Samurai Mama: Life is a Mother

Competence Trumps Self Esteem Any Day

2010-01-27T04:48:00.000-08:00

My daughter recently let me know that she has applied to go to Haiti to assist with the recovery efforts there. On the one hand, my maternal instincts instantly went into protective gear and I wanted to physically restrain her from leaving her nice neighborhood in Northern California for the hell that is now Haiti.

On the other hand, I am full of admiration and respect. She wouldn’t be the young woman I know and love if she didn’t feel compelled to offer her service. As a mother, I don’t want my baby to suffer; as a human being, I can’t imagine anyone better qualified to offer compassion than my highly skilled, deeply kind kid.

In fact, if I were in a heap of trouble of just about any kind, I can’t imagine anyone I would rather see coming over the hill than my son or daughter. Useful, capable, competent, neither is inclined to helplessness or handwringing. When there’s work to be done, they are both pretty much a drama-free zone, looking for what needs doing, rather than proclaiming their unhappiness or discomfort to anyone who’ll listen.

My daughter has a master’s degree in nursing and works as a labor and delivery nurse in a big urban hospital. My son is master carpenter for a professional repertory theater that does challenging, interesting work. Each of them has been smart enough and lucky enough to find mates who are exactly right for them and equally competent, useful and generally nonplussed.

I consider my children’s competence to be the greatest possible acknowledgement of my parenting skills. As a single mom, I didn't have the energy to fret much about their self-esteem—although my son did have some dark days in high school that had me praying incessantly for a solution. That solution turned out to be … more competence. He wasn’t having a very successful time of it in regular high school, although he was certainly smart enough to do well academically. But as soon as I relented and let him slip out of the academic track and into the technical track, his outlook began to improve. He learned to weld, to do carpentry and engineering, he started feeling useful and began to see a future for himself.

As a newspaper editor for many years, I had the privilege and sometimes the curse of dealing with a number of interns who were still in school or “baby reporters” just out of college and in their first year on the job. I could tell very quickly whose families and schools had focused on building the young person’s self esteem and which had insisted on competency. The ones who were competent were confident. The ones for whom self-esteem was the prize were an endless eddy of narcissism, complaint and need.

If I could pass along one value to parents and educators now, it would be this: Stop worrying so much about whether that child is happy and start making certain she or he knows a thing or two and has the internal resources to accomplish useful tasks. Once a person is capable and knows how to produce results, self-esteem tends to take care of itself.

We keep looking in the wrong places

2010-01-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, my cat, Ace the Ferocious Hunter, brought into my house what I thought was a large mouse. After much skittering and chasing around the kitchen, where the still-quite-lively creature took up behind the refrigerator, I finally decided I had had enough. So I bought one of those terrible, deadly zappers and within an hour had dispatched what turned out to be an actual rat to that Big Kitchen in the Sky.

My cat checked out the places the rat had been--apparently he skittered from behind the fridge to a little space beside the dish washer and, when he thought the coast was clear, to the bowl of dog kibble and water on the opposite side of the kitchen. This happened in the middle of the night, at which time the cat would hear the skittering, the dog would hear the cat and, for a few minutes, all hell would break loose. This is not my idea of a good night's sleep. Thus, the rat electric chair. I felt bad, but ... it's all over now.

So the cat investigated a time or two and immediately got the idea: the rat is gone. Case closed. My dog, however, to this day dashes expectantly over to the space beside the fridge and sniffs enthusiastically, digging at the tile beside the fridge. Or he passes the dish washer, is reminded and starts trying to dig the rat out from under the dish washer. I have pulled both appliances out and thoroughly mopped, so most traces should be gone. And besides, if any of us is going to keep trying to get the rat, it seems it ought to be the cat. But no, he gets it. Game over.

I think most of us have more in common with the dog than the cat, at least in this regard. We keep looking for love where it used to be, revisiting life as it has been, eager for a new experience, but looking along familiar pathways trying to find it. We think if we only dig a little deeper into what has been, or approach it from a different angle, we'll see another outcome and recapture what we've lost.

I haven't posted anything on my blogs for a while. I went through a long period where anything I could say would be so maudlin I wouldn't want anyone to read it. Within a three month period two years ago, one of my dearest friends killed himself, my 18-year-old cat died and my mother passed away after a lengthy series of illnesses that defined how I don't want my passing to be.

I entered a kind of paralysis that I now recognize as the way I process things. I keep working--my salvation when things get rough, and they've been that way a bit, so I've created a great career for myself with all this marching on--I only wear my heart on my sleeve for a very small circle of friends, and then only enough to let the pressure off. I just carry my sorrow along with me and keep doing life and eventually, the fog lifts and life starts coming back again.

Generally, during this time, I gain weight, which makes me feel like hell and my first re-entry into the fullness of life involves getting back on the bicycle and saying No to second glasses of wine.

But what I notice is a profound temptation to keep looking back, wishing for what will never be again. My friend was one of my best music buddies and certain songs have simply disappeared from my life since his death. I realized recently that I was, in some illogical part of my heart, saving them until we could sing them again. I've been holding my present cat at arm's distance (which to people who haven't ever been friends with a cat might not seem so bad) because he just wasn't the same cat I had come to know so well. He's a cute cat, and a sweet cat, but he wasn't my cat.

And my mother? I keep wishing for a few do-overs. I don't have a lot of regrets, but death inevitably drives those that exist directly to the surface. So, even while knowing utterly and absolutely the futility of the desire, I've been wishing to revisit some events and conversations and have things turn out different.

