Swimming For Shore

The Hunt

January 25, 2012

His job is to figure out where to put his feet, I keep telling myself. My job is to let go, something I’m not very good at. Because out here, on the semi-frozen desert landscape in the hills above Santa Fe, anything can happen. We’re on a coyote hunt. The terrain is unpredictable. It’s riddled with lava rock and gopher holes and patches of ice and swaths of slick mud. There are drops into arroyos and icy banks leading out. I keep imagining my horse stopping short or swerving or slipping and me flying off—my back hitting a rock. Paralysis. Breathing tubes. Wheelchairs and hospital beds. Or I imagine him cut and bleeding. Torn tendons. Broken legs. Months of recovery, if he’s lucky.

We’ve been riding for an hour and I realize that I’ve been looking down almost the entire time—trying to micromanage his every footfall. We’re going fast, at a swift trot most of the time, breaking into a canter and gallop intermittently. Chama loves to run. He’s a thoroughbred who raced until he was four years old. Everything in his breeding tells him to run as fast as he possibly can. I’ve spent the last five years training him to do otherwise. But out here, where the spaces are wide and the skies are even wider, where everything is untamed and boundless, Chama hears nothing but the pulse that says go. I can feel his heartbeat against my leg.

We have about two more hours of riding. Already my legs are tired and my shoulders ache from holding him back. The hounds send up their glad call, telling us they’ve found a scent. Chama has already figured out what this means. He knows that when the hounds howl, we go fast. He tosses his head in the air, trying to pull away from the bit. I want to hold him back. I want to rein in that energy and put it in a safe place where it can never hurt me. But I know that’s not why I do this sport. It’s that feeling of walking on tiptoe on a thin ledge with the city streets swirling below that draws me to it. It’s the reminder that, in the end, we control very little in our lives. That we can never completely protect ourselves. That our time here is thin and tender and clawless.

I let go. Chama leaps forward and we’re off.

My friend had a helmet cam and took this video of the hunt. Chama and I can be seen alongside and in front of her the first few minutes.

Note: No animals were hurt in the writing of this blog. The hounds chase the scent of the coyote, who are way too fast and way too smart to get caught.

Barrabas

Filed Under: Life, Marriage, Motherhood — 11 Comments

November 8, 2011

The forecast was for snow, but when I stepped out of the house, it was clear…a moon just beyond half full so bright it cast shadows on the ground. I didn’t even need to turn on the light to find you. You were just beyond the portale, in the patch of grass by the greenhouse, lying on your side in the shape of a comma. It was cold, in the low 30s, and you were so thin—skin over bones, nothing more—I worried you would freeze. I got a blanket and laid it over you. Then I got a flannel sheet and laid that over you, too. I pet you and you opened your eyes, just barely. You’d been opening them less and less since we got home from my parents’ house that afternoon. As soon as you got out of the car—Dave lifting you gently (it had been a couple months since you’d been able to jump out of the car yourself)—you walked to the far corner of the yard and laid down. Clara sat beside you. She knew you were dying, had known it all weekend, I think, in the way dogs know these things before humans do.

But that morning you seemed fine. Not quite yourself, but okay. You were walking and still wagging your tail. It wasn’t until the afternoon that those things stopped.

Being a Sunday afternoon, the vet was closed. Otherwise I would’ve driven you there and asked them to come to the car and put you down. But now the only options we had were to drive you to the emergency clinic in Santa Fe—45 minutes away—or wait and see what happened. You hated the vet, always had. You hated being messed with. You didn’t like people looking at you too closely, much less poking you. I knew they’d have a hard time finding a vein. I knew you’d hate the car ride. I knew you just wanted to stay where you were—in the shaft of warm November sunlight. So we let you be.

If you were alive in the morning, we’d take you to your regular vet and have them to put you down. But I was doubtful you’d make it through the night.

Now you were lying on the patch of grass, under the moonlight. I wanted to carry you inside. I wanted to bury my head in the fur of your neck and cry and stay there until you died. But you didn’t want that. You wanted to be left alone. I kept reminding myself your death was not about what I needed, but what you needed, so I kissed you on the head and went back inside.

Later I went to check on you and the blankets were deflated, like you’d just disappeared as part of some magic trick. I had a momentary panic that you were already dead. But you weren’t. You were walking towards the back of the house. Dave opened the back door and helped you climb the two steps inside. He had lit a fire and the room glowed. He guided you to your bed and helped you lie down.

It was Sunday night so Noah was watching football and Wyn was practicing her ballet. They’d both spent time petting you and saying goodbye—Wyn crying easily, Noah biting his lower lip. But they’re children so their sadness is fleeting. And you were never really their dog. You belonged to Dave and me. You were our dog before we had kids, when we lived in Chimayó and spent our days building fences and digging ditches and tending to the horses. You loved projects. The second Dave would put on his Carhart overalls and boots, you were at his side, following him onto the property. If it was winter, you would find a patch of sun and lay there while Dave worked. If it was summer, you’d dig a hole under a tree. We’d take you backpacking in the mountains where you and Pablo—the dog who came before you…your best friend and comrade-in-arms—would chase pikas and squirrels. Or we’d take you hiking through the barrancas, where you’d chase rabbits, your high-pitched bark reaching us from miles away that told us you’d found one. You’d follow me on horseback rides. When we left Chimayó to move to the suburbs of Washingon, DC, I think part of your heart died. You couldn’t understand a world of fences and leashes and dog parks. Then Pablo died and I’m pretty sure your heart broke in half. You were eleven then, but had never showed any signs of age until Pablo, thirteen years old and deaf, didn’t hear the garbage truck that was backing up. He died in my arms with you standing beside, panting and bewildered. The light in your eyes already beginning to dim.

Soon after, we adopted Clara, another German Shepherd mix. Two years old. I thought she might bring out some of the youngster in you again, but that part of you belonged to Pablo. Your hips started giving way when you would walk up stairs so I took you to a vet that specialized in geriatrics. He took x-rays and, when he showed me the film, pointed to a small white dot on your flank. “Buckshot,” he said. “Somebody shot him.”

That must have been a long time ago. Before we adopted you. Before we found you at the shelter, two-and-half years old and underweight and scabbed over from fighting. Before you looked up at us, walking the aisles, and pricked your ears and wagged your tail so definitively that neither Dave nor I hesitated before saying, “That’s the one.”

You survived neglect and gunshot. You survived dogfights. You survived run-ins with cows and kicks from horses that collapsed your lung. You survived the harsh desert landscape and its tangle of forgotten barbed wire fences that sliced open your feet and ears. You even survived the suburbs of Washington. When we moved back to New Mexico last December, both Dave and I felt like we’d done right by you. You never belonged back east where space was measured in feet, not acres. Now, you were home.

Walking became harder, but you kept going. I worried about you constantly. You were so old—fourteen by the time we moved back. You couldn’t live forever, right? But you didn’t seem to know or care about your age. This summer, I took you, Clara and the kids backpacking. Dave was out of town, so it was just the five of us. The hike to our campsite was only a mile, but I worried you wouldn’t be able to make it. You did. You were so happy to go. I think you could’ve had just two legs and still you would’ve made it. That night we slept in the tent, as we’d done so many times when you were younger. I woke up to feel your body’s warmth pressed against my legs; your muzzle resting on my thigh.

