Of Loss and Pound Cake

I woke up this morning as if from a dream. Things looked the same, on the surface, but it was as if they had been tampered with, moved around, and then put back in place. It has been two weeks since my dad's death and nothing feels the same, so I went to the grocery store. The grocery store has always been my oasis - my place of zen. The grocery store is routine. It's "normal," awash in harsh florescent light, wide aisles, and that punch of fresh-fruit funk as the automatic doors slide open ushering you inside.

I strolled around, listless, starting in HBA (that's health and beauty aids for the unschooled:), and after sizing up the season's newest hand soap scents, I made for the frozen food  cases and that most comforting of comfort foods, a Sara Lee Butter Pound Cake. I've been a Sara Lee Butter Pound Cake aficionado for decades, starting in elementary school when Mom would buy one for the holiday dessert. The buttery goodness started with that top layer of shiny crust, once you uncrimped the foil, pulling back the cardboard paper, and then the protective rectangle of wax paper.  The actual interior of the cake was OK - a bit dry - but it was really the handmaiden to that top crust. And while the top crust was the main attraction, it had a very attractive co-star in what I can only describe as the dense, buttery residue left at the bottom of the Sara Lee Butter Pound Cake tin. These weren't your ordinary cake crumbs - no, these had been molded into a wondrous lining and it could only be removed by spoon (or knife, but this always managed to destroy the tin).

I took my pound cake home and began my ritual today, only, something was off, way off. I uncrimped the foil and began pulling up the cardboard cover, but there was a problem. My top layer of shiny cake crust was gone. The super-dense, dry cake interior that had given me so much comfort during college finals, grad school break-ups, and wedding-planning anxiety, had been replaced by a spongy, springy mess. I spat it out and looked dejectedly at the box, wondering how I had been betrayed by such an old friend as Sara Lee. My cake looked the same but it was strange and different, and all without my knowledge or consent.

I was angry! Yes, over a piece of cake, but so much more. Dad's death has been the death of the life I knew - the life where I have two parents, alive, and just a phone call/text message/email/car ride away, and the comfort that provided to me. And while my life may look the same on the surface, right now, at the core of me, there is heartache and grief.

And while you could say that it's just a piece of cake and not the end of the world, it IS an end.

Ain't Misbehavin' or How Cancer Made a Good Girl Go Bad

I've always been a good girl. At least that's what people used to tell me. As a little girl, I was unfailingly polite, speaking only when spoken to, and doing what my parents told me to do. In school, I was the student who got good grades (actually, I got great grades!), who didn't talk/pass notes/fall asleep during class, and who did her homework without parental prompting. I went to bed at my bedtime, and was dressed and ready for school in the morning. Books were my constant companion, as were a series of spiral, college-ruled notebooks into which I poured all manner of short stories and illustrations during car trips or any other time when, as the good girl, I was expected to be quiet and entertain myself.

As the good girl, I worked hard, but accepted whatever fate had in store for me - no questions asked. If someone stepped ahead of me in line, while I might have cursed them inside, outside, I was a sea of tranquility, patiently waiting, a hard smile on my face. If a waiter placed an undercooked steak in front of me, well I just ate the bits that looked the most well-done - no need in embarrassing the waitstaff and the kitchen! Long line at the Post Office - no worries, I'll just read the New York Times on my PDA while I'm waiting.

Being a good girl meant that I was always on my best behavior, but being polite doesn't always mean being honest. And when a truth like cancer enters your life, being a good girl doesn't seem so important, because, let's be honest, cancer is a nasty little bitch whose face I want to slap every time I see her - no offense. She has brought my dad to his knees in agony, and made him scream in pain while doctors poke and prod at him. For the past month, she has ripped a hole in the blue sky that was my family. And she  has forced me to act in ways that no good girl should - questioning authority, demanding more time, more attention, more options. In short, I may have surrendered my title as good girl, but I am becoming something more, someone different - a good daughter and a good woman.

The Cast-Offs: The Strange World of the Married without Children

Last year about this time I wrote of the common misconceptions made about those who have not conceived, whether by chance or by choice. The response to that piece has been and continues to be overwhelming - from both friends and family who are squarely on the baby bandwagon, and those who for various reasons are not. The discussions reached a fever pitch this year with the release of Jennifer Westfeldt's motion picture, "Friends with Kids,"a relationship piece that put the breeding wars front and center. This year also marked my tenth wedding anniversary and my fortieth birthday, two milestone events that force an appraisal of your life whether you want to or not. Well, I'm happy to report that the state of our union is good, very good, except for the one thing that's missing - our friends!

