Jan 18, 2013
For over thirty years, we have celebrated Christmas at my house with visiting family and friends. I love it, but at Christmas my control freak – a bit over-developed from parenting – goes manic. I have to be in charge of everything, and everything has to be right. Like many cooks, I want control of my own kitchen. But my need for control extends beyond that, and I can fuss and worry through the weeks leading up to Christmas, and the few days of house-guests, as if comfort, joy and world peace were all up to me.
worldpeacebefore2021.com
The schedule might change from year to year depending on everybody’s arrival time, but generally we decorate the tree on Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner is either Christmas Eve, or the day after Christmas. With Doris and Luli’s help I prepare a big feast, and gather family and friends around the table. Late breakfast on Christmas morning is followed by a morning of oohing and aahing over opening presents, with single malt, aquavit, Calvados or other delicious sipping drink, Luli’s dundee cake, Don’s famous cookies, and whatever chocolates turn up in the gifting. The afternoon is for lying around, playing with new toys, reading new books, and a long walk. No need to prepare a feast after the morning orgy – we go to our beloved Chinese restaurant for Christmas supper.
Christmas dinner: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, a green veg and salad, and three pies topped with whipped cream. Don and Doris contribute plenty of wine.
tasteofhome.com
Breakfast? When I think of Christmas breakfast I drift into Italian, though I don’t speak the language – abondanza, mangiare, que piacere – and gesture con brio like an orchestra conductor. A feast of scrambled eggs and sausage, fresh grapefruit, home-squeezed orange juice, herbed mushrooms, bagels and lox, homemade muffins or coffee cake, a plate of fresh pineapple and strawberries, tomato salad, accompanied by coffee and of course, sipping liquor.
This year everything changed. Luli, my kitchen co-conspirator and conciliatrix, visited in October instead of making her annual Christmas trek. And at the last minute Joe had a essential meeting scheduled in South Africa. He would be gone for two weeks, returning December 22nd. All of a sudden I was on my own for Christmas preparations and Amanda’s Christmas break. I was NOT a happy camper. I’ve done children and Christmas alone and with a partner, and the latter is way better.
The first challenge was to gussy up Amanda’s Christmas break. Girls Place does wonderful programs for the school holidays, with lots of expeditions. link My friend Mary Anne and her daughter Ariel took her to the Little Match Girl ballet. But I wanted us to have special treats together. We went to the Hippodrome’s annual production of The Christmas Carol – I’d waited till she was ten because it’s scary – and went clothes-shopping. Alas, Amanda redirected her anger with absent Grandpa to available Grandma, so she was kind of a Scrooge-ette during these treats.
Hippodrome's Christmas Carol. Aaron E. Daye/The Gainesville Sun
I had other cool ideas for fun, but she got the horrible bronchial thing that’s been going around Gainesville. Meanwhile my own rage simmered and became the blues, accompanied by shame that I was struggling so without Joe.
I had planned to buy the Christmas tree with Amanda, but she was so sick we had to postpone it. Six days before Christmas there were no trees anywhere. At Lowe’s they were taking down their big white tent and said they had no trees left. But I saw five in the corner, and bought the least miserable one. Many bare branches, many brown needles. After a few days in the living room, poisoned by Amanda’s scorn and disappointment, it looked even worse. I put it out on the deck, and bought a fake tree. Apparently you have to spend an awful lot to get a nice one; at $70, this one was very straggly. I threw up my hands and decided Joe would have to deal with it when he got home.
The Tree of Despair
My son wasn’t coming. Leah couldn’t make it from New Orleans because her car was iffy. No friends were available for Christmas dinner. With the group so small, no Luli to help, and Joe only here at the last minute, I decided that I would simplify. We’d lighten up the food and add more walks. Don and Doris come from Connecticut and crave walks in our lovely winter weather.
