Fourth of July: Childhood Memories, Thunderstorms, BBQ and Granny

Fourth of July. In my childhood that holiday meant one location, one event. It was a campout of fairly epic proportions with the Broughton family, a rag tag group of brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandkids. It was a summer party; a roadtrip to southern Oregon. And as that sparkler-filled, celebratory holiday nears, I am reminded how much I miss those reunions at the Ranch.

It was a dream weekend for a kid - acres upon acres of forest, fields, trails, barns, creeks and ponds to explore for three days with 15 like-minded troublemakers - cousins of the same age. Morning to night we played, fought, ran, swam, and laughed. Parents required check-ins but we were pretty free to roam with little oversight.

I’ve been flipping through my brain trying to piece together all my memories of those weekends. I can’t distinguish most years from the next but I know the feelings that the culmination of memories gives me. 

I already mentioned joy – there was definitely fun that could only be had with those people, at that age, in that setting. 

There is a little anxiety. For me as a kid, all of those cousins were intimidating. They were braver, louder and more imaginative than I was. It was so easy for most of the kids to slide right back into the relationships they ended the previous year. It wasn’t quite as easy for me. I kind of hung close to Ryan (much to his dismay, I have no doubt) and others I saw a little more frequently. 

Plus, I was terrified to explore too much –I mean there were snakes EVERYWHERE . Yeeauuuugh.

And I’ll be honest. I grew up in a very quiet household. The Broughton side of my family, I must lovingly say, is not from where that heritage comes. I was slow to adjust to the louder discourse. 

So 4th of July memories make me smile and a little tense. But those memories also bring a tinge of sadness. Not for the events themselves so much as for all the smiling faces I have in my head of great grandparents, great uncles & aunts who are no longer here. Images of each one laughing during badminton and card games, talking over dinner, giving me a hug when I arrived and when I left at the end of the weekend. Those memories make me sad because I miss them terribly. 

So, I feel compelled to get down in words the memories I have in my head of those great Independence Day weekends at the ranch. I myself have few photos from those weekends though I know my parents have some. I hope my fellow family members will share their fondest memories and maybe a photo or two (if not here, perhaps on my Facebook page.) I’d love to see them all this weekend so we could, in a way, celebrate the holiday weekend together even though we are all apart. 

A Few Sporadic Memories of July 4th Pasts

• Granny leaning over the porch rail watching us play Volleyball. Smiling, heckling and laughing - She was always a participant.
  
• The big cinder block BBQ pit with Uncle Roy at the helm and three to four other guys standing around it at all hours of the day. It was fathers, sons, brothers, uncles laughing and talking about who-knows-what while turning chicken, burgers, corn-on-the-cob, baked potatoes (the food was always outstanding!)
  
• Creek play was amazing. We played war, house, explorers – you name it – along those creek beds. We had names for each section along the way though I don’t remember them now. And then of course there was the year Katie got stabbed in the center of her forehead by a rogue stick (was it a sword, a gun, a fishing rod – who remembers) while playing along the water. A small puncture wound but it bled like crazy.
  
• There was a thunderstorm one year. The adults had opportunistically approved having nearly all of us sleep in our one monster-sized tent; we had roughly 8-11 kids in sleeping bags in one thin-walled cage. The thunder and lightning started and some of those brave cousins I was talking about earlier wanted to go and see it. So we ventured out into the middle of the night and sneaked quietly (highly unlikely) onto the porch where Granny kept a big metal bed. We piled on and sat watching the beautiful show across the night sky. It was amazing – I’ll never forget it.
  
• Sitting on the trampoline (introduced as we had gotten older; claimed Jodi's ankle early on) one afternoon, I was watching the scene around me. Maybe there was someone on it with me, I don’t remember. But I remember scanning that wedge of the property where the house and yard, garage and fence, circle driveway, dog house, horseshoe pit, BBQ pit and front yard all sat together. And I remember looking over and seeing my grandpa and Uncle Fuzzy talking to each other near the horseshoe pits. I watched them for a while. There expressions changed from smiling to serious to laughing and back again. It was in that moment I realized, like clicked-in-my-head realized, that they were brothers. They were different but the same. They were close but distanced by life. It is such a strange, quiet memory I have from those weekends. Yet is nearly always one of the first I think of.
  

Big or small: a lesson in perspective

She said it quietly, nearly under her breath, as if she wasn’t sure she should say out loud exactly what she was thinking.

“He’s SO big.”

Eli sat at the top of the red slide attached to the preschool play structure. His size 11 shoes dangled about a foot from the bottom.  His trip down was very short but he didn’t seem to mind. He climbed back up with enthusiasm.

