Obligatory End of the Year Wrap Up in List Form

In which I sort the events of the year into two big categories and don't elaborate.


Cheers

1. Obama's election
   
2. Solo Road Trips
   
3. Running
   
4. Facebook and finding/visiting old friends
   
5. Super Target in TOWN!
   
6. Hardwood flooring!
   
7. Wii
   
8. Lensbaby Photography
   
9. Radiolab
   
10. Nostalgia
    
11. LOST
    
12. Turning 30
    
13. Finishing first 1/2 marathon strong
    
14. Satellite radio
    
15. Chuck Klosterman's non-fiction
    
16. Clarity and confidence
    
17. My son's phonemic awareness
    
18. The Olympics
    
19. Mixtape CD's received as gifts! I love mixtapes.
    

Jeers

1. Grey hair
   
2. High gas prices
   
3. Recession and friends losing jobs
   
4. Running Injuries
   
5. Money dropped on running shoes
6. Heavily processed "food"
   
7. Chuck Klosterman's fiction
   
8. No girls weekend this year!
   
9. No travel to other countries this year!
   
10. Having to deal with people who hate on the running and healthy eating
    
11. General adult stresses
    
12. Can't recall one AMAZING movie from the year other than old Hitchcock that I rented
    

On the Intensity of my Interests

About a week ago I was listening to "Into the Mystic" by Van Morrison. I'm fully in the flow of the guitar and Morrison's voice. I'm imagining that a combination of time travel and/or reincarnation means that I'm the gypsy soul that he wanted to rock when this song was released. (Goal achieved, Mr. Morrison. I am rocked.)

I turn to my husband and ask if he likes Van Morrison. And I receive the same answer I get whenever I ask him about a band or musician. It is as if he views the whole of music (excepting tiki or lounge music) as tolerable or adequate, but nothing life sustaining or life enhancing.

Times like these make me forget all the many benefits of marriage and the many positive characteristics of my husband. All I can think of is how did I manage to marry a man who sees no difference in quality between Van Morrison, Dexy's Midnight Runners, and The Doobie Brothers. My husband can date Hawaiian shirts within 5 years based on esoteric trivia that he has learned. But he has no real opinion on Van Morrison.

Van Morrison isn't the only artist to not impress my husband. I have yet to discover what he really likes musically beyond The Beach Boys.

One cannot be satisfied just by The Beach Boys!

But in the end--this isn't about my husband. My husband is amazing in so many ways even if his taste is music is limited and weak.

This is about me seeking me in others. This is about me frequently feeling lonely by the intensity of my interests that I so rarely see duplicated in others.

Where are those who are most like me? I can't be that odd. Can I?

On Allusions

In our youngest and most vulnerable years as children, our first allusions are charming and generally cartoon-based.  Our parents generally understand our allusions as they control what we can see of the world.  Therefore, a child's allusions are reflective of the parent rather than the child.

Years later, as teenagers, our allusions are verbal evidence of the work we put into shaping and manufacturing our personas.  Our allusions tend to be more esoteric as we try to use them to evade our parents' understanding of the persona we labor so painstakingly to create.

Sometime in our twenties, we realize that communicating who we are shouldn't have an adjective like "painstaking" nailed to it.  We discard the persona and discover the person.  Our allusions become reflective of the person.   And we use them as tests--Who will understand this reference?  Is this person someone who I can't be real around?  Will this person be thrilled by that which thrills me? 

I've just hit my thirties.  I have no idea what happens next, but I fear and I suspect that my allusions will start to wrinkle and grey and date me.  

On Fashioning Analogies

I consider the art of analogy the number one indicator of intelligence.

In Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nörth Daköta, Chuck Klosterman tries to capture in analogy the differences between Eric Clapton and Eddie Van Halen and succeeds: 

"Listening to Clapton is like getting a sensual massage from a woman you've loved for the past ten years; listening to Van Halen is like having the best sex of your life with three foxy nursing students you met at the Tastee Freez."* 

While I trust that I won't need to employ such modifiers such as "foxy" into rhetoric battle, I hope that I will be able to fashion analogies like his. 

*This analogy would, of course, explain why I would choose Blind Faith, Cream, or Derek and the Dominoes over Van Halen.  It also explains why my husband prefers the Van Halen of the David Lee Roth years. 

On the Importance of Moms Discussing Politics

Discussing politics socially should not be taboo.