What? You thought I was going to say a child, didn't you? But, no, we've got plenty of children - nephews and the children of our friends who have become like our nieces and nephews, thus significantly expanding the kiddie pool. We have friends who have successfully adopted, and others who are still waiting, but hopeful. And there are even friends who've been paid surprise visits by the Stork, well after they had given away the last of the onesies and forgotten how to work the breast pump. It would seem our life is teeming with children, but not our friends.

Thanks to the wonders of Facebook, we get to experience the daily highs and lows of our friends and their families. We see happy babies on bouncies, 8-year-olds in their baseball uniforms, and a tutu or two on precious little ballerinas. We hear about scouting trips and epic Girl Scout Cookie sales figures to rival Mrs. Fields. Our more tech-savvy friends get us breaking news live Tweets from the scene of paint-peeling toddler temper tantrums and showdowns in the Babies R Us parking lot with suv-driving SOBs who almost mow them down while they and their little one are attempting to walk to their car. But that's all we get.

Somewhere between labor and delivery to high school graduation (and sometimes beyond), we got cast aside. Now, to be fair, it's been well-documented that parenting comes with all sorts of trade-offs and compromises - time, sleep, you know the drill, and I know the drill because I hear about it...a lot. My husband and I would be the super-understanding couple when our new-parent friends would cancel plans/not call/not invite us to their children's birthday parties. "No problem," we'd reply, "Of course it's ok." The problem, though, is that once your friends go from new-parent to just parent, the excuses don't stop, and soon, your parent-friends are friends with other parents and not you.

There was one parent couple who were always busy with their kids' merciless, and bottomless, schedule of team sport practices, games, recitals, sleepovers, camping trips, etc, ad nauseum. If we wanted to see them, we had to contact them months in advance, and even then, those plans could be changed on a dime if there was a last-minute scheduling oversight or the sniffles. We issued our standard, "no problem," but then we found out that our superbusy parent friends were apparently NOT too busy for the parents of their children's classmates/teammates. We felt betrayed, like a jealous lover thrown over for some shiny, new thing. These were our friends, in whom we confided our thoughts and feelings, with whom we'd shared meals and memories, and to whom we'd given an abundance of benefit of the doubt.  We had been moved from the A-list to the D-list on the friendship scale!

I know this isn't high school, but it certainly has the stink of high school where friendships are based on the "are you like me" index. I may not know the name of a good lactation consultant, but is that the ONLY thing two people can discuss?

So what are my options? Well, there aren't as many as you would imagine. While we do know couples who are child-less and child-free, most keep their schedules chock-a-block full, with every moment budgeted for work, volunteering, and travel. These couples are the ones who chair church committees and tirelessly perform community service (non-court ordered, I should add!!). They are on the boards of nonprofits and sing in community choirs. They have annual theatre subscriptions and love attending concerts by the local symphony orchestra, and, odds are that they've eaten at that hip new restaurant well before Yelp/Urbanspoon/Zagat has rated it. The reasons for the packed dancecard vary - for most it's a genuine interest in new experiences, but for some, there's a bit of wanting to avoid looking like they're bored or unhappy waiting for their parent-friends to call. Whatever the case, apparently our public relations masterplan has worked, because our parent-friends believe that they're doing us a favor by not calling!

Think about this, when that rare parent-friend does call or email (unprompted), what's the the thing they all say within the first 60 seconds/10 words? Is it something like "Wow, you guys are so busy!"?? 

Don't fall for it - it's a trap!

Implied in that statement is this: We would call you more often, but we figured since you're so busy it wouldn't matter if we called, so we don't. Get it?? It's YOUR fault that your parent-friends aren't calling. But it's not your fault, they simply don't want to be your friends anymore.