I looked up at the face of his preschool teacher and raised my eyebrows. I hear this said in different ways all the time and have no good stock response or retort.

“I mean REALLY. He’s taller than all the pre-K girls.”

This catches me off guard a little. Really? Taller than the five-year-old girls? He's 3. I looked down at my smiling son now running around the gym. I know in my head he’s a big kid but in my mind he’s my little buddy.

Hearing this come from an educator who has seen a lot of kids in her career made it all a little more real. It's very likely I won't have as much time as most parents do to look down at his face and pat his head while we walk and talk. I just hope I'm not looking up to him when he's 8!

Mother's Day 2014: A Review in Pictures

As a mom, I try not to put too much importance on Mother's Day. It's an arbitrary day to collectively acknowledge as a society that mother's rule the world.  But a lot of pomp and circumstance over the day seems silly and a bit contrived. And yet, I love every tidbit of acknowledgement I get as part of its celebration. And if I were to get nothing on that floral-focused Sunday, I wouldn't be mad or upset. But I would remember.

As it so happens, my Mother's Day weekend was exceptional. It was definitely a reminder what a great job being a mom can be. And how great it is to get to take a break from it on occasion.

My Mother's Day in Pictures

Cards from My Buddy

Flowers from My Husband

Manicure/Pedicure Day with Jamie Courtesy of Husbands

Eli hijacked my phone and decided to take my picture Mother's Day morning.

Viewing of the Grand Budapest Hotel with Celeste at the Hollywood Theater

I'm pretty lucky. And sometimes its forced holidays like Mother's Day that remind me how good I have it.

Throwback Thursday: Kindergarten

I have a lot of very vivid memories of my year in kindergarten. I didn't go to pre-school; kindergarten was my first 'school' environment where 15+ five-year-olds were expected (or perhaps hoped for is the right word here) to sit in little chairs, paint, glue and play nicely with each other.

(I suppose Sunday school was an early version of this except half the kids in my Sunday school were cousins, my teacher was always either my grandma, great aunt or dad and we didn't really have to play nicely with each other.)

At any rate, kindergarten was a big room full of strangers. I don't think I said a word most of that year but I clearly watched and took it all in on some level because I have very clear memories of that place. 

Things I remember from Kindergarten

1. One class-wide lesson was to bring in some sort of 'seed' we found at our house. The teacher put our seeds in little baggies and put them on a piece of poster board on the wall.  Kids brought in all sorts of seeds I had never seen or thought of before - avocado, kiwi, tangerine - exotic finds in my mind. I brought in apple seeds. Good 'ole boring apple seeds like 5 other kids in the class. The kid that brought in banana seeds (whomever you were) had me completely and utterly impressed.

2. We had a Thanksgiving recital complete with songs and colored-paper hats. Some kids were pilgrims with the appropriate head wear. Others were Indians (when people said Indians) with colored feather bandanas around their heads. I think I was a pilgrim. We all sat in a little room (what would have been the dining room of the converted house) and sang some Thanksgiving songs (what would we have even sang?) to the parents sitting in the converted living room.

There was a drawing that day - the name drawn would get to take home a 2' x 3' cut out turkey all of the kids had worked to color during the month.  

I won. My mom still hangs it up at her house.

3. I remember learning the difference between rubber and plastic and having that moment of, 'oh, now I get it.'

4. I remember telling my mom we were asked to bring someone to kindergarten who would be attending next year so that we could introduce them and show them around. Desperate to show my best friend and cousin, Ryan, who was a year behind me at school, where I went to kindergarten, I told my mom about this and she scheduled to have Ryan join me at school the next day.  

Only one problem. Apparently it wasn't the next day that we were supposed to bring next year's recruits. I watched out the big front window as the kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Gower(sp?) explained the error to my mom through the driver's side window, with Ryan in the backseat. I was mortified and played in the back bedroom that morning with an ugly cloth doll until we were forced to come together for group activities. 

5.  I saw my first real coconut (cool) and ate some for the first time (gross).

6. I remember being the last kid to be picked-up from school one day. I ended up playing longer than normal in the garage area waiting for my mom to arrive and thinking it was odd. At some point, a car pulled up and a woman got out informing my teacher that my mom and sister had been in a car wreck and that she was there to take me home (I honestly have no idea what the verbal conversation was. And I have no memory of how I got from Kindergarten to home.) The lady that picked me up (I think she took me home) was someone my mom knew and who had driven by the wreck and worked out a plan with my mom.  

I was definitely scared by this whole thing. But what I remember most is my Annie lunch box was in the car and it got a big dent in it.