When I found out I was pregnant back in 2002, I embraced my geekiness and immediately hit the internet for information and advice. I found myself a part of a bulletin board of mothers who were due in July. Nearly six years later, we still have this incredible bond. The women on our bulletin board have supported each other through divorces, miscarriages, pregnancies, career changes, and the other varied stresses of life. Two years ago today, we lost one of our members to cancer. In short this group of women who initially bonded because of the shared timing of their first child have discussed and dealt with it all.

Politics has remained, still after all these years, a subject that many believe should not be discussed. The historic nomination of Barack Obama and the historic choice of Sarah Palin on the Republican ticket engendered commentary in our little corner of the internet. There was a bit of tension. Some suggested not discussing politics.

This is ridiculous. Moms must be involved in political discussion! We need true political discourse in this country. How can a country conceived in liberty somehow create a citizenry that believes that politics is an inappropriate topic for discussion? I think of Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and other significant voices of the Revolution and the New Republic. What would they think of a politics being pushed aside in conversation? Great American orators and writers dominate the pages of history. Let’s not allow 24-hour news networks with its sound bites destroy the art of political conversation. Instead let’s allow the internet with its democratizing powers include more people in the conversation. Let’s hold ourselves up to high standards of logic and reasoning. And let’s truly hear one another.

We are the mothers. As mothers we are our children’s first social studies instructor. We must model thoughtful political discourse in front of our children. We must have dinner parties with Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We must encourage our children to form their own opinions after careful consideration of and conversation on the issues. For the sake of the Founding Fathers, we mothers must remember that part of our job is not only raising children but also raising civically minded citizens.

I can’t help but think of 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., and those clergymen who acknowledged the social injustices of that time yet disagreed with King’s tactics and demonstrations in the name of Civil Rights. Those eight clergymen believed that King and his followers should use the courts instead of taking the battle to the streets. Their letter motivated King to write a masterpiece both of the English language and of the human spirit. His “Letter from Birmingham Jail” outlined the justification for his actions. The clergymen wanted him to wait. King explains that he couldn’t and shouldn’t wait when he and others have witnessed and experiences a lengthy list full of atrocities ranging from lynching to suffering in poverty to having to explain to a child why she can’t go to the amusement park.

Perhaps those eight clergymen felt that waiting would have been quieter. Quiet doesn’t get things done. Quiet doesn’t cause change. Quiet doesn’t inspire.

Be loud.

Engage in conversations about politics, so that when our children ask about a perceived injustice in our world, we can show them the way to change.

On What is Obvious Tonight

Watching the Olympics is quite time consuming, and if I were completely honest, a wee bit emotional.

The last time that I watched the Olympics like this was 1996. With high school completed and college looming on the horizon, I had naught else to do but watch the Olympics. On August 1, 1996, I wrote the following in my journal:

"I should have been a rhythmic gymnast. That much is obvious tonight."

Clearly, I was reflective and pensive in the way that only an bored eighteen year old can be in the summer before college.

Tonight I sit here with my son pressed up against me in bed watching the Olympics. He is fighting sleep and would rather watch SpongeBob SquarePants. Michael Phelps is about to swim the 100M Butterfly--everyone expects him to earn his seventh gold of these games--tying Spitz's record from 1972. He just won by 1/100th of a second.

Twelve years ago watching the Olympics revealed the "obvious" notion that I should have been a rhythmic gymnast. I clearly didn't understand what the word obvious meant. I was also a girl completely self-absorbed with myself. I saw rhythmic gymnastics and only saw the rhythmic gymnastics.

Tonight I see beyond the pool, the uneven bars, and the track. With this little boy sleeping next to me, sharing my blanket, I finally do see the obvious. The emotional reactions of the athletes and their parents tell the story. It is about the athlete's courage to chase the impossible and the family's courage to believe that their loved one can catch the impossible.

And I can have the courage to believe in my son. That much is obvious tonight.

On Stand by Me and Losing Your Virginity

Consider the iconic film Stand by Me and the losing your virginity.

These two subjects came up independently in conversation today. A seemingly light conversation about the dangers of wearing skirts around men (quite dangerous according to my informal poll) eventually found itself in loss of virginity territory.

What is a girl to do when her first becomes world famous and cryptically mentions her in press interviews? This is surely a plot for a novel, but it is also my friend's reality! When another friend mentions her first, she speaks of him as a long-lost friend even though he is her husband. I pointed this out to her. She argues that they are both different people now. She has one partner but thinks of him as two different people in this completely reasonable way.

