This year, for Thanksgiving, we had a couple of people over – all family – and Bill did most of the cooking. Bill usually does most of the cooking, because I struggle in that area. I will not dwell on my history of historically bad cooking experiences.
But this year, in order to save my own life, I have given up a few things that are huge on the traditional Thanksgiving menu. Stuffing, for example, is my favorite food. But it contains gluten and dairy. I can’t eat gluten or dairy. Or soy, potatoes, corn or sugar.
Sugar, of course, is huge. And no one said I could eat coconut sugar, but for Thanksgiving, I did. In fact, I also ate potatoes.
But I also made a gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, corn-free, potato-free, sugar-free green bean casserole.
You know that delicious green bean casserole with the cream of mushroom soup throughout and fried onions on top? The one that melts in your mouth and after it’s gone, you dream about it for weeks? And you can hardly believe your good fortune that it’s GREEN BEANS, so you know it’s healthy?
That’s the one I was trying to mimic.
I had green beans and onions, so I bought the remaining ingredients and got right to work on Thanksgiving morning. I sliced onions. I sautéed mushrooms and garlic. I sort-of diced onions – meaning I put them into the blender on “food chop” which, it turns out, doesn’t really chop food at all. It just liquifies food. Still, I had onion flavor.
I realized 3/4 of the way through the recipe that I had only printed out the first steps. Having not printed out the last few steps meant that I had no idea what to do with the coconut milk and bone broth, and no idea how long to cook the beans or on what temperature.
And when I looked up the recipe online – the one I had printed only the day before – the server was down and I was stuck. I had no finale for my superstar recipe. In fact, I had no clue what to do.
Bill tried to help while I was freaking out, as did my mother (who was letting me use her oven to bake the beans). And they did help – but mostly I just ran around, befuddled, wishing I hadn’t bothered to even try.
Then, only two hours later, I had created a bowl of mush that resembled porridge with shrubbery growing from it.
I threw some supposedly fried onions on top (which were actually sautéed) and called it “done.” While my mentally challenged sister-in-law thought it was delightful, and my husband admitted that he actually loved those beans, I was not a fan. All I could see were my mistakes.
And I realize, looking back (one day later), that this is the way I treat myself constantly. All I see are my mistakes.
So why does it come as a surprise when I point out all of the kids’ mistakes and don’t remember to compliment them on their successes? If they’d made a green bean casserole, and worked as hard as I did to do it, I would have eaten that thing with vim and vigor.
Which, now that I think about it, is just what my mom did.
On the same road trip where Dylan forgot his music and his license, we were flying down the highway at 70 miles per hour when, quite suddenly, we came to a complete stop.
It had gotten dark, so the road was just a river of brake lights as far as the eye could see.
We pulled into what appeared to be the world’s longest parking lot, and turned off the car. The guy in front of us got out of his car, raised the hood, fiddled with something, and then put the hood down again.
It was very cold outside. I mean, there was snow in the median strip. Traffic was backed up on the other side of the highway so that drivers could stare at the ridiculous sight of hundreds, maybe thousands, of people who were not moving anywhere.
We sat there for a long time.
We turned the car on to charge our phones, and Dylan played some music. We sang along.
We turned the car off and stood outside under our red-and-white-striped golf umbrella, gazing at the sparkling red lights.
The eighteen-wheeler next to us was a tanker truck. (I know this from when Dylan was a toddler and he was obsessed with trucks.) It had a ladder running up the side, which was very tempting for us. We both wanted to climb up, sit on top of the truck, and stare at the miles and miles of dead-stopped traffic.
Dylan took a photo of me daring myself to do it, and posted it on Instagram. I took a photo of the traffic, which didn’t do it justice, and posted it on Facebook.
Dylan ran off in his flip flops, in the snow, to find a tree that doubled as a restroom. I called Bill at home a hundred times, talking about our adventure and finding out what Bill discovered online – piece by piece – about our traffic situation. Apparently, there was a trailer tractor blocking both lanes of traffic – somehow, for some reason.
We knew we weren’t going anywhere. We sang along to a few more songs. We talked and laughed and ate snacks. We watched the people in the car in front of us, who tentatively wandered out into the cold and rain – and then got back into their car.