7. We had a big kindergarten graduation ceremony at Hucrest elementary school. We all marched up onto what seemed like the biggest, grandest stage imagninable to receive our diplomas. I remember thinking I was pretty grown-up in that moment. 

Book Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“There are many teenage vampire books you could have purchased instead. I’m grateful you made this choice.”  - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and other concerns) by Mindy Kaling

I'm not going to lie - I became a little bit obsessed with this book.

I borrowed it from the library early March and read through it over the course of a couple of nights. I held onto it for a week because I had so many specific points I wanted to remember about how Mindy and I were carbon copies of each other.

I read it again, spending a week's worth of evenings going through it and making notes to myself.  And then I carried it around in my backpack for another week. At one point, I spilled some water on it and thought, "Yes! Now I can legitimately just keep it since I have damaged this small lower corner of it irrevocably." But, in truth, the damage was minimal and I started to think about how the next person in the library’s Holds queue deserved to enjoy this book as much as I had.

So, I carried it around for one more week.

I dropped it into the library book return yesterday thinking it would release me of the burden of reviewing it and sharing with the world my small but strong obsession with Miss Mindy Kaling and her tome.

But alas, I have too much to say about it (plus I have to keep my Goodreads account updated) so I'm going to do my best to explain to you some of the great things about this book. I find this incredibly difficult because I enjoyed this book for very different reasons than most others I read. And reviewing something you love a little too much is impossible. I will never convey why I like it so much because those reasons are very personal. But I will try.

Disclaimer: I have been a fan of Miss Kaling’s for a while. I kind of loved her since she slapped Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) across the face in Diversity Day (2nd episode of season1). 

The Mindy Project is a must watch for me and I could create quite a list of reasons why you should be watching it (another blog post me thinks).

She's just like me (kind of)

Okay, I fully admit that as I read this book, I over-identified with Mindy on a slightly uncomfortable level. It didn't take too many pages for me to think 1) she writes in a familiar, witty voice I would love to emulate and 2) she writes about a bunch of important nonsense.

Now I didn't grow up in a multicultural home. I didn't go to Dartmouth, write a hit play, become a writer for one of the biggest television shows of the last 25 years or get my own television show where I get to kiss good-looking and slightly flawed men of my choosing on a regular basis. In these ways, we are not alike. I was, and continue to be, a shy person with no desire to be the center of anything. But she's had an unconventional but relatively normal life and I'd like to think that I along with most people have had the same. And those lives are funny and interesting. And they explain a lot about the people we have become.

But there are other things that I immediately latched onto as clear signs that the author and I are kindred spirits or long-lost celestial sisters.

1. She doesn’t listen to music when she writes. Me neither. Okay this one is weak but keep reading.
2. She cries when she hears Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide and doesn’t understand people who don’t. I used to lie on my apartment floor when I was 25 and listen to this song on repeat, singing and crying.  I’m still not exactly sure why. Again, there is a generation of girls who have logged tear-filled hours listening to this. I am not alone in this one.  But there’s more.
3. She has hairless forearms. Me too. It’s freaky.
4. She lost weight and got stretch marks in middle school. Right here. In my mind, there was never a time when I didn't have stretch marks. I got the bulk of them and noticed them in the 8th grade after spending that spring playing tennis and losing 10 pounds. What a rotten bit of luck, right?  I was borderline terrible at the game; I didn’t tryout for the high school team. Those 10 pounds found their way back home freshman year. And they brought more of their stretch mark friends.

Her writing style is feminine, funny and modern

Mindy talks and writes in a manner that is familiar to me and most women of our generation. It’s fluid, intelligent, and full of pop culture references.  Don’t confuse this with some attempt at airhead-chic prose aimed at getting young girls to pay attention to her.  She drives home fairly big points about life, growing up, finding yourself and tenacity without being heavy handed.  The message I gleaned from the whole thing:  Women can be cool, funny, obsessive, flaky, or disinterested in things. Flaws are relative. Being critical and honest about yourself is helpful if you look at it as a part of who you are and leverage it to make yourself more powerful in other ways.  

Plus, the lady has a ton of lists in this book that you can print out and live by. Or in my case, read out loud to your friends while you drink wine and watch reruns of the IT Crowd. 

Book Highlights for Me

• There is a whole chapter on Jewish guys.  Laugh out loud funny.
• The chapter where she talks about moving from dating boys to dating men will be required reading in my soon to be offered community college course, “So now, you’re 30: How to grow up and stop crying.”
• I will be handing my bestie a copy of the chapter “Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities” this weekend.
• Her story about being forced to jump off the diving board by an ‘adult’ is a great lesson to parents who have or think they have timid children. Hint: They may be smart or just not interested.

