I can’t get my kids to unhook both of their ear buds. When I come home from work and they’re lounging on the couch, I ask them about their day and they unhook one bud. They’re, literally, half listening and half answering.
If I reach over and pull out the other ear bud, they scream, “You’re abusing me. I’m calling Child Services.” (They love to joke like that.)
I feel like putting in my own ear buds. In my ear, I will arrange for a preteen to whisper, “You’re such a good mother. Thank you for caring about me. Thank you for working every day. Thank you for your kindnesses and humor. Now, mother, I will go make dinner for the family. And I will set the table.” Sure, it sounds robotic and saccharine. So? What’s wrong with that?
I like having and giving my full attention. I like giving and receiving household help.
I ask for help getting dinner. No one answers. They are bopping their heads to invisible music or smiling as they look at the small screen in their hands.
At least, when family dinner is on the table and we are seated together about to say grace, they are fully present. No, wait, why is my son smiling at his lap and why is his lap buzzing and glowing? That little brat! Give me that! (I take his iPhone.)
I am writing this on our vacay on the West Coast of Florida by the pool. At this moment, I don’t really care that no one listens to me. I’m not listening either. I hear only the gentle splashing sound of the fake waterfall by secluded swimming pool. Life is good. Tune out. Power down.
We all need a healthy dinner and time to savor it. Family dinner time is a sacred space to sit down together, to chat, to chew, to lean back in your chair, (even when you’re told not to).
Sure I say all this, but do we do it? Last night, I ordered pork fried rice, chicken with broccoli and spicy dumplings from the Cottage. I grabbed a few bites. Then I yelled, “Chinese food on the kitchen table,” over my shoulder.
I was running out the front door as my three kids ran in. I was going to my non-fiction class. The kids were coming home from math club, play practice and track team. My husband was working. That is how we roll — busy, busy, busy.
I believe in family dinner time. I really do. So we started a Friday night dinner ritual. We’re Christian, but our ritual is based on the Jewish tradition of Shabbat dinner. (Thanks to my friend, Joe Little, who suggested this as we sat on the sidelines of our girls’ Westside basketball league and to my upstairs neighbor Ran, who has invited us to many Friday night Shabbat dinners over the years.)
On Friday nights, we turn off the computer screens and phones, we meet in the kitchen and light a candle or two, we drink grape juice, and someone cracks open the Bible (we use the brilliant translation, The Message by Eugene Peterson).
We usually read one of the Psalms, because they’re poetic, dramatic and understandable. It takes all of ten minutes, but it’s an awesome way to decompress from the week and enter the weekend. And then we have dinner and just hang out.
Last week, after our Shabbat prayer and dinner, we played the card game, Spoons. Then we watched a movie. No biggie, just chilled and relaxed.
We should have Shabbat again tonite, but one of my girls has a statewide math competition, the other is going on a sleepover, and my husband has rehearsal. That just leaves me and my son. It’s fine that it’s just the two of us.
We’ll light a candle, read the Psalms, and savor some left-over Chinese food.
Words really can’t describe how beautiful my bike trip to work is. So I will let my pictures show you. Every day I ride 45 blocks to work in New York City. I never stop. I ride through Riverside Park. I don’t pass any commercial establishments. I ride along the Hudson River. There is beauty all around.
Last weekend my twin daughters and I spent the weekend at Grace Church School in the Village for the awesome Girls Leadership Institute.
I was surprised to learn that girls’ friendships are their whole world. Hearing about the scenarios of the other girls reinforced this. In our role playing, there were many examples of small snubs that deeply, deeply hurt — like not being invited to a party. It is tough to be a kid!
One of my takeaways from the weekend was learning four steps to navigate a conflict.
1. Affirm the relationship
2. Use an “I statement”
3. Admit your contribution
4. Solve it together
I am pathologically nice and avoid conflict at all costs. So this was good for me. I realized that I skate over step #1. And #3 too. Somehow I never fail to notice and feel the wrongs done to me, but I may not always see or feel my contribution to a conflict. (Me? Perfect ole me?)
I have to acknowledge that, “In 99% of arguments, both sides somehow contributed to the conflict…” That blew my mind. Everyone is always quick to blame others. But realizing that we each have a role in the conflict may make the solution more accessible.
