Road ready

For a girl who’s moved as often as I have, it’s strange that I get as excited as I do when we get ready to go on a trip.

There are phases, planning, lists, bags, even for an overnighter. There’s laundry to start, fold, and pack, there’s dishes to wash before running out the door. Who wants to come home to piles of dirty laundry on top of what you’re hauling back? And who wants to face a dirty, full, smelly sink? So the whole house gets a once-over, so that when we get back, road-weary or jet-lagged, we can grab a snack and flop onto welcoming couches.

Which we never do. We get the mail, we flatten and stack newspapers, we run to the grocery to get supplies for a home-cooked dinner.

But the planning excitement! I peruse my totes, select one that will carry kids’ entertainment: DS’s, chargers, camera. Coloring books for all of us, regardless of age. Tiny compact travel games and quiet restaurant diversions. LRC, Bananagrams, tangrams. So fun! We rarely use them, but they are gold when we need them. Like when someone wakes up sick in a boring hotel room and all the cartoons are unfriendly. (Yes, that’s happened.) Or we get snowed in. (Yep.)

Hotel has a pool – yippee, pack the suits and goggles. Tourist destinations to research! Lounge clothes to pack – we won’t be doing housework or dishes!

And oh, the books. My eyes are always bigger than my brain on that. I like a picture-heavy magazine for the pool – even though I’m either in the pool or hawklike watching the kids. I can dream, right, of sitting poolside and flipping organizer magazine pages. That dog training book I started and haven’t finished. The summer novel … even though it’s early December. My kindle! I’m feasting on the fantasy of unscheduled time to relax and kick back. My book stack reflects my desire to just lose myself in another world, in the hotel.

Why do hotel rooms seem so inviting? They look clean though I know they aren’t. The desk is so conveniently situated, though I’d hate for that setup at home – too close to the bed. The piles of crisp white sheets, the mounds of pillows – though I prefer my own bed, really. It just seems luxurious to hop into this hotel one.

Even road trip food and music lure me. I have too many cd’s, yet I burn midnight oil creating playlists and questioning what’s in the travel cd case. My son’s allergies require us to pack food, but the chips and pretzels are a must. We try for healthier options too, but even grapes get smashed; rolling down the road makes me hungry for Bugles and other nonsense I can’t really stomach.

The romance of the road; the inevitable reality and return. I’m glad I like my own bed, my own reading nook, my space. But it’s fun to escape for a while and give others’ a chance.

Settling in, settled down, dust settling, it's settled ....

My real estate agent, Gina, and I are going to meet up later today, eight months after I last saw her, when she helped us buy our house. Amazon sent us a package that that's intended for the former owners, and Gina's been kind about being a liaison for these transfers.

As we were setting up the meet-up plan, Gina asked how I liked it here, how I was settling in.

Answering that is a little complicated.

An appropriate answer has two key elements, for me. One is figuring out how to describe this feeling of being in suspended animation, and the other is honesty.

While I love being near my in-laws and living amid Southwestern beauty, I’m a river girl and the desert life leaves me lonely for the elms and maples and oaks of my youth. Poplars. Sycamores and weeping willows and catalpas. A tree to sit at the base of, lie and look through the leaves of, climb and swing from. Shade. Green. Breeze rustling.

While I love new experiences and the challenges of starting fresh, I so miss my hard-won friendships and the comfort zone of the neighborhood I lived the last 10 years in. I miss my troops. My fellow moms and I were past the point of needing to clean up for each others’ visits; we could get tipsy together and not feel shame the next day over what we might have said; they understood. They forgave, or celebrated the hilarious lapses.

I feel like, though I consciously made the decision to move here – spent years contemplating it, really, and months preparing – that I’m sleepwalking. I’m dreaming, and soon, I’ll wake up and be in my bed on my old street on a hill overlooking the New England valley now covered in snow. It still doesn’t feel real. Even as everyday names from There are slipping away from my totally different, now day-to-day world, I see their faces as if we’d passed on the street this morning. I mentally take note of traffic by thinking, I have to tell Kris about that! I wonder what Melissa would say to ….. and then, I remember. I’m not part of their daily world.

Social media might contribute to this sense of confusion. I do see their faces, daily, on Facebook, or Skype. We text, we call. We’re still sort of in touch. They’re 2,087 miles away, but I know what they had for dinner last night. It’s a bit surreal.