    “When I was a kid, my parents smartly raised us to keep quiet, be respectful to older people, and generally not question adults all that much. I think that's because they were assuming that 99 percent of the time, we'd be interacting with worthy, smart adults... They didn't ever tell me 'Sometimes you will meet idiots who are technically adults and authority figures. You don't have to do what they say.”

In Closing

Mindy uses some great vocabulary that I plan to steal and make my own. Stay tuned for some great, witty uses for the following words:  Pejorative, nebulous, prescient, anthropological, gesticulation and scepter (this last one is strange but trust me).

So that is my love letter to Mindy Kaling and her work, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Now, if you will excuse me. I’ve got to head to Powell’s and pick up my own copy before I make myself crazy.

Quotes of Note

“One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.”

“That's the one nice thing about being a dork about men: you can sometimes play it off as restrained and classy.”

“So I’m into men now, even though they can be frightening. I want a schedule-keeping, waking-up-early, wallet-carrying, non-Velcro-shoe-wearing man.” 

“I do not think stress is a legitimate topic of conversation, in public anyway. No one ever wants to hear how stressed out anyone else is, because most of the time everyone is stressed out. Going on and on in detail about how stressed out I am isn’t conversation. It’ll never lead anywhere. No one is going to say, “Wow, Mindy, you really have it especially bad. I have heard some stories of stress, but this just takes the cake.”  

My Car Hates Me and other irrational ways I justify being stupid

My car has decided it is time to seek revenge for the careless ways I have treated it over the last few years. It isn't happy with the number of times I've skimmed its delicate rims against defenseless curbs. The nonchalant way I transport coffee cups has become a problem. And well, as you can image, the car seat filled with crackers, toy cars and spilled apple juice in the back is not helping my case.

Over the last couple of months, the passenger side window has stopped moving up or down and my windshield, which once had one small nick, now has three new friends and has become a four inch crack threatening to split the glass in two.

But those things are livable nuisances. Then two weekends ago, the glass window portion of my hatchback started to randomly unlock and pop-open. The first time it seemed to occur randomly when I unlocked the car doors. I chalked it up to user error, slammed it shut once, and then twice and then three times and then it stayed shut.  But 24 hours later, the minute my car doors were unlocked, the hatchback window would begin a string of unlocking convulsions.

Chh-Click. Chh-Click. Chh-Click. Chh-Click.

The only way I could get it to stop was to lock the doors and then shut it. Thus began a series of tests to determine what the heck was going on. I switched out my key for the spare - it stopped for two uses and then started-up again.

Chh-Click.

I tested unlocking just the driver door.

Chh-Click.

I tested the floor release for the hatchback to see if it was on the fritz.

Chh-Click.

It was not a mystery immediately solved and unfortunately not something I could get looked at right away. So I prepared myself to have to run around my car doing Chinese fire drills all over town. (If this is derogatory, I apologize. I have no idea what else you call that thing you all know I am talking about. The internet could not come up with an alternative name either.)

On Monday, my son and I decided we were going to go on an adventure. 'Adventure' is the word we use to mean 'get out of the house before mommy or child go bonkers'. I got myself dressed, got Eli into socks and shoes, stuffed my backpack with everything we could possibly need for a two hour excursion to the grocery store and set out for the car.

Now all moms and dads know that most of the time, getting out of the house is a stressful endeavor. You have to start the process at least an hour in advance. By the time you have talked ad nauseam about how many trucks, toys, crackers, or people you will get to see along the way, asked if the child needs to go potty (no), chased the child around the house with socks and shoes in your hand, put shoes on, are told the child now DOES need to go potty, and found yourself a coat that doesn't have peanut butter stains on it, you are pretty much a frazzled mess.

So, I am in a mild form of this state of mind as we head to the car. I made my way to the curb where the car was parked, coaxing my child to bring himself and the three trucks he was juggling in his hands along with him. I threw my backpack in the front passenger seat and opened the rear passenger door with nano-seconds to spare before I had to grab my son's hand and quickly helicopter him away from walking into a large pile of dog doo sitting next to my car.

Aside: Come on dog owners! I know like 90% of you pick-up after your dog but the other 10% of you are ruining it for every dog owner I know. This was not dainty dog poop. This was a big ole mess...Next to a sidewalk that serves as a major thoroughfare for elementary kids walking to the school and college students moving from student housing to campus. And my kid getting in the car! If you own it, you have to pick-up after it.

But I digress. So, having gotten his attention and cursed the world for adding 'dog poo' to the list of obstacles involved in me getting out of the house, I swing the three-year-old into his car seat and begin the process of getting every latch in place while he tries to drive his cement mixer over my face.  Then I hear it.

