The Bobcat Kitty

I usually react with skepticism to unsolicited advice people give me. It's a side effect, I think, of my problems with authority. When Quinn was brand new, everyone I encountered who had already had a kid told me to "enjoy every minute," because, they said, "it goes by so fast." Those first days didn’t go by so fast, but these days...these days definitely do. 

The highlight of our brief summer was the much anticipated arrival of our dear friends from Wyoming whom we visited last year. That visit was a huge success on many levels. Quinn and Eloise were adorable together, but also always on the brink of some small violence. Either giggling wildly, or crying. We spent the visit on guard, to be sure there would be no regrettable incidents.

This time was different. The girls talked. They negotiated. They teased and encouraged each other.They still fought some, and pouted some, but they played a lot, and ran off on their own to do things. Eloise has continued to grow into a tolerant older sister type for Quinn, smiling knowingly with a roll of her eyes when Quinn demands to “be the leader!” or choose her bowl first. And Quinn was happy to be the host this time--she has a lot of ideas and a lot she gets excited about; she was eager to share her world with her friend.

Before their arrival, Quinn and I assembled a “summer bag” for Eloise, and I assembled one just like it for Quinn. Nail polish in multiple colors, new markers and paper, some books to read, some beads for necklace making, glow sticks, matching lunch bags for our planned picnics, and some new fairy wings. 

It poured rain for the first twenty-four hours of their visit, so we painted finger nails and toe nails, played with sticker books, watched Eloise run outside to dance in the rain. We cooked dinner, made cocktails, talked fast and loud, our conversations scattered in the chaos and punctuated with laughter. And over the course of the week, we went for hikes, and picked berries, and had bbqs, and played hide-and-seek, and had dance parties, and went to the farmer's market and for night walks, and roasted two marshmallows. And the days went by too fast.

When we said goodbye last July, it felt like we wouldn’t see them again for an eternity. But when they arrived at the end of this July, it felt like only five minutes had passed. Except we noticed, right away, how much time had passed. Last year at this time, the girls, who are 7 months apart in age, looked like this:

...No edges, just soft, round, fleshy faces. Now there are cheekbones where baby faces used to be. And dimpled cheeks and chins. Their noses crinkle. The angles are taking shape. All the days go by too fast.

I still catch myself saying my daughter is a toddler...but she’s not anymore. She’s a little kid. A beautiful, intense, smart, funny little kid. And she is in the midst of some big change right now...some new developmental leap, again. They seem to happen so quickly. Just when I think I’m getting to know her, she evolves into someone totally new. And the Quinn who is emerging right now is amazing me.

She’s still the girl who will go to blows with anyone who wrongs her. Last summer, at an outdoor festival in town, she was playing with a pile of giant blocks. Two five or six year old boys came along and grabbed one out of her hands and walked away. She knew one of the boys from her daycare; she didn’t know the other one, and she didn’t care to. I watched her scream at them as they walked away, and then I watched her run at them. She grabbed hold of the block and gave it her all trying to get it back. Soon she was on the ground, wrestling a much older, much bigger kid; Quinn had not yet turned three. When I went in to break it up, she was outraged that I was pulling her away. She knew the boys had been in the wrong and she was determined to make it right. I’ve watched this play out many times with other kids over this past year too. And I’ve also watched her be the one in the wrong, grabbing something she wants away from someone else. 

Some of her rages, usually directed at us, have been nothing short of incredible...like the two times we had to go to the doctor this year, when she thrashed and kicked and screamed, at the top of her lungs, “Don’t touch me!!!” Or the time recently when she screamed at me because I was making her leave her daycare before she wanted to...she screamed out the door, to the car, into her seat, all the way home, out of her seat, and up to the porch. And she sat there screaming, at the top of her lungs, while I went inside and opened and drank an entire beer...and still when I went upstairs and took a hot bath. She screamed for over an hour and was still screaming after I got dried off and dressed. At that point, I kneeled down on the floor and she came over to me, still screaming and flapping her arms like a deranged bird. Then she sat on the floor in front of me and took a couple of spastic breaths. I asked her if she was ready to talk about it. She nodded, yes. Within a minute, she admitted to having been wrong, apologized for screaming at me, told me she loved me and gave me a hug. Then we went down and cooked dinner. 

That’s what’s new: her capacity for self-awareness and her willingness to accept responsibility for her actions. Her ability to talk things through.

On another day when I picked her up, she ran over to give one of her friends a goodbye hug. One of her other little buddies ran up and said, "I want a hug too!" I was surprised and disappointed when she told him, "No thanks. I'm only giving one hug today." She tried to walk away, but I stopped her. I tried to coax her, feeling bad for the little guy who waited expectantly, a little smirk on his face. She never gave in. I apologized on her behalf to the little friend, tried to make light of it for him. He just turned and ran off to play--no lasting damage it seemed. When we were out of the backyard and out of earshot, Quinn turned and looked at me. "Mom," she said, "I don't want to give hugs to people who are mean..." I felt so surprised and stupid; why hadn't I trusted her? "I'm happy to give hugs to friends who are nice to me, but that friend wasn't nice to me today. Okay?" She seemed surprised too, like she couldn't believe she had to explain something so obvious to me. Sometimes, she's so grown up.

Just like last year at this time, as she was getting ready to move into the older kids’ room at her daycare, Quinn is primed right now for change. And the timing is good because this week she started pre-school, two days a week. 