Sounds harsh? Well, it's time for some tough love. As selfless and sacrificing as parents are called to be in their role of unpaid caregiver, parenting is an extremely selfish endeavor. Parents move heaven and earth for their children and their family unit. Whatever resource they have - of time, effort, money, etc. - is used up in the service of their individual family. If there is a remainder, it must be fed back to the family unit. Society expects this, hell, society demands this. The definition of a "good parent" leaves no margin for friendships that don't do double-duty. If you're a good parent, you expose your children to numerous opportunities for enrichment - sports, music, nature, art, foreign languages, religious instruction. So you develop friendships of survival and convenience with the other moms and dads whose children are also involved in the same sports, music, nature, art, foreign language, religious instruction enrichment opportunities as your children. It's not long before the mom who your child carpools with after softball practice becomes your friend, and soon you're both sitting in the stands, swapping recipes and exchanging thoughts on the latest gossip surrounding the new ball field upgrade. And while it's great that you're making friends with a fellow traveler on your parenthood path, you're also leaving behind a friend, and a new cast-off is born. And worst of all is that you justify it by saying to yourself, "well, she's SO busy all the time, I'm sure she's got lots to do."

Here's the thing - a packed to-do list can't replace a friendship that's taken years to develop and nurture.

So what can be done? Maybe we need to go a bit "old school" with our notions of parenting and friendship. Growing up, my mom's closest friends were a mix of single, married without children, and empty-nester. When Mom wanted to see her friends, she'd pack us in the car and over to their homes we would go. My sister and I would sit reading a book or watching TV while Mom caught up with her friends. These women became my Aunties and they've remained important in my mom's life as well as the life of our family. Their enduring friendship is the model for my own friendships where the line of demarcation is not drawn at the car-seat, well, at least not by me.

I'm just saying.

Did Bias Kill Trayvon Martin?

Growing up in the suburbs of Maryland, I lived a life of relative security among a community of people who were brown like me. My neighborhood was African American, and the Catholic school I attended, which was run by black nuns, had a student body comprised of only black children. And while we ventured into Washington, DC frequently to visit family and friends, and for Mom's visit to her hairdresser, we seemed always to be in a part of town inhabited only by other black people. For a time, the only white faces I saw were at the grocery store or on television, or on those occasions when we'd visit Mom's job or the museums on the National Mall.

And then it all changed.

It was a family trip down to Birmingham, Alabama to attend my Godfather's wedding. Dozens of my extended family made the trip down south and we took a block of rooms at a hotel downtown. It was an adventure, but on one afternoon, that adventure turned into something ominous when the hotel manager called with some disturbing news - the KKK were having a rally in downtown Birmingham, not too far from our hotel, and the manager thought that for our own good we might just want to stay indoors. Mom quickly gathered all of the adult family members and for the first time in my life I saw fear in Mom's eyes, and something else that I couldn't name at that time, but that I can now some 35 years later - anger. Mom was angry that after all she had done to shield her little girls from racism, here it was, breaking in, in the guise of faceless, hooded men in white sheets. After all that she had done to protect my sister and I, here we were, forced to sit in a hotel room and pray that the terror would pass.

It's a natural instinct to try to protect your children from hurt and harm and danger. But what about those threats of a more insidious nature? What about the threat of bias?

Bias is one of those words that's been given a black eye. In the 1990's, gender bias was a cause celeb, with women rallying to stamp it out in the workplace and on college campuses. Gender bias owed a lot to its immediate predecessor, media bias, which had been the subject of countless journalism school courses and public opinion polls in the 1980's. By the time we made it to the 2000's, though, bias was starting to lose its edge. It was being reduced to a fad, a relic of the politically-correct that was being used to attack free speech and subvert the so-called natural order of things. Bias lawsuits are notoriously difficult to pursue if you're the plaintiff because of the legal standards one must meet to prove their case, including direct evidence of discrimination, such as letters, memos, and notes showing a pattern of bias. Without them, bias cases turn into my word against yours.

Bias is defined as "A particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question; prejudice."
A particular tendency or inclination?

It sounds harmless, almost, but it's not. While DISCRIMINATION is a hard word of intentional action with very clear cut legal ramifications, bias seems its vague relative. A particular tendency. But with the murder of Trayvon Martin, there should be no doubt of the awful power of bias. If discrimination is the engine, then bias is the fuel. All week,  as varying accounts of George Zimmerman have started to emerge- law enforcement wannabe, trusted neighbor, racist vigilante - I've been most curious about two particular facts that have been trotted out by friends of Zimmerman: that Zimmerman is Hispanic and that he has black relatives. Neither of these facts negates bias. I've had white friends who wouldn't think of dating someone black. The fact of our friendship doesn't absolve them of bias. I have black male relatives who think that women shouldn't earn as much as men. The fact of their blackness doesn't absolve them of bias.

