Poisoned By My Metaphorical Claude Rains

Have you ever seen that movie Notorious with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman? If not, you should, it’s a great movie. I won’t go into the whole thing, but towards the end, when Claude Rains finds out his wife, Ingrid, is actually an undercover spy sent to get info on his Nazi friends, he is told to kill her by slowly poisoning her over time so it looks like she just has some weird withering disease, until Cary Grant, who’s been denying his love for her comes, in all his smoldering spy glory, and carries her out the front door as Claude is judged harshly by his fellow Nazis.

I feel a little like Ingrid Bergman.

Let me explain.

I have always been an optimist; a glass half full, believe people’s motives are pure, lemonade out of lemons optimist.  Recently, however, I have felt a withering away, a tarnishing of my rose colored glasses, if you will, which has even made me toy with changing the title of my autobiography from “Mary had a Little Laugh” to “Death of an Optimist.”

In full disclosure, I do come from a split family; my dad is an optimist, my mother a pessimist. So there is a genetic pre-disposition for either. But let me be clear, I am not talking about being sad or even feeling sorry for myself. No I just find that I am slowly letting go of or lowering my expectations for hope and am settling into a Switzerlandish state of neutrality.

I realize it is an intricate internal security system that I have installed in my psyche to protect myself from all intruders. I had a beta system installed when I was a kid, which handled softball breaches like boys not ‘like-liking’ me and not making the basketball team and my parents’ divorce. But I have since refined it into a high tech comprehensive protection plan complete with emotion sensors and automatic total lockdown to insure ultimate protection against passive aggressive marital behavior(coming from both parties), the past (and therefore imminent) doom and gloom of my children’s relationship to school, the loss of loved ones, the financial realities of the market value of any of my skills, the disappointment at the empty Entenmann’s box at the end of a long day, and all the other shoes that are waiting to drop. It is, in fact, possible that I have acquired a system so invincible that therapists and Prozac couldn’t even penetrate the first lock let alone the floor lasers, the three-headed dog and the rolling boulder. (extra credit if you can name all the movie references)

I haven’t gone full pessimist yet. I do not expect the worst, but I am not surprised when it happens.  I scan my emails at the end of the day with dread for fear of seeing a teacher’s name and the title heading “Teenager #1 in class today,” or “Missed homework for “Teenager #2.” I am grateful for the communication because I am a parent and I’m supposed to be, but it is like another dose of poison administered by my metaphorical Claude Rains.

I still believe that Cary Grant will swoop in (though he’s more of a saunterer than a swooper) and carry me through the door with my flawless skin and impeccable hair. And I know in this case Cary Grant is hope and I will still fall in love with him and he will break my heart again, and the alarm will be tripped and I will go into lockdown recoup my losses, heal and venture out into the wild again because deep down in my nougat center, that’s who I am. Love and pain and panic and euphoria and anxiety and contentment and fear and pride rely on each other for existence. I get it. To allow yourself to feel one you open yourself up to the risk to feel all. I know to feel is to be alive and life is messy an unpredictable. (BTW my inspirational posters are available on Zazzle)

So I will fight the poison and defy Claude Rains. Not everyday, but I’m still aiming for more than half.

Princess Leia Was Right

Any wisdom I have accrued during my time here comes mainly from two sources. Improv and Star Wars. That’s right, not Joan Didion or Buddha or Socrates; it all hinges on the art of making things up spontaneously and from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. And today’s nugget of insight comes from Princess Leia.

(BTW thank you George Lucas for creating a smart, resourceful, moral female character who can kick-ass and knows how to handle a blaster).

In Star Wars: A New Hope, during Leia’s first encounter with Grand Moff Tarkin after insulting his body odor she offers this in retort to his intimidation tactics “The more you tighten your grip the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” Genius despite Carrie Fisher’s out of nowhere British accent in that scene only. So let’s delve, shall we.

