A Speckled Trout

After we got used to the fact that our son was gay, Mark and I would slowly reveal it.  Much depended on the circumstances and the people.  To be honest, it is one of those things that seems hard to work into a conversation.  Imagine saying to a friend over dinner, “By the way, our kid is gay.  More wine?”

The sentence itself seemed to hang like an unmoving cloud over the the dinner table.

When we told one friend how hard the whole thing was for us he asked why.  “I am always afraid for him,” I said.

“Really?  Because you think somebody might actually do something to him?”

“Well, yeah.  We are in the Midwest after all and those kinds of things happen regularly.”

“Huh,” he replied.  “I had no idea that went on any more.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or hit him in the head.

These many years later I don’t care so much who knows and who doesn’t.  It is hardly breaking news anymore.

I do, however, still flinch at stories of cruelty to others due to their sexual orientation.  When I read of a kid who committed suicide because they were bullied I would bet the farm they were labeled “gay” by the time they were eight years old.  When a report surfaces that a mob humiliates and taunts someone who is transgender I feel physically ill.  When the Westboro Baptist Church smells publicity and decides to hold its God Hates Fags posters at the latest funeral, I shake my fists at the God-who-alledgedly-hates-fags and shout, “They’re in Topeka, Kansas, for You’s sake.  Smack dab in the bullseye of tornado alley.  Do something big.”

Recently, I was having a conversation with someone I really like and we were talking about Neil Patrick Harris. “I was so disappointed when I found out he was gay,” she said.  I was taken aback for many reasons, but mostly because it’s hard to be disappointed in someone you have personally invested nothing in.

When Michael Sam was drafted by the Rams somebody commented on Facebook that the whole thing was a publicity stunt.  “I don’t go around announcing I’m straight so why would he announce he was gay.”

Fear is the great announcer.

Being in control of your fear is the great empowerment.

Time and again I have been made aware of kids who are on the cusp of discovering who they are and who they are attracted to.  They, like my own son was, are terrified of their feelings and what they mean so when Michael Sam or Ellen Page or Jim Parsons say, “Look at me.  I’m just like you,” it is a victory for every single kid who is trying to be brave and tell one person.

When the Pope was asked about gays and the Catholic Church he said “Who am I to judge?”  It made world news and was deemed a giant step forward in acceptance, but I flinched at that one, too.  For moms like me disappointment and judging is our middle name.  We’ve had plenty, thank you very much and it has everything to do with religion rather than our gay kids.

Regardless of what box any of us check when it comes to sexual orientation, the real question is “Who am I not to love?”

When that happens we can collectively say that we prayed the fear away.

There is an effort underway in Kansas City to replace our airport.  It started with a study.  These things always start with a study to make a “want” look legit, and then lays the groundwork for the massive bill that taxpayers are going to be eating sooner or later.

I, along with many others, love our airport.  It’s kind of run down.  The lighting sucks and there’s not many places to eat.  There used to be three terminals but now we’re down to two.  I’m sure I read why they closed Terminal A at some point but now I don’t remember.  It’s probably because The New Airport People want to put the squeeze on us fliers and make us scared that the whole place is going to go out of business.  At our airport, though, you can drop off at the curb and nobody cares.  I sat there for 45 minutes one night waiting for The Big Daddy’s late arrival and there wasn’t a cop in sight.  And should you decide to park in the lot you can be in the terminal in five minutes.  It used to be that the first thirty minutes of parking were free and we always thought we were beating the system when we got to the cashier and owed zero dollars.  We’d high-five like we just beat the bankers with their fees.

When we flew in and out of Boston a couple of weeks ago, however, that airport was a beast of another color.  We were dropped off on Sunday morning for our return flight and the place was already busy.  With no bags to check in we went right to the American Airlines computers to get our boarding passes and there was a line.  Quite the line.

It was 5:30 a.m.