A fascinating study is currently being conducted called Project Implicit. Dr. Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard, along with Dr. Brian Nosek and Dr. Tony Greenwald devised the project in order to uncover the implicit attitudes and beliefs that people are either unable or unwilling to admit. Through a series of online questions called Implicit Association Tests (IATs), you can see patterns of implicit bias in your own thoughts and attitudes. It makes you wonder if that song "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" from the musical, "Avenue Q", is true and if we have something more to fear than some hatemongering men in white hoods and white sheets. 

So did bias kill Trayvon Martin? Was it bias that made Zimmerman suspect that a young black boy was up to no good? Was it bias that made Zimmerman reach for his gun? If it had been a 14-year old hoodie-wearing white girl lost and looking for her house that night would we be talking about this? 

I'm just saying. 

Untethered: Life in a 4G World

Some of my favorite childhood memories involve my grandmother, the sofa, and the telephone. The sofa was in the family room of our home and the telephone was right next to it. Attached to the phone's receiver was a coil of thick, maroon cord, a spiral that, when stretched out, must have been nearly 4 feet long. The cord would knot itself into a nasty tangle, so much so that when the phone rang, the first 20 or so seconds of conversation involved my grandmother cradling the receiver between her head and her neck while she, and her team of helpers (i.e. my sister and I) took our fingers to the mess.

Since Grandma made as many as a dozen calls a day to her very large circles of family and friends, that telephone cord became the bain of my existence. But now, in a world of not only cordless telephones, but telephones that no longer rely on a phone jack in the wall, Grandma sitting amongst the jumble of cord is a sweet memory. Those telephone calls were connection, in every sense. Now, though, I fear that those moments of connection are rapidly disappearing and I'm feeling adrift and untethered. In my lifetime, I've gone from using the cumbersome telephone in the family kitchen to calling home from a subway stop in Bangkok on a telephone so small and slim that it fits inside of my jean's pocket.

In my lifetime, I've gone from driving to my local bank to get cash in order to pay for things to sliding a card and now holding my PDA up to a transponder at my grocery store, or hardware store, or department store. I've gone from having my favorite bank teller cash my paycheck and filling me in on the latest gossip to having an unseen electronic hand put money into my bank account.

The way that I watch television has also been altered. Growing up, my ferocious need to watch "The Dukes of Hazzard" on the family room TV involved a complex set of negotiations with my older sister, Mom and Grandma. And heaven forbid you tried to schedule anything from 12:00PM to 4:00PM on a weekday, as that was when Grandma watched her "stories", a.k.a. the entire line-up of CBS daytime soap operas. Now, though, I have ample opportunities to stay current with my favorite shows, and none of them involves learning how to program a VCR!  Sure, you can invest in TiVo, but most of the time the broadcast and cable channels will repeat a program within a couple of hours of its initial airing. These so-called "slugs" have proved so popular that TV ratings firms, such as Nielsen, have figured out a way to measure the slug watchers. And if I'd like to watch an episode of my favorite show from my seat on the commuter-rail, then I can watch it on my phone or on my iPad. This is a far cry from everyone gathering around to find out who shot J.R.!

Right now, the U.S. Postal Service is in danger of financial collapse as online efficiency is making physical mail obsolete. Computer makers, one of the drivers of the Postal Service's rapid descent, are also fighting to figure out this untethered life, as consumers and corporations have gone from dial-up to 4G, and have abandoned cumbersome desktop computers for the freedom and flexibility of laptops and tablets.

But for all of the "golly-gee" of technology that's allowing us to do almost anything at anytime with almost anyone, I don't think we're satisfied. You want to know why so many people are at your local coffee shop?? Because alongside the caffeine, we're craving a connection with each other. For all of our technological know-how, the true genius of humanity will always be our ability to create unique relationships with one another, to truly connect. I'm just saying:)

An American Tragedy

Last week, we celebrated my nephew's eleventh birthday. It was a relaxed affair, with burgers and fries and the sugary-goodness of birthday cake. It reminded me of the birthday parties I had as a little girl - modest events with just the immediate family, and an odd cousin or two. Back then, the birthday cake was homemade and the presents, while never expensive, were memorable. There were favorite Barbie Dolls and pocket-sized, die-cast metal Matchbox cars to add to my collection. The weeks leading up to my birthday were the longest weeks of my life, but the actual birthday seemed always to race by me in a feverish blur that was no doubt fueled by the twin ecstasies of birthday cake AND presents. I was thinking about those times as I watched my nephew open each of his own 11-year-old gifts - each a new treasure.