Watching my misguided mutt as he enthusiastically visits the rat's old haunts reminds me how goofy such impulses are. Time to move on, to different songs and love in unanticipated expressions.

Surrender!!!

2008-06-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

This weekend I finally gave up. I have decided to let the bindweed bind, the pig weed oink and the Bermuda grass grow all the way back to Bermuda if it so desires. The little rectangle I had called -- with great hope and sense of purpose -- a "garden" just a few weeks ago is now released to become whatever it will, which is probably just more badly maintained lawn like the rest of my yard.

Nature, my schedule and a bad wrist conspired to bring me to this turn of events. In May I had lots of small plants in pots, ready for the soil my occasional landscape guy had so diligently tilled for me. Then the rains came. And came, and came and came. When I was 5 I would have loved the pool of gumbo all that water and all that soil became. Now? Not so much. And it was simply not the kind of place you'd want to maroon a sweet little tomato plant.

So I bought large containers and bigger bags of soil, trying all the while to ignore the voice sniping in my head. "Now that's just about ridiculous, paying for topsoil when you have a ton of it sitting right over there ..." "You know, if you were actually trying to raise food to feed anyone, you'd all be on the brink of starvation right about now ..."

Thank you for sharing. Now shut up.

Actually, this process has made me even more appreciative of the people who do manage to make this soil and seed and rain and shine stuff work and actually do bring food to market. I noticed that our local farmer's market -- provided by people who live in roughly the same geographic area as I do -- was loaded with vegetables. How is it that they managed to get seeds in the ground and starts started when I just sat on my porch drinking a microbrew and wishing I could get in the garden?

I'll blame it on my wrist. I had carpal tunnel surgery in April and just couldn't wield a shovel with my usual level of enthusiasm. That and my schedule. Killer, I'm tellin' ya. Just an absolute killer. Never a moment to spare. Except, of course, the occasional microbrew and half hour or so sitting on the porch with my foot on the railing and some nice accompaniment on the iPod.

Reluctantly, I may have to conclude that my most fitting role in gardening is that of appreciator, a sort of garden fan, full of profuse praise for cucumbers someone else has raised, vociferously thrilled with the tomatoes of another's labor and happy to sprinkle a couple of contained peppers and basil with sufficient water to keep them from croaking in full view of the neighbors.

Hey, everyone needs a cheerleader, don't they?

Rah, rah, ree, sorry 'bout your knee;

Rah, rah, rass, Dude, I think that's grass ....

Earth Loses One Smart Lady

2007-09-10T02:21:00.000-07:00

This photo of my mother was taken seven years ago, when she was 80. It hasn't been manipulated or retouched -- that's the way she looked at 80 -- eyes full of intelligence and spirit; complexion still like a bowl of cream; a body as fit as eight decades would allow it to be, thanks to daily swims and an energetic, can-do approach to life. The photo was a publicity shot for the back cover of one of her books -- each one a romance, published after her 80th birthday. You haven't lived until you've read one of your mother's love scenes, but as she said at the time, "I wasn't born old, you know."

Indeed, she didn't really start to get old until five years ago when her hip was broken -- irony of ironies -- when someone accidentally tripped her at the YMCA where she had been swimming laps. After that, her life became increasingly focused on a series of medical procedures and interventions, all of which she met with her usual verve and snap. The surgeon who performed her hip replacement asked to use her in a video demonstrating how to use a walker, thanks to her ready response to physical therapy. The years of exercise and her refusal to let age be the definition of her life made her an ideal patient, quick to recover and determined to meet the challenges of her physical limitation.

That relentless determination ultimately prolonged the suffering of a body that needed to quit long before the spirit was ready to let it go. Saturday night as my daughter, neice, sister and I surrounded her and sang her to the finish line, that powerhouse heart kept trying and trying to stay in the race.

As her body began to shut down and the hospice nurse rounded us up for the final farewell, we began to sing every song we could dredge up from a lifetime of harmonizing over dishes and family road trips. Although she had been unable to communicate for several days, her color improved and she began to breathe a little faster as we found the harmony on Somewhere Over the Rainbow and the beat on a medley from The Unsinkable Molly Brown, leading the nurse to speculate that Mom was trying to sing along with us. I said, "It was probably because she noticed I was flat on the high note -- and that will just never do." We all laughed at this acknowledgment of her commitment to vocal perfection, but decided to chill with the stirring renditions of show tunes and focus on slightly more sedate selections.

Then I thanked her for teaching me to sing way out to the cheap seats, and I thanked her little body for giving life to all of us and to the rest of us who weren't there, my sister thanked her for teaching us to be wonderful cooks, and one by one we began to thank her for every connection, every contribution, every good thing we could trace from her life to ours. There were many and we could have kept going, sending her out on a sea of acknowledgment and praying that she could somehow let it in, she who so often shrugged off warm fuzzies in favor of sharp edges.

Ultimately, the little clock wound down. With my hand over her heart, my daughter's hand cradling her head, my sister's arms around me, my neice embracing my daughter and even the nurse holding Mom's toes, she breathed one big sigh and just like that, she was gone. It was a gentle, kind exit and I will never get over the honor of participating in it as we did.

We washed her little body ourselves -- given her lifetime care of her appearance, I couldn't stand the idea of strangers receiving her disheveled and poorly groomed -- and dressed her in her favorite nightgown. For good measure, we wrapped her in a thick, warm robe she loved. I gave her a last pedicure and manicure and laughed at myself as I did so. As if it really matters that my mother's nails are pretty when she meets her Maker.