The first change was to lighten up the food. Five Cornish game hens marinated in olive oil, lemon, and rosemary as they thawed. I sauteed beautiful green chard with bright red stems in olive oil and garlic, while Doris was happily in charge of cooking up the brown rice with red peppers and onions. I’d planned a plate of tomato salad – Don and Doris annually rave over our Florida tomatoes – but to my dismay my tomato grower stayed home from the Saturday Farmers’ Market. So in the end the main course was reduced from eight dishes to three.
No wrestling still frozen giblets out of a turkey. No guess work on timing – four, four and a half, five hours till the turkey is done? – and last minute gravy-making. Game hens take barely an hour, pan juices are no trouble at all, and the gluttonous girl in me is as thrilled as Amanda at having a whole bird to myself. Dessert remained excessive, but preparation was easy. Not my two pies – pumpkin seasoned with tangerine zest, pecan with dark rum or maple – and Luli’s winter fruit and berry pie. But Mrs. Smith’s frozen apple pie, though a bit heavy on the cinnamon, was perfectly fine, and her cherry pie was bliss.
Breakfast would be grapefruit, eggs and sausages. Though for days I waffled (waffles? no, too much) over whether I shouldn’t at least make my low-fat blueberry coffee cake, I held fast to simplicity, and asked Joe to buy a pecan coffee ring at Publix. We had coffee and Amarula – a cream liqueur made from the berries of the marula tree, which grows in the miombo woodlands of Southern Africa. Every one loved it but me, and Amanda loved the label about the majestic elephants who feast on the marula fruit. I stuck to Calvados.
Next, I let go of gift-control. When Joe was a child, he and his four brothers each found a laundry basket of presents under the tree, and tore into them all at once. When I was a child, we distributed all the gifts and then, starting with the youngest (always me), we opened them. Over the years I experimented with various approaches to accommodate Doris’ desire for the oohing and aahing and sharing and thanks, and Joe’s increasingly itchy need to be done with the interminable ritual, which went on for hours. This year I asked him to consult with Doris and devise a plan. They did. Amanda distributed the gifts and we opened them one by one, Joe too generous and kind and fond of Doris to deprive her, and probably pleased that I’d let go of one more thing. It didn’t hurt that with fewer people, there were fewer gifts, and of course he had the Amarula.
Don got pajamas
Joe got super-soakers
Doris got a hat and scarf
I couldn’t entirely squelch my Mom-in-Charge, so I turned her attention from food and ritual to planning great walks.
On Christmas Eve, we took a picnic to Kanapaha Botanical Gardens. The weather was lovely, warm and overcast. We walked the labyrinth, Amanda leaping over the low hedges and startling the lizards. Then we took the long walk to the herb garden, sink holes, bamboo grove, lake, hummingbird garden, cactus garden and finally to the broad porch of Summer House, where we rocked and ate our picnic.
Kanapaha's Victoria waterlilies. thegreentree.net
Joe had stayed behind to rest after his trip from Capetown. While resting, he solved the Christmas tree problem. He returned the costly, scraggly tree to Lowe’s, shook down and brought inside the brown and balding fir, found its best angle, and wrapped the lights inside, close to the trunk, where they illuminated rather than hid the ornaments. Like every Christmas tree, it was our loveliest ever.
On Christmas day, after opening presents, I wanted a chance for Amanda try out her new skateboard, the gift she’d been yearning for. The Gainesville-Hawthorne Rails to Trails was just the ticket – paved, and perfect for walkers, bikers, scooters. The trail to Hawthorne is hilly and curvy, so we took the route past Evergreen Cemetery and she began to master balancing, turning, and stopping.
Finally, there was the obligatory trip to the Alachua Sink on Paynes Prairie. Everyone was out in force for the post-Christmas walk: Gainesville natives, visiting families, turkey vultures, limpkins, moorhens, herons of all types, egrets and of course, the alligators, seeking the afternoon sun after a chilly morning. They were huge and numerous. Amanda bet we’d see 25, Joe bet more than. Joe won.
This was such a happy, non-frenzied Christmas. I missed some of the abondanza. But the only missing elements I’d restore are Luli, Joe's daughter Leah, and my son Eric. Maybe I am finally learning to let go.
