20 Things I Learned after 20 Years in California

It’s been a big week for milestones ’round here.

Monday was Mark and my seven year wedding anniversary. Say what you will about this marital mile-marker, but we have thus far experienced no itchiness. Phew.

Yesterday was Kate’s first day of first grade. It was like some meta first-ness. Like first to the first power. But things like this don’t phase my unflappable girl. Within the first minute of being on the playground she was acting like the First Lady of Elementary School. By tomorrow she’ll have the kindergarteners handing over the cookies from their lunch boxes. Bless her heart.

And today is another biggie. Today marks 20 years to the day since I moved to California.

20 years!!! It’s totally unbelievable.

I’ve lived here longer than I lived in Lil’ Rhody. Which must mean that in another bat of an eyelash I’ll be wielding a walker with tennis ball wheels. I plan to have lots of flair on my walker by the way. In-n-Out Burger stickers, fuzzy clamp-on koala bears, and magenta bike handle streamers.

So there’s that to look forward to.

Anyway, in light of my 20 years as a Californian, I thought I’d share the top 20 things I’ve learned since living here.

1. To some people local artisan cheese is Kraft Singles. This is a good thing to think of when you are paying your astronomical rent or mortgage bill and feeling jealous of your friend’s McMansion in Sioux City. Compared to much of the rest of the country, the Bay Area offers many pains, but also many pleasures.

2. Redwood Trees are really tall.

3. Parallel parking is a Darwinian skill that one develops while living in SF. After driving around your neighborhood for 45 minutes on a parking spot quest, you can bet your pins-and-needles ass you’ll wedge your chippy-paint-bumpered Jetta into a space better suited to a Mini Cooper. On a 30% grade hill no less. After living in San Fran, going anywhere that has an actual parking lot makes you feel spoiled rotten.

3 1/2. (Turns out I had more than 20 things to say, so I’m trying to slip this one in here unnoticed.) You know how you go into an ice cream store and you ask the people who work there, “Wow, do you just eat ice cream all day?” and they just squirm and look uncomfortably annoyed because you’re the seventh person who’s asked them that in the past half-hour? You know that? Then they say, “Actually, no. When you work here eventually you get over it.” Well, I never REALLY believed them. Come ON. They’ve gotta be running in the back room stuffing themselves silly with Pralines and Cream, right? Well now that I live so close to Napa Valley I know exactly what those ice cream scoopers are talking about. Napa is stunning,  close by, and a world-renowned destination—oh, and it’s overflowing with wine, of course. Yet we don’t go there every weekend. We somehow also manage to not to always bring visitors there. It’s so close! It’s so fabulous! But I’m ashamed to say that we’ve grown to take it for granted. (Wait, you all don’t have hundreds of world-class wineries an hour’s drive from YOUR house?!)

4. Divorce West Coast style means that your father and his wife (who is younger than you) comes to your house for Thanksgiving with your mother and her girlfriend. And not only do they all talk to each other, they’re all best friends.

5. My scariest California rookie experience was ordering a burrito at a Mission taqueria. There’s a huge long counter behind which 15 or so women take orders from a constant stream of patrons. They sputter out questions like, “Black, pinto, or re-fried?” and you must use all your energy to ante up an answer—any answer—so as to keep pace with the next question they’re going to hurl your way. They move down the line two steps to the chicken and meat section where more un-decipherable questions are asked, and you whimper lightly and point. By then, sweating and disoriented you lose track of your burrito-maker, who is down by the salsas bellowing out “Hot or mild?” while a dozen other people are calling back to their nice burrito-making ladies a cacophony of “Pinto! No lettuce! Carnitas!” Then what happens is you start talking to The Wrong Woman. You lose your Burrito Maker and then suffer a sudden crushing white-girl shame because all the long-black-haired Mexican women look the same to you but you don’t want to accept that you really think that because that would be BAD and WRONG. Yet, uh, was that her? In the gray t-shirt? Or the one with the braids? And then suddenly she is back and in your face and yelling something and beckoning you down the long counter because you are creating a hungry human traffic jam so you wave an affirming that’s-great-thanks gesture her way so she’ll just stop asking you questions then you’re shunted to the cash register having no idea what it is that you ordered. And you have also not been handed your burrito. It’s been tossed in a pile with 8 other tin foil tubes that all have different letters scrawled on them. At the register they say things to you in questioning tones like “Super Veggie Burrito?,” or other phrases that include words like “Deluxe” which appear to be names for the kindsa burritos they make, but you have NO IDEA what it is that you got. Someone could offer to pay you $10,000 to tell them what is in your burrito and you’d just sit down and cry and say, “I don’t know! It all happened so fast! And she had an accent that I’m ashamed to say I really couldn’t understand!” But you manage to somehow buy something (that may or may not be yours) and don’t cry from the trauma of it all. And whatever the hell it is you eat it and decide that the holy terror you endured was SO worth it. Then eventually, 8 years or so later, after coming back about once a week, ordering a burrito becomes easier.

6. I sometimes feel un-cool for not being gay.

7. I’m more afraid that one of those Looney Toons anvils might somehow fall on my head than I am about earthquakes. When you live here, you don’t hang pictures framed with glass over your bed, and you don’t think much about earthquakes. Because really, not wanting one won’t prevent one from happening. Besides, we’re all too stoned out of our minds every day to worry about anything other than when the pizza is going to arrive. (See #12.)

8. You have not really gone out dancing until you’re the only woman in a gay club and by the end of the night you find yourself dancing in a black lace bra. (Just kidding, Dad! Well, as far as you know…)

9. It turns out Spanish would’ve been a more useful language to take than my 12 years of French. Who knew?

10. San Francisco Victorians are painfully cold in the winter and summer. They sure may look purdy, but most Turkish prison cells are more comfortable.

11. Everything Mark Twain ever said about San Francisco summers and witch’s tits is totally true.

12. Of my native-Calif friends, some scored pot from their parents with the same regularity and lack of big-dealness that I had hitting my parents for an allowance.

13. Whenever I was home sick from work in New York, I felt like I was the only one in my apartment building aside from the crazy old ladies who never threw out newspapers and bred cockroaches. EVERYONE else was at work. But in the Bay Area I think that people in offices feel like the outsiders. Cafes and coffee shops are thrumming with people hanging out (working? checking Match.com? betting on the ponies?) all day long. And a good drinking game, if you ever need one during the day, is doing a shot every time a man with a baby strapped to his chest walks down the sidewalk past your house. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

14. When it rains here it rains and when it doesn’t rain it doesn’t rain. These weather patterns are strictly relegated to seasons and they nearly always play by the rules. This seems odd to you at first, but later when you go on vacations outside of Northern California and after a sunny morning there’s a rain storm in the afternoon it freaks your shit right out.

15. There’s something warm and romantic—but also prone to knocking over your porch plants—called the Santa Anna winds that pass through the Bay Area every once and a while. It’s fun to say Santa Ana winds, and even funner to have an unusual weather pattern crop up that you’ve lived here long enough to recognize. “Oh yeah, those Santa Ana’s are blowin’!” you call out to your neighbor over the bluster while getting into your car some mornings. And you think you’re really cool.

