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Monday Listicle: the anti-resolution resolution list

I took a little internet break over the winter holidays, or tried to, anyway (I can’t ignore twitter, what can I say) but now I’m back in Abu Dhabi, back in the interwebs, wondering what to write. I mean, it’s seven days into January. I don’t know about you slackers but I’ve already lost ten pounds, written a novel, redecorated the house, re-organized my files, and gotten a second doctorate.

Okay, that last one is a joke.

You can imagine my relief, then, when that fantastic Northwest Mommy suggested that we write a list of things we have no intention of changing in 2013. Sounds good to me. And then maybe I’ll get around to pondering the meaning of the new year sometime later this month, when I celebrate Barack’s second term and my last year of being forty. I mean, omigod my last year of being in my forties. Yes. That’s right. In 2014 I hit fifty. Or fifty hits me.

So with that end in sight, herewith a list of things that ain’t gonna change in 2013. At least not this month.

1. There will be cheese. I went a whole month without cheese, really I did. And good lord was it dull. A shop window in New York gave me a word for myself:

The word is “turophile” and it means a connoisseur of cheese. Yep. If you’re on Broadway around 18th street, stop in at Beecher’s. Try the Hooligan. You won’t be sorry.

2. There will be family. Last Christmas, when we visited New York, I raced us around visiting all and sundry, without logging in nearly enough time with my family. This year I learned my lesson and we spent a big chunk of our time hunkered down with family galore. Well, we’re not that big a group when all is said and done, but so it was a small galore, but still…a galore. And it was galore-ious. For those friends who we didn’t see, thousands of apologies and promises for long visits this summer, after we get the kids out of the bread line.

cousins queuing up for soup, Depression style

3. There will be driving. I will drive around to various soccer-related events. I will drive and drive and drive, in my little SUV, stunned that somehow I moved all the way to freaking Arabia and became a soccer mom. Here I am in an cosmopolitan city, living in a fifty-story high-rise, and yet I drive around like I live … in New Jersey.

4. I will keep working on my various writing projects. And more than that I will not say, other than to say that if I keep saying “my writing projects” in public, then eventually I will have to produce said projects. Which is to say that in fact I haven’t really written a novel this year. Yet. Dammit.

5. There will be teaching. And as much as I might complain about grading the essays and preparing for class, it’s still the best teaching gig I’ve ever had. Bright, committed students from around the world–the kind of students who are shocked shocked when they go to other institutions and discover that sometimes students come to class without doing the reading. Students like these? A gift.

6. I will remain fascinated (rather than frustrated) by life in Abu Dhabi, life in the Gulf, life so far from “home.” I suppose this one is really more of a hope than a resolution but I’ve seen what happens to people when they only see frustration. It’s an odd place to live, there’s no doubt, but it’s not altogether a bad place to live, if a person has to live somewhere.

7. I will be grateful for the health and happiness of my children, who amaze and delight me on a daily basis. I don’t know about you, but the tragedy of Newtown haunts me; I say a tiny “thank you” every time I hug one of my kids.

8. Husband and I will find time to be together when I’m not nagging him about picking up his socks and he’s not wondering why I’m so tetchy about making the bed every morning. Remarkably, we will celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary this summer, so we should probably remember to be nice to each other most of the time all year.

9. There will be ladies night out. I believe that couples should spend time together without kids (if they have them; without pets if they have those), but spending time with women friends helps me re-charge my batteries. A walk on the Corniche, a long lunch, or a weekend away from the families–it’s practically a medical necessity (and certainly helps with #8, above). Roger Cohen, in this column from the NY Times, said that “one has best friends in part to talk with them about the problems one has with one’s loves.” Bingo, baby. I mean….that’s what I would do if I ever had any problems with darling sock-dropping Husband.

10.  I will keep in mind this advice from Bill Cunningham, via a chalkboard outside a shop in New York:

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Read full story · Comments { 13 } on January 8, 2013 in Abu Dhabi, family, Kids, Monday Listicle, NYC

Halloween Has Come To Town…

I’m living in parallel worlds right now.

In one world, Hoboken is flooded, friends and family are without electricity and heat, tunnels have become swamps, and the subways are fit only for submarines.  Con Ed exploded only a few blocks from our old apartment and most of the world below 20th street has gone dark. My computer is permanently streaming the weather channel and I click over to facebook every few minutes to see if anyone has found enough computer charge to post an update, or maybe a picture.

I’m tempted here to say something about the need for the US to invest in its crumbling infrastructure, or to mention Nicholas Kristof’s facebook post, in which he says ” I’m always embarrassed when I have to tell Chinese or Europeans about our electrical blackouts. They look at me sympathetically as if I live in the developing world….” And I absolutely will not mention Romney’s high-handed comment about getting rid of FEMA or his insistence that individual states should handle emergency relief when disaster strikes.

Nope. Not going to say any of that.

Instead, I’ll tell you about the other world I live in, which has clear skies and blue that unfurls like silk against the shore.

And where it’s already Halloween.

Being that I’m the mother of sons who play pretty true to type most of the time, the costume discussion went sort of like this:

Me: How about one of the Marx Brothers?