Chh-Click. Chh-Click. Chh-Click.

Good Grief.  The sound could not have been more annoying. In all the chaos, I had forgotten that the latch was going to be a problem.

Chh-Click. Chh-Click. Chh-Click.

     "Vroom over mommy's face."

Chh-Click. Chh-Click. Chh-Click. 
     "We go to the toy store?"
     "Maybe, buddy. We need to run some errands."
Chh-Click. Chh-Click. Chh-Click.

     "And then we go to the toy store."
     "We'll see."
Chh-Click. Chh-Click. Chh-Click.

Click!

I grabbed my keys from my pocket, locked the doors to silence the latch and threw the keys in the backseat. With a sigh, I went back to securing the car seat, handed Eli the truck he had driven over my face and dropped on the floor and kissed his little forehead, a ritual I have done since he was an infant.

Then I closed the door, walked to the back of the car, cursed the thing for being so stupid and slammed it shut.

Then I froze in complete and utter fear.

I raced to the driver side of the car and had my fears completely realized. I had just locked my son in the car. I looked at him and he stared back at me just long enough for me to give him my most reassuring smile and then went back to his toys.

What in the world am I going to do?  Wait a minute, I thought. This dumb latch hasn't stayed shut consistently for days. If I just sit here a second it will surely pop open. Then I'll climb in through the back, grab my keys, and never, ever tell anyone about this ever.  But the latch never made a peep. I tried to pull on it and wiggle it to start its Chh-Clicking one more time. Nothing.

So I went and stared into the car and located my keys sitting in the back seat just next to the car seat. "Eli, mommy needs her keys. Can you reach down and grab mommy's keys?" He looked at me in confusion then tried to crane his little head to see where I was pointing while being tightly strapped into his seat. Then he looked back up at me and said, "Mommy get in the car."

Thus began a two minute mime act where I tried to lift up my left hand and demonstrate to Eli how to reach down and grab my keys. I envisioned him securing them in his little hand and smiling as I lavished on the praise. Then he would push all the buttons, inevitably unlocking the car as he has done a hundred times before at completely the wrong times. (While we were stuck inside during this year's Snowacalypse, he got a hold of Ben's keys for a while. We didn't think anything of it until our neighbor showed up on our porch and told us that the trunk of Ben's car had been open for the last half hour.)

However, the results were not successful.  He lifted the wrong arm for a while, then he reach down into the actual car seat and kept pulling out fish crackers, then he just started playing with his trucks again.

Okay. New plan. I walked around to the passenger side of the car, dodging the previously mentioned dog poo, and started pointing at the shiny, silver door handle right next to Eli's hand. "Eli, pull that lever for mommy."

     "No."

     "It's okay. Just this once. Pull that handle for mommy."

     "No. Don't want to."

     "It's okay, buddy. Mommy just needs you to pull the handle so she can get in the car."

     "Mommy get in the car?"

     "Yes, Mommy can't get in the car unless you help pull the lever."

     "Don't want to."

That's when his little lip started to quiver and I could see he was getting scared. And that is when I truly felt horrible.

I stopped immediately, put on my happy face and said, "It's okay. You sit tight and play with your trucks, everything is fine. We're just having an adventure."

Now this all happened in the span of 3-4 minutes. I stood outside the car, trying to figure out how I was going to do this. I can't get in the house to get the spare key because my house key is sitting in the seat next to my son. My backpack is sitting in the front seat with all my stuff.

It was only at this moment that I realized my phone was in the pocket of my sweater and not in my backpack. I grabbed my phone, told Eli through the glass that I was calling daddy and made one of the more embarrassing phone calls I have ever made to my husband.

My expectation was that he would tell me what to do. Like he had some MacGyver car-jacking trick he was going to walk me through over the phone. Thankfully, he had a more level head at the time then I did and he said, I'll be there in 15 minutes.

Trying to Amuse him with the phone.
It didn't work but I got this photo

So I stood next to my car and made funny faces at Eli for about five minutes, blocking the sun from his eyes and trying to get him to sing me some songs. Minutes six through 12 were a bit more difficult. He could tell something was up. He was no longer smiling and kept saying, "Mommy get in the car" followed by "I want to get out." It was heartbreaking. I told him daddy was going to come help us because he's a superhero and he was pacified by the thought that he was going to see dad.

Car after car drove by and only one person stopped. A nice middle-aged man who lives down the street slowed down and asked if everything was okay. I said yes, my husband is on his way. He saw Eli in the car and said, "I'd like to help. I think I can get the door open."