16. Don’t be surprised if you are waiting at a stop light and a man wearing black leather pants, a black leather captain’s hat, and a “shirt” comprised of crisscrossing leather straps, is walking another man across the street who is on all fours, and on a leash. I don’t know what those wacky gay boys are up to, but it seems like good clean fun!

17. Speaking of leather pants, don’t wear those to the Rainbow Grocery cooperative. Really. Take my word on that.

18. And speaking of crossing the street, people in California actually stop for pedestrians in crosswalks! All that time on the East Coast I never knew what those lines on the street were for.

19. The Berkeley Public Library’s library cards look like they’re tie-dyed. Somebody had a great sense of branding (and humor).

20. There is a field of bison in Golden Gate Park and the first time you see them you will feel certain someone slipped you a hallucenogen.

Thank you, thank you, Mark, for a dazzling seven years of marriage, and for being the funniest, smartest, cutest, best-cookin’ husband a gal could ever have. I adore the ground you walk on, and could you pick Kate up from school today? Listen, I’ll just call you about that later.

And thanks to you California, for the wild, wonderful ride these past twenty years. I must have been having a good time, because man, that time FLEW. Here’s to the next twenty.

Unfinished Business

There was one thing my sister Ellen and I both wanted of my mother’s after she died. It wasn’t an Oriental carpet or a strand of pearls. It was a little piece of scratch paper Mom had pinned to a bulletin board. In her cramped, scrawly handwriting it said: “A well kept house is the sign of a misspent life.”

This, as it turns out, was my mother’s credo.

She wasn’t a total slob, but… how can I put this? She sometimes prioritized other things over cleaning.

I can imagine her glee stumbling across that quote one day, finding it the perfect validation for the dust bunnies under our beds and our sink full of dishes. Lesser, boring people would have their sink sparkling—but not her! She had better things to do.

I’m pretty sure that things like this skip a generation. My mother was an expert procrastinator. I grew up to be a militant project manager. She was a master of disorganization, always puttering around muttering things like, “I remember thinking I’d put that in a really good place. But where was it?” Me? I pride myself on an OCD-level of organization. And in terms of cleanliness and clutter, let’s put it this way—before I ever leave the house, I tidy up and wipe everything down as if I’ll bump into the Queen at Safeway and invite her straight home for a cup of tea.

Yes, I am NOT my mother’s daughter when it comes to housekeeping. But man, I still wanted that little hand-written note of hers. Precisely because it was so her. (Turns out, my sister kept the original and gave me a xerox copy. Which was just fine by me.)

God knows some of my less stellar parenting moments have erupted in those times of frantic leaving-the-house cleaning. I’ll have just finished picking up Cinderella playing cards littered all the way down the hall, and will walk into the living room to see that Paige has pulled every DVD off the shelf, opened the boxes, and is flinging the discs around like Frisbees. It’s that hair-pulling one step forward, two steps back thing. You finally think you’re ready to leave the house, and the baby poops. It’s inevitable.

Of course, all these leads me to the conclusion that my girls will grow up to keep towering piles of magazines around like my mother did. It will be their rebellion for having weathered my uptight neat-freakishness.

And really, if that’s the case it’d be fine by me. (As long as they let me clean when I go to their houses.) If they come by some bad habits on their own, I’m fine with that. We’re all human. But if they’re bad at something because I am? Well, that’s a different matter altogether. As a parent I want to try to breed the bad parts of me out of them.

Which is why I’ve been serving up a lot of Parental Lecture #239 lately. Which is to say, “Finish what you start.”

The thing is, I’ve been finding scores of inch-long, unfinished friendship bracelets all over the house. Someone comes to visit, Kate interrogates them about their favorite colors, and furiously starts knotting and braiding away. But inevitably something else catches her attention. She’s off with the sidewalk chalk or reading to her dolls in a fort, and that orange, black, and gray bracelet that was our friend Mike’s personal palette, is left unfinished.

She’ll start making a birthday card, then wander into the kitchen to find a snack. She’s excited about a new library book, but after two nights and two chapters, would rather we “please please pleeeez” read Ivy & Bean instead.

Now, you may be thinking that the girl is only five years old. (Or perhaps you’re wondering how old she is. Better yet, you may not give a rat’s ass.) Whatever the case, she turns six next month. So really, this kind of behavior is pretty typical kid stuff. And I get that. I certainly don’t want her goose-stepping around the house, finishing each drawing/game/activity with clinical precision, then hitting a stop watch and logging it into a book. But I do want her to understand the benefit of sticking with something. I want her to feel the satisfaction of hard work paying off. And I don’t want her to grow up to be someone who starts things and never finishes them. Like, uh… like sometimes I do.

Because, I don’t know about you, but I have a kinda mental list of all the things I’ve taken on that somehow never got off the ground. Things that excited me and inspired me and I’d even told my friends about when they asked me, “What’s new?”

And what’s funny is, I’m the last person you’d think of as a slacker. In the Enneagram—this interesting personality-mapping system that you should really buy a book about the next time you go to a ski house for a weekend with some friends—I’m a #3. The Achiever. Still somehow, I house this mild frustration within myself about all the projects I bailed on. And I guess if this is something fixable—something I can somehow deter my kids from doing—then, by gum, I’m going to try.

On New Year’s Day last year our Oakland posse came over for brunch. And we did this thing where we took the things about the prior year that we wanted to forget, or not carry into the new year, or just get over, and we wrote them on little scraps of paper. (Aren’t we SO California groovy? You probably just ate egg casserole and drank off your hang-over at your New Year’s brunch.)  Initially we stuck the papers in a little plastic doll potty I found in one of the girls’ rooms. It seemed like a good metaphor to flush those things away. But later in the day, once we had a fire in the fireplace—and a few mimosas in our systems—we started reading them aloud and tossing them into the flames.

It was good therapy. (Though I still sometimes do lose my temper with the kids.)

Anyway I wonder if, in the same vein, I can list the unfinished projects that gnaw at me here. And by virtue of enumerating and accepting them perhaps I can exorcise them from my mind.

Hell, I figure it’s worth a try.

Things I Started and Never Finished:

• Scrapbooking. I spent HUNDREDS of dollars on papers, stickers, scalloped scissors, and flower-shaped hole punchers. I painstakingly produced a few pages–maybe six—and found I was psychotically hell-bent on making each one a creative masterpiece worthy of the Scrapbook Hall of Fame (which I think is in Cleveland somewhere near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). I got through Kate’s first five weeks of life then quit, utterly spent. Continuing at that rate would have been a 90-plus hour a week job. And that was before Paige with all her scrap-worthy moments was even born.
• Compiling photo albums—actual book ones with pages you can turn. I can’t help but think that by the time my kids are adults the internet will be like an 8-track tape. “Photos of your first birthday? I have them right here! Don’t you worry, we just need to spark up the old internet to get them. Stand back now! This can get loud—and smokey!”
• Hell, I’d be happy to have up-to-date photos on our Fickr account posted. Or even just downloaded onto my computer. Our digital camera is like 20 old rolls of film that have never been dropped off at MotoPhoto.
• The marathon I attended an inspirational Team in Training meeting for 9 years ago, then gave up on after my knee got jenky after just two training runs.