We laughed a lot.
Eventually – about an hour-and-a-half later – the red lights started to blink in the distance. After some struggle, I recognized that the lights were disappearing over the hill.
Traffic was flowing again.
We turned on our car, buckled our seatbelts, and waited for our turn.
And eventually, we were flying down the highway again.
Last week, during a surprise snow “storm,” Dylan and I headed out to visit a college. He was interviewing for a fellowship and auditioning for a music scholarship, as well as having an “academic exploration” day. In other words, he was on his way to do things a mature, responsible adult would do.
It was supposed to be a four-hour drive. Since it had snowed in the morning, schools were closed. I suggested we leave early, around 1:30, to avoid both slushy roads from the morning and the evening rush hour.
At 1:30, Dylan was barefoot, on his phone, and had not yet eaten breakfast.
Fortunately, the roads were still slick, so I didn’t push. At 1:45, after reminding him all day to be ready by 1:30, I reminded him again that I wanted to leave.
“You have eight minutes,” I said. Our bags were packed and in the car. Dylan had packed for himself, and I’d been telling him for three days to have his stuff in the car – at the latest – the night before we left.
At 2:00, Dylan was still barefoot and on his phone.
“C’mon, Dylan,” I urged. “The snow is finally changing to rain. I’d like to get there before it gets dark.”
“OKAY,” he said, clearly irritated by my presence. “I’m almost ready!”
At 2:25, we finally got into the car. We went half a mile before Dylan said, “Turn around. I forgot my music.”
He needed his music for his audition.
“Weren’t you supposed to have that in the car last night?”
“Yeah, but I forgot. Can we go back, please?”
We went back. He got his music. We left again.
On our second try, we went five miles. We were on the highway, merrily rolling along, when Dylan said, “I don’t have my driver’s license.”
That’s when I lost it.
“You don’t have what?!?” I let him have it with both barrels: you didn’t get ready by 1:30, you didn’t get ready by 2:00, it’s going to be dark before we get there, the roads are snowy, you already forgot your music, you were supposed to put your stuff in the car three days ago, and you forgot your license on our last road trip, too! I had to drive for three days!
Dylan learned nothing from my rant, which lasted all the way back home, and for another ten minutes after.
But I learned something.
Again.
“You say a lot of smart stuff,” Dylan told me later. “But when you’re trying to make your point, it’s like you’re trying to land an airplane. Instead of bringing the plane in gently and landing on the landing strip, you’re crashing the plane into the control tower! It’s really hard to see your point if you’re shoving it right into my face.”
He had a very good point.
I don’t know what to do about my communication methodology. I can’t really change who I am, or how I react on a gut level. But I can – maybe – learn to take a moment and pause before flying my plane into the control tower.
I guess I just feel like I’m always making the same point, over and over, and if I don’t keep shoving it into his face, he’ll never see it.
Still, his reasoning is quite valid.
I just don’t know what I can do about it.
For three years, I have been browsing through scholarship opportunities for Dylan. I know that getting several small scholarships is the only way to pay for college, and I also know that it can be done.
I have printed out scholarship lists, and pages with individual details about specific scholarships for which Dylan is eligible. I’ve left them by his bedroom door, strategically placed them at his place at the dinner table, and directly handed them to him.
My placement of these opportunities in Dylan’s general vicinity were often accompanied by my sage wisdom.
Middle of 9th Grade:
“Dylan, you’re in high school now. I know it seems early, but it’s never too early to start planning for college. You can actually start looking for scholarships already! Here’s a website you can use to see what’s out there. We can’t really afford to pay for your college, so you definitely need to at least apply for scholarships!”
“Okay, I will.”
Fall of 10th Grade:
“Hey Dylan, I have an idea. Why don’t you spend a few minutes looking at this email newsletter? It lists a whole slew of college scholarships. Maybe you can just see what’s out there, so you know how to apply.”
“Okay.”
(five minutes later)
“All of these are for, like, seniors and stuff. I can’t do any of them.”
September of 11th Grade:
“Okay, Dylan, here’s a thought. Just apply for one scholarship every month! If you apply for one scholarship a month, that’s ten scholarships you could get by the end of the year! And you don’t have to spend a ton of time doing it. Just one per month. Here’s a whole pile to get you started.”