Back in March, when I took her to her pre-school screening, I wasn’t sure she would be ready. She’s been in the same daycare for three years. She is safe there, and she loves her people. Most days, she won’t leave without giving her teachers (and sometimes her friends) goodbye hugs. When she entered the pre-school room at the screening, and was invited to play with the other kid who was being screened at the same time, she instead clung to me. She climbed on and around my chair for the whole length of my parent interview and, by the time they asked me if I had any concerns about her development or behavior, I’m pretty sure she was draped over my head. “No concerns other than this one, obviously.”

With that memory still fresh, I was nervous about her start at Spring Hill School--a place that has a cult following in our community, and a reputation for “magic." I’ve heard that word countless times from starry-eyed teenagers and adults who seem to get lost in their memories of the place. Quinn isn’t usually starry-eyed...she tends to be a bit more piercing and direct. I worried she’d treat her new teachers like her doctor. Or have a first day throw down with one of the starry-eyed classmates of her future. 

In preparation for the year, Quinn had to choose a name symbol. When I asked her about it one day, without looking up from what she was doing, she said, off the cuff: “sheep.” But then we found out the director of the school is the sheep. Quinn’s next choice was bobcat (having just seen one at her grandparents’ house in Pennsylvania). She's been telling everyone, proudly, "I'm the bobcat kitty!" When we met the director on the first day, I was sure to warn her: sheep and bobcats don’t typically get along.

But they did get along. In fact, Quinn’s first day of pre-school was epic...for both of us. I was worked up like I had been on her first birthday...determined that everything should be perfect, and eager to soak in every single sentimental second of it. Sam, on the other hand, treated it as he does every other day--nothing new, no big deal. But when we picked her up at the end of the day, it was clear it was a big deal...in fact, it was a very big deal.

We pulled into the parking lot and heard her scream to us from the swings. She ran across the playground and up the stone steps and stopped at the top where our paths intersected. She threw her arms open wide and screamed out with joy, “I HAD A GREAT DAY TODAY!!!!” She talked a million miles an hour, nonstop. She wanted to play some more and wanted to show us around. She handed us a drawing she did and explained, "I made it to celebrate you." It was hard to get her out of there, but we eventually did, and she talked about it for the rest of the night, telling us over and over again, “I had a GREAT day Mom and Dad!!! A great day! A really great day! I had such a great day.” 

She was still talking about it this morning when she went back to her regular daycare for her Friday schedule. Alanna was there to greet her, her first teacher and someone I will always love for the way she’s loved my girl. Quinn screamed her news: “I had so much fun! And I didn’t do none cryin’! And I wasn’t shy with anyone! I just talked and talked and talked. I was so good! Actually...I was great!” 

She was still talking when I noticed Alanna’s eyes filling up with tears, and then mine spilled over too. “I’m so proud of her,” Alanna said, “I could cry!”  And I’m so grateful, I thought (but didn't manage to say), for all the people and experiences that are helping her shine.

"...So much sunshine to the square inch." -Walt Whitman

Ripe, Sweet Fruit

When I was teaching liberal arts classes at the New England Culinary Institute, I read a book with my students called Epitaph for a Peach. It was written by David Mas Masumoto, a second generation peach farmer from California. One of the students who read the book with me, a young man named Michael, was from the same area as Masumoto’s farm and, after completing his six-month internship back home, he returned, with the rest of his class, for graduation. I have a vivid memory of Michael running toward me that day. He had gathered his classmates before me and assembled us on the sidewalk outside the inn. Then, with great care, he pulled a peach out of a brown paper bag. He had held the bag on his lap for his entire cross-country journey, hoping the peaches would make it to our hands unbruised. As he explained the story, he pulled out another peach, and another, and handed them out. They were the very peaches we’d all read about together--Masumoto's peaches. They were softball-sized and heavy with juice, and we ate them right there in the middle of the celebration, each of us hinged forward, trying in vain not to get juice all over our clothes. It was a ripe and delicious moment that comes to mind vividly even now. 

Slicing peaches in my kitchen the other night, for a peach and raspberry pie I baked for visiting friends, I was struck by how many lives we live in this one short life, and how chronological time gets somehow reconfigured in the scope of our memories. My culinary school job seems like a lifetime ago, but I can still taste that peach on my tongue. On the other hand, it feels like only a year or two has passed since Sam and I built this house, yet recently, driving down our road, I noticed all the neighbors’ dogs seemed suddenly old. When did their muzzles all go white? Thinking it over, I realized: we’ve been running this gauntlet of dogs for seven years now. And that means I’ve lived longer in this house than any other place I’ve lived. For someone who has craved a sense of rootedness all her life, this milestone feels meaningful. The memories I make here daily feel ripe and sweet too.

There is a spot up the road where a microburst blew down a section of woods a few years ago, leaving behind a sunny open place that has produced a seemingly endless raspberry patch. There are more perfect berries than you could ever pick. Standing in the rain, filling a two quart bowl the other day, the savory-sweet taste of raspberries brought me back, as it always does, to the patch behind my grandparents’ house on the lake--the patch we would pass before going down the stairs to the dock. Eating them, I am young again, my sister even younger, and my mother and grandmother are nearby. Somehow they come back to me here the more this place becomes home.