My immediate thought was Ben will kill me if I let someone slim jim their way into this car. But my second thought was who cares? This thing is going into the bottom of a lake as soon as I can get my son out.

It took the nice man about 40 seconds to realize that this was not the kind of car that he was going to be able to get open. He asked me if I needed to call anyone and then tried to get Eli to open the door the way I did. Eli was not amused and before he got too nervous, I ushered the helpful neighbor away from the car and said thanks for the help anyway.

Dad the hero

A minute or so later, Ben turned down the street. Without saying a word, he ran into the house, grabbed my spare key and unlocked the car. As soon as I heard that horrible Chh-Click, I pulled open the door and kissed Eli on the forehead. He said "Get out?" and I didn't blame him. I pulled him out and gave him a huge hug. Then we danced around the sidewalk talking about how silly that whole adventure was. "Dad's a hero" he said as Ben walked over and just seconds before I wrapped my arms around Ben and tried with every fiber of my being not to cry.


Sharing a story like this is not in my nature. I like to keep all my foibles nicely bottled up inside me so I can mull them over for years and let them slowly drive me crazy. But I have been lucky enough to have lots of moms in my life, both old and new, who have shared their stories with me. Some were about this exact thing - locking their child in a car. Others have been anecdotes related to the forgetfulness, fear, stress, anger, and sleeplessness that come with being a mom. And those stories help me worry a little less about all the mom stuff. They have helped me keep things in perspective as well as have been good reminders about things to look out for. So I guess I wanted to share this story so that if you think you are messing up all over the place as your child gets bigger, I want you to know that its okay. Those things happen to all of us. And you learn big lessons from them and you learn how much you love your child. And you learn that you can handle a lot more than you ever thought you could.

Do you have a mom story you'd like to share? Leave it in the comments. 

Book Review: Counting By 7s

“From my observation, the older you get, the more you like the word cozy. That's why most of the elderly wear pants with elastic waistbands. If they wear pants at all. This may explain why grandparents are in love with buying grand kids pajamas and bathrobes.” Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan

This book is about a 12-year-old genius living in this regular old world. You instantly like her because her perspective is incredibly logical and strange. Because she sees the world this way, she absolutely doesn't care what anyone else thinks. This is the quality I like the best about her.  But when a girl like this is confronted with tragedy and heartache, even she has to find a way to cope. What could be harder?

She finds herself surrounded by equally strange people who, though not geniuses, manage to match her in the strange and logical categories. 

As I read the book, I couldn't help but go through the cast of 'Willow-like' characters that have paraded through my life. Kids who were on the 'fringe' of the norm. And I had to stop and think how I treated each and every one. To some I acted with indifference. To others I secretly felt pity**. Several of them I actually had a lot of curiosity about and wished I was the type of kid precocious enough to just go ask them (How did you know that calculus theorem before Mr. Crossfield showed it to us? Why do you walk so fast all the time?) Never, that I recall, did I treat any of them in a way that would be considered forcefully hurtful. But as I read the book, 'indifference' and 'pity' can be just as damaging.

“It's possible that all labels are curses. Unless they are on cleaning products.”
- Counting by 7s

As a mother, I think about how I will raise my son in such a way as to be kind and compassionate to all types of children he comes in contact with. It's hard. Kids are cruel. Image and acceptance become so vital as a kid tries to become their best self, that the road of least resistance is always to distance yourself from the kids that are different. I think being shy and having a natural tendency to feel bad for most kids when they deserved it, kept me in check naturally. Will my son do the same?

Moreover, I couldn't help but wonder - where are these kids now? This book is a great reminder that for most, including myself, middle school/high school is not the peak of life. And traditional ways of growing up don't always fit every type of child. I know some of the kids that fell in the 'genius' category when I was growing up are doing awesome and put pretty much everyone else in our graduating class to shame. Some of kids on the opposite end of genius, I'm not sure. But I hope they are doing equally outstanding in whatever life they have found themselves.


**The one kid that comes to my mind immediately in this category is Bruce. We were in the same class throughout elementary school. He was chubby and kind of smelled and had good days and bad days when it came to clean clothes. He got his name on the board daily and spent a lot of his free time in the principal's office. But Bruce wasn't mean. He was just put in the role of outcast and all the popular kids hated being coupled with him for anything. As for me, I didn't want to sit by the smelly kid. But he made me sad. And he was always nice to me. Thus, when the weeks came that desks needed to be rearranged and we got to fill in a slip of paper with the names of the three people we wanted to sit with (we typically sat in quads of 4), I always put the names of my two closest friends in the class, and at least once a year, I put Bruce's name in the #3 spot. It's funny. I remember the names of a select few good friends I had in elementary school, but I remember Bruce very clearly. 