But it mattered to me. It mattered that we were the ones to wash and dress her, to comb her hair and give her back to the Earth not as one discarded, but as one annointed and prepared.

My dad used to bear my sister and me off to bedtime modifying Shakespeare's, "Good night, sweet Prince. Flights of angels sing thee to thy sleep," to fit his girl children and also his whimsical sense of humor. "Good night, sweet princesses. Flocks of angels sing thee to thy sleep." It helps me now to imagine him standing on that mythical Other Side, his arms open wide for her as those flocks of angels take up singing where we left off.

In my version of this story, they get the pitch right on all the high notes. She'll see to it that they do.

Have a not-so-mushy Mother's Day

2007-05-10T09:23:00.000-07:00

A traditional tattoo in prisons everywhere is the arm or chest emblazoned with loving salutes to “Mom.”

Mother apparently is singled out for special attention because she is the only one in the bearer's life who has loved, forgiven and taken him back time and time again, regardless of how seriously he has messed up.

Maybe she shouldn’t have.

While their tribute is as touching as all get-out, I'd say both mother and offspring might be missing something. Children should know that the greatest acknowledgment they can give their mothers doesn't come in the form of flowers, nice cards and gifts, or even a cool tattoo scratched into a really buff bicep.

What your mother wants most from you is for your life to work. You want to say “thank you” to your mother? Be a good person.

And Mom? If you believe unconditional means any old behavior is accepted, overlooked and forgiven, you're missing the boat. Mothers have to be as much a wall as a pillow.

With apologies to Hallmark, what I dislike about the day devoted to Mother, with all its treacle and fluff, is that it focuses entirely on the soft side of mothering and completely ignores the solid. Being kind, gentle and forgiving is an essential part of the mothering gig. But being a tough cookie who won't let kiddo get away with zilch is equally important.

When our kids are straying from the straight and narrow, they need to run smack into a brick wall that directs them back on the path. That wall's name should be Mother. One of the qualities our society needs most right now is respect. Respect for other people, respect for other opinions, respect for natural resources, respect for ourselves. And, like it or not, the first and strongest lessons our children learn about respect come from? You guessed it: Mother.

Sometimes, in the mall or grocery store, I feel instantly anachronistic and appalled by the way I hear children addressing their mothers -- and vice versa. I cringe when I hear a little child of 5 or 6 sassing his mother, being bratty, disrespectful and demanding, and I feel a nasty foreshadowing of the direction that relationship will take as the child grows taller. Children usually don’t get sweeter as they get older.

As mothers, we must generate respect – give it, show it, expect it, and sometimes command it -- and receive it with graciousness and dignity. This is a complex process. It means that, in addition to respecting ourselves, we must respect our children.

Demonstrating our respect starts early and manifests itself in subtle, practical ways. For example, a mother who respects her baby won't just walk up without warning and start scrubbing a washcloth over the child's face. From a baby's perspective, that amounts to assault. Mothers who respect their children take time with them, and try to see adult actions from a child's viewpoint.

Mothers show their respect for their children in their behavior, in the tone of their voices. You can bet a mother who orders a toddler around and consistently bellows at an 8-year-old is going to end up having a disrespectful, out-of-control teenager. Young humans are utterly dependable at mimicking what they see. Insist that a child respect you without giving respect first and you simply breed insurrection – an equation that is persistently missed not only by parents, but also by school administrators and politicians.

Children also learn respect by how much respect their mothers command. Lifetime patterns are based on this. If we let our children speak hatefully and disrespectfully to us, we train them to believe that the rest of the world will accept such behavior. If we are in a relationship with a partner who abuses or demeans us, we train our children that this is what we, what women, deserve. Children will act out that message for the rest of their lives.

It isn't easy to be firm in a world that so often confuses firmness with meanness. Learning to insist without coercion, to be resolute without nastiness, to be compassionate without being a sucker can be a tricky business. Training ourselves to give and command respect in a culture that tells us we aren't worth much can be a lifetime pursuit.

To do all of this with the clock ticking, with a child's future hanging in the balance, is the trickiest of all.

When we become mothers, we hit the deck running, learning life's lessons on the fly. Most of us don't do a perfect job of it, and many of us are much more aware of the ways we've failed than the times we've succeeded.

So this year on Mother's Day, sure, take your mother to brunch, give her something nice. Thank her for being sweet and understanding and kind.

But even more, thank her for toeing the line with you. Thank her for insisting that you behave, for demanding that you do well, for requiring decency of you. Thank her for the occasional kick in the rear that grabbed your attention and steered you toward a better future.

Thank her for being your wall as much as your pillow. Have a great life and let her know she got the job done.

Tethered to Life with Steel Filament

2007-04-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

My mother is tied to life these days by the slenderest of tethers. Her world, once full of music and passion and words and ideas, has narrowed to the width and length of a hospital bed. Once a swimmer evangelical in her belief about fitness, her last walk was the four steps from her bed to the hospital room's door.

That was two days ago. The little bird in the bed is barely recognizable as the force of nature once known as my mother, and with each ebb I wonder if this time she will finally let go her grasp on the physical and known in favor of whatever is next. Her answer so far has been: Not on your life. She is tied to this life by the slenderest of tethers, but then, so are the cocoons on milkweed that survive gale-force winds.