It’s so hard to reconcile you then with you Sunday night, lying in your bed almost motionless. The kids were now asleep and it was after ten o’clock. Dave put the blow-up mattress in the living room, close to your bed. We’d both sleep there that night. I told Dave we should get ready for bed separately. I didn’t want to leave you alone for even a few minutes. I went upstairs to our bathroom first and brushed my teeth and washed my face that was swollen from crying. I put on the shorts and t-shirt I sleep in and grabbed my robe and slippers. I came downstairs, crawled onto the air mattress and started reading my book while Dave went upstairs.

That’s when your breathing became labored. You were awake now, looking at me with eyes that seemed afraid. I climbed out of bed and sat on the floor next to you. That’s when I heard the rattle in your throat and knew it was going to be over soon. I called to Dave and told him he should come downstairs. He did and we both sat there with you. I lifted your head onto my lap.

I don’t want to remember your death. I don’t want to remember you gasping for air and your legs twitching and the light going out of your eyes. I don’t want to remember crying as I told you it was okay to let go and that I loved you and that there would never be another dog like you. I don’t want to remember the grief veiling Dave’s face or the sobs that pulled his shoulders forward.

I keep trying to replace these images with happy ones—of you running through the mountains with Pablo. Of you in the back of our pick up truck in Chimayó, barking the moment the engine turned over, hanging out the window of the camper shell and lunging at the dogs that would chase us down County Road 101. Of you lying in the sun with your ears pricked. “Proud warrior,” we’d call you when you looked like that. Of your definitive wag.

But I can’t. I think that’s because my heart knows, even if my mind doesn’t want to, that being with you when you died was a gift, too. And even though part of me wishes we could’ve bypassed the pain, I feel like you dying in your bed, in your home, without needles or the presence of a vet you didn’t trust, was really the only way for you to go. You were never a dog who wanted to be coddled. You never wanted to sleep on the couch. You never liked being pet for too long. You distrusted too much attention.

So you died on your own. I don’t think you’d have wanted it any other way.

Yesterday morning Dave and I took your body to the vet to be cremated. Afterwards we drove to Chimayó and parked the truck at the base of the trail we used to hike with you everyday. In so many ways, you were our connection to our life there that now seems so distant. The life we had before kids came along, when our marriage was still new and our devotion to one another simpler. When our hearts were younger and less scarred. You were the one who reminded us daily that the span of our lives stretched beyond the present. A link to the past that was now, inexplicably, gone. As if our memories alone weren’t enough to hold onto it.

When we got home, Clara was laying in the back of the Subaru, where we had put your body before transferring it to the truck. She had jumped the fence—something she’d never done before—and climbed back there to be closer to you. You cast a net of love far and wide.

Last night I walked outside and looked to the grass where you had laid the night before. The shape of your body still visible in the blades that were folded onto their sides. I walked to it and put my hand on the ground. The forecast had been a day off. Low clouds covered the moon and wet, heavy snowflakes were beginning to fall.

Why the Fuck Aren’t You Reading My Blog?

Filed Under: Life, Neuroses — 7 Comments

November 2, 2011

Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t really want to know. I’ve never been one who wants to hear people’s honest opinion and never understood those who do. If you think I’m too loud or annoying or unattractive, don’t tell me that. Just stop returning my phone calls and emails. Unfriend me on Facebook (and don’t email me telling me you’re unfriending me). When I see you at the grocery store and get that big, eager grin on my face and shout your name and wave a little too enthusiastically while you’re perusing the enema selection, just give me a half smile and push your cart the other way. I’ll get the hint eventually. I’ve lived most of my life in a self-delusional bubble and it’s worked pretty well for me. I’m not interested in changing.

So I don’t really want to know why you don’t read my blog. I don’t want to hear that you find it boring or self-absorbed or repetitive. Or that you like it okay, if only my writing style weren’t the literary equivalent of a Carrot Top performance. Believe me, I tell myself that shit all.the.time. No need for outside reinforcement. Besides, I choose to believe that people who feel this way about my writing live sad, lonely little lives surrounded by ferrets and old copies of Good Housekeeping, and I’d rather you not ruin that by being someone who has a very full life surrounded by dogs and horses and kids and books by Hemingway. Because then I’d feel like shit.

But I do want to know why, since the new Facebook format took over, the number of people who read my blog has been cut by more than half. Half, people. And when that number was so pathetically low anyway, losing half becomes dangerously close to zero.

What’s more, those people who are reading my blog (who register on my statcounter as “unique users”) aren’t really reading my blog. They’re people who are finding my blog by googling these disturbing phrases:

1. “air hostess boobs and panty”: Someone from India searched on this. Dude, in the U.S. we call them “flight attendants.” Your porn search will be much more productive if you use the proper terminology.

2. “boys squeezing girls boobs”: I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing this reader from Duluth, Georgia, is a 12-year-old churchgoing boy who recently got an Internet connection.

3. “my vagina has a hard painful knot on it”: I wish I were making that up. I’m not. Someone in Kansas City, Missouri, needs to get to a doctor STAT.

4. “my bareback whoring wife”: Seems like someone in ålesund, More Og Romsdal, Norway needs to get to a divorce lawyer STAT.

Whenever I see searches like these, I think of how disappointed they must be when my blog pops up, and they click on it, and then commence to reading about my woes as a mother who can’t decide whether to let her daughter cheerlead.

Whatever. I like to remind myself that this blog has never been about amassing a huge following. Frankly, I’m too lazy to do the work that would require. Rather, it’s a creative outlet and a chance for me to hone my writing skills and, I hope, one day be a for-public-consumption-journal that I can pass on to my kids. But come on. If the only people reading my blog are pervs and women with really troubling gynecological problems, what’s the point?

So I’m going to tell you the same thing I tell my children when I ask them to put on clothes that don’t make them look like they live in either a cardboard box behind the 7-11 or in a Katy Perry video: I don’t ask much of you. I’m asking you this. Do it for me. Please.

Gifted

Filed Under: Life, Motherhood — 6 Comments

October 25, 2011

My son was recently tested for the gifted and talented program at his school. When they told me they wanted to test him, here were the thoughts I had (in this order):

1. Wow, that’s great!

2. But maybe that’s not so great.

3. What if they test him and his scores aren’t high enough so he doesn’t get into the program?

4. His two best friends are in the gifted program. He’s going to feel dumb if they’re in it and he’s not.

5. What if his scores are high enough and he gets into the program and then he can’t cut it?

6. What if he gets in but his sister is never tested, or is tested but doesn’t get in…will she (and he) grow up thinking he’s The Smart One and she’s Not?

7. What if he gets in and this makes him think that he’s super, super smart and therefore entitled?

8. What if he becomes one of those people (and there are many where we live) who is gifted academically but completely stunted emotionally and socially so he grows up being able to tell you the age of the universe down to the millionth place, but can’t carry on a conversation about the nice weather we’ve been having without making the person he’s talking to want to stab a rusty fork into their thigh to dull the pain?

I should preface all this by saying that I’m skeptical of the emphasis we (our schools, our culture, the human race) put on academic success. As a kid, I loved school and was a good student, but I wasn’t a great one. I was average. I took only a handful of advanced classes. I was never in the gifted program. Aside from writing, nothing I did stood out in any particular way. I never took an IQ test, but I’m guessing I wouldn’t have done very well if I had. My SAT scores were shameful. (When I confessed to a friend once what they were he said, “Don’t they give you that score just for filling out your name?”)

