently on something.  Chester’s new friend was a third grader, but in my mind he was definitely shaving and driving.  As I walked toward them, my thoughts raced: What is my baby doing with that big, grown-up kid?  Are they playing poker?  Smoking pot?  Looking at porn magazines?  It turns out they were playing an innocent game with a tennis ball and two cones, and, judging by Chester’s smile, he was having a great time. 

Finally Chester saw me and I got that smile I’ve been getting since he was a baby – the “Hey, there’s my mommy!” smile that makes my heart fill up and overflow and feel like it’s going to explode – followed by the running leap into my arms.  The smile and hug that say, in a world of constant change, there really are some things (the most important things) that always stay the same.