What to do with five snow days in a row: A documentary and guide

It started snowing in Seattle on Sunday, January 15. Oddly this snow came just as meteorologists forecasted it would. (If you’ve spent any time in Seattle, listening to Seattle weather forecasts, you know why I say “oddly.”) Now it is Thursday, January 19 and we are on Snow Day #5 or “Nearly to the Bottom of the Descent into Insanity” as I’m calling it and it’s STILL snowing. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow – it’s beautiful and fun and generally a magical deviation from the doldrums of ordinary, day-to-day, winter life. I especially love getting a little snow now and again in Seattle since we so rarely do. The key words here are “a little” and “now and again.” Being home-bound for nearly a week, with a five year old and a ton of work piling up at the office, ceases to be fun, magical and beautiful, and starts to become boring and insanity-inducing. At least it’s still beautiful, with the neighborhood blanketed in white and the trees covered in icy crystals. In fact, yesterday when I suggested shoveling our driveway and sidewalk, Chester looked at me incredulously and sadly asked, “But Mommy . . . don’t you want it to be beautiful?” The answer was, yes, I did want it to stay beautiful, especially considering that’s about all we’ve got at this point.

With the exception of a failed attempt at a school and work day on Tuesday, (Seattle schools opted for a late start and then decided two hours later to go with an early dismissal) we’ve been home – either in our house or neighborhood – for five days now. Five days. And you can only build so many snowmen. Overall I think we’re doing a pretty good job of keeping ourselves entertained. So, as a future reference for myself and anyone else who finds themselves snowed in for the better part of a week, I’ve prepared this list of entertainment suggestions.

1. Engage in typical snow activities

This one is a no-brainier. Of course you should immediately get out in the snow – especially when it’s still super fluffy and fresh. Go for a walk around your neighborhood; you never know what you might discover. We found this brilliant and exquisite skull sculpted out of snow!

Check out the park, have a snowball fight, build snowmen, construct an igloo, go sledding, and make snow angels.

Making snow angels works especially well when you are an adorable child.

As for sledding, it turns out we have a particularly sweet run in our neighborhood – a steep length of side street that is out of the question for cars and therefore quickly claimed by throngs of sledders. Southwest Olga Street, between 37^th and Admiral, has been home to tiny toddlers on itty-bitty sleds, tubing teenagers careening off self-fashioned jumps, middle-aged dads reliving their luge glory days (whether real or imagined, I’m not sure), and people of all shapes and sizes on sleds of all shapes and sizes. Our sledding experience these past few days has been an arctic communal utopia with everyone gathering at the local Starbucks to warm up.

As fantastically fun as snow activities are, they only last for so long. For one thing, you get cold and, as I said earlier, you can only make so many snowmen, which leads me to the next suggestion.

2. Make some new friends                                                 

Hard to believe, but snow storms create a perfect environment for making new friends. Literally. Here’s how to do it: Form a small ball of snow. Roll it around in the snow to make it larger. Repeat until you have three balls in decreasingly smaller sizes. Stack them one on top of the other. Now you have the body of your newest friend! (Yeah, yeah, I know I already talked about making snowmen, but now you’re making FRIENDS. That’s totally different.) Add arms and a face, and style as you see fit. Do you want a super hip, cutting edge friend? A classic, tried and true kind of friend? A preppy friend? Maybe you are feeling rebellious and could use a punk rock friend? A funny friend? A serious friend? You get the idea – style away. Don’t hold back; just think how great your snow friends will look standing in your front yard, mocking the less awesome neighborhood snowmen. The creation of your new posse of pals is the fun part. Unfortunately they aren’t terribly dynamic once they’re complete. Truth be told, they’re kind of dull; they mostly just stand around and act cool . . . super cool.

Super cool friends

3.  Exercise

By day three you are dying from gym and yoga withdrawals. You can’t get there and all the classes are probably canceled anyway. It’s too slippery and slushy to go for a run, and push-ups, wall-sits and ab crunches in your living room are about as boring as it gets. But who needs those things when you’ve got a 50+ pound kid who wants nothing more than to yell “YAH!” and “MUSH!” mercilessly as you pull him around your hilly neighborhood on the sled?

4. Play games

Play lots of games. If you get bored with the games you have, I recommend putting your kid on that sled and pulling him or her to the closest store to invest in some more. For the five-year-old set, allow me to recommend: Sorry, Cars Monopoly, Connect Four, Old Maid, Go Fish, Operation, Toy Story Yahtzee, Crazy 8s, Junior Scrabble, Battleship, Checkers and Jenga. Yeah, like I said, LOTS of games.