Control. Yes we all desperately want it in one form or another. Whether it’s over what we watch on TV or what we wear, or what we do for a living, or how other people in our sphere of influence act, or the outcome of our own and our children’s lives, we want control. And why not? It is the softest blanket of content and the most delicious chocolate chip cookie of comfort. We seek it in every aspect of our lives. How neat is my house? My desk? My Car? (if I’m honest, none of them very neat at all). How can I not get fired? Did I make a mistake? Did somebody else? How can I make sure nobody makes a mistake, ever, for the rest of time? (Seriously, my list of mistakes fills the warehouse where they store the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark). How can I make sure my kids are okay? I’ll monitor their homework; dispute teachers on unacceptable grades; tell them to go to bed…no really, I mean now, I’m not gonna tell you again; read their text messages; give them advice; give them the same advice over and over until they do what I tell them whether they believe it or not; get them vaccinated; have “the talk”; nag them about extra-curriculars and credentialing for college; tell them to brush their teeth until it sends me into therapy. If I do all that and more, their future will be secure, right? Everything will be okay, yeah? Nothing bad will ever happen.

Wrong. Darth Vader will still show up in Cloud City and freeze your boyfriend.

The thing about control is, it’s a bedtime story we tell ourselves again and again so we can sleep at night and keep the panic at bay. If we can control the outcome, then we know what to expect and nothing will ever take us by surprise. And how boring is that?

I’m not recommending never cleaning our houses, and letting the kids adapt a Lord of the Flies mentality (actually in that book it was the struggle for control that led to chaos), but the reality is, we cannot control the outcome. Life is messy and unpredictable and if we avoid it, we miss out on so much. Bad things are going to happen, to us and to our kids, and that’s okay because we learn we can get through them. But you know what else, great things are going to happen too. But if we’re too busy following our prescribed path of expectation we will miss those great things and the potential for un-conceived of joy.

I cannot control what grades my kids will get this year. I cannot control whether they will get in trouble or not. I cannot control whether they will get hurt or if they will hurt someone else. I cannot control if they will let in a goal, or score a basket, or remember the distributive property or to brush their teeth.

I can tell them what I think is important. I can encourage them. I can set limits on tv and games. I can make them eggs and bacon in the morning. I can let them fail. I can believe they will succeed.

So I will try to follow Princess Leia’s advice and loosen my grip on their lives. It will be hard, because I love them so much that I feel it in every cell of my body at all times of the day. But sometimes what’s best for them is what’s hard for them. So I will loosen my grip. And maybe if I do that Han Solo will show up in the Millennium Falcon and take me out for a burger.

Turn Signals

Turn your signal on. Please, for the love of god, turn your signal on. It’s probably the easiest thing you’ll do all day and an effortless way to give back. I am baffled to the point of irrational frustration at those who cannot seem to muster the momentary selflessness it takes to signal before making a turn. Seriously, how bad have things become, how deep into our own bubbles must we be, that this simplest of gestures is routinely ignored because, hey, we just can’t be bothered? The effort is too great, or simply beneath us. Others should know we intend to change directions without notice. Or, if they cannot intuit our every whim, they should simply suck it up and thank us for reminding them that the world truly does revolve around our individual needs.

Okay, sure, I’m overreacting, but am I? This one thing that people cannot do with any regularity is significant. It does show an inherent consumption with our own selves that bleeds into other parts of our lives. If we can’t be bothered to signal, a gesture who’s pure intent is to alert others to our intentions so they can properly adapt and maintain a sense of equilibrium in the universe, then we are truly on a path to chaos and isolation.

Cars used to be so simple; a convenient way to get from one place to another. And you really had to want to get there because you had to crank it up to get it started. Now, all you have to do is push a button. Cool, yes, but really, was turning a key so difficult? And yet, a car's main purpose remains the same. It is not, in fact, intended to be a movie theater on wheels, or a remote wifi hotspot, or a hovercraft.

I’m not gonna lie, borrowing my mother-in-law’s van with the DVD player made many long car trips bearable when the kids were little, who am I kidding, it can make a trip to the grocery store easier. But should it. Why shouldn’t our kids have to suffer through the boredom of hours on Route I-80? Builds character and stamina and leads to the invention of great car games like the Alphabet game, License plate Lottery and the epic Braveheart-esque battles of “He’s on my Side.” Those car rides build valuable life skills like creativity, patience, and upper body strength.