At times, I felt a little strained in the workshop, because I was the only parent there with twins. The twelve or so other mothers all had just one daughter to intensely talk with or role play with. I was trying, as I always do, to be fair and distribute my attention equally. The facilitators were supportive and sometimes worked with one of the girls one-on-one, but I don’t think they were used to twins with one parent.
All in all, it was a totally excellent weekend. We learned a lot and we are already implementing it around the house (although their big brother is a bit dismissive (maybe he’s a little jealous?)) I think I need to affirm that relationship with my son, maybe even use an ‘I statement,’ admit my contribution, and then we can solve it together. That will be fun.
For book club we are reading Diane Keaton’s Then Again.
I can’t find the passage but at one point she says we mustn’t blame mothers for all of our adult unhappiness. Mothers do their best. I agree. The book is a collage of memories, a collage like the kind Diane’s mother created – scrapbooks and journals.
I am having trouble staying focused on my reading. Fortunately, occasionally, the choices from my work book club and my other book club coincide, like when we read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Wallsin both.
At my work book club, we are reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Catch-22 and for Mother-Daughter Book Club, we are reading the Robin Benway’s The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June. The girls and I recommended that book; we’ve already read it. Very funny. (But if you don’t like it, don’t blame me, a mother.) Phew. I have one less book to read.
I’d like to blog more on this topic, but yes, you guessed it, I have to get back to the Diane Keaton memoir. Book club is Tuesday night and I have hundreds of pages to go. I might just skip ahead to the Warren Beatty part.
Desperate to escape New York but can’t afford a beach vacation for the entire family? Consider a trip from March 3-4 to The New York Times travel show where for just $15 (kids enter free) you can go around the world at the Jacob Javits Center.
There is an amazing variety of people and places in store: You can go to Israel and eat tasty olives and chips; dig sand art in the Caribbean; watch penguins waddle at Sea World; dance on a stage with teenagers from South Africa, (which we did this last year, and, in exchange, received tee shirts and hugs).
You and your kids will love the experience. At least mine do. We’ve gone for two years and will go again this weekend.
Our route around the convention center is circuitous. I wish I could advise you on the best route to travel the convention hall, but we just wander to different regions, from Alabama to Zimbabwe.
We stumble upon good advice and useful information. We learn how Peace House in Tanzania builds schools; how the plays of George Bernard Shaw changed social justice attitudes in Ireland; and how easily you can obtain a tourist visa to Cuba.
There is a holiday atmosphere to the travel show, as if all of the vendors, performers and travelers are a big cruise ship, sailing through a winter weekend into spring.
Last year, when we entered, I bumped into my coworker, Dan Licardo, who was there with his two daughters. He was lugging a bag so full of giveaways he could hardly carry it.
“It’s like trick or treating,” Dan exclaimed. “Or real international travel – only you don’t have to declare anything when you go through customs!”
We grabbed our own booty bags, from the first booth in our eyesight, India, and began collecting booty.
At almost every booth, my 10-year old twin girls picked up free stuff – candy, mousepads, bags and pens. I drew the line at glossy brochures. I tried to impress my daughters with my knowledge that what we were collecting was called SWAG – stuff we all get. But they weren’t listening; they were collecting brochures.
At the Indonesia booth, a nice lady gave us magnets of a rice field. Occasionally, even today, I approach my refrigerator door with the thought, ‘We ought to travel to Indonesia. People are super nice there.’ I like nice.
My girls scaled a climbing wall so many times I got a neck ache, watching them ring the bell at the top of the wall. I even tried it and made it to the top to ding the bell.
It’s unclear to me which state or country paid for the climbing wall. I do know that nearby Ecuador gave away Frisbees, because we still use them. We should visit Ecuador.
Maine looks nice.
The climbing wall was near the best state in the union, which according to the people of Maine, is Maine. In Maine’s vast exhibit area, a watercolor artist painted a beach scene; a moose mascot roamed around; and a textile artist spun wool. Okay, I was convinced. Maine is the best state in the union.
The first year we attended, the highlight for my twin daughters was scuba diving in a warm (and small) pool. We donned the wet suits they provided in some makeshift tents, signed waivers, and learned to breathe underwater from two hot young scuba instructors. We dove for plastic fish and smiled at each other through our masks. Afterwards, we learned there are scuba schools in New York and we almost signed up, but instead, we took a brochure.