While we were waiting our turn I noticed a distressed man at the counter being yelled at by a ticket agent.  His flight was on its final boarding call and he wasn’t going to make it.  Because missing your flight and being yelled at by one person wasn’t enough, another agent joined in the belligerence.  I watched all this and thought about going up to the counter and saying, “You know, people really don’t start off their day saying I’m going to miss my flight today.  I’m going to totally screw myself, cost myself more money and make the ticket agents mad and be late.”  But I refrained because I hadn’t had enough coffee yet to outass the people who were being asses.  He walked away dejectedly and we got our boarding passes and headed to security.

Did you know that there are people in Logan Airport that work the security lines and their only job is to look at the size of passengers bags?  Un-huh.  I got stopped.  “Can’t take that on the plane.  Too big.  Go check it.”

“What?  No.  I brought it here and nobody said a thing.  It’s fine.  It fits in the overhead bin.  Really.”

“Okay, stand it on its side,” she said.

And so I did and Bag Size Checker got out a tape measure.  A frigging tape measure.  “It’s two inches too tall.  You have to check it.”

The Big Daddy was seething.  “It fits and we are not checking it.”  With that he tried to cram it into one of those little boxes that says “Is your bag the right size?”  It wasn’t.  He tried every which way and that sausage wouldn’t fit in the casing.

We went back to American Airlines to use the computer to check my bag.  The line was even longer now because, after all it was 6:00 a.m.  We waited to use the computer and when that was finished waited for somebody at the ticket counter to call my name and take my bag.  This was the most hare-brained of systems.  Dozens of passengers hanging around waiting for their name like a teacher calling attendance and nobody was being called.  There was some kind of stress going on there and I thought that maybe they were doing it on purpose so we would miss our flights and they could team up and yell at us like the sorry soul from earlier.

Somebody behind us with a bigger mouth than The Big Daddy and I said, “Why aren’t you calling anybody from this side when we’ve all been waiting?  Why are you only calling people from that line even though we’ve been here longer?”

And I was like, “Yeah, American Airlines, why you gotta be like that?”

A few minutes later my name got called, we unloaded my slightly too big bag and went back to security where there was NO ONE MEASURING BAG SIZES.

What appeared to be a thirteen year old boy checked my boarding pass and license and looked up at me.  “You’ve been pre-screened, do you hear me?  Don’t take a thing out of your purse until you go through security.  By the way, cool hair.”

Pre-screened?  What is he even talking about?  Cool hair?  Not in the mood right now Doogie Howser.

My pre-screened self and The Big Daddy shuffled through security with all the other cows in the herd and boarded our flight.  I sat between two women, one who took her shoes off immediately and the other who took forever to eat a bagel smeared with peanut butter that made me want to gag.  Peanut Butter Bagel Lady kept saying “good girl, good girl” and I didn’t make eye contact to my left or right because I thought I was stuck between Smelly and Crazy.  Halfway through the flight I noticed a dog in a carrier under the seat and I was like, “What the heck?  First peanut butter and now a dog?  Am I on a plane or a Greyhound bus?”

When the flight landed Peanut Butter Lady got her little foufou dog out of his carrier while we taxied and she picked at his eye goobers over and over.  Each time she’d get one she’d hold it in front of his mouth and he would lick it.

There really should be a Code of Conduct for Flying for those who are confused about things like smelly bagels, smelly feet and snacking on eye goobers when confined with a crowd of people in a turbo-charged area. 

A few hours later we were back in our home sweet home airport.  We got my bag and headed to the parking lot.  The automatic door to leave wouldn’t open until the fifth try.

Our crummy little airport is just like our crummy little house…….a little sad and peeling – a lot welcoming.

I love you just the way you are.  

Mark and I have recently come back from a quick trip to Boston.  Mr. Smartypants Scientist was invited to a collaborator’s retirement events at Harvard.

How do two bumpkins from Kansas secure that gig?  Well, he worked his tail off for it.  I tagged along like I belonged there and made a note to myself at the reception to ixnay on the Speckled Trout chattay.