And home for me now is as much about Quinn as it is me. The memories we create here will be what she carries with her into her future. I want them to be sweet and just right. I want them to be happy, as mine are. 

Last week I took her on her first hike. I have hiked many places, with many kids, and I have loved each experience--even the cold, wet, scary ones, in the end. But hiking with my own kid was something entirely different. Following the advice of a friend, I took her on a day when we had nothing else to do, so we could take as long as we needed to. I gave her the choice of going to school, or going on a girls’ adventure with me, and I packed a picnic to eat at the top of Sunset Ledge. The hike is just over a mile each way, which seems long considering Quinn barely makes it to the end of our driveway most days before she asks for a “hug-carry.” Fortunately, when we arrived at the trailhead, the mountain-magic kicked in: Quinn motored up the trail, scrambling up and over rocks and roots, and was determined to do it all on her own. I followed behind her, most of the time with my hand held out just behind her back. If I accidentally touched her, she scolded me, “I’ve got it, Mom! I can do it myself.” Halfway up, she said, “I love it here, Mom! Thanks for taking me.” I smiled the whole way, totally unable to contain how proud I was of her.

A couple of nights later, we took her out in the canoe for an evening paddle. We hadn’t gotten her in a canoe for any length of time since the first time we took her when she was ten months old. As a baby, and since, she’s refused to wear a life jacket, but after three years, I’ve learned a few tricks. I allowed her to pick out her own new life jacket. She picked a hot pink one with a shark fin on the back because, she said, “it’s funny.” Fortunately it also seems to float. 

I also packed a lot of snacks for the ride, and padded out her seat on the bottom of the boat.  The night of our paddle on Blueberry Lake, Quinn told us, “Hiking and canoeing are my life!” Given what the world is like, given the chaos and the clutter, I would love to think this will somehow prove true. For now, I’m savoring the sweetness that is, trying to make this version of my life last as long as possible.

For Father's Day, I'll Let Him Speak for Himself

Sam’s lacrosse team has gone to the championship game of the state tournament three times in the past four years. Always his team is a mixed bag of boys who have played some lacrosse before, and many who never have. Because of the ski season, they start playing two to three weeks later than all the other teams in the league. And because we are a boarding school, these boys play together as a team for the first time here, unlike some of our opponents who have been playing together for years. In recent years, the team has tripled in size from what it was when Sam first arrived at our school. And while he usually has one other young ski coach around to help drive vans, and keep the stats in the book, maybe do some drills with the kids, Sam coaches by himself. Other teams we’ve met in the championship game have had a sideline full of coaches. We just have Sam.

Photo credit: Jill Maynard Nolan

Two years ago, we won the state title in a game that was, literally, unbelievable. We’d had a great season. We’d lost only one game in the regular season and then beat that same team in the semi-finals. The year before, the boys lost by one in the final game, and so in 2012, they were primed to win. But we were down by one goal as the clock started to run out; I couldn’t believe it was happening again. I couldn’t believe we’d made it to the championship a second year in a row, only to lose again by one goal. But then the unfathomable happened: with only 1/100^th of a second left on the clock, one of the boys put the ball in the net and tied it up. We lost our minds. And the momentum of that tying goal was enough...with almost no time elapsed in the sudden death overtime, we scored and won the game. It makes me tear up just thinking about it. 

Last year, we lost in the semi-final, but that was a minor hiccup in the long view of these past four years. When this season began, last year’s season-ending loss faded in the distance as we won game after game after game. We won all eleven games of our regular season this year. And then we won the first two of the championship tournament. In our semi-final game, against another strong team, we won with ease; the boys played beautifully, connecting with each other as if they’d been playing together for years. Our record going into the championship final was 13-0...an accomplishment the school has never seen before.

Two years ago, when we won the title, I was determined to write about the victory here, but somehow I never did. I wanted to record the story, for the future Quinn, of what a great coach her dad is, and what a good luck charm she seemed to be: since her arrival in the Gumby fan base, they had gone to the tournament both years. That year, 2012, the only game they lost was the one she didn’t attend. When they won that emotional championship game, after the boys dumped a cooler of water over Sam’s head, after Sam, who is relatively unemotional on the field, hugged players all around him, I handed the not-yet-two year old Quinn over the fence to our Athletic Director who set her down on the turf, and I watched as she worked her way through the legs of giants to find the legs of her dad. He picked her up and held her in his arms when the team posed for photos, and he held her in his arms as the team accepted its trophy. 

Amazingly, she seemed to know what had just been done.

This year, the championship game had a different feel. We hadn’t lost a game all year. We had already beaten the team we were playing, but still we knew it could be a tough game. What we didn’t know going into it is how things outside of our control would affect the outcome of the game. We didn’t know that we wouldn’t get credit for one of the critical goals we would score, because we never could’ve imagined that with four referees on the field, it would be possible for such a goal to go unseen. Evidently, it was. And evidently, the ample photo and video evidence, and the reaction of the stadium full of people would not count for anything. Evidently the goalie for the other team was never asked whether he’d let one it, and evidently he didn’t feel compelled to tell anyone. The game was tied with three seconds left on the clock when the other team scored a goal. It was the 7^th goal they scored in the game. We “scored” one for them by having a ball fall out of our goalie’s stick and drop in behind him; so the scoreboard, for our opponents, said 8. We scored 8 goals, but only got credit for 7. 