My new motto: Put it down; someone else will pick it up.
Or not.
Nov 9, 2012
I recently read an astonishing email, a bride’s instructions to the ten women she was inviting to be bridesmaids. They included requirements that the women clear their calendars from February through August, respond to bride’s emails and calls within a day, and attend all three wedding events, in Vail, Vegas, and New York. click
I was horrified and amused, and was thinking fondly of our own wedding, when I suddenly realized that it was October 9, our thirteenth anniversary. (To be honest, I did have to look inside my wedding ring, where the date is inscribed, to be certain. I can never remember whether it’s the 8th or the 9th)
Our wedding was a modest, do-it-yourself affair. We rented the Boltin Center, a city-owned community center. When I booked it, the only hitch was that they were planning to paint and refurbish it, and hadn’t scheduled the work yet. What would we do if we made all our plans only to lose our location?
It is the only time I have ever engaged in municipal corruption. A close friend was high in city government. He assured me that he would see to it that the painting happened after the wedding. If we had asked him to expedite the work, that might have posed a problem, but delaying it wouldn’t trouble Buildings and Grounds at all.
The Boltin Center
When we made our guest list, I was struck by the size of Joe’s family. His list was huge: his daughter, four parents, three brothers and a sister-in-law, nephews, and dozens of aunts, uncles and cousins. Both my parents and all but two of my aunts and uncles were dead; I was unconnected to my cousins. I did have my son, my two brothers and their wives, my sister, and the seven nieces and nephews. It made me sad, and also made me fear being swallowed up by The Jacksons.
Planning the food was not too hard, though it was our biggest expense. A friend was a caterer, and she prepared a lovely lunch buffet of salmon, an elaborate rice pilaf, and a green salad. We served no liquor, as Joe didn’t drink, we saw no need for it, and we are both cheapskates.
Our wedding cake was the best I have ever had. Joe’s cousin Stephanie had her own cake business. She made us a three-tiered yellow cake with French raspberry buttercream, made with butter and eggs, not the nasty grocery store stuff. We topped it with my sister Luli’s Sculpy figures of Joe and me dancing together. She swears they are anatomically correct, but the clothes are sewed on so we couldn’t check.
Stephanie brought the cake layers and the frozen frosting down from Boston on the plane. The night before the wedding she and Joe’s brother Adam carefully thawed the buttercream with her hair dryer, and she assembled and decorated the cake.
I had no desire, at 51, to be married in white, looking like a big fluffy marshmallow. Instead I wanted a pretty red party dress with a swirly skirt. I looked through pattern books until I found just the one, with a fitted bodice, scoop neckline, and full gathered skirt. I had a hard time finding the fabric at JoAnn’s, but the Christmas prints were in, and I found a bright red gingham with tiny darker red pointsettia leaves.
My friend Nancy offered to make it, and I spent the night at her house in Orlando. When it was basted together and I tried it on, I couldn’t breathe. “I never knew you had such big boobs,” Nancy said. We fixed it by opening the bodice and making a triangular insert, with ornamental buttons down each side. I had planned to wear dressy flats with my party dress. But two days before the wedding I broke my toe, so I was stuck with white adhesive tape and sandals.
There were two bridesmaids – Joe's daughter Leah, 13, and my daughter Rebecca, 17. It never occurred to me that they should wear matching dresses or coordinated colors. Rebecca and I went shopping. I steered her away as best I could from the teen trollop look, and we bought a lovely black knit minidress with red and white trim.
Leah’s mother took her shopping. I believe she bought a cream and mauve floor-length dress; however, I never saw it. On our wedding morning, Naomi, Joe’s mother, called and asked if there was a Target in Gainesville. Leah had left her dress in Tampa. I didn’t envy Naomi. Leah was at the self-loathing stage, and shopping with her could not have been fun. But they succeeded, and bought a black dress with blue flowers.
I look at the pictures now and laugh. Rebecca’s dress barely covers the essentials. Leah is thoroughly swaddled. And I am gloriously decked out in my silver hair and the perfect party dress I dreamed of when I was twelve. I had no idea till I saw the pictures that my concept of pretty hadn’t changed since 1959.