When I got to college I decided that I was going to be a great student. I studied almost constantly and took as many graduate-level courses as I could. I got into the honors program and graduated second in my political science class. After graduation, I moved to Washington, DC, for a Senate internship. I applied for every available job on Capitol Hill and expected the offers to come rolling in. They didn’t. Because everybody else who was looking at my resume knew what I yet didn’t: academic success means very little.

My husband worked on the Hill and in government relations for years. He observed that the people who run Washington are not the valedictorians, but the C students who were the social chairmen of their fraternities. And he’s right. The most successful people I knew in Washington were the ones who understood people and how they relate to one another and what motivates them.

Now, I realize that Washington is not the rest of the world. I also realize there are jobs where academic success matters a lot. (Like those in, say, academics.) But I think they’re are in the minority. More importantly, I think very little of what matters in life can be tied to academic prowess. I remember walking through the halls of my high school at my 20-year reunion and stopping at the plaque that listed the National Merit Scholars. I scanned the list and was surprised to realize that none of the award winners I knew had done anything particularly spectacular in their careers. Nor did any of them seem happier than the rest of us. Some of them, in fact, I would describe as unhappy and unfulfilled.

I was telling this to a friend over lunch recently and she recounted the story of her high school class valedictorian who went on to Harvard. A few years after graduation, another friend ran into her at the gym and noticed scars running along her wrists.

Being gifted is not always a gift.

This is what I thought of as I dropped off Noah for his three-hour test, telling him, “I don’t want you to think that this test means you’re smart or dumb or anything else. It just tells us information about how your brain works. That’s all.”

“I knooooow, Mom,” he said in that exasperated way that means: you’ve told me that a billion times. Let it go already.

A few weeks later his school called with the results: he qualified for the program. A meeting was set up with the gifted teacher, Noah’s regular teacher and the evaluator who administered the tests. During the meeting, they shared with Dave and me the test results and what they meant about how Noah learned and processed information. Then they began completing the paperwork required by the state for children admitted to the program, which involved asking Dave and me a series of questions: Did he exhibit any gifted qualities at home? (It’s definitely not doing the dishes.) Were there any areas in which he struggled? (Doing the dishes.) But one question left me momentarily speechless: “What’s your postsecondary plan for Noah?”

Dave and I exchanged looks.

“What do you mean?” Dave asked.

“Well, when he graduates from high school, what’s your plan for him?”

I looked at Dave again, then back to the teacher. “I don’t have a plan for him,” I said. “That’s for him to figure out.”

The teacher seemed to take pity on our inability to answer a pretty straightforward question and offered an example, “Some parents will say things like, ‘backpack through Europe,’ or ‘go to college on the east coast.’”

I’ve long maintained that parents’ expectations of their children should not extend beyond two things: 1) work hard, and 2) be kind to other people. Anything more than that is unfair. It is their life to live, not yours. You already had your chance.

Dave and I looked at each other again, at a complete loss as to what to say.

Finally, I stammered out, “I want him to find what he loves and pursue it passionately.”

***

The other night I picked Noah up from football practice and brought him home. Dave was getting Wyn from ballet and would be home later. This meant that, for about an hour, I had Noah all to myself, something that rarely happens. As I made dinner, Noah sat at the counter and read to me from a book of jokes he got at the library that day.

“Hey, Mom, what do you call a dog with no legs?”

“What?”

“Matt.”

“What do you call a boy who’s been caught by a tribe of cannibals?”

“What?”

“Stu.”

“What kind of football player gives refunds?”

“What kind?”

“A quarterback.” This sends Noah into a fit of giggles. “Get it? Quarterback? Like he gives you a quarter back.”

I smiled at him. “I get it. Read me another one.”

“What game do tornadoes like to play?” He doesn’t even wait for my response. “Twister!” His gap-toothed grin takes up the surface area of almost his entire face. “Get it? Twister!”

I put down the spoon I was using to stir the spaghetti and walked over to him. I wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my face in his mop of red hair that he refuses to cut. And I realized then that the plan for my son is this: to go into the world and be loved as he deserves to be loved. I want nothing more for him–and nothing less. How could I?

Like Mother Like Daughter Like Son

Filed Under: Life, Motherhood — 2 Comments

October 5, 2011

My daughter thinks I’m perfect.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Because no one is perfect. Especially not me. Of all the imperfect human beings populating this marble, I might be one of the least perfect of all.

But her seven-year-old eyes don’t see this. Wyn thinks I’m the best mom, the most beautiful woman, the best equestrian, the best singer and the best dancer (don’t laugh) the world has ever seen. The only area in which she sees my perfection as lacking is cooking—and even then she’s more forgiving than she should be. “You make the best popcorn in the whole wide world, Mommy!”

When I cleaned out the garage a couple weeks ago, finally revealing large areas of concrete previously hidden by boxes we’ve moved four times and never opened and wheelbarrows and old bikes, I inadvertently created—in Wyn’s mind—a perfect dance studio. She asked me if she could bring down her little portable stereo and practice ballet. “Of course,” I told her. And then I told her how I used to do the same thing as a kid growing up in Houston. (For the better part of my eighth and ninth grade years, I would ask my dad to back the cars out of the garage and then put on a leotard and leg warmers. I’d bring down my boom box and cassette tapes—Bryan Adams’ “Reckless” was a regular go-to—and then close the garage door and dance as long as I could stand the heat [being Houston, the garage was easily 8,000,000 degrees in the summer] or until my older brother and his friends started playing basketball in the driveway, threatening to reveal my shameful Flashdance-inspired secret.)

After I told Wyn that I used to dance in the garage, too, she threw her arms around my legs, looked up at me and said excitedly, “I’m just like you, Mommy!”

I hugged her and kissed her forehead. “No, you’re not. Thank God.”

She looked crestfallen. “Why?”

“Sweetie, you’re your own person. We’re a lot alike in a lot of ways. But you’re not just like me. You’re you.”

“But I want to be like you.”

“I promise you, you don’t.”

I know she’ll figure all of this out on her own. In a few more years she’ll talk back and roll her eyes at me and cringe when I sing or dance (and “literally die of embarrassment” if I ever do either in front of her friends). She’ll think I’m stupid and ugly and that I wear awful clothes.

A couple months ago I was reading a book aloud to Noah and Wyn. In it, the protagonist’s parents are getting divorced and the girl feels like it’s her fault that her dad isn’t coming over anymore because she had previously thought how much easier it would be if her dad wasn’t around. I stopped reading and said to the kids, “This is really, really important to remember as you grow up: your thoughts do not have power.”

Blank stares.

“It’s really easy to believe that what you think is going to make something happen. Especially when you think bad things. But it’s not true.”

More blank stares.

“Can you just keep reading, Mom?” asked an impatient Noah, who realized long ago that I’m not perfect and already, at the tender age of eight, spends most of his time rolling his eyes at me. He especially hates these “teachable moments” that I lock onto like a pit bull with a bone in its jaw.

“No. I want you to understand this.”

He rolled his eyes.

“Like someday you’re going to think, ‘I hate my mom. I wish she would die.’”

Wyn gasped in horror. “I would NEVER think that!”

“Oh, yes, you will,” I told her.

“No, I won’t!”

“You will.”

“Why?”

“Because every kid thinks that about their parents one time or another. It’s just how the world works. But the important thing to remember is, even if you think it, it doesn’t make it happen.”

Several days later, as she and I were walking the dogs, she asked me, kind of quietly, “Why will I someday want you to die?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Because when kids grow up they want really bad to do their own thing and they don’t want their mom or dad telling them no. And I’ll tell you no and it will make you really, really angry.”