Sure modern invention creates convenience, and convenience is nice (really nice) but it is not a cure-all for responsibility. Despite the James Bondish ingenuity a car’s main purpose remains the same: it is meant to help people get places faster than on foot or by horse or bicycle. Yet the responsibility involved in operating that machinery is awesome and as age and indifference clicks on auto-pilot, we take that grave power cavalierly, and cannot fulfill the most basic duty of moving a lever up or down with the effort of a single finger, because we are too busy talking on the phone, finding the perfect song, or lost in our own terribly important agenda.

I’m not saying we need to go back to the Stone Age. I like my IPhone. I like not hearing my kids killing each other in the back seat. But I call on us all to resist the urge to let these conveniences dupe us into assuming an entitlement that does not exist. We are still social creatures beholden to one another to evolve in a humane way. We rely on each other in so many conscious and unconscious actions over the course of a day, a year, a lifetime. Opening a door, saying please and thank you, compromising on health care, and signaling before you turn so the other ripples in the lake can adjust. This is what makes the world a better place, a simple effort to look beyond our own seductive need for personal convenience. And it’s such an easy place to start. Just signal when you turn and realize that driving is not your divine right, but a privilege you must earn every time you get behind the wheel.

Can you tell Teenager #1 is about to turn 16?

Sleep

Sleep, you little rat bastard. You fill me with need and then dash my hopes night after night after night You are my Moriarity. I hate you and love you all at once. I defy you and yearn for you in the same breath. I may act coy and aloof as if I don’t really need you. As if I can function perfectly fine without you. I flaunt my indifference to you in martyr-like fashion, adopting an air of superiority. All these other fools seem to fall apart without you, but I carry on steeled in my Joan or Arc perseverance to not crumble under your tyranny. Yes I put on a good show, but strip away the bravado and I am just an exhausted lump longing for you to take me into your arms and cast me under your spell.

And you just love it, don’t you. You toy with me in your feline-ious ways. You taunt me all day with eyes half open, yawns coming almost as regularly as breath, and once I finally put head to pillow, you are no where to be found. Or even worse, you take leave of me early in the morning, like a guilty lover, you slink away too early to be late, and no multitude of sheep or ambient noise machines can take your place.

And what an insidious army of minions you have enlisted.   A husband who falls back to sleep before his head hits the pillow and cannot be roused by his alarm, or the cacophonous synchronicity of his and the dog’s snoring; teenagers who can sleep 23 ½ hours a day; a dog who has to be part owl since he sleeps all day and is awake most of the night, and a mind so filled with to-do lists, worries and random blog ideas that it will not quiet. Only you would turn my very family and my own mind against me. Brilliant, cunning, evil.

Yes, I admit it; you are a master, always one step ahead of me. Without you I am a hideous, impatient, idle wretch. I look forward to your next visit, yet you never stay long enough for us to truly get to know each other. And perhaps therein lies your Achilles heel. You toy with us all, hooking us on your addictive properties, laughing at our inane efforts to court you with dim lights, no electronics, regular exercise, no caffeine after certain hours, the Lunesta butterfly and, of course, the proverbial warm milk. You resist our every move maybe because, like so many men of a certain age, you fear commitment. Perhaps if we get too much of you, we will cease to appreciate you, we will take you for granted and you will become mundane, routine, the least interesting of our basic human needs.

But don’t you know that the more we get, the more we want? Have you ever met anyone who says they are well rested? Is there a single human being who doesn’t, at some point of every day, in response to the query “How are you” say “I’m tired?” Even teenager #1 who enjoys your company for sometimes up to 13 hours, wakes up tired and takes a nap only two hours later. It is impossible to get our fill of you.

So you have a choice, Sleep, you can continue your power hungry lonely ways isolating yourself as something to be loved and reviled, or you can take a seat at the table and stay awhile. I won’t get too clingy, I promise. I won’t pressure you or try to change you; I just want to get to know you a little better.

So I’ve exposed my queen, it’s your move.  Do not underestimate me, you may knock me down, but I will always get up. Can you handle that? Or are we going over the falls together?

Have-To

I’ve always considered myself a fairly lazy person. When I’m busy I yearn for the time to just sit around and do whatever I want. Turns out I’m not so good at it.