One of those treasures was a portable electronic gaming system, and from the first few seconds that he spied the box's telltale logo, his face was resplendent with joy. He was so possessed by this possession, this thing so desired. But desires don't retail so cheaply, and this particular one came with a triple-digit price tag. For a family of modest means, this was truly a thing to be treasured. For a little boy from a family of modest means, this was a thing to be shared, a thing to be shown off, and that was when the unthinkable happened.

This treasure was stolen, and suddenly a little boy and his family are thrown into a tailspin.

Listening to my mother over the telephone relaying the details, her voice hollowed out and thin, I, at first, was only half-listening - your nephew went to school Monday...your sister told him not to take it to school...his brother noticed he had it in the car...came home crying...your sister went to the principal this morning...$300...so upset.

This incident brings up all sorts of issues, from obeying your parents, to teaching children how to be responsible, and the on-going debate over appropriate gifts for children. And any of these issues would be worthy of a good blogging, but I'm most curious if my nephew's short-lived relationship with this thing will have an everlasting effect on his psyche. Will this gaming system become his Rosebud? Will my 105-year-old nephew's last words be, "Nintendo"? And how is it that for all of the toys and games that we've given him over the years - toys that he's played with and forgotten about - that this one with which he has spent the least amount of time with is the one for which he grieves? Will this thing define him? Will his parents no longer trust him with things that they value? Will he feel unworthy for an innocent mistake? And will he ever believe the truth, that he will always be worth more than some thing whose worth is measured in dollars? I'm just saying.

A Nation of Hoarders

As I left my house Saturday morning, I noticed dozens of people picking through mountains of stuff assembled on various tables scattered along a sidewalk. It was my neighborhood's annual yard sale, and, judging by the large number of cars and trucks parked on either side of the street, this year's was a success. I've never had the urge to stop by yard sales, which is a pity as this was the third or fourth yard sale I'd passed this week. At one yard sale, we saw a woman practically skipping down a suburban Virginia street with a colossal 60-roll package of toilet tissue. You would have thought she'd just bought a Tom Ford-era Gucci dress in her size for a nickel!!

Maybe it's the recession that's fueling the yard sale craze. With consumer credit in a curious place, that buyer's rush has to be satisfied some way, so why not with a slightly used $3 denim jacket from Old Navy that you picked up from a stranger in their driveway?? But, really, this urge to have and to hold can become dangerous and obsessive. The Target stores have reported that their launch of a mid-priced line of housewares and apparel by Italian fashion house Missoni has resulted in a rash of buyers snapping up the items in bulk, cleaning out entire store inventories, and then reselling these items with a stiff mark-up on online auction sites like eBay. This takes the house-flipping concept to a new low!!

And what about couponing sites like Groupon?? That's great that you can get parachuting lessons for $15 instead of $115, and a $20 bag of groceries for $10 from your favorite whole foods store, and dinner for two for $30, but does anyone ever ask themselves, "do I really need this?" Why are we so consumed with consuming?

I guess, then, it's little wonder why the reality show, "Hoarders" has become so popular. While the cameras roll, we see living rooms piled waist-high with newspapers, kitchens overwhelmed by dirty pots and pans, whole bedrooms packed to the gills with clothing and trash, and, in the midst of it all, a person and their story of loss and loneliness. They stuff more and more and more things into their homes in an attempt to fill the emotional void. Some of them confront this crisis and clean up their act, but some will not, either way, it doesn't matter because the American TV-viewing public loves "Hoarders." Maybe it's good, old-fashioned schadenfreude that makes the show's fans tune in, but I think it's a lurking feeling that we have more in common with the hoarders than we're comfortable admitting. We want it, and we want it NOW, and we want it ALL!

You'd think we'd learned our lessons about the dangers of unfettered appetites, what with the now-global economic crisis, but I guess not. We still want and we still buy, only now, instead of plunking down our credit card at a pricey department store, we throw down cash for another's trash and claim it as treasure, and we don't even use it! How sad is that?? Hoarders take no pleasure in all that they've accumulated. They feel compulsion but not joy. Maybe joy is something that we all could use - real joy at our connections to each other instead of to another thing. I'm just saying:)