She grabbed my hand and said in a small voice, “I don’t think I’ll ever feel that way about you.”

If you think I’m going to say that I wish I could freeze that moment in time so nothing would ever change, you’re wrong. I mean, yes, okay, it’s very dear and I’m thankful for it and inevitably I’ll read this blog when my daughter is 14 and say, “Where did the time go?” all wistful like and look at pictures of her when she was a baby and somehow try to will that little girl back to life. But there’s part of this side of her that worries me a little. The part that’s so eager to please. So intent on saying the right thing. So firmly steeped in the idea of perfection—as if there was such a thing.

It’s interesting: I have many more conflicts with Noah than I do with Wyn. I get angry with him more. I’m less patient. I’m harder on him. Although I would never label Wyn the “easy one” and Noah the “difficult one,” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel that way more often than not. (This reminds me: The other day, after a picnic at the kids’ school, I saw a mom whose son is friends with Noah circling the campus, looking for one of her kids. “Did you lose one?” I asked her. “Yes!” she answered. “And I lost the good one.”)

Yet even if I have more challenges with Noah, I get him in a way that I don’t my daughter. In fact, it is Noah, not Wyn, who is more like me. Noah’s obsession with football mirrors my own obsession with horses as a kid—and, yes, okay, as an adult (which I try to remind myself when Noah is recounting in painstaking detail yet another play of yet another NFL game that I care nothing about). He is fiercely independent and has a maddening stubborn streak (two traits for which I’m infamous in both my family and my marriage). He’s outgoing and will do pretty much anything for a laugh. He’s already asked for his own Facebook page.

Wyn, on the other hand, tends to be on the quieter and shier end of the spectrum. She likes things to be pretty and nice and predictable. She plays by herself most of the time. She would much rather spend time with the family than her friends and if she senses any acrimony, she immediately tries to smooth things over.

Because I relate more to Noah’s approach to life, even as we lock horns, I don’t worry about him as much. I know how his personality operates and, mostly, how it will serve him as he moves through the world. But Wyn…I’m not so sure. I find myself wishing she were more assertive and outgoing. I worry that she’ll try to please people to the detriment of her own wellbeing. I worry she’ll get lost.

As I write this, I know for certain just three things:

1) Kids change. Who Noah and Wyn are now is not necessarily who they’ll be in 10 or 15 or 20 years. I know I’ve gotten shier and more reclusive as I’ve gotten older. I’m also less stubborn and less obsessive. We adapt to the changes life throws at us, as well as the vagaries of friends and culture. The fact is, I can’t possibly know the people they’ll become as they grow up.

2) They are who they are and what I have to say about it matters almost not at all. So getting my panties in a twist about whether Wyn will assert herself enough is kind of ridiculous. It’s also not really fair. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t make it wrong. Her introversion is not an affliction. Nor is her desire for things to be harmonious and trouble-free. In a world where civility is bordering on extinction, we could probably use a few more people who want to keep the peace.

3) They are their own people. Wyn is not just like me, but neither is Noah. They both have plenty of their dad in them, too, and plenty of other stuff that has nothing to do with either of us. And even though it’s impossible as a parent not to see those traits that are so similar to our own and say, “Ah, yes! That’s my kid!”, I would argue that it doesn’t do our kids any good.

I told Noah the other day that I hated to break it to him, but he looks exactly like I did at his age, just with red hair. He got a huge, embarrassed grin on his face. “Oh, Mom! No! Don’t tell me that!”

“It’s true. The freckles, the smile, the eyes. You’re going to grow into a beautiful young woman.”

“Moooooom! Gross!”

Wyn, overhearing this, said, “What about me, Mommy? Do I look just like you?”

“No,” I told her. “You’re much prettier.”

“But you’re beautiful! I want to look just like you!”

I took her cheeks between my hands and placed my nose firmly against hers and said, as plainly as I could, “Careful what you wish for.”

The Trail

Filed Under: Horses, Life — 8 Comments

September 27, 2011

Chama and I are climbing to the top of the bluff. Or mesa. I’m not sure what it is. I hadn’t planned to ride him up here. I hadn’t planned on anything, really. I’d set out on the trail this perfect fall morning of blues and yellows and reds with nothing in mind other than to explore. There are hundreds of miles of trails back here, on this sprawling swath of public land just a five-minute ride from the barn, yet I’ve only ridden over a small fraction of them. I set out to see more.

But I didn’t expect to end up here—on a steep trail carved out of stone from millions of years of rainfall so it is less of a trail now and more of a canal. A foot deep. Maybe two feet wide, which seems much too narrow for a horse. I worry the rock will cut Chama’s legs. I worry that his metal shoes will slip on the polished rock and he’ll stumble and land on his knees. I envision torn tendons and puncture wounds.

But Chama is handling it well. He doesn’t seem particularly anxious and he’s figuring out where to put his feet without my help, so I stand in my stirrups to give his back more freedom to really climb, which is what we’re doing now. Up and up and up. I notice out of the corner of my eye blood beading in a line across my bicep, the consequence of misjudging a piñon tree’s reach earlier on the trail. I look to the ridgeline above us jutting its bouldered jaw and instinctively scan it for mountain lions, imagining for probably the hundredth time how terrifying it would be to encounter one out here. On this trail, at this moment, I would be dead. So would Chama. We have no room to turn around. And even if we could, there’s no way we could outrun it—not here, on this slippery rock face that’s barely wide enough for Chama to walk, much less run.

This is what would happen: Chama would see the lion first—or, no, he would smell it. And as soon as he did, he would start snorting and pulling. I wouldn’t know what was going on. I’d sit back in the saddle and shorten my reins and try to regain control, but it would be useless. Then the mountain lion would come into view above us. I’d feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Chama would turn to run. I wouldn’t be able to stop him. But it’s so narrow he’d have rear onto his back legs to do it. Everything might end there. Because the trail is so steep, as he rears, there’s a good chance he’d lose his balance and fall backwards, tumbling down the face of the bluff. He’d land on top of me. A half ton of flesh and muscle and bone smashing into me as my back hits a rock. It might mean instant death or at least instant paralysis, so I wouldn’t feel the jaws of the lion close around my skull. If he manages to keep his balance, and I manage to stay on, we would be scrambling down jagged rocks and fallen trees. I can feel Chama’s hind end collapse under me as the lion sinks its claws into his flanks. Or maybe one of his paws would swipe my shoulder first, pulling me down.

No matter how many times I replay it, it never ends well. (I really need to stop reading National Geographic.)

But I see no mountain lions. And I remind myself that the chances of encountering one are slim. And even if we did, it would probably be afraid of this large horse with a tall rider astride. I’m betting my life, literally, on the belief that wild animals are more afraid of us than we are of them. So I ride on.

We reach the top, which, it turns out, is not a mesa, but a point. The rock face trail descends immediately down the other side so steeply I can’t even see it. I decide it’s just too risky to continue. I don’t know the condition of the trail on the other side and I don’t want to get into a spot that I can’t get out of. Luckily, the trail widens just enough so I can turn Chama around. But it isn’t easy. It requires him to scramble up several other rocks. He slips—his shoes scraping against the rock like someone trying to start a fire with flint—but he quickly regains his balance and pivots so he’s pointing back in the direction we came from.

But before we start down, I look around me. And when I do, I stop breathing. I see layer upon layer of mesas distinguishable only by shafts of light that cut into the deep canyons between them and tumble towards the Rio Grande. Clouds as thin as a single breath hover above. For what feels like a full minute, I barely move. Nothing else does either.