• The needlepoint of a bunny (what was I thinking?) that I worked on during endless doctor appointments, and chemo and radiation sessions with my mother. I would get SO engrossed in it, that after sitting in a stiff gray waiting room chair for an entire day, my mother would finally be ready to go and I’d beg, “Can we just stay a little longer so I can finish all the red flower petals?”

• And that damn needlepoint reminds me of the owl hook rug I started as a kid. I had big plans for that acrylic throw rug. Big plans. I think my mom kept that unfinished masterpiece in the attic for decades after I’d abandoned it. She apparently had faith in my ability to some day complete that project. The fool.
• There’s that book about the orchid thief, and one about a Parisian piano shop, and many many other books I started and never finished even though I always claim to be someone who “can’t start a new book ’til I finish the one I’m reading, even if I hate it.” If I ever use that line on you, know that it’s a lie. (Even though I still like to think it’s true.)

• And of course, the biggest ugliest most brutal unfinished project—my book. Yes, my book idea that I was so impassioned and inspired and determined about, the research material for which is now sitting pitifully in a box on our basement floor. I’m not sure if my energy for it petered out because I stopped believing in my idea, or if I stopped believing in my idea because I never put enough energy into getting it rolling. If I could only get back the money I spent on childcare while trying to finish that damn proposal. It’d probably amount to the proceeds I’d have made on the book if I ever got it published.

Oh, I’m sure there are more more more things on this list. I have boxes of fabric and pillow stuffing and yarn—the vestiges of  creative undertakings that died on the vine. I have vintage buttons I planned to sew on cardigans. Growth charts for both girls devoid of hash marks for each year’s passage.

Some of this is maybe just life—you’re bound to find yourself in the not-yet-completed part of some undertaking. But at times, in the middle of the night, these things can weigh on me. My Achiever personality frets over what I’ve failed to do, instead of reveling in my accomplishments.

Last summer we vacationed with friends who have four boys. If her offspring wasn’t time-sucking enough, in her off-mama hours the woman is an E.R. doc. And a triathlete. Her husband commandeers a fairly new, wildly successful craft brewery which struggles to keep pace with the demand for their product. They’ve got one of those big white boards in their kitchen that outlines everyone’s schedule for the week. Take it from me, these people are BUSY.

But I was blown away but how thoughtfully they manage their lives on a minute by minute basis. Like how, whenever one of the boys pulls on the mom’s arm and asks, “Can you read to me? Can we play Zingo? Do you want to play freeze tag?” More often than not, her answer is Yes.

It made me realize how often my answer is No. I can’t read because I’m cooking dinner. I can’t pretend I’m your baby, I’m sending a work email. No, no no. When really, doing any of these things takes just a few minutes. (Except, of course, a hellishly endless game of Chutes and Ladders.)

But really, will the world fall apart if I play a couple hot rounds of Go Fish, instead of emptying the dishwasher right away?

When the girls want to know some day why they don’t have baby books—why I can’t remember the exact date they took their first steps, or can’t put my fingers on a photo of their kindergarten play—I hope I’ll be able to remind them of that huge hopscotch we drew along the length of our block’s sidewalk. And I hope that that will somehow be enough.

As for that book proposal? I think I just need to get off my ass.

What have you started that you never finished?

Opening Windows

Was it just me, or did everyone adore their pediatrician when they were little?

I mean, not love love. Not like in any Electra Complex sorta way. It’s just that for me going to the doctor was always a super happy event. Even when I had to get shots.

I’ll call him Dr. Unger. And what I remember about the guy was this: He had pictures of his patients covering one wall of his office. Even though I wasn’t in any of them (something I never dreamed of—as a fourth child, photos of me were rare), there was something so free-spirited and fabulous about the collage. To my kid brain, at least. No adult I knew dared to decorate this way.

Of course, as a mother now myself I now know nearly every pediatrician does this, at least at the holidays with photo cards. But at the time it was one more thing that made Dr. Unger so dazzling.

For some reason I always thought he looked like a handsome version of—get this—Jerry Lewis. Ha! Absurd, right? I’m not sure where I got that idea, but I remember thinking I was pretty cool for coming up with it. I mean, this was the age of Tab and Fresca people. I’m no spring chicken. So, along with thinking that shag carpets were an acceptable floor covering and Pacers were cool-looking cars, we we clearly devoid of handsome celebs—leaving me to have to summon in my youthful imagination what Jerry Lewis mighta looked like if he didn’t look the way he did.

I know what you’re thinking: I’m an over-achiever. And you’re absolutely right.

Anyway, Dr. Unger had this nurse (or was she a secretary?) who was ancient, and crisp white uniformed, and super old school. She ran that office like a Swiss train. Or a Swiss clock. Something Swiss. (But not cheese.)

She was a mighty force, but her air of authority was never off-putting. She made it clear the place would fall to ruins without her, yet managed to be all smiles and winks. And she had a very chummy, insider-ish way of talking to my mom. As if we were a special family she was truly happy to see.

She probably made everyone feel that way. And good for her, if she did.

“Oh that Dr. Unger,” my mother would say admiringly, as we walked down the floating staircase (very mod at the time) to the parking lot, and she lit up a brown More cigarette. Mom adored Dr. Unger as much as I did. In that “he’s SO good at his job” kinda way. Though, who knows? Maybe she had a thing for Jerry Lewis too.

Whatever the case, there was a real sense of us feeling lucky that he was our doctor. I mean, we’d drive a half-hour to get to his office. This is halfway ‘cross the state when you consider we were in Rhode Island. But mom was resolute that he was “the best” so she’d dress us up for an outing to “the city” for every little check-up and sniffle. (Shorts, for your information, were an unacceptable clothing option for the city according to Mom. She stopped just short of making us wear gloves and bonnets.)

Aside from an allergy test where he pricked different parts of my arm with a short four-pronged needle, and aside from getting to pick out a lollipop after getting a shot, for all my admiration for Dr. Unger, I don’t remember any specific interactions I had with the guy. But I do remember one thing he told my mother once. He said, “The best thing you can do for a child is to keep their window open when they sleep.”

And so, all these years later I can’t help but think of Dr. Unger when I tuck my girls in at night. Unless it’s super cold out, I try to at least keep one window in their rooms cracked.

It’s such a little thing, but when I do it I feel like I’m tapping into some old world wisdom. Like I’m channeling some simple maternal legacy, since it was something my mother did with us. Because, of course, Dr. Unger’s word was gospel. Mom wouldn’t dare go up against doctor’s orders. And she always prided herself on the fact that my sisters and I never got sick. Something I’ve gotta admit, I love about my kids too. (Though now that I’ve said that I’m sure they’ll be plagued with an endless stream of sniffles, sore throats, and all-night puking sessions.)