“That’s a really good idea, Mom. I can do that.”
(five minutes later)
“They all want essays and stuff. I’ll have to think about what I want to write.”
November of 12th Grade:
“Dylan, here’s the thing. I have been asking you to look for scholarships since you were in eighth grade. I’ve texted you. I’ve forwarded emails to you. I’ve printed out dozens of opportunities and handed them to you. And you still don’t seem to understand. We can’t afford to pay $50,000 a year for college. We need your help, and you aren’t looking for scholarships at all. You certainly haven’t applied for any.”
“You have no idea what I’ve been doing.”
Well, that much is true.
And now, time is up.
I am too wrapped up with the dog to think about the kids, or to write a blog.
The dog is doing GREAT, by the way. She’s been to the vet for three post-op appointments, and now has her bandage off. She is resting comfortably, and also jumping around way too much. In other words, she’s behaving normally.
What I learned from having a dog at death’s door, however briefly:
- In spite of being Mama Duck, I am not the only person who cares for the dog. I may be the only person who feeds her, remembers to let her out, gives her fresh water and takes her for walks (unless she’s vacationing with the grandparents), but there was a lot of breath-holding during surgery. My boys – husband, two kids and my stepson – were all equally incapable of functioning until they found out Xena was going to be okay. Even my dad was quiet and waiting.
- My mother is also Mama Duck. I know Xena lives with me, but my mother reacted exactly the same as I did. This, of course, was horrible for everyone, except the dog who didn’t realize she’d been at death’s door. My mother will be the first to tell you that having grandchildren and grand-dogs is harder than having children and dogs; you have less control and more to worry about.
- I love this dog. I mean, I really, really love her. I have been saying for ten years that I would rather have gotten a Goldendoodle, the world’s cutest dog. But this dog is the perfect dog for me and my family.
As a result, the dog now sleeps in my room. I moved her bed and water bowl in with me. Even though she has previously been known to vomit on my rug, and even though she occasionally wakes me up by ramming into the bed, she never needs to sleep in the hall again. She seems happy with the new arrangement.
And everyone is happy with her.
We are still waiting to see if she has cancer. We are also waiting to see if her autoimmune anemia is improving with medication. So we are waiting to see if the baby of the family will be with us for a few more years, or a few more months. After a few days of recovery, she is in great spirits and acting like she is going to live forever.
Regardless, we all have a new appreciation for Xena.
There’s nothing like having a dog emergency to put life into perspective.
My dog had surgery. Xena has had prior surgeries, all to have bumps removed from her skin. Even as a puppy, she had bumps.
But this “bump” was actually called a tumor. It was bigger than the other bumps.
And it was bleeding. A lot.
So this surgery wasn’t just a bump removal. It was an emergency procedure.
When we took her in for surgery, the doctor sat down with me.
“I have Xena’s preliminary blood work,” she said. “And the numbers are not good. She is severely anemic, which means her platelet count is very low.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, completely lost. “What should we do?”
“The safest thing to do would be to take her to a hospital where they have the resources to do a complete blood transfusion. We don’t have the resources to do that here. A complete blood transfusion will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. Here, we can only do the mass removal. With her platelet count as low as it is, we may not be able to stop the bleeding. But that mass has to come off.”
The doctor was telling me that my dog could die today.
I didn’t hear that. “Well, she’ll bleed to death at home if we don’t remove it,” I said. “So let’s just get it off.”
I wasn’t thinking about blood transfusions or why she would need that. I didn’t know what “platelets” were. I just wanted it all to go away so I could have my dog back again.
It wasn’t until I went home and researched that I decided to check platelet numbers. The internet said anything under 150,000 would make surgery dangerous.
So I called the vet while my dog was in surgery, and asked: “How low, exactly, is her platelet count?”
The vet secretary read from Xena’s paperwork. “Seventy-five,” she said.
I hung up and collapsed. My dog wasn’t going to survive the surgery. She didn’t have enough platelets to make her blood clot. She wasn’t going to stop bleeding.
I called my husband. I texted the boys. I put out a cry for help on Facebook.
Please pray.