Caleb: Nah, I think a skeleton.

Me: Groucho? With a cigar and a moustache?

Caleb: Nah, I think Death.

Me: A Hobbit?

Caleb: Nope. Skeleton. Maybe with a sword. Or a Nerf gun.

We arrived, ultimately, at Death Eater, specifically, Lucius Malfoy.  And that’s how I found myself trying to take this:

to this:

using this:

The other child? He wanted to be a character named Skulduggery Pleasant, from a book series that he read and loved this year. So that’s easy: black coat, black hat, some white face paint (Skulduggery is…a skeleton), black pants:

Front of cover book, Skulduggery Pleasant Mortal Coil

And then:

Liam: So I read online about how to make safe handheld fireballs.

Me: Safe and fireball don’t usually go together.

Liam: They are totally safe. You just get some cotton and some lighter fluid–

Me: No.

Liam: Then what’s the point of the costume? Skulduggery has fireballs. Without fireballs, I’m nothing.

Needless to say, he went off to a Halloween party with some school friends but without the Molotov cocktails. I know, I know, where’s the fun in that, but still, it’s such a drag to get the phone call about your kid lobbing flammable objects at the pumpkin carvers.

As for the Death Eater? He went off to trick or treat in our building with a friend from next door — without me or any other grownup. For the first time in what–twelve years?–I did not traipse around with a gaggle of costumed children on Halloween night.  I stayed home and answered the door to tricksytreaters, gazed out the window at the water, and clicked endlessly into facebook, where, in my other world, Halloween has pretty much been cancelled, or at very least, postponed.

I won’t make a joke about Thanksgiving turkeys this year being stuffed with Halloween candy; instead, I’ll talk about missing. My sister said to me once that basically she just doesn’t let herself think about how much she misses us, and I told her that it’s the same for me: I put all my “missing” in a separate little box and try to ignore it.

But at times like these – which I think you could pretty much call a crisis  -  that little box breaks open and I can think only about what’s happening not here.

The thing about this expat life? Sometimes it’s fine being far away.

And sometimes? It’s not.

 

 

 

 

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Read full story · Comments { 8 } on October 31, 2012 in Abu Dhabi, expat, family, Kids, NYC

As-salaamu aly akum

We’re a long way from home today, on Thanksgiving.  I mean, we’re a long way from home all the time, but on a day like today it’s a little bit harder than usual.  Usually I’m scurrying around the kitchen making a mess, swearing occasionally, but mostly loving that I’m cooking for people I love (why that feeling doesn’t carry over into the regular work week, I have no idea).  But today…nah. Just a regular day in Abu Dhabi.

A group of friends are getting together on Saturday for a big Thanksgiving feast, which will be lovely (and tasty). (Note to self: always find expat community comprised of fabulous cooks.)  We are lucky–thankful, even–to have a community of smart, funny, interesting people who have helped us feel more at home, and later today there will be phone calls to dear ones in the States, all of whom we will see in New York over the winter holidays.

So, as they say, As-salaamu aly akum–peace be upon you.  I hope you’re all with people you love (or at least like a little bit) on this holiday:

 

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Read full story · Comments { 9 } on November 24, 2011 in Abu Dhabi, expat, Travel, UAE

Monday Listicle: Tips for New Parents

It seemed like a good idea in theory, this having babies thing, right?  A dimple-cheeked bundle swathed in cuddly rompers and you getting to join the  Bugaboo-bumper car game in the grocery store.  Your partner would gaze at you (adoringly, of course) while you nursed, in a scene straight out of some Renaissance Pieta painting; and then you would push your (adorably) sleeping baby through the streets in the pram, in order to walk off that wee leftover baby poochy bit that’s still preventing your size 4s from zipping.

Or that was the theory, anyway. Welcome to the reality of Monday’s Listicle topic, hosted by Stasha and dreamed up by Cookie: tips for new moms.

1. Here’s the first tip: disregard all tips and advice. New parenthood equals survival mode. Do what works. If that means you live entirely on mac-and-cheese, go for it. If it means all you want is spicy doritos, make someone hightail it to the store and get it for you now.  There’s a reason the first three months of a newborn’s life are called the fourth trimester. You have needs and they should be met immediately. Logic and “appropriate” have absolutely nothing to do with it.

2. There is no such thing as “sleep training” a little baby and particularly not a newborn.  Other parents will (smugly) announce that their little baby was sleeping through the night from birth and shake their heads pityingly at you, who obviously gave birth to some lower life form.  Here’s a thought for those smug parents: fuck ‘em.  If their kid is sleeping through the night now, fine, but you know what? That’s gonna change, because…

3 …nothing stays the same with a new baby.  You think you’ve figured out the rhythm, you think there’s a sleep pattern, a feeding pattern, a crying pattern.  And there is.  For about a week.  But then that little squiblet grows, or gets a shot, or you enter the dark of moon, and everything goes straight to hell. You’re back at the beginning again.  Try not to let this constant cycle of change make you cry, because…

4.  … new parenthood is designed to teach you an important lesson that you should carry forward into the rest of your parenting life: you may think you’re in control, you may want to be in control, but you have given birth to another person. This person will, eventually, achieve autonomy and independence and language.  All of these things are a mixed blessing.