Anyway, more often than not old clashes with new. And this small window thing is no exception.

Because one day, in a stream of chatter about everything and nothing at all (my favorite kind of conversation), my Mama Posse friend Maggie mentioned that she always closes her kids’ bedroom windows at night. And locks them. “Even,” she added, “if it’s, like, 100 degrees out.” (Though, blessedly, the Bar Area never gets near that hot.) Ever since the Polly Klaas thing, she said she’s not taking any chances.

Several weeks later, another member of the Mama Posse (we don’t have matching tattoos or embroidered satin jackets, I swear) was showing us the new extension they’d put on her house. Their fab-u-luss new master suite is pretty removed from their kids’ rooms. And so then she mentioned something about locking the kids’ bedroom windows at night.

And so, I took pause. (It’s such an odd expression, “took pause,” but I’d like to use it here, if y’all don’t mind.)

Because my Mama Posse mamas are women I’ve known since I used the word “latching” several times a day, and my C-section scar was still an incision. Back when a wrap-around nursing pillow was a regular accessory on my couch, and I hadn’t yet mastered breastfeeding while waiting in line at Trader Joe’s. In other words, I’ve know them since the infancy of my motherhood.

And we have talked about it ALL, these women and I. If my mama friends had told me that slathering my baby in mayo was an effective cure for colic, or way get her to sleep, or to take a bottle,  I’d be scooping the stuff out of a jar with my bare hands and lubing that baby right up—no questions asked—even though I’m pretty much phobic about the stuff.

I seek and trust and respect their opinions on all things motherly above and beyond Dr. Spock even. But above Dr. Unger? And my own Mama?

I was perplexed.

So hearing their stance on window openage got me thinking. Am I acting irresponsibly? Am I playing with fire, all for the sake of some fresh air? Does old school wisdom not translate so well into the modern day?

Our nice neighborhoods aside, the fact is, we live in the fourth most dangerous city in the U.S. At least, that’s what my sister told me she read on AOL once. It’s not like we’re in the little Mayberry-like town that I grew up in.

But somehow, somewhere along the line, the fearful “someone’s going to break in and take her” feeling I had about both my girls when they moved out of our bed-side bassinet and into their own rooms seems to have dissipated. Not that I’m concerned about their safety any less. But now that they walk and talk and wear friendship bracelets and request “alone time” and know the lyrics to Justin Beiber songs, I have a whole new host of concerns that have apparently put kidnapping low on the list.

Or maybe it’s that I could imagine someone wanting to steal an angelic sleeping baby, but can’t fathom the desire to make off with a child who has a 20-minute screaming tantrum because I won’t give her a cookie three minutes after she’s had an ice cream cone.

Besides, the way our house is set up, our first floor windows are super high up. Definitely un-attainable by even the tallest thief or kidnapper.

And the place is hardly vast. If either girl sneezes in their room, we can pretty much hear it from ours. I always said the baby monitors we used were vanity items.

Last summer my neighbor started letting her third-grader walk the couple blocks to our local library. This seemed kind of wild to me at the time—who knows what could happen in that short distance, even with the most careful and responsible child? But I’m coming around to understanding what she allowed it. It’s no Mayberry here, but it IS a sweet little neighborhood we’re in. And if we can’t relax and enjoy it—if we can’t give our kids small tastes of independence, bite by bite—then we’re just letting the terrorist win. Or someone who we don’t want to win.

Who knows what I’ll be allowing my girls to do a few years from now. I hope I have some of that “let them out of the nest” courage my friend next door has with her kids. More likely I’ll be jumping out of the bushes when they’re in college to walk them across the quad at night.

In the meantime, I’m taking what feels like a small but valiant stance on the windows. Barring any large-ladder wielding weirdos, I think we’re safe having them open.

After dredging up all these memories of Dr. Unger, I just Googled the guy. I was half-scared I’d get an obit. In that clueless kid-like way, I have no idea how old he was when I was his patient. (Though I know I was wedging my college-aged ass into a kiddie chair in his waiting room when I last saw him, and he gently referred me to a grown-up doctor.) Thrillingly, I found a listing for him. He is alive and well—and still even in practice! Those kids who’s pics are in the collage on the wall of his office today are lucky little patients.

After more prowling around The Internets I found one of those doctor directory websites, which had this line on him: “Years since graduating from medical school: 57.” My math’s not good, but I think that takes him to a ripe old age.

Good for him. Must be all those nights sleeping with his window open that’ve kept him going.

Summer Camp Blues

True confession: I never went to summer camp.

Go ahead, take your pot shots. I know, I’m a freak. As if it’s not bad enough that I’ve never seen Star Wars, I also lack any nostalgia about or understanding of camp culture. I know no campfire songs. I can’t make a lanyard. I’ve never short-sheeted a bed, dipped a sleeping friend’s hand in warm water to make her pee, or snuck out of a cabin late-night to to meet a boy.

But don’t you worry. I’ll be fine.

This void in my childhood experience was great comic fodder for my college friends. I’d be standing at a bar with a new boyfriend and they’d come up to us and say, “Hey, so what say we sing some campfire songs?” Then with dramatic mock dismay they’d say, “Ooooh, yeah… That’s right. Kristen never went to camp.”

Who am I kidding? I never had an actual boyfriend in college.

Anyway, my daughter Kate is like the Patron Saint of Summer Camp. At the tender age of five, no less. She’s gone to so many different camps this summer—adventure camp, costume-making camp, famous artist camp, discovery camp, cooking camp, animation camp—and all in seven weeks’ time.

I can’t imagine what else she’d have done if we hadn’t spent most of July in Rhode Island. Car repair camp? Hair braiding camp? Drum circle camp?

Thankfully Kate’s a super duper trooper when it comes to transitions. The girl is devoid of first-day jitters. She plunges into social settings without knowing a soul, and never considers that that could be awkward.

When I picked her up from the first day of animation camp, a sea of boys poured out of the room before her.

“Wow, I said looking back at the little guys running up to their mothers. “A lot of boys in your camp, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m the only girl,” she said, un-phased. Then she took my hand and led me toward the door.

I had my mouth open to pour out a stream of neurotic questions and maternal concern, but she looked up at me all excited and said, “I used Paigey’s Plum Pudding doll to do stop motion animation today!”

So I closed my mouth, pushed the door open, and heard all about how they took “like 100 pictures of the doll” then made it into a movie.

Katie’s had a blast at all her camps this summer—gathering t-shirts, friendship bracelets, and mad lanyard skillz. But I can’t bear the thought of sticking her into another new environment again. So I’m taking next week off of work, and having some quality time with the girls before school starts.

Perky teen counselors will have nuthin’ on Camp Mama. I plan to make pancakes for breakfast, let us linger in our PJs, then have outings to the beach or the zoo, and go out for gelato. If the weather’s bad I’ll take them to that Winnie the Pooh movie I promised Paige after I traumatized her at Kung Fu Panda 2. (She’s been asking if we can go back to “that big-TV place” but see “something not scary.”)