In a decades long commitment to cheapen any experience we might have, The Big Daddy secured lodging a bit away from Boston proper to save some bucks.  As in so far away that getting anywhere via public transportation required a hotel shuttle ride to the mall, from the mall getting on a public bus to the train station, once arriving at the train station taking the red line to Park St., once arriving at the Park St. stop transferring to the green line.  The Big Daddy would say it wasn’t that big of a deal but in the couple of times I was involved in this escapade it took two hours.  The last time took all of that and then a 0.8 mile walk (due to a M.I.A. shuttle) from the mall back to our hotel, weaving around construction cones and then crossing the entrance and exit ramp to the highway.

Always the adventure with that guy.

Our return home was via an early morning flight and so there we found ourselves sleepy-eyed in our hotel lobby at 5:00 a.m. meeting our taxi driver for a ride to the airport.

He introduced himself.  We helped him put our bags in the trunk and set off for the quickest, calmest ride of the trip through a quiet Sunday morning Boston with few cars on the road choking traffic.  A most welcome departure from the experience we had seen all weekend where sitting in traffic regardless of the time or day was as frequent as the seafood restaurants.

Our cab driver (which was the fourth of the trip) chatted with us as he made his way to our destination.  A former hotel manager for 14 years for the Intercontinental, he then spent 26 months in Afghanistan as a cultural liaison and interpreter for the U.S. Marines, and that’s when this very interesting man became ever more so.

He told us of the time when the unit he was working with was trying to bring basic services to a village and met with a young Taliban fighter to discuss the most urgent needs of the people.  He introduced the Afghani to the Marine Corps Lieutenant and he refused to shake his hands.

“Why will you not shake his hand? ” our driver asked him his native language.

“Because he is a non-believer and Allah said to never touch the hand of a non-believer.”

“Oh he did?  Really?  Did he tell you that himself?”

“No,” the Afghani said laughing.  “He’s been dead too long for that.  My mullah told me.”

“Well your mullah is full of shit.  Allah never said that and you don’t disrespect a man trying to bring you clean water, do you hear me?  You shake his hand.”

In many ways this taxi driver of ours reminded me of the main character in House of Sand and Fog.  A man of such dignity that his words carried the weight of gold.  A man who made you want to stand a little straighter and parse your thoughts more carefully.

As if reading my mind that was curious to know how he came from all that and was now driving an airport shuttle he said, “I came back and went to work for this company because it allows me to set my own hours.  After fourteen years in the hotel business and more than two years in Afghanistan I am home more for my kids.  That is what I wanted for my family.  To be there.”

Inside that taxi the world became a smaller, more manageable place.  Nothing was solved but common ground wasn’t so difficult to find and we agreed that many things done in the name of his religion and ours have been the recurring source of too many problems in this fragile world we all inhabit. 

Mark folded a generous tip and extended it our driver and we three stood on the curb for an awkward moment.  I felt like hugging the guy but opted instead for a handshake. 

The universal first step to respect.
  

My dad was an uber-Christian, and by that I don’t mean he was fire and brimstone and Bible quoting.  I mean he treated people like they were Jesus himself crossing his path.  Often at dinner if one of us was complaining about somebody being an annoying pain in the ass he’d say, “You don’t know what kind of load they’re carrying.”

Eye roll.  Heavy sigh.  

“For chrissakes, Dad, can you take my side for once?”

He never took our side.  He took the side of someone he never met who was giving his kid a hard time because he thought that there wasn’t a deliberately mean person in the world.  Maybe a person with some worries, health problems, marriage problems, money problems, boss problems, kid problems.  Whatever their problem was it was our job to overlook their bad behavior and treat them with kindness.

A mighty tall order.

When I was working in Chicago doing health benefits claims, I often told him about this woman who was always turning bills in that we already paid.  She had a short fuse and if you looked at it and said, “Wanda, we’ve already paid this one,” she would tear into you and start arguing.  Since I sat at the first desk in the office I often got a direct hit.

“Well, if she’s turning in a lot of bills she’s probably pretty sick,” is all Dad had to say about that.

“Well, I don’t feel so good either when she’s yelling at me, Dad.”

“You’re young.  You don’t know what it’s like to never feel good,” is what he answered back.