People change. Our firsts can become famous or infamous, familiar or strange, Nobel prize winners or the perpetually overlooked man.

Attitudes change. Most in my (albeit small) circle of friends cried after their first time. For reference, we are in our thirties. I have no idea if this is the norm or if I am simply drawn to a bunch of women who cry. In talking to the younger generation, we find that teenagers today find our tears to be strange. These teens didn't cry and can't imagine why we did. We can't imagine why they wouldn't.

Pressed to explain, we can come up with partial explanation at best to explain the tears. But some part of the motivation for the tears is terribly elusive.

Until today!

Don't read that as some arrogant proclamation of "Eureka!" The fortunate juxtaposition of our Stand by Me conversation with the conversation on virginity revealed the obvious.

Why does Stand by Me speak to so many? On a literal level, the film centers around four boys who set out to see a dead body presumably at the end of the summer. On the symbolic level, the film's literal journey represents the journey out of innocence and into experience. (I'll spare you an in-depth analysis of the archetypes and references to Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell.)

After you have seen the corpse, the journeys change. Singing songs while walking the train tracks become seemingly inappropriate when they once surfaced organically and with a carefree spirit.

And that is worth a few tears.

It isn't that innocence is better than experience. Both obviously have their virtues and pitfalls. As we become experienced, we cry because we can't have both the experience and the innocence. We cry because we can't go back.

There is something magical about those transitional times--those summers which precede the inevitable death and dying in the autumn. You are on your way to seeing the corpse. You know after you see the corpse everything will change, but you have to see the corpse. Your curiosity overwhelms you.

Just like Gordie Lachance wistfully remembers the friend he had when he was twelve, we all wistfully remember those last moments of innocence that we shared with the boys before they became famous, or our husbands, or complete strangers.

On a Shrinking World

I love it when the world proves to be smaller than expected, but all things should have a limit.

During my childhood, I had my share of friends moving away at different points. One friend, Tony G., moved away during our freshman year of high school. This was in the early 1990s. This was before the expansion of the internet and well before cell phone plans with no long distance charges. Keeping in touch with friends who moved away was done the old fashioned way—through letters and the occasional phone call permitted begrudgingly by parents.

Fast forward to my last quarter at UCLA. It was 1999. I was taking Latin for no other reason than I thought it would be fun. I was not planning on a career in a field that relies heavily on Latin-derived jargon. I simply thought it would be cool to take Latin. I had met the requirements for my major and was just earning units at this point. Near the end of the quarter, I hear someone call out my name. It was Tony G. We had easily lost contact for probably five years. It was such a pleasant surprise seeing him there. The best part was he was taking Ancient Greek next door. I love the odds that we both decided on taking dead languages at that precise moment in our lives.

The world seemed a little smaller with that reunion.

That reconnection makes for good storytelling, but I have plenty of other moments of reconnection. Leaving home to attend college means separation from your old high school friends. Graduation from college means another separation, and suddenly you have old college friends. I consider myself to be fortunate to have been born in the late 1970s. Not only do I have fond memories of music videos on MTV, but I also was able to experience separation and serendipitous reconnection.

Essentially, I lived a lot of life before social networking boomed into existence. For this, I am thankful.

Now young adults really don’t have to leave old friends behind. They can stay connected through social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. Websites like those have allowed me to make contact with many old lost friends (including Tony G. who I had lost contact with after reconnecting at UCLA). So far my childhood friends have become amazing adults! So a big part of me likes these sites, but the mother part of me is afraid for my son.

Will my son experience that separation and the subsequent joy that comes with reconnection? He will not because the world has grown too small.The readily available connections of our age mean he won’t get to experience those absences.

It is when I think of these sorts of things that I feel old and a bit old-fashioned. I feel like I am morphing into this caricature of a mom who says to her child, “You know when I was your age ::insert memory here::”

But I’m sure that I am not alone. I am sure that these feelings are fairly universal. Each generation pities the next for missing out on those special moments. I’m curious as to what my worries my own mother harbored watching me grow up. Did she worry that I was pampered by a word processor when she had to use a typewriter? Was she concerned that cable television would rob me of my imagination?

Then I think of my son having a child of his own. And I cannot fathom what he and members of his generation will think as they watch their own children live in this increasingly shrinking accelerated world.

On This Blog

I really can be a better writer if I only applied myself.

This is me applying myself.