In the days since this game, I’ve been struggling to make sense of the disappointment and my sense of the injustice of it all. Struggling to deal with my frustration for the lack of accountability for the refs who altered that game. Sam has been going over it again and again too, but he has done so with the composure that so many people who encounter him on a lacrosse field always notice. When he asked me to proofread the letter he wrote to his boys, the night after the game, I knew immediately I wanted Sam’s thoughts to be the thoughts saved here for the future Quinn (with his permission):

Guys,
I’m assuming lots of you are still feeling some of the sting from last night--I know I am. I also know, from my time on a lot of lacrosse fields, in a lot of places, over a long period of time, and also from life in general, that this sort of disappointment is part and parcel of being an athlete and being a human.  Things don’t always work out--we don’t always get the results we want, or even the results we deserve. The goal that the officials missed last night hurt us--through no fault of our own.  That’s deeply frustrating, but it’s also part of being alive and being a competitor.  There will always be factors that are out of your control.   

And the truth is, before we start crying too hard over our fate, there were a lot of factors in our control, factors that we didn’t turn to our advantage.  It’s hard to make sure that every factor you can control works out for you in every game, over a fourteen game season; you guys did an incredible job of doing this for thirteen straight games--in the end, the one game where we didn’t do our job as well as we could have is also the game where some other factors came into play.  Unfortunately, this game is the one we wanted the most. 

It’s clear that the officials (or at least the person who is responsible for the officials) are well aware that factors beyond our control impacted last night’s outcome, but it’s also clear that that is not going to change the result.  Perhaps knowing that will change how you feel about it--that’s something each of you will process in your own way, individually. 

What I am feeling is just an enormous sense of gratitude for having had the opportunity to work with all of you and to go on the sort of run that we went on this spring. I imagine that each of you will undertake future endeavors that will follow a similar sort of trajectory--a whole lot of hard work, leading to a whole lot of success, but in the end, the ultimate goal might (or will) prove elusive.  Would you go back to the beginning and stop yourself from starting in the first place? I hope not.  This is where we learn resiliency, determination, toughness. It’s also where we learn about the value of the relationships we form with teammates.  Those relationships are far more important than whether we won or lost last night. Looking at how that game, and its result, unfolded, each of you should be able to see that a single game’s outcome can be totally arbitrary (up to the gods, if you will) but the work you and your teammates share is not.  That’s the real result I hope you’ll focus on.   

Again, thank you for giving me the chance to work with all of you guys this year. I’ll leave you with two quotes, from a couple of my favorite people--one is a former president, the other is a spaced out kayaker who has done some incredible things on this planet. 

Take care of yourselves, and each other, 

Sam 

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”  -Theodore Roosevelt

"You've got to be big enough to be small enough to let the world be awesome and it will"  -Jim Snyder

Photo credit: Jill Maynard Nolan

Congratulations team, on an incredible season. You made us all proud.

"You're Good at Vacuuming"

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, 

but people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou

We were finishing up dinner one night last week, having some homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Sam was drying dishes and putting them away. Quinn was on a stool at the island in our kitchen. I was somewhere in between. “You make good cookies, Mom,” she said. “I do,” I agreed, shamelessly. “I’m the best cookie baker you’ll ever meet!” 

“Yeah, you’re good at cookies Mom. And, Dad...you’re good at vacuuming!”

This stopped us in our tracks. I let out a surprised laugh. Sam looked confused, at best. Then I started thinking: Quinn meant it as a compliment, genuinely. And Sam’s face seemed to say, “Geez, that’s all I’m good at?” Almost instantly I realized how great this was. I explained it to Sam: growing up with a dad who is good at vacuuming (as well as a number of other things), means Quinn will grow up with the expectation that dads, and therefore men, vacuum. And maybe they even do the dishes, and a few other household chores. It means she will be less likely to end up with a man who believes it’s entirely her responsibility to do those household chores. It means she’ll grow up expecting a partner, not a boss.  It may even mean that she grows up challenging preconceived gender roles. Pretty soon, Sam seemed okay being the guy who was good at vacuuming. And, ironically, soon after that conversation, I found an article online titled, “Dads who do chores raise daughters who aspire to high-paying careers.” 

The next day, I was still thinking about it all, and I started thinking about my own dad. I don’t remember him vacuuming exactly, but I’m sure he did, along with plenty of other things around the house. One of our rules was that the person who made dinner didn’t have to do the dishes. And I remember a lot of summer evenings when my parents would leave together after dinner to go play tennis while my sister and I cleaned up. Not only did they share the work, my parents were also active together. And they encouraged us to get out and do things too. When we moved to a town with no girls’ swim team, both my parents encouraged me to join the boys’ team. I knew they were proud of me when I swam against the boys, and perhaps especially so when I beat them. I never felt like there was anything I couldn’t do just because I was a girl. And I always felt like it was worth fighting for my place in the world. That’s how I was raised.

And I’ve been working to raise Quinn that way too. When a recent Atlantic magazine arrived with two women on the cover, and an article called “Closing the Confidence Gap,” it made its way to the bathroom where most of our magazines spend some time. Quinn, like her dad, enjoys a good magazine in there, and when she spotted the picture of the two women, she wanted to know all about them. We’ve been talking about what it means to be confident for weeks. I’ve been telling her that being confident means knowing that you are smart, and strong, and independent, which means you’re good at doing things by yourself. When I heard her in the bathroom the other day, I went upstairs to see if she needed any help. When I arrived, she told me, “I did it myself Mom, because I’m confident.”