I wouldn’t trade this sepia world for a pre-Facebook world, though. Having moved prior to the internet, I can attest to the cold-turkey method of disengaging with a community you used to live in. I used to write letters ….

The other element of giving Gina, and whoever else asks me that, an answer is honesty. I’m from the Midwest, and we are known for being upfront to the point of being blunt. I’d rather be honest in every situation; when people ask me how I am, I try to say. I’ve found that not many people want to know, actually, how I am. They’re being polite. They’re smiling, they appear to care, and they don’t care. They just don’t want to be rude. I’m learning to smile when I’m glum and answering, “Terrific! You?” when that’s not accurate at all. Defeat the oversharer in me and move on down the hallway.

Each instance like that is a little flower-killing, to me. I droop a little more when I realize people greet without caring, and I’m answering without truth. It’s not a social interaction or a team moment; it’s not bonding opportunity. It’s a reinforcement of how separate we are, how time and money trump contact. They’re in a rush; they don’t want messy details. I can understand that, and feel that way sometimes, and I don’t need to be everyone’s best friend. But it makes me feel lied to.

So how will I answer Gina? It might rely on the traffic of the moment – “I’m glad I arrived alive!” or the predictably but always unique, gorgeous sunset, or the NPR update of the moment. I might actually feel positive about my work contributions and have a positive attitude – a rarity more often than I’d like to admit.

I’m glad my husband’s happy here. I’m glad my kids are thriving in their current schools. I’m glad my mom is being looked after and feels she’s contributing to our household. I’m glad we finally have a dog. But the road is not easy – as I’m sure it’s not for Gina, either – and it remains to be seen where I will go on it.

Maybe that’s just it. I’m not settled. I’m on a journey; one that is currently in this town. I’m unsure of a destination, I haven’t put down roots. I don’t feel settled yet, and it might be awhile before I do.

I guess I do have my answer.

Stepford up

As I understand it, “step up” is the possibly now stale, but relatively trendy, term for giving it all. Doing more to show you mean it. Showing your bosses – not superiors, but bosses – that you are willing to stay later, do more, get it done. You’ve been doing fine, but if you want that promotion, you’ll have to step up. Or maybe you’re not doing so well, and you need to step up to stay on the job.

I guess athletes use that term, too. Turning on the afterburners to excel.

So I was cleaning house a few weeks ago and pondering my life (I’d better get a louder vacuum, so I can drown out those thoughts!), and the fitting in conundrum. And the image of the Stepford Wife came to mind – the docile, robotic, matchy-good-attitude-at-all-cost, no individuality allowed, matron of the 1972 novel. (I just Wiki’d the novel and my impression of it was slightly different; my mental picture of the women of that fictional, maybe not so fictional, town had less chauvinism going on, but the analogy still works, I think.)

I frequently war with myself on doing a better job of fitting in vs. doing a better job being honest and proud of the misfit I frequently feel I am. I’ll forever be lost somewhere between being a fifth-grader longing to be cool and the 17-year-old rejecter of popular culture. I feel like I’ve been trying to figure out the lay of the land all my life; a Methodist attending Lutheran school; a ruralite moving to the suburbs; a junior in college starting over at a 4-year university; a Midwesterner tackling the East Coast; on and on. As soon as I get my bearings, I move again. I’d like to say it takes less time to figure out local customs and protocols each time, but I’m beginning to fear that it takes more time with each transition.

So, pondering all these changes and my continued state of being ostracized at work, taking out my frustrations on scrubbing or vacuuming or sorting dirty clothes, somewhere in my unconscious, the term “step up” collided with the Stepford women. Stepford up.

There are times to follow my own drumbeat, and times to quiet mine and listen to others’, and times to suck up all the noise and Stepford Up. I feel that, at work, the latter is the only accepted path. It’s not bad practice, temporarily. It gives me information and cues for when the independent drummer can be set free. But that drumbeat keeps getting louder.

New and old as one on your smartphone

A colleague and I were discussing a new podcast, "Serial," that he thought I ought to catch up on.

Funny timing; I'd just seen someone else on Facebook recommend it. My colleague made a good case for it, and I repeated an old line that my friend Jim and I have said for years: If you have a good story, people will follow it, buy it, regardless of medium.