She has always been impossible, this hard-headed mother of ours, and feebleness and fragility have thus far produced no miraculous alteration in that trait. My sisters and I have tried for several days to have some practical conversations with her, only to be met with, "I don't want to talk about that today. We'll talk about it later. Tomorrow." Last night, inexplicably, her hearing failed and now the woman whose hearing was so keen she could hear me from the other end of the house going flat on that high C or my sister sneaking into the house five seconds after curfew can't hear a word unless you stand right in front of her and yell.

Every conversation has to be conducted at a decibel level that defeats nuance. Try discussing "durable power of attorney" and "living will" and "hospice" at essentially the same volume you'd tell the motorcyclist next door that his muffler appears to be broken.

Regardless, she isn't having any of it. "I'm just dealing with what I need to do next," she says in response to our attempt to have her formalize her wishes for the next time her blood pressure crashes or pneumonia returns. She hates us for "making" her go to the hospital, but refuses to sign papers because "maybe I will need to come back to the hospital." She wants to be well-cared-for and she wants to be left alone. She doesn't want heroic medical intervention, but she wants anything that can be done to be done. She wants to be who she was even five years ago before the hip broke and the systems started shutting down and her able body became undependable. Impossible.

And yet, I would expect no less from her. She isn't being ornery for the sake of being ornery. When she says she is just focusing on what needs to be done next, she's being who she's always been, minus the physical resources. I learned persistance and a never-say-die attitude from her, so why would I think when it's actual Death she's facing, she'd just roll over and let it carry her away?

"Do not go gently into that good night" could be her theme song. She will rage against the dying of the light with her last breath -- not with histrionics and drama because she doesn't have the energy for that anymore. But with that set of her jaw and that deep, deliberate exhalation as she focuses all her energy into just one more bite of pudding, she will keep going because that's what she knows how to do. She doesn't know how to surrender, doesn't know how to quit.

She never did. And for that, I admire her and despair.

I’m About To Be Seduced Again

2007-02-05T04:07:00.000-08:00

I can see the signs; I can feel the stirrings in my heart. The alluring photos, the sensual descriptions, the come-hither language. And here I am, the eternal optimist, allowing myself to be charmed – even encouraging enchantment.

Day after day, the seed catalogs appear in my mailbox and day after day, I allow my mind to drift to how life could be if only. If only I planted the “Butterfly-Hummingbird Garden Collection” that's practically fluttering in bright pinks and purples from the pages of the Audubon Workshop; if only I made a cold-frame like those described in the pages of Mother Earth News and started some pretty lettuce and spinach plants from the seed packets I received as a come-on from Nichols Garden Nursery; if only I turned that corner of the yard by the back door into a little kitchen herb garden.

In the background as I’m thumbing through these catalogs, making lists (in pencil at this point: I’m not ready to commit) and wondering exactly how much I actually could grow on a small urban yard, I hear the snazzy tune of an old, familiar song. I’m jest a girl who cain’t say No; I’m in a terrible fix. I alluz say Come on, let’s go! Just when I orter say Nix!

I know better. I’ve been here before. The first year I moved to Kansas – from the wind-swept wilds of Wyoming, where, if you planted 32 tomato plants and tended them carefully, you might end up with 64 actual tomatoes – I went a little mad in the local nursery. I bought heirloom cherry tomatoes, heirloom slicing tomatoes, heirloom sauce tomatoes and then, just in case the heirloom thing wasn’t as great as I hoped it would be, I bought some of the old standbys: Big Boy, Celebrity. And then, because I wanted to make sure I had tomatoes as early as possible, I even bought a couple of Arctic something-or-others, developed with a very short growing season for people in cold climates. 32 tomato plants.

I also bought three tomatillo plants, just to see how they’d do here (the answer: Splendidly.) If anyone in Kansas is looking for a cash crop, allow me to recommend tomatillos, that pungent little green fruit so essential to South-of-the-Border sauces. Tomatillos love Kansas’ climate. I had tomatillos for the multitudes.

And sufficient tomatoes to feed global hunger. I started out carefully nursing my tomato plants, fussing over them as though I still were in Wyoming and needed to say the appropriate incantations and hold my mouth just right to get the earth to cooperate. By the end of the summer, I was practicing not benign neglect, but openly hostile neglect. See? I can pass right by you and NOT turn on the garden hose.

Of course, I couldn’t keep that up for long, given the spirit of my father, a.k.a. my garden wizard, tsk-tsking his disapproval in my ear. So I watered and I weeded in a surpassingly minimalist way. And I got tomatoes! Exuberant, oh-my-lord tomatoes: Yellow tomatoes, orange tomatoes, paste tomatoes, slicers. The day I happily put together a basket of tomatoes to share with my co-workers, I discovered an awful truth: In August, everyone in Kansas is trying to pawn off tomatoes on everyone they know.

I was stuck. So I froze and I canned and I dehydrated and still I had tomatoes. I ate so many tomatoes that the acid gave me mouth sores. By early September, I was actually happy that the grasshoppers had discovered the tomato patch. I had a dream in which my neighbor Nancy (with whom I was sharing a garden space, and who had planted tomatoes of her own) and I stood in our garden wearing tattered nighties, laughing maniacally and chucking tomatoes at passing cars.

So this year, I know I must let my head lead my heart. Just because the Kitizawa Seed Company says those blue melons can be grown in my climate doesn’t mean I need to try. And just because the magazine article says I can make those cool garden-tipi trellises in an afternoon doesn’t mean I actually have to. Maybe ornamental gourds will grow along my south fence, but honestly, are they really right for me?

There’s a certain predictability to this romance. I’ll fall for the pretty pictures and the sweet nothings and then time will move on and I’ll be left with all these offspring and neither time nor money to give them everything they need. By late August, I’ll have an orphaned garden and a heart full of shame.