Hell, we’ll maybe even whip up some friendship bracelets for each other. And of course, there will be LOTS of singing. Every time Kate’s been in the car this summer she’s busted out some new ditty she learned at camp. Her capacity to memorize lyrics astounds me. And she’s got Page trained on the “repeat after me songs” (a genre, I must admit, that was all new to me).

So if you see us driving around Oakland next week, don’t be surprised if the windows are down and we’re happily belting out “Percy the Pale-Faced Polar Bear” or “The Button Factory.” Yes, at age 44, I have finally, blessedly learned some campfire songs.

And I’ve gotta tell you, I love them.

Just in case you too have been denied this pleasure, I’ll share one of our faves. Best sung while eating s’mores or signing your friend’s camp t-shirt.

Well I ran around the corner and I ran around the block,
And I ran right into the donut shop.
And I picked up a donut right out of the grease,
And I handed the lady my five cent piece.

Well she looked at the nickel and she looked at me.
And she said, This nickel is no good you see.
There’s a hole in the middle in and it runs right through.
Said I, There’s a hole in the donut too!

Thanks for the donut. Bye-bye!

Have fun, campers! See you next summer.

Paging Dr. House

Should I start with the good news or the bad news? Okay, since I can’t hear you very well, I guess I’ll pick.

So, the good news is: All my blood tests have come back negative.

The bad news is: I have no idea what the hell is wrong with me.

If you haven’t been riveted by this story and following along from home, here’s the sweetened condensed version: I came down with some mystery illness after our East Coast vacation. It started with numbness, then achyness, then I threw in some jarring joint pain, just to keep things lively. I’ve had MRIs (and drugs for MRIs), been poked, prodded, and questioned, and had enough blood taken for a gang of vampires to binge for days.

Somewhere along the line my dad emailed me a guess at what I had—to keep those two-bit docs on their toes. Lyme Disease, he said.

I was giddy. Like, all hand clappy excited. Convinced my lawyer father outwitted the doctors. And they did agree that Dad had something there. (I had forgotten to tell them I got a weird bite in Rhode Island.) But then the Lyme test came back negative.

Which was when my first freak-out about WTF I do have ensued.

Thankfully, my dad isn’t the only un-qualified yahoo out there who’s been willing to float a diagnosis my way. Well-meaning friends have wondered (aloud) if what I’m experiencing is a by-product of bottled up anger, an energy blockage, or everyone’s favorite malady du jour—gluten intolerance.

Now, you might say that I’m asking for this, living in California as I do. But what I want to tell those people is, “Yes! You are right. I do have pent up rage. I do have energy log jams. But those things aren’t why I feel like I do. I have them because I feel like I do and no one knows why.”

As for gluten intolerance? Puh-leez. Gluten is my friend, people. In fact, I’m going to go and eat a big gooey glob of gluten right now and process it like a champion. Gluten is my wheat grass, California.

And while everyone else has a theory on what’s plaguing me, my doctors remain utterly baffled. Having a case they can’t crack  seems bad for business, like unsolved murders in the police department. So in a valiant effort to move down the path to some resolution, my doc started me on antibiotics—the Lyme Disease treatment—even though that test came back neg-o.

They say there can be false-negatives in the early stage of infection. It’s like I filled out one answer on the SAT in the wrong column then got everything totally wrong by accident. So I’ll take the test again in two weeks, with the happy hopes it’ll come back positive. “Lyme Disease! Yay!” Then the doctors can finally get back to their golf games, and I can assure my veins they’ll no longer be tapped for blood like a tree for maple sap.

But until all that happens, my work husband has enthusiastically claimed dibs on performing my eulogy. I have no doubt it’ll be fabulous. He assures me he can “fake cry with the best of ‘em,” which I find wonderfully supportive. He’s gone so far as to make recommendations on good dates for me to expire. His mom passed on 9/9/99, so he fancies himself an expert in this area. I’m lucky to have style-conscious friends with a flair for event planning who are stepping up at this time.

And, as long as I keep laughing I convince myself that when they do figure out what this weird numb, tingly, achy, joint painy so-you-can’t-sleep thing is, it’ll be something itty bitty and easy to eradicate.

But I’ve gotta say, the longer this lingers and leaves the docs scratching their heads, the intermittent moments when I do worry become more and more mittent. If ya know what I mean.

In the meantime I’ve managed to make my father sick from all this. It’s the craziest thing. The man is some supremely empathetic illness conductor. Like, when Paigey was a baby and was lizard-like with eczema, my 80-year-old dad who’d never had so much as a rash was suddenly covered with the stuff himself. A year later, Paige’s walking delays required x-rays of her hips. Then Dad called to report his hip was giving out, and he’d need a new one. And now? Just yesterday I call home and what do I hear? Dad is on antibiotics—for Lyme Disease.

It’s madness! The man is nothing short of a copy cat. I mean, when my father says he feels your pain, he’s serious.

When I was at BlogHer I experienced the bliss of bad hotel TV. I watched crappy shows I never normally watch, on a huge TV at the foot of my bed. Alone. It was a simple but profound indulgence. And I saw that show House, about the ornery-but-lovable doctor who’s the Sherlock Holmes of sickness. Every patient who comes to his hospital seems to be near death with bizarre symptoms that Dr. House eventually, handily diagnoses—and cures. Like, the girl who was becoming paralyzed from the legs up? In a creeping, oh-no-it’s-stopped-her-lungs-now fashion? She eventually gets discharged and heads off to school the next day.

Oh, it’s good stuff.

As I rubbed my numb feet together under the starchy hotel sheets I considered climbing into the TV and sitting myself down in House’s office, hopeful that he was in-network. But who knew how long the wait would be without an appointment. And I was tired anyway. So instead I rolled over and snapped off the lamp, put my faith back into my real-world docs, and drifted off to sleep.

Confessions of a Salad Bar Loser

I loved when George Jetson commuted to work.

He’d be in that sporty little spacecraft-car of his, and he’d fly up to an endless stream of other space mobiles. It was like the worst space rush hour traffic ever. Enough to make you head back home, crawl into bed, and call in sick. But not George. George was undaunted. He’d just point the nose of his space-car at the snarling mass of traffic, merge right in, then zoom off with the crowd.

Now, I’ve never been a joiner. Or at least that’s what I sometimes tell myself. Because if you were to ask Mark, I’m sure he’d come up with tons of things my turbo-extroverted ass has joined. I guess I’ve just maintained the attitude that if there was some group out there that I wasn’t already part of, there was a probably a good reason why. So I should just steer clear.

Which is why I was so freaked out at my first prenatal yoga class. This was six years ago, mind you. But I distinctly remember walking into a large wood-floored room packed with preg-o women on yoga mats. And, despite the fact that I was pregnant too, something about them all being there together, all so… so knocked up, made me feel like an outsider. Like they were somehow pregnancy professionals, and I was an imposter.

And so, it was with that same not-a-joiner trepidation that I went to BlogHer ’11 in San Diego. A gathering of some 3,600 bloggers. Or, rather, 3,599 bloggers who all had some legitimate reason to be there, and me.