 Lots of Games

5.  Work puzzles

Work lots of puzzles. Yes, this is similar to #4, but with puzzles instead of games. Try Toy Story puzzles, Disney puzzles, dinosaur puzzles, map of the United States puzzles, rare tropical frog puzzles. Lots of puzzles.

6. Watch movies

Watch lots of movies. See numbers 3 and 4. Substitute movies and snuggling. Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel worked well for us. Warning: Side effects involve relentless quoting of the movies which may include, but not be limited to, your child saying, “Hey, Pecky Peckerton!,” pointing at you in the Starbucks line while mouthing “Nimrod,” and even repeatedly singing Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” in a chipmunk voice.

7. Stage an epic battle

Gather your army men, create a brilliant military strategy (or a formation that looks kind of pretty – whichever works for you) and head into battle. This is good for at least an hour of entertainment, especially if your child, like mine, is fond of creating his own games with lengthy, complex rules. Below is a historical photo of the famous Battle of the Toy Snowldiers. Can’t tell what’s going on? Neither could I. It involved rolling two army men like dice and employing some sort of complicated mathematical formula to devise what to do, depending on how they landed. All I know is we lost a lot of good men that day.

 Snowpocalypse Now: Battle of the Toy Snowldiers

8. Build a fort

By now you’ve discovered that building an igloo is a lot of work, the roof is nearly impossible to engineer and it’s too cold to play in for long. So why not build a fort inside? It will take you forever to re-fold every blanket in your house and reassemble all your furniture, that is true, but you should tell that reasonable, tidy, organized voice inside your head to hush up. Twenty minutes of entertainment is well worth the forty minutes it will take you to clean up. In a stunning display of how big an impact a very small person can make, the entire first floor of my house (granted it’s not that big) became . . . well, I’m not exactly sure what it became. I’m going with fort/maze combo. 

My house is not usually arranged like this.

9. Make construction paper monsters

Why? Because it takes up a good two hours, that’s why.

10. Read a book

Opt for a book you might actually enjoy or use the home confinement to compel yourself to get through something less pleasant.  I have Snow Day #5 to thank for forcing me to finally finish Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” – easily one of the least enjoyable books I’ve ever read. I know it’s a classic, by a literary giant (that’s why I forced myself to read it) and my criticizing it is akin to a person who can’t make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich disparaging a five-star restaurant chef, but I can’t help it. I hated it. I know Hemingway “did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century.” I know he won a Nobel Prize for Literature. I know “A Farewell to Arms” is considered the “best American novel to emerge from World War I.” But despite all that, I hated it. For those of you who haven’t read it, here is my synopsis (spoiler alert): The main character is Lieutenant Henry, an American ambulance driver serving on the Italian front in World War I. He meets a British nurse named Catherine. They don’t really like each other, but then randomly decide they do. There are mountains. The mountains are big and gray and covered with snow. There are rivers that are clear and blue and filled with pebbles and boulders and rocks that are jagged and rough and smooth and wet. There are lots of soldiers marching. They march through mud. It is brown. It is frozen. Lieutenant Henry gets hurt and ends up in a hospital. Nurse Catherine is there and they fall in love. Sort of, I guess. It doesn’t really seem like they’re in love. Their dialogue goes like this:

Catherine: Oh darling, I love you so much. Don’t we have a grand life together?

Henry: Yes, it is very grand, especially at night.

Catherine: I’ll be a good wife for you won’t I? I’m a good girl.

Henry: Yes, you are.

Catherine: Oh, I’m so foolish and stupid and ridiculous. You should go away from me.

Henry: Do you want me to go away?

Catherine: No, I’m nothing without you.

Henry: Good. I don’t want to go away.

This nurse Catherine has some serious self-esteem issues. Anyway, whether or not they’re actually in love, they make love and (surprise) she gets pregnant right about the time his leg is healed and he has to return to the front. There are mountains and farm houses and marching soldiers described in excruciating detail. Soldiers are killed matter-of-factly and their friends barely notice, much less care. Lieutenant Henry goes AWOL and hops a train back to Catherine. They escape the country together via a row boat to Switzerland, where they live for several months.

Catherine: Oh darling, don’t we have a grand time together?

Henry: Very grand.

Catherine: I’m so silly and stupid. And now I’m fat and not at all appealing to you.

Henry: You are more beautiful than you have ever been.

Catherine: Oh, you sweet boy. You are so good to me. You should grow a beard.

Henry: Do you want me to grow a beard?