Valentine's Day 2014: I Am Loved

Valentine's Day has never been one of my favorites. I spent my youth (like most girls) putting so much importance on the day, hoping a secret admirer would make himself known on this day meant for love and devotion. The flowers and cards received by others were just little pins stuck into my side reminding me that I was alone.

My parents (and grandparents) were both married on Valentine's Day. Weren't they cute?

I think this may have subconsciously made me put more importance than was normal on Valentine's Day. However the reality is most of my friends felt the same bit of sadness every year when this pink explosion of a holiday came around.

So over the years I went through the expected phases of emotions around Valentine's Day:

Hope
Pining
Depression
Loathing
Derision
Appreciation
Indifference

I wish I could go back and tell my adolescent self to relax. With or without a person, it's just a day.

Valentine's Day is cute. It's fun. It's an excuse to eat chocolate and wear pink. And I appreciate it as a day to remind the one's I love that I love them. Forced to say the words,  I am also forced to truly think about what those words mean and embrace them.

So rather than rail on how Valentine's Day should not be taken seriously, I am embracing the opportunity it provides me to contemplate all the love I have in my life.

Our Valentine's Cards from Eli. Yes, Eli chose a hippo wearing 'heart underwear' for daddy.

Flowers From Ben. I think this is hilarious because never can I imagine Ben calling me a "smoking fox" and yet this is exactly the kind of Valentine's Card I would have imagined he would pick out.

Eli's Valentine from Papa and Granny Wee

My Boy Likes Trucks

Googly-Eyed Monsters, Parsley & the Perfect Mom

My son is in preschool. And as such, he comes home every day with some wonderful creation he's made during craft time:

• Play dough "creatures" with 11 googly eyes stuffed into the center of it and three pipe cleaners sticking out of the left side of its excessively eye-balled face
• A half dozen 2'x3' sheets of original Eli paintings consisting of 3-4 strokes of blue, purple or yellow paint
• Buttons and popsicle sticks glued to copy paper

And what I know about all these things is that in reality, he is not that interested in creating them. His teacher confirmed this assumption during his first conference (quote - 'He is not into any of our art projects'.) 

He's grown into tolerating these activities but the truth is, he doesn't like to get his hands dirty. He isn't interested in touching anything 'squishy.' He doesn't like to color but he is happy to watch you color what he tells you. So I know these lovely items I am collecting are 80% the work of the teacher's assistant and 20% Eli's feigned interest meant to appease his teachers long enough for him to get back to his true passion: trucks.

But I am a first-time mom who feels maternal obligation to cherish every item he creates during this first academic year.

This past month, I picked up Eli one Wednesday afternoon and found a small terra cotta pot filled with dirt and decorated with bits of colored paper sitting in Eli's cubby. This, I thought, is a project that I can appreciate and something we can talk about as it grows even if I am sure he didn't glue the paper on himself.

Now, I have my own issues around potted plant school projects that I think played a part in my giddiness over Eli's project. My earliest plant memory goes back to 4th grade when, as a class, we all planted bean plants in milk containers filled with dirt and, in my memory, paper towels (I haven't researched this project via youtube to verify if this memory is completely accurate but nevertheless, in my mind - dirt and paper towels.)

Anyway, guess whose bean plant never ever sprouted?  Yeah, me.

And though I don't have any severe sadness around this memory, clearly I remember it above the many other bad memories I know I have from fourth grade, so my subconscious surely deems it important.

Aside: My one other sad 4th grade memory is of my teacher (who I truly liked and who was a great teacher) walking around with his hands tucked neatly in the back of his pants and then rewarding you by handing you a palm full of peanuts from his peanut dispensing gumball machine.

But I digress. This science project served as my fourth grade epiphany - I do not have a green thumb. Growing things is not my forte. Leave it to the farmers and gardeners who can grow a bean in a milk carton, Corrie. You are not going to save your family by growing your own crops during the apocalypse. And I have lived my life since then rarely trying to grow anything and failing within 2 weeks almost consistently. 

So seeing Eli's cup of dirt with a tongue depressor sticking out of it reading 'water me' I should have thought, "Give this to his father immediately." But instead I thought, "This is my second chance."  It will be a project for both of us. Get this little plant - parsley seeds to be precise - to thrive at our home. To water it and watch it with him, hopefully riding on his little green thumb coattails.

We carried the little pot to the car, discussing how he put the dirt in the cup (not likely) and glued the papers on the pot (maybe). He thought it was very cool regardless.  I put the pot on the floor mat at his feet and threw him into the carseat and we were on our way.