Take right now. Husband is at work. Teenager 1 is at work. Teenager 2 is on vacation with a friend’s family. I’ve had the whole day to myself and I have spent it wondering what I should do.

Most days there’s a list of things I have to do. So I put myself on an incentive program. I make myself do the things I have to do, and then I feel justified in doing the things I want to do. So it was today. I paid bills, took the dog for a walk, sent pertinent emails to pertinent people, put workout clothes on thinking it would make me more inclined to workout (it didn’t). All those things done, I prepared to take myself to a movie.

Incoming text: “Mom can you drop of my compression shorts?”

This task would be in the opposite direction of the movie. Realign plans. No movie today. Drop off shorts, return books to Barnes & Noble, go to Petsmart.

Outgoing text: “I’ll be there at 2:30.”

Incoming text: “Actually I’m fine.”

Oh. Okay. Now the window of opportunity for the movie is closed.

What to do now? I could tackle the list of things I should do. Filing. Prepping hallway walls to paint. Purging teenagers’ rooms of crap. Writing that Star Wars/Improv book. But should doesn’t have a deadline, and I’m not in a should mood. Problem is I can’t do most of what I want to.

I want to jump in the car and go to the shore for a couple of days, but I have a meeting tonight.

I want to drive up and see my best friend in Vermont, but husband would secretly resent that, though he’d be outwardly supportive.

I want to go to the outlets and buy useless things at discounted prices, but I just paid bills today and reality forbids such an excursion.

I want to sit at an outdoor café in a carefree manner with friends and laugh and eat cake, but my friends are at work or in Vermont.

So instead I do nothing as I linger in a limbo of the magnetic fields of Have-to, Should and Want.  I feel I must cede control to Have-to and Should in order to deserve Want.  And so I fill my life with Have-to and Should, because, lets face it, those are the things that make us feel relevant. If I have to do it, I must be necessary. If I want to do it, I must be self-serving. And we can’t have that, despite what the airline guidelines are for affixing oxygen masks. I know the trick is to convince myself that the Have-tos and Shoulds are actually Wants, but lets face it, mopping the kitchen floor and reorganizing the medicine chest are never going to hold the same allure as sitting in a beach chair with my feet in the water while reading the latest Maisie Dobbs mystery.

So I keep my tally sheet of Have-tos and Shoulds until I’ve checked off enough boxes for a free Want. My life has become a Starbucks frequent customer card.  Balance, balance, balance-it adds depth, meaning, and focus to life. It’s what I’ve always done. It’s what I know I should do.

So I bet you can’t guess what I want to do now…

(P.S.: Ironically, now that I've written this I feel I've earned a reward)

Summer Reading

Just kill me now.

My kids have to read 4 books a piece this summer. Just four books. One required book, and then they are free to pick the other three. Free. Wheee.

Does the game guide to Skyrim on XBOX count? 

How about the blogs for how to improve your performance in League of Legends the online game du jour?

The description of the next Dr. Who episode?

The backs of cereal boxes?

Because these are the things my kids want to read, this is what they would like to be  “free” to read. Surprisingly these are not on the list of suggested reading. That list is composed of books 300 pages and longer which is perfect for apparently every child other than the ones living in my house. Because, according to 87% percent of the parents I talk to(statistic is arbitrary and made up) their kids can’t get enough of reading, they love reading, they live for reading. These children, will, undoubtedly, go to Princeton and Yale and, one day, employ me shaking their heads in bemused disdain as I clumsily negotiate the word processing programs that will at that time be implanted in our heads.

I have a confession to make. I hated summer reading when I was a kid and it wasn’t even as strict as it is now. I liked the thought of filling out the progress sheets the library handed out, but often lagged in momentum as the summer waned on and afternoons at the pool ogling cute boys took precedence. Reading was not my go to form of recreation or escape; I preferred reruns of the Bionic Woman and playing Charlie’s Angels in the backyard with my sister.

So now I am in a tricky spot where I have to be the hammer and get my kids to do their summer reading. There is no respite from my school-year nagging for them to do their homework. It is subtly re-named "summer reading" as if putting the word "summer" in front of it implies a sense of playfulness and whimsy. But it is, in fact, my kids’ least favorite thing to do over the summer. They would actually prefer taking out the garbage, loading the dishwasher and picking up the dog poop in the back yard to reading.