I’ve been reading her books with female characters, telling her she’s strong and smart instead of always pretty, and I’ve been working on myself too to be sure she sees me leading a healthy, happy life at home, at work and in my free time. But I realize that no matter how much I try to tell her that she just needs to be confident in herself, there’s the rest of the world she has to deal with too--all the people who will try to limit her or make her feel bad for possessing those very traits I want her to have. 

The timing this week was ironic: it was the same week a young man went on a killing spree in California, targeting women, because they had never done what he wanted them to do.  No matter how confident those young women may have been, they couldn't compensate for the killer's lack of confidence. It was the same week our school's campus blew up in a hot mess over some student-written op-ed pieces in which kids tried to make sense of their feelings about sexism, and which soon descended into kids making public attacks on each other--boys attacking girls because they felt attacked. Soon they were right back where they started: he said-she said, and us against them...some kids left frustrated they didn't make any progress, but not realizing their effort was progress itself. This week was also, ironically, the week the indomitable Maya Angelou died--a beautiful and powerful voice for the beauty and power of all people.

Quinn needs such voices (we all do), and she needs to be able to see examples of how things should be. This is where Sam’s vacuuming is so important.That and her own instincts. Today we had a birthday party to go to for a four year old boy from her daycare. I asked Quinn what she thought her friend would like for a present and she said, “Well, he loves snuggle buddies!” I thought about it and realized that nearly every time I see this little boy, he’s squeezing a stuffed animal in the crook of his arm. Still, I was thinking trucks or something like that would be a better (more well-received) gift. But, when I brought Quinn to the store, I decided to just let her choose--he’s her friend after all. 

There was a huge display of perfectly sized stuffed animals. Bears, monkeys, weird looking gremlins...and there was one white kitten with pink ears. When it was present opening time, the birthday boy was inundated by kids eager to give him their presents. About halfway through, after a bunch of trucks and light sabers had already been unwrapped, Quinn worked her way to the front of the pack and handed him her gift. She stood next to him as he opened it and all the other kids looked on. I looked on nervously too. When he got the paper opened up, he immediately squeezed the kitten to his chest. Then he brought it over to his mom to show it to her; she had to remind him he had more presents to open. Quinn found me in the crowd, with a big proud smile on her face. I picked her up and squeezed her, “He liked his snuggle buddy, Mom,” she said, pleased with her gift. I was pleased to know that she hasn't yet left that happy, safe time in life when each person gets to just be who she and he wants to be.

For half of the party we watched a new Disney documentary about grizzly bears. I was sitting on a couch between two moms, with four little kids stretched out on our laps, watching contentedly for an impressive amount of time. Eventually they started moving around in the open space of the theater. The footage on the screen was spectacular: massive wide angle views of Alaska--mountains, rivers, forests, ocean--close-ups of bears, wolves, eagles, and fish. It was mesmerizing. The kids kept getting closer and closer to the screen. After a while, one and then the others climbed onto the little stage directly below it. They got as close as they could and looked up at what must’ve been, from that angle, massive and breathtaking. I could see Quinn in among them. At one point, she stood with her arms reaching up over her head, as if to touch all that wild nature towering above her. It was a stunning image...all those tiny people, girls and boys, still unhindered by expectations and limitations, staring up at big wilderness...all of it uncharted territory. So much possibility.

"Nothing will work unless you do." - Maya Angelou

Your Mother's House

It’s Friday morning and I’m in class. My seniors are doing their weekly forty-five minute writing exercise. Each time we do it, I give them a prompt to start from. Today, two days before Mother’s Day, I’ve given them this: Write about your mom. What do you appreciate about her? What do you miss when you’re not with her? Describe the times when you call her, or find her in the house to talk. 

As an afterthought, I’ve allowed for this possibility: Maybe you and your mother are not close...why do you think that is the case?

I sit here wondering what they are writing about their moms, and I wonder too how Quinn might respond to this question ten or twelve years from now. I hope she won’t choose the afterthought.

Inevitably, I’m sitting here thinking too about the conceptual intersection between my daughter and my mother. As I always am.

Soon after we returned from our April roadtrip, with stops at her grandparents’ house on our way to and from the beach, Quinn asked me, “What is your mom’s name?” I reminded her. “Claire. Remember? You have her name in your name.” I showed Quinn her picture again. In the past when the subject of my mother has come up, Quinn’s questions have been limited to what she can see: why is she holding that puppy? what color is her hair? This time was different. “When can we go to your mom’s house?”

It was funny, in the absurd way, to think about the possibility that I simply hadn’t chosen to bring Quinn to visit my mom--as if I had never gotten around to it, or for some reason didn’t want to go. But her question was sincere, and she waited for my answer. I didn’t really have one prepared.

“She doesn’t have a house anymore.”

“Why not?”

“She doesn’t live anywhere anymore…”

Obviously, Quinn didn’t understand. I offered up heaven, but that didn’t really work; perhaps she could tell even I didn’t know what I was talking about.