I mean, I AM a blogger. As this very thing you are reading unequivocally proves. And I was even attending this blog-fest for work. Making me somehow doubly-qualified to be there.

But let’s just say the concept of 3,600 women can be intimidating. I joked before I went that I was “girding my loins for estrogen-palooza.” I whimpered to friends that I didn’t know a soul there, and feared I’d be a lonely dork. I had nightmares about 3,600 women lunging towards me, waving business cards and crying out, “I’m Francie from Francie’s Cute Kitten Pictures dot com!” Or, “Hey, I’m Linda from SoccerMomsRUs.com. I home school my 11 kids, raise chickens and llamas, and drive two mini vans at once!”

I had the fear.

And this is from the world’s most outgoing human. I mean, I talk to EV-ER-Y-ONE. I don’t scare easy. Except, I guess, when it comes to this group thing.

But then the night before I left, my friend Heather from Rookie Moms emailed that she was going too. “Bring business cards, comfy shoes and a smile,” she advised. “Most people are friendly.”

So Saturday morning I made my way into the San Diego Convention Center knowing that if a meteor fell from the sky and landed on me, pinning me to the ground, at least one of the 3,600 women there would be able to identify my remains.

Which was comforting.

In college, my Mean Girl friends and I made up the term Salad Bar Loser. Because at my teensy, pastoral liberal arts school, after you went through the cafeteria you were spat out into the dining hall, where it wasn’t always easy to find your friends. Blessedly though, the salad bar was in the middle of all the tables. So you’d often see people making salads they had no intention of eating. Blindly piling Bac-O Bits onto their plates as they searched for their posse. And we would watch, and mock them.

In rural Ohio, this is what passes for a good time.

Well, I’d love to say that karma’s a bitch. But the fact is, in a group of 3,600 no one really notices when you’re a Salad Bar Loser. So on that first morning at BlogHer, I picked my way through the breakfast buffet, scoped out the scene, and meekly walked up to a table with a few empty chairs. “This taken?” I asked.

Seconds after my butt hit the seat business cards started flying. And even though it was a taste of my worst fears, it wasn’t so bad. I took cards. I gave cards. I smiled and shook hands. I acted like it was what I do over oatmeal every morning.

Going to the conference sessions was the easy part. Anyone can sit in a chair and listen to a panel of speakers. It’s those meals, free times, “networking” events that are more tricky for us un-joiners. Though unstably at first, I eventually navigated those waters too.

I met running bloggers, food bloggers, gardening bloggers, pet bloggers. I met women with brilliant blog names like Nap Warden, The Recessionista, and Midlife Mixtape. I sat in a dark room and was dazzled by Penny de los Santos‘ photography.

I ate cupcakes with a sweet Kentuckian who blogs about adoption, and her son from the Congo. I heard an anonymous, wig-wearing blogger describe her experience eating school lunch for a year. (I wouldn’t recommend this.) And I waited in line for fake eyelashes with a gal who felt successful Latina role models were lacking, so—after having a baby at age 15, then going on to Stanford Law School—she started a video blog where she interviews powerful Latinas. (Her lashes turned out much better then mine by the way. I looked ever so slightly hooker-ish.)

And later, from the mass of strange faces, Katrina from Working Moms Break (the friend of a friend) emerged and became my BlogHer BFF. Yay!

Man, my feet hurt, but the rest of me was in the groove. I vowed to tear through my pantry at home, ridding my family of all processed foods. I got fired up to take better pictures, rename my blog, and stop mocking people who home school. I decided I should write less and read other blogs more. (Or do both, but sleep less.) I thumped women on the back who’d stood in front of huge crowds and read candid, deeply-personal posts on everything from the death of a baby to overdosing on drugs to red underwear. A few times I even told people about my own humble wee blog.

I went from a fearful, “Oh, them” attitude to a beaming, proud, “Yay, us!” state of mind.

I nudged the nose of my spacecraft into that mass of 3,600 women. And you know what? Nearly everyone I met hit their the breaks and waved me in (despite my having all the makings of a Salad Bar Loser). And for that, I thank you ladies kindly.

Thank you BlogHer for making a non-joiner part of the estrogen-palooza pack. I’ll be back next year. But just to be on the safe side, I’m taking my friend Jill along too.

Polka Dotted Panties

I’m planning to take an axe to Paige’s diaper pail.

Or maybe I’ll back over it with the car. Or set it on fire like some stinky, suburban Burning Man. We can get the neighbors to wear strange provocative costumes, do psychedelic drugs, and ride their bikes around our back yard as they watch it go up in flames. (Never let it be said I don’t keep the community’s entertainment needs in mind.)

Or maybe this is the wrong approach entirely, and I should do something to honor and preserve that damn diaper trapper for its many long years of service. Like, maybe I could mail it off to one of those places that covers baby shoes in bronze. We can set it in the corner of the living room—under a little art spotlight—like some masterpiece that everyone would be too disturbed by it to do anything other than compliment it. It could be our awkwardly large tribute to our kid’s babyhoods, like some freakishly over-sized charm bracelet souvenir.

Oh, the possibilities are endless, really!

Yes, it’s a thrilling time of unbridled celebration here at Chez McClusky. For the first time in nearly six years, we don’t have any children in diapers. (And we only have TWO kids. I shudder to think how long The Diaper Phase endures for more prolific breeders.)

Yes, we have no diapers to change. We have no diapers to buy. We have no diapers to carry with us in unattractive, unwieldy padded diaper bags. And we’ll hopefully never again be part of one of those weird half-drunk conversations where you find yourself arguing with other parents about whether it’s harder to clean poop off of boy parts or girl parts. (Everyone seems to think the gender they don’t have to deal with is worse. Which has gotta be some kind of Darwinian survival instinct.)

Whatever the case, Paige proclaimed recently, “Girls have vaginas and penises. And boys have nothing!”

In Paige’s world it’d be easier to change boy diapers without a doubt. I imagine they’d just be like dolls down there.

At any rate, it’s too soon to put our poop-talkin’ days totally behind us (no pun intended). As a new potty indoctrinate Paige is still in the exuberant bodily-function announcement mode. Which is to say, the moment everyone is seated at the table, hands washed, milk cups filled, and you lean over to take your first hungry bite of roast chicken, Paige will inevitably announce, “I have to go poop! I have a thousand big big poops to do!!”

Oh, how… cute.

At least, for the weight conscious among us, it‘s an effective appetite suppressant.

Of course, the dark side to all this grown-up behavior is that we’re closing the door on yet another phase of parenting—even if it does mean less direct contact with feces. I lamented the last time I breastfed. I was heartbroken packing away all those tiny newborn shirts, booties, and receiving blankets. And despite myself, I was a weeper on Paigey’s first day of preschool.

Whether it’s good or bad, when the girls move past something, I feel a twinge of nostalgia about it. I mean, if I have time to.

But I’m over thinking that having a third baby is the solution to avoiding the bittersweet passage of time. I’ve come around to accepting that parenting throws plenty of weepish moments your way. So even though I don’t get to chomp on Paigey’s  ham hock thighs when I change her diapers any more, there are new excellent things that she does now—like pontificate about how panties with polka dots are really the best panties there are. And deliver spontaneous anatomy lessons on gender and genitalia.