No. I simply must resist. Must be rational. Must not ….

But look: Right here in the Nichols catalog, it says “Easy care.” And here … in the Audubon catalog, “Fun to Grow!!!”

I’m jest a girl who cain’t say No ….

We All Have Scarlett Moments

2007-01-26T04:46:00.000-08:00

A friend I'll call Cynthia called me once upon a time to tell me she'd finally broken up with a man she's been with for several years. Though I kept it to myself, my first reaction was uncharitable: "I've heard THIS before..."

Those of us who know Cynthia had listened over the years as she told us that this time she really, honestly had had it with this guy. But as I listened to her this time, I heard something new in her voice. Before, she'd been hopeful that she could leave him. Now, she was determined – not only to have him out of her life, but to change her ways so there was no longer room for him or his kind.

"I swear to God," she said, in a voice vibrating with determination, "I will never again get myself hooked up with a man who doesn't even LIKE women. If I have to live alone the rest of my life, that's the way it's going to be."

As soon as those words came out of her mouth, I knew: Cynthia was having a Scarlett O'Hara Moment.

Remember the scene in "Gone with the Wind," when Scarlett, exhausted and defeated, shook that sad, droopy turnip toward the sky and proclaimed, "As Gawd is mah witness, ah will nevah go hungry again." In that moment, Scarlett became the quintessential survivor, determined to do whatever it took to overcome her circumstances.

Scarlett O'Hara Moments aren't common. It may be possible to live an entire life without one, although I suspect one's character would be lacking important ingredients if that occurred.
S.O. Moments are times when character is forged, when who we've been being suddenly slams on the brakes, looks around, then hooks a radical turn in a different direction. These are the times when every cell in our body cries out, "Never, ever again."

It is in these moments that we reach the bedrock of our character. We reach the end of our needs, desires and/or capacities for tolerating the intolerable and we begin to change.
The real work of 12-step programs always begins with a Scarlett O'Hara Moment: "As God is my witness, I refuse to ruin my life with alcohol, drugs, violence (fill in the blanks) again." Changing one's life is implemented one day -- sometimes one minute -- at a time, but it all starts with that surge of determination that things are going to change, and they're going to change now.

I don't know the mechanism by which this happens, but I know once we've had a Scarlett Moment, circumstances begin to rearrange themselves around our resolve.
At first, it seems as though someone out there wants to test the strength of that resolve. "Oh, yeah? You just think you're through with the wrong sort of man just like that?" Then someone or something very tempting appears in our path and we have the opportunity to prove – to ourselves, if no one else – just how committed we are to this new direction. Joseph Campbell describes this phenomenon in The Hero With a Thousand Faces as encounters with the threshold guardians, who place themselves between the hero and the Golden Fleece to force the hero to discover just what she or he is made of.

One of my S.O. Moments came shortly after my children's dad and I divorced many years ago. A single mother of two small children, I felt utterly unprepared, particularly for the financial demands that suddenly were thrust upon me. I had to borrow money a couple of times from my parents, but finally just couldn't do it any more. "I swear to God," I declared, "I will never borrow one red cent from my parents again."

Within a week, of course, my dog got sick, the car broke down, the babysitter raised her rates and my son had to make an expensive trip to the emergency room. What little savings I had were wiped out and I was completely slammed against a rock, with a hard place looming just ahead.

I knew if I picked up the phone, Mom and Dad would rescue me again. But I was nearly 30 years old and that option had become completely untenable for me. So I made my own way around the catastrophe, inch by inch, and eventually pulled myself out of that particular pit.
In doing, so I began to remake myself in ways I liked much better.

This new sense of self is the most important by-product of these moments. We begin to respect ourselves, to see ourselves as heroes rather than victims.

And as Gawd is mah witness, everything changes after that.

Bouncing Out of the Chute in the Two-Dog Rodeo

2006-10-17T18:10:00.000-07:00

Every morning and every evening these days, I play a challenging game anyone can play (but few would want to).

The alarm clock awakens me before dawn, but it's the expectation of two dogs that actually get my feet on the floor. If I didn't walk them, I could sleep in a little longer, but Bob Dog, the elder statesman of DogWorld, would look at me that way. Amazingly peppy, he's physically sound for such a senior gentleman, partly because of the morning walks we've been taking, except for illness (mine -- Bob is never sick) or sucky weather, for almost all of his 15+ years. We even walked in Wyoming in the winter, and believe me, that's some commitment.

For Bob, I could do no less. It's part of the charter of our friendship. I give him food, water, a warm place to sleep and two walks a day and he gives me all of him, with no reserves and no judgment. Bob is love.

Newer to the equation is the ebullient, sassy, irrepressible Miss Grace. Rescued from a flood and a bad beginning in New Mexico, Miss Gracie is being fostered at my house until I can find the just-right home for her. At four months, she's way more energetic than Bob or I have patience for -- and as for the cat, just forget about that. Sable Cat has taken up residence on my bed and says she'll come down when we get rid of that thing.

Gracie is only in my home temporarily and I could, theoretically, leave her in the back yard while Bob and I take a spin. She's not mine, after all. But Gracie is in her formative months and if she doesn't get trained in being a companionable dog now, who knows what might become of her? I didn't ask for the Gracie assignment, but it came my way and I wouldn't be me if I had just turned the other way.

So, we walk.