In that moment, I remember a good friend of mine who was once a nun telling me that she didn’t believe me when I said I don’t believe in God. “I’m not trying to convert you,” she said, “but when I hear you talk about the mountains and horses, you’re talking about God. You just call it something else.”

Chama and I begin to descend the bluff. When we get to the bottom, the trail crosses a dry sandy streambed and then up the other side. The light reaches its long fingers to us through the ponderosa pines. I see a pile of logs to the side of the trail and ask Chama to canter. I point him towards it. He pricks his ears. I squeeze my legs around him and he sails over it.

Maybe my friend was right.

9/11

Filed Under: Life — 5 Comments

September 11, 2011

I really wanted to avoid writing about 9/11. I really wanted to avoid thinking about 9/11. I had no plans to do a blog this week because I didn’t know how I could write something and not address it. Part of this is because it’s such a painful memory. Part of it is because I’m not sure I’m very proud of the country we’ve become in the intervening decade. Part of it is just 9/11 fatigue. But I think, mostly, it’s because I don’t know what to say. Not just “I don’t know what to say that hasn’t been said before,” but really: I don’t know what to say.

I remember when Dave’s mom died unexpectedly at the age of 56. It was the most tragic death I had experienced. It was sudden and fierce and stole the life of someone who was young and healthy and had so much left to give. She would never teach again. She would never see two of her sons marry. She would never meet her grandchildren. It shook me to the core.

When I returned to work after burying her, I couldn’t believe how many people avoided me. People who had been my friends, whom I had coffee or lunch with daily, whom I met for drinks on Fridays, stopped coming by my office. There was one friend in particular who said nothing to me when I came back and actively avoided being alone with me. When he finally came into my office, several weeks after my return, he said, “I’m sorry I haven’t said anything to you. I’m not very good with the whole condolences thing. I didn’t know what to say.” I wanted to slap him and yell, “This isn’t about you, dickhead. Say you’re sorry to hear the news. Say you’re here for me if I need you. Don’t say anything at all and give me a fucking hug. I don’t care, but your feelings of inadequacy or awkwardness are not an excuse to ignore a friend who’s hurting.”

But I didn’t. I knew that he was dealing with it the best he could. And I knew, just a few short weeks before my mother-in-law died—before I had experienced first hand such a profound sense of loss and realized that all anyone wants to hear in times like that is “I’m so, so sorry”—I probably would’ve done the exact same thing.

And here I am, on the anniversary of 9/11, basically avoiding the subject. Wishing it away.

Of course, it’s different. I’m not comforting anyone in particular. No one is expecting anything from me. I doubt any of you logged onto my blog this morning, expecting a post and feeling slighted when you didn’t see one.

But the essence is the same: I don’t know what to say.

Maybe that’s because there really isn’t anything to say—or rather, there’s nothing for me to say. My experience of how 9/11 changed me or didn’t change me is inconsequential. Talk about a flea on the ass of a mule trudging into the Grand Canyon. How I feel about the murder of 3,000 people is even less significant.

So instead I’ll tell you this:

A few days ago I was hiking through the desert to the canyon edge that looms over the Rio Grande. We’ve been getting a ton of rain lately (by desert standards) so everything is alive. Young grasses are poking through the sandy floor. Small pools of water have collected in rocks. Flowers are blooming against dead piñons. And I was struck by how little encouragement life needs to prevail. After one of the hottest and driest years in the state’s history—a time when everything should have been killed or scorched to the point of no return—those seeds survived. They didn’t die despite everything indicating they would. The desert is never really dead; it’s simply waiting for the right moment to blossom. Even when we’re surrounded by death, life edges it out and reminds us that survival is what we do best. Our hearts know no other way.

Lonewolf

Filed Under: Horses, Life, Marriage, Motherhood — 10 Comments

September 2, 2011

There was a moment, as I was driving my truck a few weeks ago with my two dogs in the cab and my horse in the trailer, that I got nervous. I was driving north on highway 285 to Parker, Colorado, just south of Denver, for a horse show. I’d been on the road for about two hours, and still had five or six to go. I’d just driven through Carson National Forest—the stretch of asphalt winding ahead of me, lying across the desert hills like ribbon. It was then that I realized I hadn’t seen any other cars for the last half hour.

I tend to be on the solitary end of the spectrum. I don’t mind being alone and often prefer it. And, in truth, I had been looking forward to this trip all by myself—with just my dogs and horse for company—for weeks. It would be a chance to get away from the demands of the kids and the stifling routine of daily life. A chance to be alone with nothing but my thoughts, the open road, and my iPod. No one to make bad music requests (really, if I hear Miley Cyrus’s Party in the U.S.A. one.more.time). No backseat driving. No bathroom stops except for me (and the dogs). It would be exactly what I needed. And the distance wasn’t a concern. I’ve made a lot of long solo road trips over the years–to Austin, to Arizona. One summer a couple years ago, I drove from New Mexico to Virginia alone.

But on this lonesome stretch of road, I found myself getting worried. Dave had told me before I left that the pressure on one of the trailer tires was low. “You should stop at the gas station before you drive very far and fill it.” I told him I would. But I didn’t. It was stupid. I should have. I had every intention of doing it, I really did. But then once I loaded Chama and was on the road, the idea of pulling over right away sounded so…so…slow. So I kept going. I told myself that I’d have to pee in an hour anyway, right when I’d be turning onto 285. There was a gas station on the corner. I’d stop there.

And I did. But right as I was pulling into the parking lot another car pulled in front of me and parked at the air station. The man who climbed out of the car looked like he’d been on an all-night bender. When he turned to look at me, I saw a huge bruise around his eye that looked suspiciously like a fist. I noticed the woman sitting in the car had a bruise around her eye also. Their tire was flat. I decided to keep driving.

But now, here I was, a good 50 miles from the next town, and not a soul in sight. What if I got a flat? I had a thousand-pound horse in the trailer. And although I have a special jack made specifically for horse trailers so you don’t have to offload the animal to change the tire, the fact was, I’d never changed a flat in my life—on any car, much less a trailer. I have roadside assistance through my insurance company, but I had no cell coverage out here in the middle of nowhere.

I realized that my shoulders had slowly inched up and were hovering around my ears.

This was silly, I told myself. I didn’t have a flat. My truck was running fine. My trailer was almost brand new. Besides, worrying solves nothing. What was that quote I saw posted on someone’s Facebook page once: Worry wastes creative energy on something you don’t want to happen.

So I willed my shoulders back down to their normal altitude and told myself everything would be fine. And everything was. No flat tires. No being stranded on the side of the road. I got to Walsenberg, Colorado, where I’d pick up the freeway, and decided to stop for lunch. I found a shady little park by the railroad tracks adjacent to the town welcome center, which looked like it hadn’t been open since the Carter administration. But it was quiet and no one was around—the perfect place to let the dogs out for a bit and give Chama a break from the jostling of a moving trailer. After the dogs had their little stretch, I put them back in the cab, lifting my 14-year-old dog, Barrabas, who can no longer jump. As I was lifting him, a van pulled up and parked a few spaces from us. A train was now chattering down the tracks, blowing its deafening whistle.

The van door opened and a 50-something woman emerged. “I had an old dog, too. I just put him down in February.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I replied. “That’s rough.”

“It was. Broke my heart.”