Mom’s car was making a rattling sound in the dash and he and Mom took it in.  The mechanic called and had the dashboard pulled apart and still couldn’t figure it out.  Dad was livid.  He knew exactly what the problem was and told the mechanic when they dropped it off.  If he weren’t in the process of dying he could have easily fixed it himself like he did everything around the house.  He yelled at the guy about how he was padding the bill and he’d be damned if he was going to pay for that.

I overheard all of this and didn’t know whether to cry or give Dad the lecture about how to treat people like he’d done to us a thousand times.

Dad said he was going for a walk around the block.  I went to the grocery store.  Thirty minutes later I came back and he was just then making his way home.

“I guess I was more tired than I thought,” he said when he saw me, as if that and not cancer was the reason it took so long.

“Well, it’s pretty hot, Dad.  Why don’t you just lay down for awhile,” I suggested.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” he said.  “First, though, I need to call the mechanic and apologize.  I don’t know what got into me.”

 A few months later Dad closed his eyes for good, and every time Wanda came in I took her bills and told her we’d process them………even if we already had.  

If you even seen the movie “Multiplicity” with Michael Keaton and Andi McDowell, then you are familiar with the magic that Doug Kinney discovers for his overworked, stressed self.  A duplicated him.  The ability to make a copy of himself to keep all the balls in the air.  Then another and another.

It is one of my favorite movies.  “My life’s a shambles.  I need pie.”

So it is with motherhood, where Original 1st Time Stressed Mom was on top of everything all the time.  When Maggie came home from the hospital I couldn’t figure out when I was supposed to shower.  She did sleep but ever-vigilant to my firstborn, I needed to listen to her sleep and I couldn’t do that with the shower going.   Everything was on high alert for that kid even when it wasn’t the least bit necessary.  When teeth and toddlerhood came along she didn’t eat hot dogs.  Are you kidding me?  What’s even in those things?  No, it was fruits and vegetables cut into microscopic pieces to ensure choking wouldn’t happen.  Food that fell on the ground would never, and I mean NEVER, be put in that baby’s mouth.  So many outfits in a day.  Drool?  Change.  Spit-up?  Change.  Miniscule drop of apple juice on her perfect little dress?  Change.

Along came #2 and my mothering methods got a little watered down (i.e. not showering was no longer a viable option every day).  He was the baby that woke up ready to attack the day, and so after I fed him and his sister I would jump in the shower while Maggie kept an eye on him.  Why she was already like a little mother with her smothering hovering, so what was the harm in letting her keep an eye on him?  Unlike his sister, though, Will was introduced to and loved The Hot Dog and if you cut them into small enough pieces you had an easy, winning lunch plan.  And should it fall on the floor?  Wiping it on your pants leg seemed more than sufficient to rid it of germs.  As his Dad always said, “The best way to keep a kid healthy is to expose him to as much germs as possible.”  In our case, that would include dog and cat germs, a hamster for awhile and then a parade of reptiles.  And changing clothes?  He was a boy.  What was the point?  He woke up looking for dirt.

When #3 came along, I pretty much had figured this mothering thing out.  Mallory got Relaxed Mom, It’ll Be Fine Mom, Let’s Not Get Our Shorts In A Knot Mom.  She was the kid that was always on the go with me, and when she would melt down I’d pat my shoulder and she would lay her head on it and stick her thumb in her mouth.  She had plenty to protest as a baby and toddler but she just went with the flow.  If I watched her sleeping it was in the rear view mirror as many of the naps she got were in a car seat.  When I decided to cook asparagus for lunch and chop it into bite-size pieces to see if she’d like it, she inhaled it.  Her preference, though?  VanDeKamp’s fish sticks and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.  By the time she was born, we weren’t so broke and Gap had a whole line of baby clothes.  Stylish was her middle name.