Actually, walk is not quite the correct verb, but I'm not sure there is one. From the moment the leashes come out, the bouncing begins. Boing, boing, boing, Bob is bouncing stiffly on his mildly arthritic front legs while I hitch him up, and Gracie is so excited, she's just a little blur careening all around us until she sees me bending down with her leash. She's learned quickly that the game doesn't continue unless she gets the leash on, so now she comes and stands as quietly as she can muster -- which isn't very -- by my side until she, too, is hitched up.

Then, out the front door, down the steps they go and over each other and under and around and over again. Within two minutes, one dog has gone left, the other has gone right, Gracie has seen a squirrel and lunged toward the tree and Bob just wants a moment's privacy, thank you very much. The leashes get tangled, I duck and pirouette and plunge, and occasionally swear in a stage whisper and try simply to hang onto both leashes and also a tiny bit of my dignity.

Eventually, someone poops and a plastic bag of warm dog dirt adds to the challenge. Surely there's a judge somewhere giving me extra points for the difficulty of that maneuver.

But also, somewhere along the way, the leashes untangle, the dogs start trotting in tandem, and I begin to notice the morning stretching and yawning all around me. The streetlights shine muzzily through the fine mist that spritzes my face, the train whistle hoots in the distance and there's nothing in the air that could be mistaken for anything but autumn.

The real dance is the one with my own reactions. If I resist the dogs' energy, they wear me out. If I start thinking the walk should be anything other than exactly what it is, I get upset. If I mentally start tapping my foot and moving on to the next item on my schedule, I end up tripping on either a dog, a loose brick in the sidewalk, or my own impatience.

But if I stay present and if I keep myself interested in the dogs and the moment we find ourselves in -- observing the dynamic of their interactions, the enthusiasm with which they smell abosolutely everything, the delight with which Gracie pounces on the shadow of her own ears, the familiar tick-tick-tick of Bob's nails on the sidewalk -- I stop feeling like a stranger in this world and begin to feel a part of every molecule of it.

The moment passes, the bouncing begins again and soon I'm swearing sotto voce as I try to unwrap the green leash from around my ankle and get the stickers out of Bob's paw and Gracie away from the sticker patch and not drop the warm baggie before we get to the trash bin a few feet away.

Briefly, though, there's been a little pocket of peace on this earth and I've been right in the middle of it, basking in my First Prize win in the Two-Dog Rodeo.

Noticing Where You're Heading Can Keep You From Going Off a Cliff

2006-06-11T11:35:00.000-07:00

Just before my most-beloved-person-in-the-entire-universe-except-perhaps-her-brother-with-whom-she's-equal-in-my-heart daughter left with the also beloved and beautiful spirit known as her boyfriend for points way south (see "Costa Rica," below), I realized I was being a butt. I was so concerned about the potentially horrific stuff that could happen to these two Americans in a part of the world where many people live for a year on less than the price of their truck, I couldn't see what else might be possible.

A seaching self-assessment revealed that I was being unhelpful, neurotic and adding to my daughter's burden, not helping to lighten it. They were taking a risk. They knew it, and they had done what they could to minimize the risk. But, as Ariel pointed out, I hadn't raised her to be someone whose life is given by trying to avoid risk. I raised her to be bold and to face life with gusto. She was driving to Costa Rica, she'd stay in touch and she loves me, thank you very much.

Harrumph.

I could see where this was headed: She and Jereme would drive off down the road, carrying my concerns right along with their surf boards. I would continue to stew and fret and check my phone every few hours for ransom calls from Central America. Mostly, though, I would feel deep in my heart that I wasn't being true to my daughter. In honoring my worries, I'd lost track of honoring her.

So I called the night before she left. She told me what was done and what was left undone and how ready she felt and didn't feel. And then I said, "Listen, Toots, I can see that I haven't been being helpful to you. I want you to know that I think what you're doing is splendid. I'm proud of you and envious of your great adventure. ..." And she said, "Oh, Mommy, you're going to make me cry. ..." So we cried and talked and I told her the opportunity I was holding fast in my mind and heart is for the two of them -- kinder spirits you will never meet -- to present a positive and compassionate face of America to a world that doesn't see us necessarily as either these days.

"And remember," I said, from the fount of my great wisdom, "it isn't an epic adventure if at least part of it doesn't completely suck."

Jereme was heading out the door as this conversation took place: I told her to tell him to take care of my beautiful baby daughter. He called back across the room, powerfully and with complete confidence, "I will protect her with my life."

Then it was my turn to cry. I knew he would protect her with everything he had, if the occasion ever arose. I love him and trust him completely. I just hadn't realized how much until that moment.

So they hit the road with my enthusiastic blessing -- on their trip, on their choices, on them -- instead of me whimpering softly in the background. I heard the sound of a door softly closing and a future unfolding with verve and courage.

Turning around quickly enough to catch my shadow is not my favorite game. I like being comfortable, even if it's in my misery. But what a relief to have averted the emotional catastrophe of alienation from my dearest and best. And you should read her e-mails: People have been kind, the food is great and surf's up.

Glory be!

Equal Time for Austin

2006-04-14T04:56:00.000-07:00

The photo accompanying this post tells you why I don't have as many lovely photos of my son as I do of my daughter, even though they both occupy equal real estate in my heart. From the time he was 4, I couldn't point a camera without him contorting his features into a facial pretzel -- and believe me, he could come up with some doozies, as this one demonstrates. I'm not entirely certain what that impulse was about -- maybe a way to avoid the domination of Mom's doting. Maybe a way to show that he wasn't soft or sentimental, that he was a real guy and guys don't have much need for serious photos or anything that would make him look, God forbid, well-behaved. Or maybe he's just a goofball. He is, after all, my kid, and I was the first person to teach him to make some of those faces.