In another conversation recently, Quinn said, “Remember that time we went to the movie with your mom?” I was surprised by that question too. “Yeah! Mom! Remember? It was the movie about the planes.” Sam and I looked at each other across the counter. The movie about the planes was the first movie we took her to see. I loved the idea of my mom being there with us, looking on, smiling as she always is when I dream about her. The dreamer in me allowed for the possibility that my mother had been there with Quinn and Quinn knew it--that the two of them had found a way to meet in some sphere beyond what the skeptics could perceive. 

Wanting proof, I asked more questions. I was hopeful. But eventually I realized what Quinn was probably remembering.  “Was it the movie we saw with Mary?” I asked, “And her daughter Claire?” 

“Oh! Yeah,” she smiled, “that was it.”

This time, as I tried to explain where heaven was, things started to fall apart. My eyes watered against my will. Quinn studied my face, concerned. I said, “heaven is kind of everywhere,” but even I could hear my statement sounding like more of a question than an answer. She didn’t understand, of course, and I didn’t really expect her to. How do you explain to someone who is just starting to appreciate what it means to be alive that everyone who is alive must also die? How do you explain to your child that her mother won’t always be there? 

Maybe you don’t. 

“I don’t know how to say good bye,” I told my mom in the hospital. “You don’t,” she told me. “When you love someone this much, you don’t say goodbye.”

A Lesson In Faith

A few days after Corey and Kellam had their baby, Corey sent me an email. “I’ve never felt so whole,” he wrote, “...or alive.” Corey is kind of adorable, kind of sentimental, and very much prone to obsess over a new project. The baby, and fatherhood, were clearly the new projects.

I am prone to constant self-assessment, a little bit of competitiveness, and sometimes, I’m not proud to say, judging others. I’ve confessed here before that Quinn was three months old before I decided I was ready to feel glad to have her in my life. It was far from instantaneous for me, and even farther for Sam, though I should probably let him speak for himself. And, in those early days of Corey’s new fatherhood, when I was receiving pictures of the sleeping newborn hourly, I experienced some sort of weird jealousy that I didn’t have a partner who enjoyed our baby like Corey enjoyed his. Every new photo that popped into my inbox caused me to locate Sam in the crosshairs of my criticism. What’s wrong with him, I wondered. Why wasn’t he like this when Quinn was born? Why isn’t he like this even now? And how did I end up married to the Tin Man?

The reality, of course, is that if Sam had been as effusive about baby love in those first couple of months, when I felt like a sleepless alien in my own body, I probably would’ve handed him the kid, wished him luck and been on my way. Sam and I are, for better and for worse, well matched. And I realized that, fortunately, before I did too much damage comparing him to my old friend.

Winter is challenging for us, so we’re not always focused on the positive. Near constant school responsibilities, lots of tag-team parenting, the stress of our road in winter, etc...all of them conspire against clear-headedness. On top of that, Quinn seems determined never to sleep through the night without eventually ending up in our bed sometime before dawn. An almost daily discussion in the months leading up to this time, was about how to keep Quinn in her own bed so we could get a good night’s sleep. For a while, after she transitioned from her crib to her bed, she would wake up and still call out to us from her room. But this winter we entered a new phase: little feet pad across the wood floor in the dark, a quiet “Mama!” is whispered in my ear, and she lifts up the blanket to climb in and snuggle and fall back to sleep. Now we don’t even have the opportunity to try to convince her to stay in her own bed; she just comes in and helps herself to ours. For me, that’s not so bad because the truth is I love having her curl up next to me, and now I don’t even need to get up to go get her. When Quinn is snuggling with me, warm and soft and breathing in my ear, I’ll tell you what: I feel whole, and alive. 

Sam doesn’t love sharing the bed as much as I do (or at all), and when he complains, I remind him: it won’t last forever. I intend to enjoy it as long as possible, whether he intends to or not.

A couple of weeks after Corey’s baby was born, with the baby-daddy envy finally beginning to subside, Sam and I managed to get Quinn to bed one night and still have some energy to watch a movie. We had some dinner, a glass of wine, and watched James Gandolfini and Julia Louise Dreyfus in the movie Enough Said. It’s a great film, about two divorced adults, each with a daughter about to go off to college. In an early scene, Dreyfus’s character is in bed early in the morning, and her college-aged daughter comes into the room and climbs in bed with her to snuggle. I looked over at Sam guiltily, wondering if he was thinking what I was: it actually might last forever!  As you can imagine, we each responded differently to that scene. 

The movie progressed and the daughter’s departure for college, thousands of miles away, loomed closer and closer. Already I dread Quinn going off to school and I still have fifteen years to prepare. I have essentially given up on the hope of Sam understanding this, given up on the idea that we will have shared feelings that will allow us to commiserate. When the scene finally came, and Dreyfus took her daughter to the airport and had to say goodbye outside the gate, I was toast. Tears poured down my cheeks. Snot streamed from my nose. I couldn’t hold it in. I was no longer watching a movie--I was traveling through time, standing in the airport myself, and a grown Quinn, just out of reach, was smiling and waving goodbye. 

Just when I thought I would die of anticipatory sadness, I glanced over at Sam again. 
Tears streamed down his face too. My world was, and is, as it is meant to be. 

Welcome to the World

We first exist in the ether. A loosely formed inquiry about what’s possible, about joy, about responsibility. We are first a question and then an evolving answer. We become Maybe, Hopefully, suspended in the warm waters of the womb. Eventually, we emerge as Yes with the arrival of gravity, and the gravity of it all settles its weight on everyone. We adjust to the pull of the Earth, anchored in the arms of our guardians, adjusting our eyes, our lungs. Finding our way.