There are fractions of every stage of my motherhood in each of them.  Maggie is anal about punctuality, Will believes all lunches are meant to be leisurely, Mal often thinks time is an ishy endeavor.  Maggie developed an allergy to most fruits (maybe overload years ago?), Will still eats hot dogs, Mal recently asked for fish sticks and mac & cheese.   Maggie never outgrew her fondness of naps, Will is still the child who wakes up happy, Mal, the night owl wandering around for a nest as if her own bed isn’t even an option.

I faked a lot of things in that career because even when people told me how damn hard and never-ending the job was I thought it was more due to their own ineptness than actual difficulty.  I would soon learn otherwise.

There are some things, though, that my kids got in equal measure.  I never relented on manners, and could easily stand for five minutes with a shy child while they gathered the courage to say “thank you” to a stranger.  Once I said “no” it was no longer negotiable.  I loathe laziness and never allowed them to be slackers.  I wanted them to believe in a power higher than themselves.  I did not tolerate them being mean to each other.

“You know how when you make a copy of a copy, it’s not as sharp as… well… the original.”

Those three copies are the pieces of my often puzzling, haphazard journey of parenting, and though my mothering changed through the years, the states and the circumstances, they, thankfully, each remain quite original.

And when the history of our dysfunction rears its ugly head I do the most self-serving thing of all.

I blame their dad.

You bet I’m a mother.

I could probably write about Listen To Your Mother for the next year and not run out of things to say.  I think I’ll do the highlight reel next, but first the lessons learned.

Last year I had been on my job for all of one month when I found out the HR manager had just started writing a blog.  I moseyed down to her office and said, “I do that as well and there’s this show coming to Kansas City that I’ve heard a lot about and I was wondering if you’d like to go with me.”  We went.  I dragged the Husband as well.  When the show ended and the writers were taking their bow, I leaned over to Amy and said, “That’s going to be us up there next year.”

A plan was cemented. 

Flash forward to this year and a writer I follow on the east coast posted the link to submit pieces for LTYM in Washington, D.C.  I googled the Kansas City link and posted it to my Facebook wall for my fellow writer.  “Amy, dear, it’s go time for us.”  We both submitted pieces – probably five minutes before the deadline at least in my case.  We both got called to audition.  My take on mine, “I didn’t suck.”  Her take, “It was rough.”  Then we waited.  When I got the email that I had made the show I squealed in delight and FEAR, and then I pleaded with The Universe to make it so for Amy.  A few hours later The Universe emailed us both to say that this was in fact true.

What I wanted out of this experience waffled depending on my mood.  Primarily, I remain proud of what I’ve written and believe it could help other parents in my situation.  Besides that, an internet sensation wouldn’t be so awful.  A book deal?  Scan me a contract.  A slew of advertisers for my blog so I can quit my day job?  Duh.  A friend to go through the process with?  Yes, that.  Entwined first in a job and then in words.  Somebody who loved stories and authenticity as much as me to be on stage.

Just a little over an hour before the show started I was coming from the bathroom and headed upstairs at the church where the event took place.  I couldn’t tell you how many authors I’ve seen at this church.  Dozens at the very least, but I’ve never been beyond the sanctuary.  Alone in the basement I headed toward the staircase when a woman stopped me.  She was about my age, attractive, quite beautiful actually.  “Please can you help me for a second,” she asked.

“Sure.”

“I’m looking for the AA Meeting that’s supposed to be here and I can’t find it.  Do you know where it might be?  I need to find it.”

“No, I’m sorry I don’t.  I know it’s here some place because I heard somebody say that it was going on.  I’m not at all familiar with this place, though.  I’m sorry.  Maybe upstairs?”

“Okay, I’ll keep looking.”

She headed down the hall looking in empty room after empty room.  I headed up the stairs. 

At 7:30 we took the stage, stood before hundreds of strangers and told our stories.  The night was nerve wracking, followed by sheer joy.  After we took our bow Amy and I hugged for a long time.  There wasn’t a whole lot to say between us.  We did it.  We will be forever connected.

Therein lies the beauty of Listen To Your Mother.  We are all connected and it is the stories of our triumphs and failures, fears and happiness, our realness that is the cement.