And then I prayed. I alternated between denial and devastation – between organizing the cupboards and falling onto the floor sobbing. But for hours, I prayed and prayed and prayed.
Finally, the surgeon called. “Xena is out of surgery,” she said. “Everything went very well.” They stopped the bleeding. They want to give her medicine to help with the anemia. There is a long recovery period. Blah blah blah.
They stopped the bleeding.
The surgeon and the doctor were both perplexed. “She’s bleeding less than most dogs bleed in a normal surgery,” the surgeon told the doctor during the operation. “I honestly don’t know how this is happening!”
The prayers worked.
I breathed.
I called and texted. Everyone else breathed, too.
Xena came home, wrapped in a body bandage, obviously in pain. She has a long road of recovery ahead of her.
But she came home. And that, today, is all that matters.
I was listening to the radio one morning and a disc jockey was talking about his young daughter. She was leaving town to spend a week in Florida with relatives. She is a younger child, and he has been consumed for years by his parental duties.
The question of the day was: “Do you have any ideas what I should do with all my free time, since I get to press pause on parenting?”
“I get to press pause on parenting.”
What interested me about this question is the specific use of the word, “get.”
This was a joyous occasion for this particular dad. He was looking forward to having a week off and doing things without his kid around.
I cannot fathom that mentality. In fact, I rarely go on trips without my children because I miss them so much while I am gone. The last few times I traveled with my husband, I said a thousand times, “The kids would love this.”
Mostly I don’t go, saying instead, “I don’t want to go there without the kids.” So my husband travels for work alone.
While I do realize that many, if not most parents think this way to some degree, my life revolves around my kids. I don’t stare at them while they’re here, and follow them around. I don’t “baby” them or expect that they need me to do everything for them, particularly as teenagers. And I have backed off tremendously from the hovering I did when they were younger.
I have a life outside of my kids, but I would give it up in a heartbeat if it meant that I could spend more time with my kids. I can’t imagine looking forward to being away from them.
I never want to press pause on parenting. I certainly wouldn’t say, “I get to press pause.”
What would that mean?
“I get to press pause” on hearing scurries in the hallway and sudden squeals of delight or horror. “I get to press pause” on waking up to the comfort a home filled with family. “I get to press pause” on listening to stories about school, seeing artwork that isn’t perfect, and finding out what they learned about life today. “I get to press pause” on doing laundry so that the one imperative shirt is clean again for the following day.
Sure, it’s tiring. Parenting is an enormous responsibility. But this morning, while the DJ was wondering what to do with his free time, I woke up wondering if I should foster a child after my own children are gone. I missed Shane’s little face peering at me in bed and whispering, “Mommy?”
I never want to press pause.
That doesn’t mean I have to suffocate them and know what they’re doing at every moment. While I want my kids to be independent and grow into strong adults, I pray that they will stay in touch with me. I want them to come home and visit, to be part of my life, to call me and tell me how things are going, and know they have a soft place to fall as long as I am here.
Parenting is the best job I have ever had. And I want to do it until the day I die, every minute and every hour of my life.
When I was growing up, I wanted to vote. It made sense to me that everyone would get a vote. And it was a right of passage for me.
But by the time I was old enough to do so, I wasn’t terribly interested in politics. And I only wanted to vote for one person: the President. I read an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that clarified the positions of the two candidates, and then I voted for Michael Dukakis. He seemed to think like I did.
That’s as far as it went. I didn’t know the difference between Democrats and Republicans, or even if there was a difference. I didn’t realize that I would also be voting for a whole slew of other people, besides the President, and I didn’t really care.
Since my first voting experience, a lot has changed.
My children, on Election Day, asked when we would know what was happening. We watched some of the stories of the polling issues on MSNBC. And it isn’t even a Presidential election year.
They remembered chanting along with 800,000 other people: “Vote them out! Vote them out!” in the heart of our nation’s capital.
This year, they know what’s at stake. They know how important this election is to our country – and they realize that their votes will count in every future election. They are concerned about the issues. They want things to happen in these United States that make sense to them. They want a say in their own future, and the future of their families..
They want to vote.
And I couldn’t be any prouder of them for that.
Shane came home from school early in the year, math homework in tow. He went upstairs to finish it.
About an hour later, he was back downstairs still working on a single Algebra 2 problem.