Catherine: Yes, I think it would be lovely. Oh, I’m so stupid, but I’ll make you a good wife, won’t I?

Henry: Yes, let’s get married now.

Catherine: Oh no, not now while I am so fat. When I am skinny again, then we will get married and I will cut my hair. You will let me, won’t you?

Henry: Yes, I think it will be exciting.

That goes on for a few months. They go on carriage rides and picnics and try to enjoy themselves as much as they can before the baby comes. They fear the baby will ruin everything. Foreshadowing abounds. Finally Catherine goes into labor. It goes on forever. The baby dies. Catherine dies. (You really don’t care.) Lieutenant Henry goes back to the hotel. The end. Seriously, that’s the book. Now you don’t have to read it. Thank you notes are appreciated, but not necessary.

So, there you have it, my top ten ideas for never-ending snow storm entertainment, and not a moment too soon because I just found out school is canceled again on Friday. Snow Day #6 (aka Official Arrival at Insanity) here we come!

Everyone Poohs

We’ve been watching a lot of Winnie the Pooh at our house lately. Santa brought the new movie to Chester for Christmas and it is delightful. It makes Chester giggle uncontrollably, which makes me happier than I ever imagined I could be. All week, I’ve been humming and silently singing, “Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, tubby little buddy all stuffed with fluff, he’s Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, willy nilly silly ol’ bear.” You’d think it would be annoying to have the Winnie the Pooh song on a constant loop in your head, but amazingly it’s not. I can’t be in a bad mood or get too upset about anything with the line “willy nilly silly ol’ bear” running through my mind, and believe me when I tell you that has come in quite handy this week.

It occurred to me a few mornings ago that Winnie the Pooh is sort of the original Toy Story. When the first Toy Story movie came out and rocketed Pixar into mega-super-domination of the animation world, I remember thinking what a great and unique idea it was to base a story on the toys in a child’s room coming to life. I certainly mean no disrespect for Pixar or the Toy Story franchise (I’m a huge fan), but I guess the concept wasn’t really all that new. Chester was watching Winnie the Pooh as I was getting breakfast ready and I was enjoying overhearing the part where Balloon (the red balloon that lives in Christopher Robin’s room) wins the prize for finding a new tail for Eeyore. Rabbit presents the award with a monologue about what a loyal, wonderful friend the winner is. He gets Pooh’s hopes up before excitedly announcing that Balloon wins the pot of honey – much to Pooh’s chagrin. The stuffed animals treat Balloon as an equal member of their Hundred Acre Wood community and why shouldn’t they? He is, like all of them, a beloved toy in Christopher Robin’s room.

I loved Winnie the Pooh as a child and cherished my own stuffed animal versions of the characters that my mom sewed herself. My old Kanga and Roo currently watch over Chester’s room from prime real estate on his dresser and my favorite, Eeyore greets me (gloomily, of course) every day from atop the armoire in my closet. I find it fascinating that the Pooh characters are still so relevant these many years later (A. A. Milne’s first book of short stories about Pooh Bear was released in 1926) and resonate as much (if slightly differently) with me as an adult as they did when I was a kid.

My beloved stuffed Eeyore.

A. A. Milne’s characters masterfully depict common human character traits. I’m certainly not the first person (nor the most articulate) to notice and write about that. The humble little bear and his friends have been used by many authors and academics to illustrate complex philosophical ideas. Benjamin Hoff explains Taoism in The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet. Frederick Crews retold Pooh stories in obscure academic jargon in Postmodern Pooh and The Pooh Perplex, and John T. Williams uses Milne’s characters to illustrate the works of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, Plato and Nietzsche.  

I’m a big believer that, as human beings, our weaknesses can also be our strengths and vice versa. I remind myself of this whenever Chester is being stubborn and argumentative and a general pain in my ass. I take a deep breath and think to myself “This kid will never be anybody’s doormat. He’s going to be persistent and tenacious and will always stand up for what he believes in.” The Hundred Acre Wood characters are so meaningful to generations of people of all ages partly because they beautifully illustrate the somewhat strange but true dynamic that our strengths and weaknesses can be, and often are, one and the same.

Winnie the Pooh is a loyal friend with a pure heart. Unfortunately, he often underestimates himself. Despite being “a bear of very little brain,” he is frequently quite astute and makes great efforts to utilize his limited smarts. Christopher Robin summarizes Pooh well when he eloquently and lovingly reminds him, "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Eeyore is gray in color with an outlook to match. He is intelligent, but his melancholy mood and cynical wit keep him complaining constantly. He is somewhat of a loner in the forest, often getting left behind, assuming no one wants him around or simply preferring some peace and quiet. Despite his gloomy nature, Eeyore values his friends and, while he certainly never expects kindness or takes favors for granted, he truly appreciates the goodness extended to him.