“I bet. When my dog dies, I’ll be a wreck. He’s the best dog we’ve ever had.”

We spend a few minutes talking about her dead dog. And then she says to me, “I have two rats now.”

Silence.

“They’re sewer rats. They live in the van. They’re really friendly.”

I want to run screaming down the street, but she’s nice and she’s got rats…so what? So instead I said, “I’ve heard that’s true about rats.” And I had. A couple people I know in research have said it’s hard to do experiments on rats because they tend to grow attached to their humans.

“Yeah, they come when I call them and everything.”

“Oh.”

“But I’m going to have to get rid of them.”

“Why’s that?”

“The smell.”

Silence.

“It’s awful. I clean their cage a lot. But still, the van smells.”

Imagining her rats in a cage in the back of her stinky van made me want to barf.

I did the “well-it-was-nice-talking-to-you” wave and started to walk away. But she kept talking, “Where you headed?”

I have a pretty good sense for people, I like to think. I’ve got a very strong creep radar. And that single question gave me the creepy vibe. I imagined her luring me into her stinky van and taking me to a trailer in the middle of nowhere that she shares with her boyfriend who says things like, “You’ve got a real purty mouth.”

I was vague, “Up near Denver.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“New Mexico.”

“How long have you been on the road?”

“A few hours.” This conversation was ending now. “I’m going to go grab some lunch. Have a good trip.” And I walked away, down Walsenberg’s main street lined with 19^th century brick buildings that would be charming if they didn’t look so empty and sad. I found a diner and ducked in, where a woman the age of Methuselah sat in a booth alone in the corner and another woman the age of Methuselah’s oldest daughter stood behind the counter. I ordered a BLT and a Diet Coke.

“For here or to go?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that eating it there would depress me beyond the reach of an elephant-sized dose of Paxil. “To go, please.”

I walked back to my truck, hoping the Rat Whisperer was gone. She was. I opened Chama’s trailer door so he could see the sights. He sniffed my food eagerly. “You don’t eat meat,” I reminded him. I gave him a potato chip instead.

I sat on the curb next to him and continued to eat my sandwich. Then I saw a man walking down an alleyway adjacent to the park. He started crossing the grass toward me. I stood up, got out my keys.

“Hi ma’am.”

“Hi.” I said flatly, giving him a look that made it clear I had no interest in chatting. Because I knew this guy wanted something. And I knew he had a story.

“We’re trying to get my daughter up to Pueblo, and I’m trying to make some money. I have some real pretty jewelry I’d sell you real cheap.” He started to reach into his pocket.

“Not today,” I said, closing the trailer door and climbing into my truck. “Good luck.”

Up I-25 to my exit. Almost eight hours on the road. It was five o’clock. I was ready to be there. But I realized about a half hour after I exited that I was lost. Well, not lost, but I must have missed a turn. Gas station. I need to fill up anyway. As I did, I asked the guy at the pump next to me for directions.

I’m about to make a sweeping generalization, but I think it’s true: Don’t ask a man shorter than you for directions. Because even if he doesn’t know the answer, he’s never going to admit it. I think this is doubly true if you’re driving a one-ton diesel pickup truck and hauling a horse trailer and he’s driving a Lexus convertible.

“What’s the address?” he asked. “I’ll just type it into my GPS.”

I explained that there really wasn’t an address. It was a very big equestrian center, and the address would inevitably be the business office, which may or may not be anywhere close to where I needed to go. So instead I showed him the printed directions (yes, I drove using printed directions and an actual atlas, just like the pilgrims did). “I just need to find Bayou Gulch. Once I find that street, I can find the show grounds.”

He didn’t have a clue where Bayou Gulch was. But he couldn’t just say that. After a lot more talkity talk that was getting me nowhere, I just said, “You know what, I’m pretty sure I can find it. I think I just need to go back the direction I came. Thanks so much for your help.”

He actually seemed kind of pissed as he drove away.

So after a few more wrong turns I saw the equestrian center and pulled into the parking lot of the—you got it—business office, which of course was closed because it was after five. It’s a very fancy place and it was clear some sort of fundraising event was underway, complete with women in high heels and skirts and hats. I walked into this wearing my jeans with manure on the cuffs and a shirt smeared with green horse slobber and a baseball hat. I asked a very nice man who was clearly drunk whether he had any idea where the Western Area Complex of the show grounds were. He was taller than me, so he confessed that he did not. I wandered out of the building and saw a maintenance guy driving a golf cart. I flagged him down. Yes, he knew where the grounds were. He pointed me in the right direction and, finally, I arrived.

Offload the horse. Haul hay. Haul water buckets. Haul manure. Walk the dogs. Feed the dogs. Find the port-a-john. Ride the horse. Hot walk the horse. Feed the horse. Unhook the trailer and drive into town looking for a restaurant.

Chili’s.

Perfect.

I headed straight to the bathroom, where I washed my face and hands and arms. The water in the sink turned a soupy brown. I did an assessment in the mirror. I looked like a trucker. I went back to the hostess stand.

“How many?”

“Just one.”

“Oh. Well, wouldn’t you rather just sit in our lounge?” She gestured toward the bar. “You can seat yourself.”

“Okay.” So I did, in a booth facing a TV screen broadcasting a Steelers pre-season game.

The waiter came to my table. A cute, enthusiastic guy in his early 20s, just like a Chili’s waiter should be.

“Will someone be joining you?”

“No, just me tonight.”

“Oh!” he seemed excited by this. “Lonewolfing it tonight, huh?”

“Yep.”

***

After dinner, I went back to the show grounds. I filled Chama’s water buckets and walked him again, trying to keep his muscles loose for competition the next day. I walked the dogs again, too. Finally, at 11 o’clock, I brushed my teeth in the spigot near my trailer and threw some water on my face. I put on a clean t-shirt and shorts and climbed into the bunk of the trailer, where I had a mattress and pillow and sheets and a comforter. It felt luxurious.

As I lie there, I thought about how many times in my life I’d fantasized about this: Just me.

I’ve had elaborate daydreams where I leave Dave and the kids and go live on my own—with just my horse and my dogs. How many times had I imagined going to sleep without tucking anyone in, or signing school forms, or making lunches, or double checking homework? How many times had I daydreamed about waking up alone, without a husband to consult on decisions? With no one but myself to answer to? Without anyone to disappoint? Too many to count.

I love my husband and children. But the weight of that love can feel impossible to bear at times. An anchor chain dragging me under despite my arms trying to pull me to the surface.

But lying there by myself, I didn’t feel weightless. I didn’t feel free. I felt lonely. Desperately. I kept thinking of how funny Dave would’ve found the rat woman, and how, if he had been with me, he would’ve spent the next hour of the drive making me laugh as he recounted, with his ice dry wit, all the creepy things she would’ve said had we stayed at the park and talked to her. If he were with me, I wouldn’t have missed that turn; my trailer tires would be the right pressure. I thought of how the kids would’ve loved the pony that was boarded a few stalls down from Chama, and how we would’ve put pennies on the railroad tracks in Walsenberg.

I remember reading once that wolves will forgo food and sex for the privilege of staying in the pack. That’s how important it is to belong, to feel a connection to others. Humans are no different. It’s a need that vibrates deep within our chests and pulses through our fingertips. It’s no less vital than air and water.

I thought of my waiter that night. What was it he said? Lonewolfing it tonight, huh? I should have told him no. I couldn’t possibly be. There’s no such thing.

To Cheer or Not To Cheer?