In our car rides home, we often cover a very basic set of topics - what did you have for snack time? who did you play with? what do you want to have for lunch? For quite some time, the answer to all of these questions was pretty much the same - fish crackers. But the longer he has been in school, the more diverse and accurate his answers have become.

We pulled into the driveway and I walked around to get him out of his seat.  And that is when he looks at me and says, "Mommy broke my project." The pot, which for as much as I was enthralled with it at preschool, I completely forgot about as we drove down I-5 listening to the Mulan soundtrack, had tipped over and rolled around below Eli's feet.

I killed it.

I couldn't believe it. I ruined his (our) little project. And he knew it. He kept saying it over and over again.

"Mommy broke my project."
"Mommy broke my project."

Guess what he was going to say to teacher when she asked if his parsley was growing?

"Mommy broke my project."

I had to fix this. I had to show him that it wasn't BROKE and that MOM was going to fix it. So I walked Eli to the door, dropped our stuff in the house and made lunch.

I forgot about the plant for 24 hours.

But then, I remembered it again and I immediately went to the car and poured the contents of the floor mat back into the cute little color paper-covered pot, stuck the 'water me' reminder back into the  soil and proudly marched it into the house to show Eli how his project was 'fixed.'

Then I prayed.

I prayed to the sun. To the souls of all gardeners past. To the creator of parsley and school projects. Please help this little pot create something amazing for Eli despite my failures. 

I watered it on my own for a week, not wanting to bring its attention back to the preschooler in case nothing happened and I would hear, "Mommy broke my project" one more time.

And then... magic.

Little parsley sprouts abound. I proudly showed him the little green sprouts with all the adolescent excitement I had back in 4th grade but never got to show. Now he waters it every other day and peers at it on the windowsill when he remembers it. His project lives and I have redeemed myself a little.

I've set the bar pretty low when it comes to how perfect of a mom I plan on being. I can only go up from here.

Book Review: The Namesake

"Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.” - The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

I finished my first book of 2014...and I did it before January was even complete! I'm feeling pretty good about myself, I'm not gonna lie.

This was a great book to start out with. Not because it was uplifting. It's not the type of novel that motivates you to meet your goals for the year or makes you want to go out and adopt eight little puppies. But it did give me a new perspective on growing up and family dynamics. And new perspective is something I am interested in pursuing this year.

In an effort to be a more positive me in 2014, I am trying to take moments to better understand where other people are coming from. I've found that if I look for ways to look at life from the worldviews of others, it plays a big role in my being calmer, less critical and more positive. So a novel about Indian immigrants finding their way in America, raising children who they hope will both be better for being Americans while also expecting them to hold onto the Indian traditions they have little love for, is a perspective I find fascinating. I walked away from the novel with a new compassion for the struggles first generation children have.

You can read my complete book review on my Goodreads page. 

GoodReads Reviews: My 2013 Read List

As much as I feel like a well-read individual, I know I don't give it the time and devotion to support such a perception. I do give it as much time and devotion as I am able to at this time in my life. From 10:30pm - 11:00pm is when I currently have a quiet room to devote to whatever story I have at hand. But if Eli refused to nap that day, if work was particularly draining or if I decided to devote 9:00pm - 10:30pm to wine drinking, then even those 30 minutes are forsaken for a good nights sleep.

A review of my 2013 reading list on GoodReads tells the story pretty well.

I read some incredible books last year. By incredible, I mean that I took something away from the story. They were books that stayed with me a few days after they were completed. Nearly all of them were books lent to me by friends or my in-laws. And they were good. 

But they total in number a whopping 5. Yep five novels in 365 days. Hardly the record of a well-read individual.

Now, this number does not include the obsessive number of re-reads I had of the Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay this year in anticipation of the Catching Fire release. For the record, those numbers were HG (1), Catching Fire (2) Mockingjay (2). And to defend myself, I can read those in 2 nights when insomnia kicks in.

Anyway, these books deserve mentioning only because I highly recommend them and would love to discuss them with any friend who may choose to give them a read as well. I've linked the below to my GoodRead reviews in case you are curious.

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman 
Origin: Lent to me by my mother-in-law

 An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin 
 Origin: I read the Shopgirl and wanted to read Mr. Martin's other novels. 









  
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green 
Origin: Lent to me by Miss Jenny Criglar

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje 
Origin: Purchased at the GFU bookstore in 1997(?) for my Modern Novel class.

Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
Origin: Lena Dunham recommended this book via her Twitter feed. Now, I don't really give two-hoots about Miss Dunham (no offense Lena) but I am impressed by young women who are able to pack their lives with everything they ever wanted to do (Mindy Kaling is my other idol).