At any rate, in the interest of equal time, here's the column I wrote when Austin got his license -- a much more harrowing experience for me. He is my firstborn and I was a lot less experienced at letting go back then. I finally had to turn his driver's education over to a friend, lest I drive my son and myself completely round the bend with my worry and overreaction. Sometimes the best parenting is realizing when you've reached your limits and being willing to call in reinforcements.

Life is usually more difficult than it looks
By K.C. Compton
This is so bizarre. I am sitting in the front seat of my car next to this tall, handsome kid with the great grin and the weird sense of humor. We've been here a thousand times before, only this time, the seating arrangement is reversed.
How could I possibly be the mother of this person in the driver's seat of my Toyota? The last time I remember really thinking about my age, I was 26. That was just a few months ago, wasn't it? It certainly couldn't have been more than a decade ago. Or could it?
Here he is sitting behind the wheel, shrugging sheep-ishly and saying 'Sorry, Mom," as the transmission takes a bite out of first gear. And here am I, remarkably calm as I think, "This is the part where I give him his first driving lesson. This is the part where I take deep breaths and don't shriek in wild maternal panic when he gets too close to the curb."
We're on a deserted street, the car has plenty of gas, and I figure there isn't a lot he can do to damage the car since there are no nearby trees or other large, immovable objects to rearrange. In a window of the lone house in the neighborhood a curtain slowly raises and an ancient face peers out.
"Martha, I think those children are doing drugs," he mimics in a wobbly voice as he glances toward the window. The curtain flops back down as if the observer had heard the kid's joke. The Toyota hippety-hops down the street as Austin attempts to conjugate the verb “to clutch.”
"This is harder than it looks," he says as the car dies for the tenth time in two blocks.
It is, indeed. I'm having a remarkably good time, though, considering that my firstborn is teetering on the rim of the nest, about to wing his way out of the shelter I've spent the better part of my adult years constructing for him. I'm letting go, even rejoicing as I do so. I've raised him well; I trust who he is. I know I can back out of the picture and let him take the wheel of his own life, even if only a block at a time.
But it's so much harder than it looks. I worry about other people's role in his future much more than I worry about him. I know if he can see what's coming at him, he's competent enough to handle it. But what if someone or something — a drunk, a disease, a bomb — blind-sides him and he's caught off guard for one vulnerable moment?
A part of me wants always to be riding shotgun in his life, looking for hazards he might not have the experience or the vision to see. An impractical impulse, I know, since steering down my own path in life frequently takes all the resources I can muster. Still, the urge to cover for him grips me and I know I'm not ready to turn him over to the Out There quite yet.
Letting go is a discipline, a learned skill in some ways as mechanical as the interplay between the car's accelerator and clutch. I let out or, the rules, and increase the personal accountability. I pull back on my control of his situations and accelerate my faith in whatever gods may be. And sometimes I must slam my foot hard on the brake to prevent catastrophe.
Learning to release my child to his own future has been a gradual education, one that probably began when he took his first step. Still, letting go is an uneasy process, and I know my efforts are sometimes as clunky as his fledgling attempts at driving.
My hope is that he'll forgive my insufficiencies as I forgive his. By fits and starts he's arriving at his destination. And so, I suppose, am I.
Some things you only learn by doing

Our Baby Daughters Do Grow Up

2006-04-14T04:53:00.000-07:00

Speaking of letting go, this is the column I wrote when Ariel got her driver's license. As you can see, detaching is an ongoing process:

Sixteen years ago I sat on a hospital bed holding in my arms the most perfect baby girl in the universe. I was filled with awe, speechless with wonder over what I had done to earn such bounty. I got to be this miraculous creature's mother.
What blessing, what honor.
Now, she's standing before me, proudly holding a laminated card with her photo and the words "driver's license" on the upper right-hand corner. The braces came off her teeth a few weeks ago. She glances down to talk to me when we're standing face to face.
The signs are everywhere: My little baby daughter isn't such a baby anymore.
The blessing and honor multiply.
I know this is anathema, this bone-rattling affection I have for my teenager. In our society, "teen" has become synonymous with "problem." I'd change this situation overnight if only I could, because it is such a treacherous falsehood. My teenager is wonderful; yours probably is, too.
This child has always instructed me. She still does. She came into this world with such a quiet serenity and easy dignity. At the time of her birth, those were not adjectives I could readily apply to myself. But this quiet, smooth child came from me. If deep calm was her birthright, perhaps somewhere in me was its source. Over the years, with her as a guide, I've found it.
She instructs me in other ways as well. In a recent spat with one of her teachers, I heard both sides of the story and it seemed to me she was being unreasonable. Serenity or no, she was being obstinate, unpleasant and rude.
We hassled back and forth about the situation for a day or so and I simply couldn't imagine why she was being such a stinker about it all. Why couldn't she just capitulate to what the teacher was asking and be done with it?
Then I actually listened to her again. And, although she wasn't articulating it directly, this is what I heard: Her sense of fair play was being transgressed and she was willing to fail the course rather than give in.
Hmm. Right or wrong, that kind of ethical stand requires some sturdy stuff. I wish I had more of it. I wish most of us did.
"You know, Snooks," I said, "When your sense of justice is violated, you turn into a tiger." She smiled and ducked her head. I'd nailed it.
"I love that you're strong-minded and spirited," I continued. "I just hope you'll learn to pick your battles. You're the only one who knows, really, if this one's worth fighting for. Do what you think best — you'll do it anyway — but try to have some sympathy for your teacher."
I try not to influence my children's career choices too much, believing that only they really know what will make them happy for a lifetime. But I do hope when my daughter gets older, she'll use that ardent commitment to fairness to go after the bad guys. Her clarity and passion could move mountains.
At any rate, this situation is typical of the arrangement we seem to have worked out over the years. She teaches me strength; I teach her compassion. She teaches me to focus; I teach her about the bigger picture. She's taught me to be serious; I've instructed her in the ways of silliness.
We never sat down and signed any contracts, but on some level a pact keeps getting made between us. I have a hunch it's a healthier bargain than many parents and children develop together — certainly healthier than the one I had worked out with my own mom and dad.
More often it seems the transactions are thus: The child is disruptive; the parent, long-suffering. The child gets to be a pain in the neck; the parent gets to be right about how rotten children are. The child is kept helpless and weak; the parent gets to be strong and omniscient. It’s a lousy bargain for each.
From the very beginning with both my children I've felt as though I've been given temporary custody of angels. That might sound sloppy and sentimental. So shoot me: I've been an indulgent mother.
The balancing act is to indulge and permit in all the right places, and to come down like a ton of bricks when the situation requires.
So she's asking for my car keys and wants to drive out of my life. She stands in front of me saying, "Just for 30 minutes," and from somewhere behind me I hear voices whispering, "Let go; let go. This is what it's all been leading up to."
I fork over the keys and try to remember to breathe as I watch her go.