Filed Under: Life, Motherhood, Neuroses — 24 Comments

August 25, 2011

Yesterday I told my daughter she couldn’t be a cheerleader. Not now, anyway. Not at the age of seven. Nor at the age of eight. Nor nine, ten, or eleven. I told her when she was in middle school or high school if she still wanted to be a cheerleader she could try out—but until that time, I would gladly pay for gymnastics and dance classes, but no cheerleading.

This led to tear-rimmed eyes and demands of “why” and accusations of “it’s not fair.” She might be right on the last one. I’m not sure. In truth, this is something I’m extremely conflicted about.

Let me give you a little background first: My son, who is eight and in third grade this year, plays YAFL. That’s tackle football for little kids. Noah is a football fanatic and has wanted to play tackle since he was five years old. Dave and I told him he couldn’t play until he was eight—hoping the fever would pass. It didn’t. He turned eight in March; the football season started this summer. The bill had come due and we had to pay it: we signed him up.

The reason we didn’t want him to play football is because of the physical risks. All the recent studies about the long-term effects of concussions worry us. “But,” I told Dave as we discussed this among ourselves year after year, “I really don’t have a leg to stand on with this. Because if he wanted to ride and jump horses, I would let him—which is actually much more dangerous.” I was just talking to a friend of mine the other day who has been riding since she was five years old. She’s had seven concussions. So, really, me telling Noah he couldn’t play football because it was too dangerous held about as much water as a fishing net.

So he’s playing YAFL. And it turns out there are YAFL cheerleaders. Yes, cheerleaders age six and up who cheer the boys on each week.

But what’s wrong with that? After all, it’s harmless, right? I have many good friends who were cheerleaders in high school. Hell, my sister and brother (yes, brother—more on that later) were cheerleaders. All of them are smart, accomplished people. Cheerleading didn’t make them some sort of subservient, glassy-eyed, anti-feminist pods. So what’s the harm in letting my daughter cheerlead? I want to be okay with it. I really do.

But I’m not. As I told Wyn yesterday, “You are a smart, talented, strong girl. The boys should be cheering you on.” Of course, we should all be cheering one another on, but that’s not how it works, does it? “Have you noticed there are no boy cheerleaders?” I asked her. “In high school and college there are a few, but not many. And have you noticed they almost always cheer for boy sports? The point of cheerleading is for girls to cheer boys on as they do great things. It’s sexist.”

“What’s sexist?”

I’m embarrassed to tell you that I answered this by giving her a brief history of the women’s movement, telling her how women used to be the property of men and didn’t have the same rights and couldn’t vote and couldn’t own land.

“But that’s not how it is now,” she said.

“You’re right. But there are still some holdovers in our culture.”

“What’s culture?”

“Society.”

“What’s society?”

“A group of people. America is a society.”

“Oh.”

Long pause.

“But I want to be a cheerleader because it looks like fun.”

Cue to a montage of my own conflicted past with cheerleading…

When I was Wyn’s age, I also wanted to be a cheerleader. Desperately. As I grew, it intensified. When I was in seventh grade, my sister was a sophomore in high school. She tried out for the squad and made it. This only galvanized my resolve. I decided to try out.

But let me quickly explain something about how cheerleading works in Texas, where I grew up. While at many schools across the country, trying out for cheerleader entails doing a dance and a cheer in front of a small panel of teachers and other cheerleaders, in Texas, they go for the jugular: One tries out for cheerleader in front of the entire student body. You wear shorts and a t-shirt and you run out into the gym tumbling (if you have the skill) or just shouting your best “Go Clear Lake!” whilst pumping your fists through the air. I think you can guess which camp I was in. Then you stand with a group of about seven other girls and do a cheer. Then they cue the music and you do a dance. Mine was to “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” from the Footloose soundtrack.

(You’ll be horrified to know that I still remember the first part of my routine to this song and recently did it in a bar in Austin. But I digress…)

It was a humiliating exercise. It wasn’t uncommon to hear outright laughter among the crowd, or occasional shouts of “cow” when the chubby girls ran out. I don’t think the torturers in the Soviet gulags could’ve come up with a crueler punishment. Nothing like being judged by a group of your peers to make a girl in the throes of puberty and mired in insecurity feel borderline suicidal.

So after the cheerleader tryout assembly (yes, this was done during school hours), the students would go back to their classes and vote on who should make the squad. Not surprisingly, the girls who made it were either (a) pretty, (b) had big boobs, or (c) both. Needless to say, I was not (a) and I didn’t have (b). In seventh grade, I had a tightly permed mullet and braces. I was skinny and flat chested. I was taller than most boys in my class. And in case that weren’t enough to seal my fate, I had freckles. There was nothing pretty about me. No boys liked me. Not even a little bit.

Shocker, I didn’t make the squad. (Nor did my best friend, Amanda, who also had freckles and no boobs, but who was an amazing gymnast. Really. She did something like eight back handsprings across the gym floor—and yet still she didn’t make it, putting to rest any arguments that cheerleader tryouts were not a popularity contest.)

So my sister (who was pretty) was a cheerleader and I wasn’t. But she only did it for one year. She hated it. She always felt like an outsider among the tight clique of girls. So when the school year ended, she quit. Then, when my brother and sister were seniors (they’re twins), my brother decided to try out for the squad. This wasn’t because he was particularly full of spirit, it’s because my brother was an overachiever. He was popular. He was class president. He was handsome and smart. He won every award there was to win and excelled at pretty much everything he set his mind to. So he decided he’d be a cheerleader, too. This was a bold move. In Texas, boys weren’t cheerleaders. They were football players. Or basketball players. Or hunters. Or, God willing, all three. They didn’t dance or chant things like “we’ve got spirit, yes we do!” And they certainly didn’t wear tight white pants.

But Patrick decided to break that barrier (largely, I suspect, to meet girls), and tried out. I went to the assembly that day. The gym was packed. People who couldn’t find seats stood along the gym walls. No one was going to miss this. He came running onto the gym floor pumping his fists in the air. He did his cheer. He danced to “The Heat is On” from Beverly Hills Cop (what’s with the movie theme songs?)

The crowd went wild. He easily made the squad and, for the rest of the year, traveled from town to town with the football team (most of whom hated him because he held their girlfriends up by their butts during cheers) and the basketball team and led pep rallies and wore his tight-panted cheerleading uniform to school on game days. When we would play away games at some of the rougher Houston schools, shouts of “fag” would echo across the field or gym floor. This angered my sister, who, during half time at a basketball game at one such school, clopped across the gym in her high heels and, in front of a couple hundred students, held up her middle finger and shouted, “That’s my brother! And he’s not a fag!”

I think the closest my brother has ever come to killing my sister was that night.

But all of this is to say I have nothing against cheerleaders. As I said, some of my best friends were cheerleaders. My aforementioned recent trip to Austin was with one of these friends. We were talking about her cheerleading days and she was telling me how she really loved the cheering and dancing—the performance aspect of it—but hated the “dutiful wife” stuff that came along with it, like decorating the football team’s lockers on game day.

But she was old enough to make that distinction. She was far enough along in her development and maturity to know that supporting the boys was a ridiculous part of the job. What really mattered was that she got to dance and have fun—just like my daughter wants to do. But the trick is, my daughter doesn’t yet have the maturity to separate “having fun” from “your job is to make the boys feel like rock stars.”