A few days before the wedding Joe and I had the requisite prenuptial quarrel, when he told me he planned to go down to the Boltin Center the morning of the wedding to supervise the placement of the chairs. We were expecting about 100 guests, which made quite a tight fit. Joe had drawn a detailed diagram on graph paper for my friend Iris, who was in charge of setting up the room, but he felt he needed to be there to supervise. I had intended a quiet morning at home, just the two of us, to get in the mood for the wedding.
“I don’t need you to manage my mood.”
“Iris doesn’t need you interfering. We delegated this to her, and she’s very competent.”
“We just have different meanings of ‘delegate.’ To you it means just hand it over; to me it means you supervise the job.”
Now you just know I had to go look it up in our big fat dictionary to confirm that I was right. I hope and believe I didn’t race back to him with the definition. We fumed in separate rooms, and later Joe agreed to the quiet morning together.
Setting up without supervision
The night before the wedding our friends Mary Anne and Larry had a family gathering for us in Mary Anne’s beautiful garden. My nephew Ben grilled burgers and dogs, and we hired a shucker to deal with two bushels of oysters. Mary Anne and my sister Luli made side dishes.
Luli, Mary Anne and Larry prepare the feast
Luli was in heaven – I believe she ate three dozen oysters. Joe’s large family mingled with my small family, and there was food and love and happiness to spare.
Joe and I had our quiet morning together, interrupted only by Naomi’s call at 9, and then the doorbell at 10. His friend Jaleel had driven all night from D.C., and arrived to find it was too early to check into his motel, where he had hoped to take a nap before the wedding. We gave him fresh-squeezed orange juice and led him to the guest bedroom.
Joe, Leah, Rebecca and I drove to the hall and waited downstairs. And waited. Joe went to find out what was holding things up. It turned out Stephanie was rebuilding the cake, which was to be displayed in the back of the hall. The Florida heat had softened the frosting and the top two layers were sliding off. I don’t know how she did it, but she hid any repairs with fresh raspberries. Luli, who has been a food professional most of her life, was awed by Steph’s aplomb.
Steph repairs the cake
Finally Adam came to tell us everything was ready. The girls walked down the aisle, carrying flowers from a friend’s garden, followed by me and Joe. Patti, a dear friend who’s a notary, waited for us, and my oldest brother Don stood at the front playing the wedding march on his harmonica. I saw him, and our families in the front row, and friends from all over, and blubbered all the way down the aisle. I sniffle now as I think of it.
We exchanged slightly modified old-fashioned vows (losing ‘obey,’ adding ‘come what may’) and each read a poem, one solemn, one silly.
Download Wedding poems
And then we were married, and the fun began. The band got everybody dancing by putting them in a circle and teaching them the cajun two step.
Everybody ate but me – I was too wrought up. We ran the gauntlet of blessings and soap bubbles, and went off for two happy days at the beach, accompanied by the top tier of the wedding cake.
I love going to the weddings of people I care about. I love the gathering of family and friends, and of course the dancing and eating. If it is over the top I share my catty thoughts only with sister Luli, who is intimately acquainted with the nastier aspects of my nature.
The point of a wedding is to make a public commitment, shared with and supported by the people you love. I prefer a wedding to be a celebration, not a spectacle. To each her own, but I’m sorry when I hear it conceived as an entertainment extravaganza starring the bride. It can be a lovely occasion, but it’s the least important part of the long adventure of marriage.
Sep 28, 2012
“So, do you have big plans for the weekend?”
A nineteen-year-old cashier at Publix asked me the question as she tallied up my vegetables. I had never seen her before. I was taken aback.
“Uh, I’m a pretty private person,” hoping she would get my meaning
IMAGE FROM ENVIROMOM.COM
The bag boy chimed in. I’d never seen him either.
“Oh, I can tell she’s the kind that goes with the flow, aren’t you ma’am?”