“Dylan, can you look at this?” he said. The two of them sat down on the floor and looked at Shane’s worksheet. They were there for a long time.
I thought it was nice that Shane was asking Dylan for help, but he wasn’t. Shane was concerned that the problem was wrong. Something about the equation didn’t sit right with him, and he was asking his big brother if he saw any glaring errors.
“I think it’s wrong, too,” Dylan said finally, getting up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked somewhat absentmindedly.
“The problem doesn’t make any sense the way it is,” Shane said. “I noticed it in class, and I told my teacher, but she said she would think about it later and then she never said anything else.”
There is a paraeducator in Shane’s math class, which I remember because Bill told me all about her after Open House. The paraeductor has a motorcycle.
“Don’t you have two teachers in that class?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” Shane said. “I think I’m going to ask the other teacher what she thinks tomorrow.”
And he did.
“What did she say?” I asked later.
“She said she thinks it’s right the way it is,” Shane told me. “But I know it’s wrong.”
I pushed for details. Given that Shane has such a propensity toward the literal, I assumed that he was reading the problem wrong somehow – that he was taking something too literally.
Shane explained that it was a complex algebraic equation, and that it was too hard to explain why it was wrong if I didn’t really know algebra. I took Algebra 2 – twice, actually – but I really didn’t understand anything algebraic. So I didn’t push for details.
“I have an idea how to explain it better,” Shane said. “I’m going to show it to the other teacher again tomorrow.”
And he did. Then he didn’t say anything about it for weeks.
But a few weeks later, I said, “Whatever happened to that one problem that you thought was wrong in math?”
“Which one?” Shane said. “There were two of them like that, in two different places. And the same thing happened with both of them.”
“Well,” I sighed. “What happened with both of them?”
“I explained to the teacher why it was wrong,” he said. “And she finally understood. Then she had to explain it to the other teacher. And then the teacher had to re-teach the entire class how to do the problem the right way.”
“Really?!”
“Yeah,” Shane said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it,” Shane said. “I mean, it doesn’t really matter.”
Maybe it didn’t matter to my son, but I was impressed. My 14-year-old freshman had to teach the teacher – twice.
But Shane just cared that the problem was done the right way.
And so – finally – it was.
I moved around a lot as a child. I lived in nine houses, six cities and five states before I graduated from high school.
But I am from Pittsburgh. I graduated from high school in the Pittsburgh area, then spent my young adulthood there. And while I went to college in Ohio, stayed briefly in Florida, and have lived in Maryland for 25 years, I am – and always will be – from Pittsburgh.
I don’t know how it works for all home towns, but the bond between Pittsburghers is strong. Once a heart connects with the city, the grip never loosens. It’s not that Pittsburgh is the most wonderful city in the world, or that it has the best weather, or even that its sports teams are extraordinary (although they are). It’s just not a place one can ever really leave behind.
Most people who were born in Pittsburgh stay in Pittsburgh. My mother hails from a large family there. In addition to an army of her cousins who never left, all of my mother’s sisters and most of her nieces and nephews still live there. Even the nieces’ and nephews’ families still live there.
That’s just how Pittsburgh is. People rarely leave.
So when an insane person walks into a synagogue on a Saturday morning and fires bullets into a crowd of gentle Pittsburgh families, the pain of their neighbors is real. And their neighbors extend far beyond the borders of Squirrel Hill, throughout the surrounding suburbs of Pittsburgh, and include the hearts of people all over the world who have ever called Pittsburgh “home.”
After hearing the tragic news, I could immediately picture the neighborhood where the shooting took place – a place to which I’d occasionally walked miles, just to be there.
Squirrel Hill is where I bought record albums at a world-class music store, and ate Mineo’s pizza bought from first-generation Italians. It’s where I followed cute boys down the block on Friday nights and it’s where I had my first taste of Haagen Dazs ice cream.
And now every memory of this beloved city will be slashed with a tragedy that, before Saturday, was entirely unthinkable. I will now remember the people who woke early to celebrate a new baby, and who never made it home. And I will think about those they left behind, their lives forever in tatters.
My heart, as always, is with you, Pittsburgh. My only wish is that someday, the healing will be as deep as this pain.