And a possible truth dawned on us both about technology today - so often vilified for dividing people, destroying memory capacity, reducing the population's IQ (good arguments could be made about how the average IQ might not be all that great anyway). A possibility that evil digital technology is actually not so terrible in one way, at least.

It's retro. It's oral tradition. Only now, instead of gathering around a fire, you download an episode of people telling stories, and you listen to the stories, and you share - in this case, verbally - with people around you. You share the story. It lives on.

It's a brand new, yet ancient version of storytellers of centuries past, who entertained, educated, motivated, shamed, bonded tribes of people with compelling stories. Stories that became the Greek myths, or folktales, or fairy tales.

This is not an essay defending video zombieism. Nor am I excusing corporate greed, or the transformation of the American retail landscape by the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon.

I'm saying this could be bigger than even them.

"Serial" has broken records for numbers of people downloading it - more than 2 million downloads per episode. It's a phenomenon. Word of mouth is the best advertising.

It reminds me too of President Franklin Roosevelt and his Fireside Chats; people gathering to listen to and discuss the latest missive.

Somehow it brings me a measure of peace in these fractured, violent, and stressful times to know that a popular, portable, and affordable format is making possible in a new direction one of the very first ways people came together and shared information.

Storytelling has power. 

Irony!

I wrote an essay a couple weeks ago exploring the idea of home – what it means, how it’s defined differently for different people, what emotions are tied into it …. Just brainstorming, really.

I wrote it at work under a neutral name, to avoid unwanted attention. And then, days later, I cleaned out my work computer, prompted by a higher degree of workplace protocol requirements. I put some files and photos on a flash drive, and some I emailed to myself on my personal account.

And now I can’t find it. Not in my email, not on my work computer, not on the flash drive. Not in my send folders. My witty little neutral filename is gone from my memory, rendering it somewhat less witty.

As with any lost work, after the initial panicky search, I had to walk away from the computer and mourn. I might still find it, but I needed to process it a bit to calm down. Regain perspective.

It was no masterpiece; if there were any wondrous truths laid bare, they were minor enough to be instantly forgotten. I’m fairly certain that it was an overly self-conscious, stiff draft.

Still, driving around town on my lunch break, I had to laugh.

Here’s this writing piece I have thought about for years – what is home? – and I make one lame attempt to begin to capture it, and it has vanished. As ethereal as the reality of “home” is for me now. Vague memories, aspirations, weak attempts – for both the written summary and the physical reality.

I have deep nostalgia for the place I grew up, which of course also holds traumatic and bitter memories. I’ve moved more than 30 times, and each time, I make some attempt to assemble old and newly acquired belongings: beloved books, heirloom furniture, favorite cooking tools. But there’s always something lacking. The chaos of each day lends value and life and shows me just how far I have to go to reach my dream of living the organized, cozy life I hold in my head. Every house feels unfinished. Not quite home. I’m not home yet.

There are people, of course; it’s not just about where to put books and dishes. There are my sons, whose needs drive our lives, willingly. There’s my husband, with specific and heart-felt domestic goals of his own. Now, too, there’s my mother, whose beloved couches and tables and TV and solitaire help anchor her to a new place and help her adjust to a challenging time in her life. There are in-laws and sisters and friends. There is a dog. There is life.

But as with each move I make, there is the re-knitting of old and new, comfortable and fresh, familiar and frustrating. I’m processing, and it takes a long while to reach a peace with new rhythms and driving routes and habits. The letting go of friends and habits and certainty. The disorganization of petty details as we find new routines.

Methods of maintaining memories and forwarding information through changing technology – it’s a fulltime occupation. The ubiquitous flash drive, common as Kleenex now, is new to this formerly SAHmom. Managing papers and remembering where I put things has never been a strength, however much I pride myself on logical processes and plans. With limited desktop access to my email inbox, vital information feels out of reach, dimly remembered.

I’m eager to straighten things up, find what I need, but it’s painful to realize my recent work is possibly really gone. Just like that long-ago address in a valley far, far away.

A formerly skinny girl's observations on body image

Thanksgiving small-talk at my sister-in-law’s house led to what’s common at many tables: trash-talk. They weren’t gossiping, or being mean to each other.

They were being insulting, though. Each woman was topping the others by talking about how bad they themselves looked, criticizing themselves mercilessly.