My daydreams may or may not ever materialize, but I would give up the possibility of every single one if it meant that the chance encounter I had an hour before the show led to that woman standing before strangers and telling her own painful story.

Yes, that……..for I am her.

She is me.

We are in this together.

I took a creative writing class in high school and I have no memory of the “why” part of it.  My guess is that I heard it was an easy class, but it clicked and I loved going into that room.  I would have stayed in there all day if they’d have let me.   I took a long break for many years until I asked to join an established writing group.  They had to vote on me (I passed) and every month we would meet and share our work.  That eventually led to this blog.

I have been asked by my friend Mary to participate in a blog hop.  The subject?  It’s all writing, peeps.

What am I working on/writing?

I am always working on blog stuff.  My day job is very numbers orientated and daydreaming and writing in my head could lead to lots of mistakes.  That is the frustrating part of my day.   The paying attention.  I need to make money and I wish it could be by writing but that hasn’t happened yet, so I have to work.  Fortunately, it is part-time so I do have time to write – not as much as I’d like but what are you gonna do???  Baby’s got to finish college.  I have another goal of writing a children’s book and I have no idea what it would be about, but I LOVE children’s books.  I have loved every stage of my kids lives, but I miss reading to them.  If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.  Goodnight Moon.  Angelina Ballerina.  Madeline.  I felt like every character lived in this house for years.  There is a children’s bookstore nearby and I always stop and look in the window.  Charmed………every single time.

How does my work/writing differ from others of its genre?

It doesn’t.  I am just one of many, many bloggers out there trying to get some attention.  All of those bloggers have a writing voice and when you follow them you begin to recognize it.  My voice is unique to me and hopefully, strikes a chord with readers.

Why do I write what I do?

My style fluctuates from funny to sad to wow.  It’s how I think.  I like to have fun with my writing but profound wonder of life and loss is integrated into everything I do.  I am often too feely for my own piece of mind many days.  I think everyone wants to go through life thinking they made a difference.  I have to write myself there.  I have to tell the story (sometimes of total strangers) to say “I cannot stop thinking about you and here’s why.”

How does my writing process work?

I am by nature an observer.  Things will appear on my radar and I will note its significance.  I hardly ever know why it’s significant.  I just remember it.  It is when I’m writing that The Significant Thing will pop up and get woven into my story.  I’ve learned to trust it and its place in my writing.  In fact, I love it.  When I plan out a story it hardly ever goes the way I’ve imagined until The Significant Thing appears and ties everything together.

I will have much more to write about Listen To Your Mother sometime this week.  It’s a whole lot to process but The Significant Thing came to mind today.

And she was beautiful.

We moved into this house in December.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, plans were already in motion for the Annual Neighborhood Cookie Exchange, and the newest neighbor in the hood would be getting an invite (and maybe an assessment).

Walking into a party and knowing NOBODY is usually not my thing, but I was new to this state and I needed friends, and/or friendly neighbors with teenagers that babysat.  The hostess was welcoming and lovely, and in one fell swoop I met just about every woman who lives on this street. 

That following summer, the hostess of that party would bury her six year old son from meningitis.  It is impossible to wrap your head around a healthy kid riding his bike up and down the street one day to being gravely ill to dying, and life on this street was wrapped in sadness and disbelief.

Four blocks away, on the corner of 75th and Roe, is a Baptist church that many of us enrolled our kids in for Mother’s Day Out and preschool.   The parents of this little boy were church members there and strong supporters of the preschool, and they raised funds to build an outdoor play area for the kids in honor of their son.

That neighbor moved a long time ago, but our son and her younger son are the same age and so I would see her and her husband frequently at the high school and cross-country events.  We always catch up on what our kids are doing these days, and despite the tremendous loss in her life she is a joy to talk to and I am always happy to see her.

It is not unusual for me to drive by the corner of 75th and Roe many times a week, and each time I do I glance at that cheerful playground.  My own kids and many others have been the beneficiaries of my neighbors’ generosity during the darkest hours of their life.

