July 2009 Archives

   If any of you working parents out there feel like you're barely making it, when it comes to keeping up with your kids  homework, event dates or deadlines...you know exactly what I'm talking about when I say:  "I'm ALWAYS sliding into home."  That's what I call my attempt to meet all these calendar dates (with at least some shred of dignity and air of organization). 

   Once again, this weekend I will be trying to create the illusion that I was "on top of things the whole time" by scrapbooking a years' worth of my daughter's life!  Getting it in, as usual,  just under the wire.

  It just so happens this morning, after their end-of-the-year play (my kids are in year-round school), the teacher kindly stated she didn't ask for their scrapbooks, so parents didn't feel pressure to finish them by today.  Under my breath I said "Or start them...." 

   So....in order to ensure that my little girl has a book chock full of memories of her first year in school and to save face, I will be scrapbooking all weekend to meet Monday's deadline.  I've decided to make it a project for the both of us, that way I look like a really cool Mom who just wanted to spend time with her daughter...and not the lame, overwhelmed working mother who's brain sponge is soaked to capacity and forgot.

   I guess the important thing is, you still score...even when you have to slide in to get there!!!  (It's just worse when you wear a skirt).

  Something you should know about me is that I love to read biographies.  I am simply enthralled by the tales of peoples' lives in their entirety, because only then can you truly see the undulations we all experience in a lifetime.  Something I find very comforting.  Particularly, when I am standing in one of my "valleys", that God willing, will give way to a new "peak" on the horizon soon.

   One of my favorite reads, which also happens to be an easy one, is from our First Lady of the State, journalist and working mother, Maria Shriver.  It's based on a commencement speech she gave by the same name titled: "10 Things I wish I'd Known - Before I Went Out Into the Real World".  Though it's not a traditional biography, it has the lessons learned over the course of her life, which despite her pedigree are incredibly grounded and pragmatic.

   One of her pieces of advice is that every woman should always have her own desk.  Whether she is the CFO of a Fortune 500 Company or the CEO of her household, it's critical to a woman's sense of well-being and purpose.  And above all, defines her space.  I've never forgotten that little nugget.  It compliments one of my own working mother (in or out of the home) philosophies. 

   I always tell all my friends, they need to find a place that reboots their "Zen-ergy".  A place that they like, for no other reason than, they just like it.  It doesn't, and quite frankly shouldn't be, a place to run errands, or get anything done, just a space that makes them smile or rekindles a joy they have.  Strangely enough, mine is the "Cedros Design District" in Solana Beach.

   For as long as I can remember I have enjoyed beautiful decor and knick knacks.  I must have rearranged and redecorated my little pink bedroom once a month during elementary school, while making wallpaper samples out of index cards.  Dorky I know, but it's a part of my DNA.  Something as a mother you don't often get to express.  Let's face it, our number one decorating priority in parenthood is durability.  Not always a pretty trade off.

   So whenever I have an afternoon free of kids or work, or a couple of free hours in the morning...that's where you'll find me.  I stroll up and down the street, peeking in and out of stores, pleasing no one...but myself!  And, everytime I leave, I recapture a little part of me that's just for me, and all to often pushed aside.  Then, I go to work or home, having written a little paragraph in my own biography on how to hold onto parts of yourself, when you're giving so much of it away, every day.  And in that moment I find some "Zen-ergy"...to keep going.

   I can still see my blonde haired Barbie dangling in the wind out the rear window of our station wagon by her golden locks, somewhere in "nowhere" Nevada, with my two older brothers threatening to drop her.  It's as vivid a memory, as the myriad of smells that always accompanied those two.   Mile after mile, I endured their torture. Fighting them, boredom, and piles of luggage from burying me into oblivion in the backseat. 

    It was our family road trip from Arizona to Washington state.  A journey that like most, started out with smiles, anticipation, and games... and ended with my father slamming the car door....and taking a long walk around the block by himself.   We didn't see him for an hour.