Does this sound familiar? Odds are you’ve heard or been part of identical conversations. This talk is mostly likely part of the “I’ll put myself down before anyone else can” school of self-protection, or a dark-humor form of complimenting others.

Whether it’s a mix of low self-esteem or perfectionism or self-loathing or something less malevolent, it’s upsetting for me to hear it. I see strong survivors standing before me – two of the women were recently out of the hospital, one with life-threatening illness finally behind her. The other has decades of surgeries that have only exacerbated, not alleviated, her pain. The third has borne four children and prevailed over a challenging setbacks.

None are obese. They might be carrying more weight than they’re comfortable with, but the pounds don’t prevent them from managing jobs, households, and moderate to strenuous physical activity.

There was a fourth woman in the kitchen that day, too; a 15-year-old girl with self-image stress.

So when I wandered in and overheard the conversation, I was horrified. Not for my niece initially; more that these beautiful, capable, kind, and smart women were so full of hate toward themselves. My second reaction was more to protect the teen-aged girl, to prompt a bit of recognition that our bodies can be perceived as beautiful. I’m not confident at all that I was able to do that.

Somehow this talk is acceptable in our culture, and it needs to stop.

I should have stayed and listened longer, joined the group more subtlely, before opening my own mouth; instead, I reacted, saying, “Where is the self-love, ladies? Body positive – you are all beautiful and have so much more going on than this. Look at everything you’ve survived! You are beautiful the way you are!”

To which one of the women said, “Sure, you’re skinny, you can’t talk.”

Her words were so apt – I can’t talk if I don’t fit their notions of similarity. I’m not allowed to have a voice, even if – or perhaps especially if – it’s to compliment them. I didn’t mean to preach or be condescending, and I hope I wasn’t.

I am not skinny. I have my own body issues, my own difficulty with eating the right foods at the right times. While historically I have been thin, I am not now. I’m one size smaller than the woman who said that to me. I’m in the 10-12 category – not skinny, but not overweight. Out of shape. Bigger than I used to be, before my kids came. But smaller than the women around me.

Svelte, slender, thin – choose your word. In our culture, it's revered. But as a child, for me, “skinny” was an epithet – another child and I were nicknamed “Pin” and “Needle” for our bony appearance. My mother constantly worried the doctor would tag me as malnourished. The sting of those names hasn’t eased in the decades since, and the ante has only risen since. Those words hurt today even when a well-meaning, loving friend playfully dismisses me as skinny.

I am a mother – like three of them. I have long hair, like three of them. I’m married, like three of them. I’m working, like two of them. We live in the same town, we face similar struggles and hold similar views. And I’m unhappy with how I look, perhaps like them. But they say I’m not like them.

It’s ironic, really; someone at work was describing his wife and said, “She’s tiny; not like you, much smaller than you.” And I felt like I’d been insulted, though all my life I’d wanted to be “regular size.” I wanted to grab him and say, “No, don’t you see? I’m SKINNY!” I wanted to feel relieved I wasn’t perceived as malnourished anymore. But his words made me feel fat.

I often dress in bigger clothes than I need, to camouflage, to distract; I'm told they make me look thinner, instead of more average. I'm advised to show myself off. But when I do, women around me tend to be just slightly more hostile than if I wear baggier jeans, thicker sweaters.

Body image is such an amorphous target, it’s difficult to address out loud or in therapists’ offices. In the fitting rooms, it’s harshly assessed and tentatively accommodated.
At Thanksgiving, we eat too much and culturally it’s expected, despite the U.S.’s difficulty with obesity and diabetes. So we talk about how fat we are, paying lip service that barely covers our feelings of hopelessness. And then we sit down and load our plates with more food.  

Probably I’m tone-deaf to culturally appropriate girltalk; maybe I’m out of step with women my age. I feel that I have social skill deficits galore. Whether it’s due to that social anxiety or other reasons, I feel outside their circle, though my own body image discomfort is just like theirs.

While I want to cross the bridge to where they are, I don’t want to feel worse about myself, and I’d really love it if they could feel better about themselves. I wish they didn’t judge me, or rule my comments unworthy based on my size. I end up tongue-tied; compliments are shrugged off, commiseration ridiculed. I stand there mute, or I wander to join the guys, for whom body image is much less an issue, at least out loud.