Before our East Coast foray this summer Kate went to a fabulous summer camp. One of those old school outdoorsy places where she canoed, rode horses, swam, did archery (ha!), and had her first overnight away-from-the-family camp out. Oh, and made lanyards. In fact, she could now open an Etsy shop called Lanyard-palooza.

At the end of the first week the camp put on a lip synch performance. Each of the groups of campers did a little performance to a song, all the parents lucky enough to not work came to watch, and it was a lot of good clean fun.

I mean, “clean” if you didn’t listen too hard to the lyrics. Like for one of the songs, Katy Perry’s “Extra Terrestrial,” a stage full of nine-year-old girls jumped around waggling their fingers on their heads like antennae, while mouthing,  “Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me. Infect me with your love and fill me with your poison.”

I don’t mean to be prude, but sheesh.

Kate’s group sang a Justin Bieber song, for which she practiced around the house (seemingly endlessly) by jutting her hips out to one side and singing with the synthetic soulfulness that only a five-year-old can muster, “Bay-buh, bay-buh, bay-buh, oh!”

At least no one was purporting to be filled up with someone else’s “poison.”

But still I felt that sneaking, sinking they’re-growing-up feeling. Too fast.

One of the other moms called me the night before the performance. All the other girls were wearing Justin Bieber t-shirts for the show. Did Kate have one? Her daughter did not, and she had no intention of changing that. As long as our girls would be outsiders together, it’d be fine. We agreed they’d wear special sundresses—an attempt to make them feel gussied up, without giving into some Tiger Beat-like peer pressure at age five.

As it turned out, none of the other kids wore JB shirts the next day. More proof that you can’t always trust what your five-year-old tells you. And a reassuring indication that kindergarteners through the tunnel—in the suburban town where the camp was—were the same as our kindergarteners. Or at least, they weren’t yet acting like tweens.

On the last day of camp there was a talent show. The auditorium was packed with kids of all ages and parents wielding video cameras, digital cameras, and iPhones. Rest assured, this event would be captured.

The show was made up of older girls singing pop songs alone and in groups, boys doing kicks and karate chops to “Kung Fu Fighting,” and one twerpy kid who sang some teddy bear song that had the crowd howling as the seemingly endless lyrics went on and on and on.

Kate had talked about wanting to do something, but I wasn’t sure if she’d muster the gumption. Almost no kids her age had.

Then the M.C. called to her to go back-stage to be “on deck” as the next performer.

When she stepped onto the stage, she was clutching a mic and standing ramrod straight, wide-eyed looking out at the crowd. Then, without any musical accompaniment, with a weak uncertain voice she started singing, “Doe a deer, a female deer…”

I noticed a few mamas in the audience reach out to touch each others’ arms.

My chest swelled with love—or pride, or sympathetic stage fright—or all of those, and I held my fingers up to my mouth as I listened to her. I telepathically egged her on. I hoped some people knew she was my kid.

My little Kate, on her own volition, picked an adorably sweet wonderful song, blissfully devoid of semen-shooting metaphors. (Sung by a nun no less!) She’d ponied up to perform, though few other kids her age had. And she was KILLING on stage.

Maybe in response to the smiling audience (or my telepathic encouragement), her confidence kicked in, and she started singing more steadily, even swaying a bit less stiffly than her initial robotic stance. She finished to a resounding room of applause. (But really, the crowd clapped a lot for everyone.)

My girls might be growing up fast, but somehow—for now—they seem to be doing a damn good job of it.

Bravo to you, Katie! You are a rock star indeed. At least in your mama’s eyes.

And Paige, Daddy and I could not be prouder of you and your big girl panties.

Carry on, girls! Carry on.

Now Hear This: My Father is a Genius

If you’ve been following along from home you’ve read all about my latest mystery affliction: numbness.

And if you aren’t up to speed here’s the “Recently on Kristen’s Life” summary: Weird mild numbness in my arms, hands, and feet. Gone to the neurologist, gotten two MRIs, yadda yadda yadda. Maybe it’s a migraine, maybe carpal tunnel, maybe I’m just cuh-razy.

Okay, so now you’re all caught up.

So last night I go out to dinner with my friend Rick. Rick, my gay work husband. A heartfelt, hilarious, and also delicious dinner, throughout which Rick intermittently checked on the state of my numb-itude, and proffered several diagnoses which I’ll refrain from sharing. (Suffice it to say, in the mind of a gay man—or in his mind at least—all illnesses stem somehow from the girl parts. Or, as he likes to say, “la vagine.”)

It’s wonderful to be the recipient of all this concern. Truly. I’m touched by all the emails and phone calls and tweets. But I’m still somehow convinced that what’s plaguing me ain’t dire.

So after my dinner last night I got an email from my father. Tell the doctor to do a blood test, he says. You got that weird bug bite when you were home. You’ve got symptoms of Lyme Disease.

Can I tell you right now that I’ll bet you one U.S. dollar and my best blue-green marble that I THINK THE MAN IS RIGHT.

I’ve already ranted on the evils of the ferocious, disease-borne East Coast tick. Nearly everyone in those parts has a dramatic tale of when and how their Lyme Disease was diagnosed. It’s like cell phones. Everyone’s got one.

And when I was in Little Rhody I did get a gruesome bite from an indeterminate bug, and developed a weird, red, sundress-unfriendly rash on my back. And like a good hypochondriac I was convinced I had Lyme Disease.

But the thing with being certain that you have every possible disease and affliction listed on WebMD is that you stop believing yourself. It’s like you’ve cried wolf to yourself too many times.

So eventually the rash subsided, the bite turned all dark and bruisey, then finally faded away. And I forgot about it.

If it wasn’t 11PM when I got that email from my dad, I’d a been careening in my car up on two wheels all Dukes of Hazzard style over to my doctor’s office—the most excited person ever to demand a blood test. (Though there probably are some needle fetishists who get pretty fired up about those procedures.)

It’s still early here. My neurologist’s office hasn’t opened yet. But I CAN’T WAIT to call her when it does and tell her that I think my dad has cracked the case.

All Clear

Well the results of my brain MRI are in, and I’m thrilled to report that it revealed no pennies, Polly Pockets purses, or other organic free-range scary kindsa things you don’t want growing in your head.

And although I had a hunch it’d be okay, I’d still like to release a huge, resounding PHEW. Because I don’t know about you, but when I see a police car, even when I know I’m not speeding, I slam on the brakes. I somehow have that inner guilty-until-proven-innocent default setting. (Maybe on accounta my Catholic upbringing?)

At any rate, if you’ve been wondering where that tube of Sephora lip gloss you liked so much has gone, I can tell you with 100% confidence that it’s not in my brain. Check under the seats of your car. Or in your other purse. Or under your kid’s bed, because God knows lots of other stuff that’s gone missing lately is probably there too.