“Well, as I said, I’m a pretty private person.”
I walked out stunned, and all the way home I thought of what I coulda shoulda said.
‘I’m having a triple bypass.’
‘I’m planning to assassinate [any one of various political candidates].’ That one would lead to complications.
‘I’m going to eat potatoes, broccoli and carrots and curl up with People magazine.’ (Yes, I bought People. Gabby Douglas was on the cover. I’m embarrassed to admit they can also get me with Michelle Obama or the British Royal Family.)
GABRIELLE DOUGLAS ON UNEVEN BARS AT 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS
Apart from the intrusiveness of the question, it poses another problem. My memory isn’t so good, and besides, I’m apt to be wool-gathering as I wait for my groceries. When yanked back and forced to think about my weekend, it’s quite a struggle. ‘What am I doing this weekend? Let’s see. There’s riding lessons, and Girls Place volleyball try-outs. I thought we’d go to church. Wasn’t there something else? I thought there was something else. Hope I wrote it down.’
NOT AT GIRLS PLACE: DANIELLE SCOTT-BARR – 2012 LONDON OLYMPICS
When I answer the phone and it’s my step-daughter she says, “Hi Liz, what’s up.” And I’m stumped. I suppose there’s a stock reply to this, but I don’t know what it is, so I scramble to compose a status report. “Oh, I’m just sitting on the couch and staring.” “Nothing much, just about to do laundry.” The boring bleakness of my report brings me down.
I’m used to “How do you do?” “How are you?” I know that the response is “Fine, thank you,” though it feels odd and dishonest to say it when I’m in trouble. I think maybe young people felt that traditional greeting had lost all meaning, and they wanted to be friendlier, so they came up with this.
My sister Luli tells me that at her grocery store the clerks are required to ask, “How has your day been going so far?” They clearly do it grudgingly. She went to the manager and complained that it was NOT a good idea, and he told her glumly that the directive came from higher up.
I’m on Twitter because a literary agent recommended it, but I’m hopelessly out of date. I’m not interested in the private life of total strangers (except the royal family) and I don’t want total strangers inquiring into mine.
THE ROYAL FAMILY – AM I BEHIND THE TIMES?
Manners differ, not only across cultures, but across generations. And manners are artificial. Within broad bounds, polite is whatever contemporary culture says it is. If enough people no longer return phone calls, those of us who leave voice mails must just learn to text. If the new standard greeting is going to be ‘Do you have plans for the weekend?’ or ‘How’s your day going so far?’ I suppose I’ll have to learn the standard and meaningless response.
Still, I’m allowed to grumble to my sister and friends about the astonishing rudeness of the younger generation. And once you start doing that, you are well on your way to curmudgeonhood, a status I confess I find appealing.
I suspect the Inuit people don’t really put their aging parents on an ice floe to drift off and die. But if I am hopelessly and happily out of date, it may be time for me to go with the floe.
IMAGE FROM COLLECTIONSCANADA.GC.CA
Aug 31, 2012
It’s been just over a year since the first post on The Feminist Grandma. Please give me an anniversary gift: urge three friends to take a look.
In August we went to Maine to celebrate my brother’s 80th and my nephew’s 50th birthday. Twenty-five years ago my brother Richard, a writer, and his wife Esther, a painter, bought a house on an island fifteen miles off the coast of Maine. Over the years four of their children have bought houses on the same island. It is an island of about 1300 year-round residents, mostly lobstering families. In the summer the population swells with artists and a few tourists. Richard and Esther spend the whole summer there, and their children coordinate so they have at least a week when they are all there, and the young cousins can hang out together.
The trip from Florida is long and complex. We spent the night in Jacksonville to catch an early flight to Boston, then drove five hours to Rockland, Maine, where we took an hour-long ferry ride to the island.
We arrived on Monday afternoon on the 4:30 ferry. The weather was hot, with bright blue skies. We left on Sunday morning on the 10:30 ferry. The island was fog-bound. Above our heads, the foghorn blasted every two minutes. We weren’t five minutes out when the island had completely disappeared, as though our week there were a magical time removed from our lives.