It Does Get Easier

2006-04-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

A quick conversation with my daughter and once more, I'm smack in the middle of prying myself loose from fear, dread, and horrifying, meticulously detailed scenarios of how badly things could go wrong.

This response first introduced itself when I let her walk with her brother to the playground down the street from our house. It reappeared when she asked to spend the night at a friend's house and again when she entered junior high school in a new town. In fact, I can safely say that every transition in my daughter's life, all major and many minor, has been accompanied by her mother's hyperactive imagination freaking smooth out. For the most part, I've done a good job of keeping it to myself, although she would dispute that.

(Trust me, baby, I have. You might think I've been a worry wart, but you don't know the half of it. I might have been saying, "Are you sure you know how to cross that street?" but inside I was screaming with certainty that life was getting ready to place-kick you into a terrible, terrible storm and I needed to STOP IT RIGHT NOW!!!!! I just kept my mouth shut about the very worst of it and let you hear what I simply couldn't suppress.)

The initial reaction hasn't gotten any less intense, but I'm happy to report that at some point, it becomes easier to hear fear's static and move on to the next station on the maternal dial.

Except every now and then. Like now.

My daughter, who is a healthy, successful and actually sort of gorgeous adult now, called a few weeks ago and reported that she and her boyfriend have sold her car, bought a used truck, which they are outfitting with a camper shell and maybe a bio-diesel converter, and they are driving from their home in Berkeley to spend four months in Costa Rica, surfing. They will take their boards in the truck and surf all down the Pacific coast.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!! NO, NO, NO, BLOODY HELL, NO!!!!!!

I mean ... unh ... couldn't you just fly down there and send the boards?

No, they can't. Some of their other surfer buddies (my daughter, raised in the desert of New Mexico, now cannot be kept out of the ocean) have made the trip regularly and say it's safe. They've read books, studied maps, talked with experienced travelers. It'll be OK.

I was just finally beginning to make peace with the fact that she shares the ocean with sharks and now, this? Maybe SHE could fly and her boyfriend could find a Spanish-speaking friend and they could drive the boards down and meet Ariel down there?

"Good one, Mom," she says in that voice that tells me this is going nowhere. "That would sort of defeat the 'me-surfing-all-the-way-down-there' part, wouldn't it?"

Oh, lordy. This makes me crazy. There's only one thing to do. I call or email each of my friends and I fret, loudly, long and often. I ask them what they think. "Well," my friend Tim says, "I had a nephew who was going to do that and at the last minute he broke his leg and couldn't go." And I think, "hmmmmm. .... "

When I catch myself seriously thinking that her breaking her leg would be an improvement, I know it's time to rein myself in. I call her.

"Is there anything I can do to dissuade, discourage, distract or just outright prevent you from doing this?" I ask. "Nope," she says. "Not a thing. We're going."

"OK, then," I say. "I support you completely. What do you need from me?"

Because, you see, she actually is one smart cookie. She's also serene and kind-hearted and a wonderfully cool head in emergencies. A registered nurse, she's exactly the kind of person you want standing by your bed when you regain consciousness. And her boyfriend Jereme is also smart and capable and kind. Neither of them has the tiniest shred of the Ugly American to them, no arrogance, no sense of entitlement that says the world owes them something just because of who they are.

And yes, things can happen. Bad stuff. But the way I tried to raise my children, and the way I try to live my life, is that at any given moment, there's an even greater chance that something truly wonderful can happen. Looking back, I can see that not one of those terrible things I imagined actually did happen. Not one. So, expanding my vision beyond my worrisome obsession, I can see that this stands a very good chance of being the adventure of a lifetime. And it's exactly the kind of thing that I would do. In a heartbeat, if only my arms were strong enough to pull me up on a surfboard and I weren't worried about cellulite and losing teeth to a bad wave.

So I bless them on their journey. I'm sending phone cards and sunscreen. And maybe one of those Global Positioning thingies on their truck.

See? That wasn't so difficult, now was it?