   Recently, I set out on my own family road trip with my kids.  We drove from San Diego to Sedona, Arizona, The Four Corners National Monument, up to Telluride, Colorado, across to Bryce Canyon National Park and into Zion, Utah, through Las Vegas... and back home.  Needless to say, it was a lot of driving.  But there was symmetry to this trip.  It was the continuum of both my husband and my childhoods...bleeding into our own kids' memory banks.  We knew with each mile we logged, we were making memories for them.  And suddenly, we felt this awesome responsibility.  This was their childhood!  These will be the experiences that will shape who they are and what they'll reflect back on.  And we can only hope...they look back on them fondly.  Like we do.

   All the teasing, annoyances, Madlibs and mishaps, that can only be created in the vacuum of a family road trip, is something every child should both experience and endure.  It's not a vacation, it's a rite of passage.  And a ride, I wouldn't miss for the world.

   That's not just the title of a drowsy Willie Nelson song anymore... that's how I feel after somehow pulling off yet another birthday party for one of my kids.  My son turned 9 this month (which is a feat in and of itself, when you consider I used to mark off every day he was still alive under my care, after he was born.)

   Well, now that I can openly celebrate my kids' birthdays without trepidation there might not be another one, I find myself wishing there wasn't another brithday party to go along with it.  They've become as draining as going into labor, without the breathing exercises.  Which by the way, would have been handy yesterday, after the giant slip n' slide we spend hundreds of dollars on, was utilized for all of 15 minutes.  At which point my son and a dozen of his friends turned to me and said, "We're bored.  Can we play Playstation 3?"  (I immediately had visions of tossing my son down the slip n' slide myself, much like the way tigers carry their young by the scruff of the neck.)

   I articulated my simmering feelings by simply saying "Are you kidding me?"  Which my intuitive son, quite rightly took as his Irish Mom's way of saying "You better be kidding" and quickly retracted his statement.

   It was then we decided to break out the water balloons (which cost us a total of three bucks) and all the memories of my own childhood birthday parties came splashing back.  Here we were in the shadow of this portable monster water park...and the kids just wanted to pelt each other with water balloons.  Reminding me once again, to keep it simple. 

    In our fast paced, plugged in, highly produced world, I WAS THE ONE making it bigger than it needed to be....thinking the scale of his party might somehow match the weight of my love for him.  But like most sayings.... there's a reason, people say "it's the little things that make the greatest impression."   Because it's true.

   Which is why I now have six months to plan my daughter something really simple that celebrates the other greatest day of my life...and now, I'm actually looking forward to it.

     I know, that headline alone can conjure up all kinds of images, but I'm not talking about any of Michael Jackon's strange, perhaps even criminal relationships with children that shaped the last decade of his life.  What I'm talking about is explaining the life and death of Michael Jackson to children.

     The topic came up for us, during our family vacation (a very "Griswold Family Vacation" type affair, I'll blog about later), when racing out the door of a Utah hotel room for a morning hike.  It was at that moment the media blitz of Michael's passing, pierced our frivolity.  My six year old daughter, continued to play with some action figures with little regard for my husband's or my repeated drumbeat of:  "Michael Jackson is dead?"  But, my nine year old son took notice and asked "Who's that?"  We explained he was a popular singer we grew up listening to and we continued to watch the old videos of the Jacksonn 5 and his "Thriller" days pour in.  Then my son said something that put explaining Michael Jackson into a whole new framework.  He asked again, "Who's that?"  Only this time, he was pointing to a RECENT photo of Michael - pale skinnned, whittled features, frail.  Making no connection between the two.  He had no idea this was the same person.

     It made me really think about Michael's metamorphosis and how to explain that to a child.  I told my son, he had a lot of plastic surgeries to change the way he looked and that he must have been a very sad person inside to do that to himself.  My son continued to watch quietly and then said "He seemed like a nice person."  I said, "He did."  Knowing full well, no one really knew who he was, including Michael.