LOBSTER BOATS DISAPPEARING IN THE FOG
With no cell phone service or email, no TV or electronic devices for the kids, it was magic. We swam in the quarries, cold clear water that tasted clean enough to drink. We explored rocky tide pools. We kayaked in coves with fog hiding the open ocean, staying close to the shore to ensure we would find the way back. An osprey flew toward us, calling to distract us from its mate in a high nest.
SUNSET SWIMMING IN THE QUARRY
There are seven cousins including Amanda, ranging in age from three to fourteen. (The eighth cousin is married with twin babies of her own; they’ll undoubtedly join the gang when they’re older.) The five older cousins run in a pack, moving from house to house, supervised by one couple or another. Amanda had three sleep-overs with the only other girl. On our final night Joe and I took them all out to dinner. The children sat by themselves at a table by the window. Amanda had her first whole lobster, which she demolished with glee; Joe and I sat with Don and Doris, my oldest brother and his wife, and our own lobsters.
We celebrated the birthdays with two family parties. Friday evening Ben and his husband Scott had a cocktail party at their rented A-frame on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The children disappeared up the cliff, and soon seven-year-old Gus returned crying. The big kids had run off and left him. There was a rumor that the test for inclusion was to define “puberty.” Amanda certainly knows what puberty is.
THE BIG KIDS RETURN FROM THE CLIFF
The next night there was a big party at the house that Michael and Fleeka and their two boys share with Luke and his daughter. Richard and Michael had crowns decked with ribbons and wildflowers. We sat in a row to watch the 2012 Family Olympic Games.
Amanda won the sack race. Then she and my niece Claire tied their ankles together and doggedly practiced running with three legs. But at Ready, Set, Go they hopped a few yards and fell laughing on top of each other. The suitcase relay was chaotic as teams kept mixing up their vests and hats. I took part in the rolling-down-the-hill race, and spun so fast I was sure I must be winning. But I arrived last at the finish line, and lay for a moment until the world stopped spinning.
NOT DEAD, MERELY RESTING
I was very proud of myself to have participated and survived, but the real star of the hill roll was three-year-old Gabe, who rolled in circles like a little grub, and kept on rolling long after his rivals had crossed the finish line.
After the games, the ribs were just beginning to cook, so we saved them for dessert after the cake, and made do with burgers and dogs, salads and chips. When the mosquitos arrived, we went inside.
The children and several adults crowded into the playroom to rehearse the play, adapted by Maria, the oldest daughter, from The Wind in the Willows. Most of us were ducks, with cardboard beaks and tails, waddling and waggling in a line through the living room, down the hall, back through the playroom to the living room again. Mole and Toad and Ratty had recitations, and as each said, “Heads down, tails up,” we ducks all complied. Gabe was the star again, with a particularly fetching tail waggle.
THIS IS HOW WE FELT IN MAINE. E.H. SHEPHERD’S ILLUSTRATION FOR THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS
After the play it was time for cake and presents. A spice cake, a chocolate layer cake with whipped cream frosting, and then gifts and homemade cards. A huge bag of potato chips and a leather-bound Bible for Richard. Smelly cheese for Michael, and a print from one of the local artists, to be selected by him. Don and Doris brought books for all the children – a beautiful book about horses for Amanda.
The guitar came out, and we sang while Amanda played tom-tom. Then we danced to a mix tape put together by my nephew Jamie, and Amanda was able to strut her quite astounding stuff. No sleepover that night; we bundled her back to the motel to get some rest.
Last spring we took Amanda to her friend’s birthday party. When we arrived a couple of hours later to pick her up, the mother urged us to stay: “We haven’t done the pinata yet, or opened the presents.” The children played in an inflatable pool with a hose and water balloons, smashed the pinata, and squabbled over the candy. We sat under the portable canopy, shelter from the fierce sun, with the other grown-ups, eating hamburgers and watermelon, drinking tea and beer.