And the guardians are finding their way too. The world is different. The path is new. The disorientation is real. “How do you feel?” I asked my friend. “Weird,” she said, with a smile. She is a poet, she has so many choices, and yet “weird” is really the only choice. I know. 

And I know too she and he are in love with their new answer, their new path, and yet no matter how full that love is right now, unbelievably, it still has so much room to grow. In the beginning, we know it only to be new and unfamiliar. As the days unfold, we come to understand, a little more, that it is also old, as old as the Earth and the ether, and we come to sense that that love has emerged from us as if it has always been there, waiting to emerge. We come to understand that this new life is the catalyst, and we are the vessels, and the love is larger than we can ever fully comprehend or explain. 

And yet some of us will spend the rest of our lives trying to comprehend and document and explain. And we will probably not succeed, but we’ll try anyway because first there is the moment, and then there is the attempt to capture the moment, and in that recreation is the re-experiencing, the revisitation of joy, and laughter, the struggle, the lessons, and the profound inexplicable wonder of it all. 

And life proceeds from here in this circular advance through time, moving forward, looping back, swirling as samaras from the maple tree, falling to the Earth, taking root again as fieldings, keeping the ancient, magical love alive.

 Welcome to the world, baby girl. You've landed in a wonderful place. xo


For Corey and Kellam, and for Fielding. 
Wishing all of them joy and love they can feel in their bones.

The Christmas Conundrum

Last December I started worrying about whether or not I would tell Quinn the Santa lie. I was able to put off the decision, temporarily, because at just over two years old, she wasn’t really ready anyway. This year she was more cognitively prepared and I was still ethically unprepared. 

With Thanksgiving just past, and Quinn reminding me daily that we had to do something to make the world more beautiful, we entered into the Christmas season. One weekend, earlier this month, we made our world more beautiful by hanging colored lights on a small spruce tree in our front yard. Quinn loved the process and many nights this month she’s gone out on the front porch in her slippers to admire our “beautiful” tree, lighting up our dark little corner of woods. Soon after hanging the outdoor lights, we put some decorations up inside the house, and started a countdown calendar so Quinn could count the days until Christmas. We hung a green ribbon from the railing next to the stairs in the hopes of receiving holiday cards in the mail, and had a great time each day when they did. Eventually, the weekend before Christmas, we hiked out into our woods to find and cut down a tree.

Through it all, I was testing out the Santa Claus idea with her. “Hey Quinn...have you heard anything about this Santa Claus guy?” I was awkward about it, I knew, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t make it feel natural. I’ve always been terrible at lying--I’m incapable of it really. Quinn had heard of Santa from school, but I could tell she didn’t really get the myth, so I thought if I danced around it, I might have still another year to postpone this difficult decision. And yet even in my talk of “postponing” the decision, I felt more and more sure that I would not actually try to convince her that a man in a red suit would come into her house and leave her presents on Christmas Eve. It’s actually kind of creepy, when you think about it in a certain way.

I started preparing Sam for my decision not to lie to Quinn. I think he understood my desire to be truthful with our daughter but, unlike me, he was very concerned about other people’s kids--worried that Quinn would be the kid who would ruin it all for everyone else. I suggested we find a way to talk about “the magic of Christmas” without Santa being expected to actually arrive. But, before I could fully frame the story, I stumbled on a game changer: an article on the New York Times homepage titled, “Santa on the Brain.” I clicked the link, eagerly looking for something to justify my refusal to participate in the Santa lie, but found instead a thought-provoking argument for making the lie as big and fanciful as possible. 

The author, a neuroscientist and mom named Kelly Lambert, explained some brain-development basics:

Although children are born with a full set of 86 billion brain cells, or neurons, the connections between these neurons are relatively sparse during these early years. As their brains develop — as more and more micro-thread extensions form between neurons, and neurochemicals zap across the tiny gaps — children slowly learn about the rules of the physical world, and the distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. Eventually, they learn that reindeer can’t fly, that Santa can’t visit every child’s home in one single night and, even if he could make such a trip, there’s no way he could eat all those cookies. Magical beliefs are pruned away as mature neural circuits reflecting real-world contingencies become solidified.

Lambert goes on to explain that even though children outgrow their early fictional beliefs, the presence of those early fictions might provide benefits to them in adulthood:

...The brain appears to retain a mechanism for neural time travel. By this, I don’t simply mean that adults have warm memories of having believed in Santa Claus. [They may also have developed] mental time travel memories, or M.T.T. These [memories] come closer to re-experiencing a remembered event...Neuroimaging evidence indicates that, when certain events are recalled — presumably after being triggered by familiar sights, smells or sounds — emotional brain areas are activated as well as visceral responses. You relive the feelings you experienced in the past.