On a Friday afternoon in October of last year, on a clear, beautiful fall day, a 29 year old woman was killed at that corner by an alleged drunk driver estimated to be traveling in the neighborhood of 100 miles an hour.  If you saw this intersection you couldn’t believe that something so tragic and senseless could happen there.  It isn’t even that busy or the kind of street you’d avoid because of frequent accidents.  Not to mention somebody driving drunk at 1:00 in the afternoon.  Amongst my friends and neighbors we have talked about it again and again as if there’s some missing piece to this that was overlooked that would make sense.  The woman who was killed owned a dance studio and left behind a devastated family, including a husband and his son.

A few weeks ago I was at that intersection waiting for the light to change when I saw a man in a shirt and tie, crouched down and staring into the intersection.  It seemed out of place and sad and it wasn’t until the light turned green and I had driven a few blocks that I realized that the guy I’d seen was her husband.  I recognized him from the story in the paper.

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod.  It’s her husband.  Somebody should tell him that those of us who live in this neighborhood have thought about his beautiful, dancer wife a thousand times.  That whenever the subject comes up we can’t believe somebody died on that corner.  That the recent story in the paper about him and his son and her family trying to keep her dance studio going broke my heart and made me proud of them all at the same time.  Somebody should tell him that.

Somebody like me.

I turned the car around with no idea of what I would actually say to him and drove back to that corner.  Five minutes had passed by and he was nowhere to be seen.  I circled the drive and parking lot twice to see if he’d gotten in his car.  By now I was so sure he should know how truly sorry this neighborhood is about his wife that I had become brave enough to knock on his car window if need be.

The following day a funeral was held at that Baptist church for the woman who owned the dance studio my own girls went to for years.  A dancer, a business owner, a woman who choked up at the recital every year thanking everyone, died of Lou Gehrig’s disease.  In tragic irony, the woman who made a career from moving was stopped by a disease that systemically took all movement away from her.

On the corner of 75th and Roe, where brightly colored slides and climbing equipment sit like a rainbow of happiness, there is more heartbreak than the casual passerby could even begin to imagine.  Only those who have tried to patch a life back together know it all too well.

 I was recently having a conversation with a mom whose daughter is in high school.  She is navigating teen years with her and I offered a couple of observations about what that was like with my own kids.

“Oh, you’re so right,” she said at one point.  “You seem like one of those cool moms.”

And it was like nails on a chalkboard to me.

I know it was meant as a compliment, but I no more have had my shit together than any other mom.  I happen to be a few years beyond high school with my kids and so I have perspective.  I can look back on those years and say we made it, we didn’t strangle each other, they are neither drinkers or partyers, they have plans and goals for their life, they all work incredibly hard.  We still like each other most of the time these days.  

That doesn’t make me a cool mom it just makes me fortunate.

In the Facebook world there is often comments about posted pictures that are some version of this…..

“SMOKING HOT MAMA!”

That, too, makes me cringe.  Hot mama?

A cool mom seems like the kind of woman who would let her kids and their friends drink in the basement when they’re thirteen because “they may as well do it here where I can keep an eye on them.”  A hot mom seems like the kind of woman who drinks with them while wearing her daughter’s American Eagle skinny jeans and halter tops.

It’s all so Kardashian.

It has always been my habit to observe women who are about ten years older than me.  What makes them stand out?  In a youth-obsessed culture what is their attraction?

Working in retail for so many years made it easy and there are two women that I’ll always remember.  One was dressed in head to toe black and wearing red ballet flats.  My guess was that she was seventy.  The other was a woman who bought a funky skirt and was so thrilled, so excited to wear it that she couldn’t contain herself.  She was bohemian by nature, the other was more conservative, but what both had was serenity.

The kind that comes with being happy in your own imperfect skin.

As I age a bit more each day and sixty isn’t all that far away, I strive for content status.  Loving little things like red flats and patterned skirts but noticing big things like the fall leaves, a glass of wine under a fingernail moon and an old photo of my grandma and aunt that makes me smile every time I pass by it.

Just two of the long line of women in my life who showed me over and over that the best thing somebody can say about you is that you have some up in your giddy.