People smiled as we exited the pool area, not rushing us at all. There was a friendliness between fellow travelers that you don’t encounter at an airport or in a foreign country when you’re traveling with kids. Maybe it’s because there’s no need to rush in an exhibit hall. Or maybe it’s because you’re traveling the world, yet you know you can sleep in your own bed at night.
There are stages with world music performers, panels with international chefs and book signings with travel writers but, due to my kids’ restless pursuit of SWAG, I’ve never attended any of these. Maybe this year.
I did have a celebrity-sighting thrill when I met a favorite writer whom I read in the New Yorker and follow on Twitter, Susan Orlean, as she came up the escalator with me.
“I love your work,” I told her sheepishly. Damn, I thought, she’s talented AND pretty.
“Thanks. I’d like to chat. But I lost my boots somewhere.” She yelled down to her husband who was holding their son’s hand at the bottom of the escalator. “I can’t find my boots!” Ah great, I thought, talented, pretty AND disorganized. Just like me! NICE!
“You’re going to need them,” I said, looking out to the city street where the snow swirled around Manhattan, turning to slush as it hit.
I wasn’t quite ready to hit the dirty, snowy city streets yet.
Fortunately, at that moment, Dan spotted me. He called, “Mary Beth, they’re giving out shots of rum in the Caribbean.” I joined him back at the Bahamas.
We’ll head back to the travel show this weekend. I doubt I will visit many of the 500 countries, states, cities or communities that exhibit there but I’m grateful they still want us to visit. The girls are looking forward to more SWAG. New York Times Travel Show
Thousands of people sing and worship together in this intentional community in Taizé.
I wrote an article for a Christian magazine a couple of months ago and mentioned that a young missionary lived in an intentional community with other missionaries.
I thought it was cool, because the missionary said the four young women had weekly meetings and talked about any cohabiting issues that’d come up — like cleaning out the fridge. And then they’d pray together.
This minor reference to an intentional community was edited out of the article. I wondered why. But, as usual, I didn’t make a fuss. I never asked the editor, Was there something wrong with that information?
And then, last night, I saw the movie Wanderlust. The leader of the hippie commune corrects Paul Rudd, “No, not a commune; We prefer intentional community.” And everyone in the audience laughed. And then I got it. Intentional community is perceived as hippy, dippy, grungy, suspicious, free love, attractive but not sustainable.
Briefly, I lived in intentional community. There was hardship and friendship. (That's me on the right, with Lee, our wrangler).
Tell that to the monks and religious orders. Religious people, like monks, priests, nuns, and, even young adult missionaries, live together and care for one another in communities all over. And it makes good sense, especially as people age and do not have children or spouses to care for them. Human beings are social creatures. We crave community, intentional or ad hoc.
Is being one half of a married, straight couple the only sanctioned way to live? I don’t think so. I thought a lot about this when I went to Taizé a few years ago. In that monastery, the brothers seemed to care a lot about one another and they cared a lot about the thousands of people visiting and living with them. That is intentional community too.
Brother Roger, who founded the Taizé community in 1940, said, “I think that I never lost the intuition that community life could be a sign that God is love, and love alone.”
If an intentional community is based on love – and figuring out who cleans the fridge – that does not seem to be so crazy. That seems to me to be the point.
I had an audition the other night at Riley-Grier Studios. I felt like a real professional actor. I had to add my name to a list of dozens of names of people auditioning, but they were running right on time and took me within 10 minutes. They were friendly and curious to hear my writing.
I read a short piece on how my kid is growing up and that’s awful and also great. The show is for a Mother’s Day show called, “Listen To Your Mother.”
I think it went well. Two of the three women were smiling and laughing at my piece. Of course I wondered why the third one wasn’t. Should I not have worn pearls? (Oddly, I always wear pearls to the Parents In Action Meeting, which is where I’d been right before my 8:30 pm audition time. It’s a little uniform I have for parents’ nights.)
Auditioning threw me back to a time in my life where I went on a lot of auditions (and got not a lot of roles). I felt those same feelings – pride and vulnerability, confidence and insecurity. And always this: I’m ambivalent about being judged.
I’m glad I did it. It was one of my New Year’s Resolutions – to make my work a little more public and to perform on a regular basis.
Today was an extremely dreary day. The view from my office.I don't have a head shot any more, but this is one of my Facebook profiles. No pearls.Jones Beach in the winter is so empty and peaceful and beautiful. This has nothing to do with my post.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 