Now that my weird numbness is not accountable to any bad-bad in my brain, the complex migraine diagnosis is the front runner. But “just to be really thorough” my doctor wants to do ANOTHER MRI of my cervical spine. Which is to say, that I will have to go back into that Godforsaken claustrophobic loud clackety-ass machine from hell. And although it may not be apparent, I’m really NOT looking forward to that.

I used nice beachy thoughts to get me through the one last week, but I’m thinking that was a one-off. If there’s any hope of getting me back in there I’m almost certainly going to need drugs.

This, by the way, is nearly identical to my experience with childbirth. Whoever said you forget the pain of childbirth was probably a man. Because by the end of my second pregnancy ALL I could think of was the miserable excruciating world-rocking pain I went through the first time around. That first time I was naively gung-ho to go drug-free (and I did for a loooong while), but by Baby #2 I walked into the hospital bellowing to anyone who would listen for an epidural.

My doctor had given me some kinda Valium-esque pill for my first MRI. But when I read the label (this is a warning to others to NEVER read the label) it said all in big letters “do not drive after taking this medication.”

So like a dope, I didn’t take it. Because I was going to have to drive to work after. And because I’m a rule follower.

But here’s the thing. If you’re not supposed to drive on Valium-like meds, how do you explain the entire city of L.A.? Hmmm??? There’s a reason there’s so much traffic there, people. It’s all the disoriented drug-induced driving. And I really don’t think all those folks are on their way home from getting MRIs.

Anyway, my left-side numbness has taken a turn. And it’s not a political shift to the right (thank God). Now it’s just in my arms and hands—but on both sides. Granted, the OCD in me appreciates the symmetry of it, but I’d have preferred the numbness to just depart my body altogether.

So it turns out the doctor also wants me to have carpal tunnel testing. (Like, maybe I have that, and also had a complex migraine?) She explained the carpal tunnel test involves “a series of needle pricks up and down your arms,” which she confessed “is not terribly comfortable.”

Lovely.

When I went to the front desk to schedule the test, I was informed that it would take 90 minutes. 90 minutes?!? Of NEEDLE pricks?

Twenty minutes doped-up in an MRI machine is starting to looking better all the time.

Comfortably Numb

I’ve gone numb.

Unfortunately I mean this quite literally.

It started innocuously enough the other morning on my left arm. It wasn’t tingly or anything—not like pins and needles—just a little numb feeling. Since I sleep on that side, I chalked it up to a snooze-induced injury. Something that by the time I showered, fed the kids, and walked out the door I’d have totally forgotten.

And that day I kinda did.

But the next day, it seemed to have spread. Toweling off after my shower I thought my left leg and foot were a bit numb too. Not a close-my-eyes-and-I-won’t-know-you’re-pinching-me lack of sensation. It was more like Numb Lite. And it was only on my left side. Enough to make me think I’d gone half mad.

By the time I got in to see a doctor, the left side of my head and neck had joined the fun.

Oddly, I wasn’t freaked out.

And blessedly, I didn’t need to be. Because, the good doctor explained, that as someone who’s got a history of migraines, this kind of crazy thing can happen. I didn’t even had a headache (though I did have a stressful day Sunday), but some kind of neurological episode—called a complex migraine—was apparently making all this happen.

“These kinds of migraines,” she said, “can bring about symptoms that imitate stroke.”

STROKE?! Oy!

But, she went on to explain, I hadn’t had a stroke. And this wasn’t something to indicate I was about to. (Phew.) My numbness was likely to fade away as un-dramatically as it had appeared. (And actually, today, it’s barely discernible.)

But, to be on the safe side, the doc wanted me to get an MRI. Of my brain. She didn’t expect to find “anything unusual.”

Any hypochondriac worth her weight in worry would immediately conjure some horrible citrus-fruit shaped tumor. But for some reason I thought of that scene in Jaws, when they finally catch the shark and cut him open. Inside they find stuff like an old boot, a Sony Walkman, and a New Jersey license plate. I pictured those miniscule Polly Pocket doll shoes that Kate loses nearly immediately, and all the socks that went into the wash as a pair and came out alone—I imagined all those things (plus some other random lost items) showing up on my brain scan.

Considering this is where my mind went, I guess I’m not really worried.

We’ve been back from vacation for a few days now. And in what I imagine was an attempt to condense commentary on a three-week trip, several friends have asked what the highlights were of our time in Rhode Island. I tend to have trouble answering any superlative questions (favorite food, favorite movie, favorite band). There’s so much to love, I hate picking one thing. But that’s not why I couldn’t answer their question.

Was it a good vacation? Yes, an excellent one.

Were there better parts than others? Of course.

But in general, what was wonderful about our trip was all the small happy moments that made up our days. Watching my dad teach Kate card tricks. Early morning runs with my old friend Ellen. Dinners outside in dad’s big yard, where the girls tiptoed around looking for bunnies, played “fairies” in the flower beds, and wrestled giddily in the grass while the dog barked, desperate to join in.

And the beach. The beach, the beach, the beach.

We spent so many days at the beach—mostly in Newport, but also on Cape Cod, and one day at Coney Island. And even with one cold foggy day, the beach never let us down.

Kate spent the entire time in the water. She’d be alone squealing with laughter and jumping around as each wave came at her. Paige was content packing wet sand into buckets, smoothing the tops with the palms of her hands, then anointing the center of each one with a single decorative shell. (That’s my girl. She knows less is more.)

I presided in my low-slung beach chair, tattered sea-sprayed novel in hand, keeping an eye on the contented kids and getting in a paragraph or two here and there. All this and a sun-warmed peanut butter and jelly sandwich was just about bliss.

There was no time we had to arrive at the beach. And, forsaking Paige’s naps as we did, no time we needed to leave. Most days there was no one to meet up with. And like many of the activities in our usual world—school plays, or ballet classes, or preschool potlucks—no compulsion to record it all with photos or videos. Our camera doesn’t mix well with sand and sea air. No choice but to live in the moment.

And that was fine, because somehow I knew that a video—the mental Super 8 of our time there—was being recorded directly onto all of our memories. In the same way that I can play back the happy beach days of my youth. A truly transcendent beach day has that unique ability to time travel—combining nostalgia for the past, imprinting a future memory, and soaking it all up right then and there.

And so yesterday, when the technician slid the tray I was lying on deep into the MRI machine, delivering me into a claustrophobic metal tunnel where I was ordered to remain still for 20 minutes, I kept my eyes closed tight and went to the beach.

I tried to block out the loud clacking noises the machine made as it xeroxed my brain by picturing Kate jumping over waves, her blond hair hanging in slick wet ropes. I imagined Paigey clinging to my side like a koala as we edged tentatively into the water. Later my mind had us all head in towards the blanket, where I dug my wallet out of the tote bag and we walked down the beach for lemonade. (I was unable to imagine making any headway on my novel. I was only in the machine for 20 minutes, after all.)

I managed to survive the entire MRI without any heightened panic setting in. Never came even close to squeezing the rubber “panic” bulb they’d set in my hand.

Now I just need to find a way to retain that sense of calm while I wait for the test results.