5.  Get outside. Even if you’re in the middle of winter (or the middle of summer or it’s raining or it’s snowing or it’s that you don’t want to leave the couch), get the hell outside. Breathe some fresh air, look at the sky. Maybe even without the baby. Walk around the block, down the street, across the field, wherever the hell you live. If you have to take the baby with you, take the baby with you, but better if you can find someone who will watch the baby so that you can be vertical on your own, without being attached to this new life you’ve spawned.

6.  The new life you’ve spawned will be okay if you are not there twenty-four hours a day.  Seriously. Would you want you hovering over your face every waking minute? No. You would not. You look like hell, your hair is unwashed and because you’ve been living on mac-and-cheese and doritos, your breath is pretty atrocious too.  You can leave the baby unwatched, in a car seat, in a crib, in another room, for the length of time it takes to shower, for example. You do not need to lug the child into the bathroom while you shower; you do not need to have the child in the room when you take that first post-partum poop.  If you must, bring the baby monitor into the bathroom with you. But everyone will be happier if you can remember that the physical attachment part happened in utero, and now the cord has been cut.  Separating also means…

7. … let other people help you.  Other people can hold babies without dropping them; other people have even been known to change diapers. (Okay, not my own father, but that was a different era, so he gets a pass. Sort of. I’ve worked it out with my therapist, so it’s all good).  You are allowed to ask for help, you are allowed to cry, you are allowed to say “this sucks shit and I’m bored and tired and fat and my ass hurts.”  Being a new mom is not like being in the military: there are no gold stars for bravery; there is no oak leaf cluster for being stoic. Stoic is for the ancient Greeks. And lok what happened to them. Met any ancient Greeks recently? Exactly.

8. But by the same token, remember that, in fact, there have been other babies in the history of the world. Yours may be the most beautiful, adorable genius that’s ever puked milk down a shoulder, but that notwithstanding, other children exist in the world–and have rolled over, spat up, smiled, farted, sneezed, and been generally “amazing ohmigod let me just show you this twenty-five minute video of her sleeping and then look, wait for it, she twitches! Isn’t that just the cuuuuuuutest thing ever??” Resist the temptation to tell everyone everything that your little darling has done. Save it for your mom, or maybe for twitter, where you can’t see people roll their eyes and hit delete.

9. If your baby is seriously ill, god forbid, or has to spend time in the NICU, god double forbid, find some comfort in the fact that the bond between parent and child can–and has–moved mountains. You will be able to withstand just about any amount of pain if it means getting your child well.

10. Don’t be surprised by how much you love that little blob of human flesh. All the books, all your friends with kids, will say “everything changes” once you have kids, and you probably nodded and said “yeah, yeah, sure, it changes, I can’t go out drinking until all hours any more, whatever.”  What they don’t say is that when you look at this baby, your entire world view shifts from somewhere in the front of your brain, where intellect resides, into somewhere deep in the reptilian brain, where instinct lives.  Suddenly you–your shoe collection, your thoughts about a new car, a new iphone, a promotion–don’t matter. Your happiness will now be directly correlated to the happiness of that mewling blob. As a parent you will now be always wrong and always right, frequently simultaneously (I read that somewhere on Mom-101, can’t remember exactly where, but I can’t take credit for those words of wisdom).  This contradiction is just another manifestation of the dizziness you’ll feel the first time you look into the eyes of this… .being… and feel your world shift on its axis. The dizziness doesn’t every fully leave you, either. You’ll be going along just fine and one day, when the baby is a little older, maybe ten or eight or something, you’ll look at the kid out of the corner of your eye and whammo, the love you feel will almost flatten you.  That whammo? That’s parenthood.

 

Double-dipping again today because when it’s List Day followed by Lovelinks Day, well, one column will have to serve for both!  So click over to The Good Life for other tips for new moms and click over here for lovelinks #28 (for virgins!)

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Read full story · Comments { 18 } on October 24, 2011 in birth, Children, family, Monday Listicle, Parenting

Whose Family Values Are They, Anyway? Happy Adoption Day!

My extended family will officially, legally, extend by one more person today, August 29.

My brother is going to become a father.

It’s very exciting and my mom has gone out west to join him for the big day.  They’ll meet at the courthouse where the papers will be finalized and then they’ll go out to lunch: my brother, my mom, my now-official nephew, his mother, and a few assorted other relatives.

It’s an event that would make Michelle Bachmann’s well-groomed toes curl in horror and make all of Rick Perry’s hair stand up straight (Michelle’s would stand up straight, too, except she uses too much hairspray. Come to think of it, maybe Rick does too).  In fact, my brother is pissing off the entire cohort of the Far Right today, with one simple action.

My single gay brother is legally adopting his biological offspring, the result of a single woman’s trip to a sperm bank some fifteen years ago. Continue Reading →

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Read full story · Comments { 28 } on August 29, 2011 in birth, Children, family, Feminism, Gender, Politics