And my husband and I did all those things the articles, and books and Dr. Nancy Snyderman told us to do. We read to our kids since they were babies. We surrounded them with books in their room. We read in front of them, modeling I believe the technical-intimidate-other-parents- with-my well-informedness term is. We turn off the internet we still get a paper delivered to the house. We talk about books, at the dinner table. And yet, my kids still prefer any other activity to reading.

If they are truly free to read whatever they want outside that one required book, can’t we expand the scope of what that includes? How about comic books? Graphic novels? A really great article in Sports Illustrated? An in depth analysis and review of Assassin’s Creed? The back of healthy cereal boxes?

I’m interested in my kids being curious and reading the source material that feeds that curiosity. I do believe they need to be pushed to explore things they have hastily written off in order to fully understand and rediscover the things they truly love the most. I mean the whole reason they are drawn to Skyrim and League of Legends is because of the story aspect. It’s not just to win and blow the heads off of mythical creatures and aliens, they stick with it because they are invested in their character’s story. I know this because I have sat and listened to remarkable detail in the re-telling of their latest victory complete with names I will never remember and specific verbal renderings of weapons, armor and foes.

And why do they seek out the next new game, or the next new tweet or the latest Facebook status update? They are hooked on the stories inherent in these medium. How will that flirtation end up? Will he win the race? How can I defeat the dragon next time?

We read to see ourselves in the lives of other characters, whether to escape, or relate. We seek to know what we would do in that situation or to gain validation from a similar choice or outcome, or to see what is the next possible or inevitable. Whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, Facebook fact or fiction, video game fiction, we are all just seeking to understand our place in the universe and that can happen in a magnificent book, and it can also happen in the collection of stories we find in so many other sources.

Yet until that particular wardrobe door is opened to that strange new world of possibilities, I will continue to bribe, threaten and dupe my kids into completing their summer reading beating it into a joyless obligatory pulp.

Cereal Box Wisdom

Kids are expensive, but not in the way you think.

Yes, they eat a lot, want name brand shoes and clothes, want the latest IPhone, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Those are the expenses you expect and commiserate about with other parents at polite dinner parties and barbecues in an Ephron-esque way.

But the expenses they don’t tell you about in “What to Expect While You're Expecting” or whatever book is currently THE book to read when you’re pregnant are the hidden fees and charges. It’s the cost of doctors, tutors, specialists, medication, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, when it turns out that perfect child of yours is “complicated.” It’s not college that’s going to put us into debt; my kid is struggling now, and I can’t buy him out of it, but I must pay the people who can help him through it.

So, I’ll take this job and that job, and my husband will make those 45 calls to find the in network specialist who is also highly recommended, and we will use our credit card checks to pay for the tutor, and I will stop visiting Target for therapy, and I will not spend extra money on organic vegetables, and I will cancel my Netflix subscription because my kid is not perfect, but he is extraordinary in his own right, and he can’t see it. And the world doesn’t get how hard he works each day without even knowing it to survive what seems normal to the rest of us. And if I can help him, than money will be no object.

And we are lucky. There are many who have it unspeakably harder than we do. And their children are extraordinary and expensive in all the ways they never expected.

And that is why I sometimes tear up when I’m choosing a cereal to buy, and I want the Cinnamon Chex, but it is $4.79 and the Post Raisin Bran is on sale for $2.50. But I don’t want Post Raisin Bran for dinner tonight (because now that I’m a grown-up I can eat cereal for dinner if I want), I was really looking forward to Cinnamon Chex, but it would be irresponsible of me not to get the cereal on sale, because that extra $2.29 will surely keep us from bankruptcy.

So I buy the Post Raisin Bran and I feel in control of something, even if only for an instant. An unrecognizable instant that won’t guarantee all good things for my kids, but it’s got eight essential vitamins and minerals, and it was only $2.50, and, in its own small way it contributed to the possibility of all good things for my kids.

So, yes, kids are expensive in predictable and unpredictable ways, but expensive and impossible are not the same things. I’ve learned many things from the back of a cereal box, but who knew that two scoops would make the impossible feel possible.