We were the only non-family and the only non-blacks, and everyone tried to make us welcome. I talked knee replacements with the grandmas and aunts, and Connecticut winters with a boy who was heading to college up north. The birthday cake was a work of art, made by a 16-year-old cousin who has mastered fondant – a beach scene with umbrellas and clown-fish and bright blue fondant ocean. When we left, I told the mother and grandmother that it was the nicest children’s birthday party I had ever been to: “You can’t rent family at the Party Store.” I went home grieving for Amanda, who yearns for black family gatherings.
PARTY FAVORS, GAMES, AND MORE…BUT YOU CAN’T RENT FAMILY AT THE PARTY STORE
Amanda is in an odd and challenging situation, a black girl who began her life in tough poverty, raised now by old white people who have more than enough. Who knows how long Joe and I will last? I want her to have plenty of family when we’re gone
Now she has three families. There is her mother’s family. She rarely sees her mother, but I keep her in touch with Grandma Cookie and her maternal aunt and cousins. There is Joe’s family – grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. She sees them often, and the love is mutual. And there is my family, who welcomed her into the pack of cousins as though she had always been there.
A wise woman I know says “All families are multi-cultural.” I want Amanda to see many places and many ways of living. Exposed to so many different worlds, maybe she will never feel she belongs anywhere. But if all goes well, she will understand that she belongs everywhere.
THANKS TO JOSEPH S. JACKSON FOR THE PHOTOS FROM MAINE (and for making all the travel arrangements!)
Jul 27, 2012
Discreet. I like that word. In my mind I still partly live in my mother’s world of short white gloves, hats and stockings, a world which was starting to crumble just as I was old enough to enter it.
I used to be very averse to exposing my private life to the world. That has changed since I began blogging, and I’m not sure why. For a long time I was embarrassed to let anyone know what I was really thinking. The Voice of The Fathers was VERY strong in me, condemning a lot of what I did and thought, and I’ve always half-agreed with them. Of course it wasn’t The Fathers, it was my father.
ME AND MY FATHER, 1987
Now I write posts about fuck-me shoes and crude adolescent behavior on trains. I’m no longer embarrassed by my body – I”ve posted pictures of myself exercising in my underpants, and in a wetsuit like a fat black sausage. Below you’ll see me happily lumpy in a bathing suit. At 65 I believe I’ve earned my lumps.
A friend tells me that to write memoir effectively you must be fearless. But I am not fearless. I may seem to be baring my soul, or at least my past and my thighs, but I don’t write about my deepest sorrows or biggest regrets. I don’t write about the thoughts and deeds I’m most ashamed of, not for lack of material, but precisely because I am ashamed.
I am more careful now about other people’s privacy than about my own. When I write about friends or family I usually clear the piece with them. None of them has ever objected to anything I say, probably because I am still bound by ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’
I am particularly concerned about Amanda’s privacy. I keep her worries, fears, and misdemeanors to myself. I avoid writing much detail about her life, except the sunny innocuous parts.
I recently posted two pictures of Amanda as a toddler; you couldn’t connect them to the nine-year-old she is now. I am leery of putting up contemporary pictures. I also have an ill-informed fear of the internet, and what might happen to a photo of her there, as though a stranger would track her down and harm her. I know there are real dangers to children on the internet, but I suspect the ones I fear are not real. Still, the Grandma in me yearns to share with the world the adorableness of this child. So at the end of this post I’ve put up a few more baby pictures.
In fiction I have always felt obliged to make up characters. I feel I’m cheating if I merely disguise someone I know. After I finished my third novel I wondered whether I would be a better writer if I were willing to go deeper inside myself. I created a character based on me, though the scenes and details were imaginary. But I found I loathed her.
I would not venture to defend any of these opinions, nor apply them to the work of other writers. Indeed, I don’t believe they rise to the level of opinion; instead, they remain in the warm, murky waters of feeling. They are mine, and I share them with you without any attempt to persuade.
Jul 13, 2012
This is a tribute to my dear husband Joe, who is father and grandfather to Amanda. We married when I was 51 and he was 40; we never expected to raise a child together.