Reading this forced me to think about my own Christmas memories. When I was little, Christmas was, truly, the most wonderful time of the year. When the Christmas decorations came out, my parents let me hang a string of colored lights around my bedroom doorframe and I would fall asleep happily every night in that soft glow. We left notes for Santa every year, and cookies we’d find mostly gone, save for a few evidential crumbs, by Christmas morning. My sister and I were literally giddy with excitement for days, if not weeks. And, when the day finally arrived, my father would torture us with further ploys to prolong the anticipation. He would have to go to the living room first to confirm that Santa had actually come, while we waited impatiently at the end of the hall, or upstairs. He would have to make the coffee, put Elvis’s Blue Christmas album on the stereo, and light up the tree before we came down. And for the whole long journey, we’d have a camera pointed in our faces, recording the hope and excitement and finally the confirmation, by virtue of the pile of presents wrapped in paper unlike all the others, that Santa had in fact remembered to include us in the Christmas joy.

To this day, in spite of my desire to avoid the excessive consumerism of the holiday, I love listening to Christmas songs, I love signing, addressing and sending Christmas cards, and I love baking Christmas treats and decorating the house or the tree with our small but growing collection of Christmas ornaments with stories. I still get excited. And I still remember, every year, the time I woke up in the middle of the night and was certain I saw a reindeer leg pumping air outside my second story bedroom window.

My reluctance to tell Quinn the lie, I realized, was not a desire to deny her these Christmas joys, but rather a desire to help her avoid the disappointment of finding out that Santa isn’t actually real. That’s why I’ve been trying to imagine a way to preserve the Christmas spirit, without the lie. But when I reached the conclusion of the neuroscience article, I started to realize the necessity of the fiction. The author herself realized, “For every year I layered another set of Christmas memories into [my girls’] brains, the easier it would be for them to relive those feelings.”  And so, if Quinn is to be able to call up that magic in the future, if she is to have an opportunity to relive the joy in her adulthood around the holidays, it seems I have to lie to her right now. I want Quinn’s experiences of magic to be real, and tangible, rather than just conceptual...rather than just lore.

And so, when Quinn told me one night recently, “I hope Santa will bring me a new baby doll for Christmas,” even though I had already bought her presents, and even though I hate baby dolls, I went out and got her a new one. And when I absentmindedly let her play with the roll of wrapping paper that was going to be just for the Santa presents, I went out and spent another $7 dollars on a different roll, so the Santa presents would stand out as unique and exotic under the tree. On Christmas Eve, I asked Quinn if she wanted to leave Santa some of the peppermint brownies we’d made for friends and family, so he could have a snack if he stopped at our house, and I even wrote a note for her, based on what she wanted to write: “Dear Santa, Cookies are for you.” After that, she signed her own Q.

She went to bed without complaint, understanding that Santa doesn’t stop if you’re still awake. Sam and I stayed up late prepping appetizers and dinner for Christmas day, and wrapping presents, and we were woken up early the next morning by our three year old who was eager to see if Santa had come. She was hard to contain upstairs while I went downstairs to get things ready, and she graciously arrived with a look of surprise when she saw the small pile of Santa presents set aside from the rest. 

It didn’t all go exactly as planned. When I showed Quinn the crumbs left on the plate, certain she would be excited that Santa had eaten and enjoyed the treat she left for him, she burst into tears and stormed away. I followed her to ask what was the matter. “I wanted those!” she screamed, and she continued crying for at least five minutes. Seems we still have some work to do on just how this whole Santa thing works. In the meantime, it was a good start, and it felt okay, for now, to tell this white Christmas lie.

As for me, I worked hard to do my Christmas part. I got the granddaughter to Massachusetts to see her Nonna and Poppa, Aunt Amy, Uncle Scott and her boy cousins, and I got her home in time to host her Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle Josh and Aunt Geraldine and cousin Olivier, as well as her Aunt Becs and cousins Tyrus and Cameron just back from California. Everyone had presents under the tree and was hopefully well fed through the holiday. I made cranberry orange scones for breakfast (reminiscent of my grandmother’s cranberry bread she used to make for me), and Louise's egg and sausage casserole. We had bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with blue cheese in the afternoon with shrimp cocktail and champagne, and a smoked ham for dinner with sautéed green beans and a rosemary potato galette. Everyone seemed content: reading books, playing with toys, video-chatting with the one missing Jackson sibling and her family in Spain.

By Christmas evening, as the last of the presents were opened, I was exhausted and felt a cold coming on, as well as a bit of anti-climax. That’s when I was forced to assess what Christmas means to me now. It’s not the presents that matter, but the anticipation of it all and the rituals. I love receiving Christmas cards in the mail from friends and family all around. 

And I love that students come back home to Vermont and want to see us. Since we said goodbye to the family on the 27th, we’ve been welcoming a rotating series of former students - now friends, to hear their latest stories. I love the surprise phone call from an old friend far away. That’s what’s wonderful to me now about Christmastime: people remembering other people, making time to say hello. That and my memories of childhood Christmases with my family. Not remembered magic, but magic re-experienced.

The day after Christmas I put the leftover hambone in a stock pot on the stove. I’d never bought a ham before, and hadn’t had a spiral sliced ham in many years--since we used to celebrate Easter at my grandmother’s. Every year, after Easter, my grandmother made split pea soup and it was one of the things I most loved. I’d never made split pea soup with ham before. It simmered on the stove for hours, and when I finally tasted a spoonful, the sweet smokiness transported me back to her dining room, on a day when we would have tea, just the two of us. I’m convinced the time travel is real. Magic, done right, can be relived. 

For me, 2013 has been a magical year and I'm grateful for every minute of it.

Here’s hoping 2014 is a magical year for everyone. 

Happy Holidays.