Piglet is small in stature and timid. He tends to mistake fear for lack of courage. "It is hard to be brave when you're only a Very Small Animal," he says. Piglet’s strengths are kindness, compassion and generosity.

Rabbit is the bossy one of the bunch. He is high strung and strives to create order, as evidenced by his dedication to perfecting his garden, as well as his tendency to make lists, create agendas and generally order the rest of the characters around. Rabbit is clever and knows how to get things done.

Tigger is exuberant; perhaps overly so. He loves nothing more than to bounce – sometimes he bounces his friends in greeting, sometimes on accident, but he always wreaks havoc. He is boastful and overestimates his abilities. Despite his annoying traits, Tigger is so fun-loving and sweet, he is hard not to love. As he is fond of saying, “The wonderful thing about Tiggers is I’m the only one!”

Owl is brainy and immerses himself in intellectual pursuits such as knowing and spelling long words. He can be impatient with the less intelligent characters and often bores them with long-winded stories. While Owl is genuinely smart, he isn’t necessarily as knowledgeable as he leads the others to believe. He occasionally bluffs his way through lack of expertise to maintain his reputation of being wise.

Kanga is the only female of the forest’s core characters and gets along well with everyone. She is nurturing, practical, level-headed and motherly.

Roo is the youngest forest resident. He has the cheerful, optimistic outlook of a child, with an untarnished belief in himself and the world around him. He is bright and brave, but can be a bit of a show-off in his efforts to win praise from his mother and friends.

Milne’s characters have been so beloved, for so long because we all see a little of each of them, in varying degrees, in ourselves. In fact, a quick internet search turned up all sorts of sites that offer descriptions of the characters’ personalities and at least half a dozen “Which Winnie the Pooh character are you?” quizzes. I took a few of the quizzes and interestingly, but not so surprisingly to me, came up with a different character each time. My guess is that it would be difficult for most people to choose only ONE character that represents them. The beauty of Winnie the Pooh is that we can identify with all of them.

A dear friend and colleague of mine had a great product idea based on this concept: Pooh Totems. Totems are usually an animal or other natural figure that spiritually characterizes a person or group of people. In this case, the animals would be Pooh characters and people could construct their own, unique “totem pole” of the characters that represent them best. The objects themselves could take a variety of forms. The characters could be plastic – like pop beads for kids or rendered from precious metals and made into some sort of jewelry concept. They could be key chains or paperweights or any number of things, and they would be appealing to all ages, because honestly, who (besides someone really evil) doesn’t love Winnie the Pooh?  

So, for example, my Pooh Totem is Eeyore-Pooh-Rabbit. I’m cynical on the surface, but ultimately believe in the goodness of people and the world. I’m intensely loyal to and have unwavering confidence in my family and friends, but almost always underestimate my own abilities. I’m nothing if not organized. I could easily give Rabbit a run for his money in the creation of lists department, and while I undoubtedly drive a lot of people crazy in the process, I absolutely get things done.

It’s fun and even somewhat addictive to contemplate what the Pooh Totems of friends and family would be. I’m pegging my husband’s Pooh Totem as Pooh-Roo-Piglet (the compassionate part of Piglet, not the small in stature part), with a touch of Eeyore. My five-year-old son is Tigger-Rabbit-Roo (mostly Tigger at this age!)

I’ve even amused myself in particularly boring meetings or kept myself calm in contentious ones by mapping the Pooh Totems of my colleagues. As annoying as that naysayer is, it’s somehow easier to tolerate when I imagine them as a Piglet who finds it hard to be brave. Who hasn’t come across know-it-all Owl types who use meetings and projects as vehicles to create a perception that they are a whole lot smarter than they actually are? And there always seems to be a Tigger – that person who operates with such a lack of finesse and utter disregard for policy, hierarchy and general professionalism that they leave a trail (or a conference room, as the case may be) full of people who literally feel like they’ve been bounced upon. When I want to strangle these people, I try to see them as good-natured Tiggers who are simply unable to contain their enthusiasm.

                                                                                                 

See how fun and useful Pooh Totems are! Give it a try . . . which Pooh are you?

 

Christopher Robin's "Winnie-the-Pooh Character Guide". Winnie-the-Pooh FAQ. http://www.lavasurfer.com/pooh-faq.html. (January 6, 2012).

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.