I’ve been a single mother and a married mother, and married is way better. Amanda has two parents to love and support her, with different views and personalities. We share the work. We figure out knotty problems together. Most of all, we rejoice together as we watch her grow.
A single mother’s mood controls the emotional weather at home. When she is angry or depressed, tired or stressed, the child has nowhere to turn.
With two parents, when one is angry, Amanda can go to the other for comfort. When one of us is in a conflict with Amanda that is heading downhill, the other steps in and takes over. Joe is brilliant at distracting her from her angry stubborn stance until she is ready to cool down and comply.
Joe and I balance each other. By nature I am a little too controlling and rigid, he is a little too loose and laissez faire. This certainly produces plenty of conversations, some of them loud. But with the benefit of both our perspectives, I let go of a thousand things that don’t really matter, and he supports me on those I feel strongly about. We confer on complicated issues of how to handle behavior. (We both believe rewards rather than punishment are the way to go with this child, but that’s WAY easier said than done!)
I do most of the practical work and logistics. I set up schedules and systems for behavior, chores, homework, bedtime routines. I arrange afterschool and summer programs. I’m usually the driver and cook, the nurse when she’s sick. I’m the protective one, the strict one. I do more parenting; Joe does more playing. He’s more fun than I am.
Since she was very young, Amanda has loved the beach. The first time we took her was a blustery, chilly day, but that didn’t stop them.
Since then he has taught her to make drip castles and ride the waves. Last weekend they rented a wave runner and went charging around in the ocean at Miami Beach. He let her hold the throttle.
When she was little they’d play toddler hide and seek. She’d hide in the sofa cushions, he’d call “Where’s Amanda?” And she’d pop out crying, “Here she is!”
They’d dance in the living room to Bob Marley, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and he’d spin her high in the air. She’s too big for that now, 55 inches and growing, but in May they went to the Girl Scouts’ Father-Daughter dance. She had a most spectacular magenta dress with spangles, jeweled sandals, and rhinestone earrings. Joe said, “You look beautiful. But I think there’s something missing.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a wrist corsage of pink roses.
Joe’s grandfather taught him to explore nature; his father taught him to sail. Now Amanda shares his love of rocks and fossils, and they sail Hobie Cats at Lake Wauberg. He loves Disney World and wild rides as much as she does; I stay home and enjoy the silence.
When she’s earned enough screen time they watch videos and share popcorn. They love monster, space alien, and adventure movies. They also love nature movies (especially when one piece of nature eats another piece of nature).
His favorite part of fathers’ day weekend was going to see Men in Black II, and wading in the creek with the dog and Amanda. She was particularly impressed when he ran into a banana spider’s web.
My own father was not a romper. I remember watermelon seed spitting contests. I remember my little hands inside his big ones as we washed up before lunch. He made up stories about a little girl, her doll, and two dragons. But mostly I remember him as distant, a little scary, someone to be avoided. If he announced it was time go for a walk or a drive, I knew I was in for a lecture.
Researchers believe that fathers play a key role in developing girls’ self-confidence and self-esteem. A strong relationship with their father can be a shield or antidote to all the possible toxicities of their young encounters with boys. (This is not to say that daughters raised by lesbians suffer; research also suggests that children of lesbian couples have stronger self-esteem and self-confidence than those of heterosexual couples.)
I began writing notes for this when I was at a five-day writers workshop in St. Simons Island, Georgia. When I asked Joe he never hesitated, “You should go.” He is the main cheerleader for my writing and genuinely happy when it goes well for me. So I had five days in a motel by myself, responsible for no one and nothing but me. I never had that with the other children until they were old enough for sleep-away camp.
I won’t claim that our life is nothing but hearts, flowers, hugs and smiles. The words killjoy and irresponsible have been heard once or twice. Sharing child-rearing and chores produces plenty of disagreements, and we have the occasional eye roll and mutter. But we always end by talking it over. We’ve both learned to listen. I know from experience that two heads and hearts are better than one.