As I write all this, though, I’m not entirely convinced I’m doing the right thing. One of my greatest assets as a mom (perhaps my only one) is that I firmly believe kids should be allowed to do what they want to do (as long as it’s safe and legal) and figure out for themselves what they like and don’t like. I knew a mother once who wouldn’t let her six-year-old daughter do ballet because she was too tall. “With that kind of height, she’ll never be a ballerina,” she told me. It was all I could do not to respond with, “Are you fucking kidding me?” I mean, the idea that a parent wouldn’t let her child try something that interested her because it isn’t a realistic long-term career prospect? Ridiculous.

But isn’t that basically what I’m doing? Or, perhaps the better comparison: What separates me from the father who loves football and all things manly and thus won’t let his son try out for the school musical? I’m worried the answer is: nothing.

Yet, I remind myself, I’m not telling her she can’t ever be a cheerleader. Just not now. Not until she’s older and can make judgments about what she wants her role as a girl and woman in society to be.

Another complicating factor here is that my daughter is pretty. I know everyone thinks their daughter is pretty, but she really is. Gorgeous, in fact. She might not always be beautiful (few of us escape at least a brief ugly phase), but already I can tell people treat her differently because of how she looks. I worry that, at her tender age, she’s already developing an understanding that we live in a society that still values looks in women over anything else. Never mind if a woman is brilliant and talented and funny and kind, if she’s unattractive, her value is diminished. Conversely, if she’s beautiful, we forgive all sorts of flaws (evidence Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin).

I know that cheerleading isn’t supposed to be about looks, but I think anyone who says it doesn’t play a role is smoking crack. And even though, at this age, Wyn doesn’t have to try out for anything (I just have to sign her up and pay the fee and she’s on the squad), I can’t escape the nagging feeling that becoming a cheerleader at this age will just solidify in her the gathering suspicion that being pretty is what matters most.

So I’m saying no. For now. Maybe I’ll change my mind. Maybe, if Wyn lobbies hard enough, if she learns how to be aggressive—I mean really, be aggressive. B-E-A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E—I’ll come around and sign her up. But for now, the only cheering going on in this house will be by me, cheering my kids on in their various pursuits and occasionally doing my seventh grade cheerleader tryout dance routine in the kitchen. Because I can. And because it is awesome.

The Return

Filed Under: Life, Neuroses — 7 Comments

August 17, 2011

I dug myself a hole this summer. A shallow hole, but a hole nonetheless. I deactivated my Facebook account (read about that here). I stopped writing my blog. I kept my Twitter account, but considering I have something like five followers and have updated it maybe three times, that didn’t matter so much. I didn’t return most of my friends’ phone calls. I barely texted. I emailed only occasionally. In short, I tried to disappear.

Being in the hole was weird. To go from being someone who shared pretty much everything (seriously, I’ve posted pictures on Facebook of my gynecologist’s office) to sharing nothing was strange. In some ways, it was liberating. There’s a pressure that comes with sharing yourself—the pressure to always be interesting and funny and engaging. By not sharing myself, I didn’t have to be any of those things. (Fortunately, my husband and kids love me despite the fact that I’m only occasionally interesting and funny and engaging—which is probably the best reason to get married and have kids.)

So for about 70 days this summer (excluding a week and a half in early July when I went back on Facebook to update friends about the wildfire that was nuking the mountains above our town), I flew under the radar.

This is what I learned in those 10 weeks:

1. I didn’t miss Facebook as much as I thought I would. I was really surprised how easy it was to give it up. As a confirmed addict, I thought leaving Facebook would be akin to heroin withdrawal, but it wasn’t. The first few days I found myself thinking about it a lot, but for the most part, I kind of forgot about it as soon as I left. And I was actively happy not to see the updates of many of my Facebook friends. I know that sounds cruel—and I know I can hide them from my newsfeed, which I often do—but I found that all too frequently, the updates of most people just annoyed me or, for some reason I can’t quite explain, depressed the hell out of me. Maybe it’s because I want to believe the world is a beautiful place and the people in it are interesting and do worthwhile stuff with their lives…and so often catching a glimpse of someone’s life on Facebook proves just the opposite.

2. I lived in the moment more. My experiences were no longer viewed through the potential-Facebook-status-update-or-blog-entry filter. Because I write about so much of my life, too often I don’t just experience things…I create a narrative. This is one of the joys of writing, but it can also be exhausting, and it can rob you of the very experiences you’re trying to live. I found that once I let go of that, I could enjoy daily life at a much more elemental level.

3. I read the newspaper more. Because I didn’t have Facebook to distract me anymore, when I was in need of a distraction (and I am desperately in need of distraction; I’m like a puppy), I would read the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. I’ve never been so informed in my life.

4. I enjoyed being anonymous. It was kind of nice seeing people who didn’t immediately know everything that was going on to my life. They didn’t know where I’d vacationed recently or whom I’d seen or my thoughts on J-Lo and Marc Anthony’s breakup. For once in my life, I had an air of mystery about me…at least that’s how I choose to see it.

Those are all pluses. But there were minuses as well:

1. I wasn’t more productive. I expected that as soon as I went off Facebook and the blog, I’d be a ton more productive. The couple hours a day I wasted online would be replaced by working and doing laundry and checking things off my to-do list, like renewing my passport, which has been on said list for over three years. But guess what? I still haven’t renewed my passport. The laundry didn’t get done any faster. And I worked just as much and just as efficiently (or inefficiently, depending on your perspective) as I had it the past. I’m not sure what happened to the newly acquired free time, but I have a feeling it went to my horse.

2. I became kind of boring. The pressure of Facebook and the blog to be interesting and funny and engaging might be a burden, but I also found it’s like going to the gym (which I don’t do, but for metaphor’s sake, let’s use it): If you don’t exercise your muscles, they get weak. Likewise, if you don’t exercise your wit, it atrophies. Because I work at home alone and have actual face-to-face grownup interaction with someone other than Dave maybe twice a week if I’m lucky (and then it’s usually very brief), witty repartee is not something I get a chance to do very often. I realized that without Facebook and the blog, my mental acuity might as well have been sitting on the couch, eating cheese puffs from one of those big Costco tubs, and watching Jersey Shore.

3. I really, really, really missed my friends. I’ve long said the best thing that Facebook offers is the ease of staying in touch with people at a distance. I’ve moved seven times in my adult life; I have friends spread all across the country and, in some cases, the world. To be honest, most of my Facebook friends could disappear tomorrow and I wouldn’t notice, but there are a couple dozen that I really love and missed desperately when I deactivated my account. Yes, I know there are other ways to stay in touch, but I suck at those other ways. I rarely call even my best friends. I’m a little better about email, but not by much. So I found myself genuinely pining for my friends whom I’d reconnected with on Facebook and now felt as distant as the moon. There are also people who are not good friends (some I barely know), but whose Facebook presence I really enjoy and look forward to seeing. I missed them, too.

It was #3 that really drove me back to Facebook. And because I’d gone off of it for a while and proved to myself that my addiction was superficial (seriously, I had a harder time giving up Diet Coke), I figured I could go back in a measured way.

Ha.

That hasn’t happened. Since returning less than a week ago, I’ve posted 19 times—updates, pictures, links, videos—and this doesn’t include the countless comments I’ve made to other people’s posts. I’ve got the Facebook app back on my phone and it’s the first thing I check in the morning and the last thing I check at night. There’s nothing measured about this return. I’m tying the tourniquet around my bicep and holding the syringe between my teeth. I’m back, baby. I’m back.