by advicefrommarta | Jun 28, 2012 | Family Life
I am by nature a hoarder. As much as I admire a minimalist look aesthetically, it is not in my nature to have it. I love collections. It’s amazing to me how one marble on its own is just a marble but put in context with 20 other marbles of different sizes and colors, it becomes art. I am also sentimental. Like Ma’s China Doll in Little House on the Prairie, having talismans from my past gives me a a sense of belonging and security.
I found a box of old cassette tapes recently. There’s no reason for me to have them. I own most of the music on CD and don’t have a place to play a cassette. But just looking at them gave me a welcome snapshot of my life twenty years ago.
I’m also the grandchild of immigrants, practical people who thought that the pain of shlepping things was worth not having to buy them again. My great grandmother shlepped a feather bed across the ocean in case she needed to hide her children from the Cossacks here, too. What? Just because it was a new country she should have to buy a new feather bed?
One of my favorite places in my parents’ house is their attic. It’s been cleaned and organized in recent years but it is still a veritable store room of my childhood and young adult years. When we stay at my parents I go up to the vast attic and bring down to my children the same Legos and building blocks that I played with at their age. My prom dress hangs in a closet and Fred and Ethyl, two Easter Island-esque decorations originally belonging to my college roommate have a home.
While my own house isn’t as big as my parents, it does have an abundance of storage space and so for the most part we keep stuff. Sometimes it pays off in unusual ways. Out of nowhere my children will start playing again with a toy long past it’s suggested age. When they rediscover an old toy they often find a new, interesting way that wasn’t on the long discarded box. A bath toy becomes part of an experiment in floating and sinking. Foam building blocks meant for preschoolers become part of a complex machine that would do Rube Goldberg proud.
My daughter recently rediscovered her Backyardigans DVDs, a favorite from preschool. She’s watching them again and enjoying them on a whole new level. She’s enjoying them on their own merits and remembering how much she enjoyed them as a preschooler. Together they’re reminding us of her preschool years.
But, even our space is limited and really some of this stuff could be put to much better use by other people, so we’re having a yard sale. There’s a certain bittersweet joy to once again holding baby toys, to seeing impossibly tiny shoes and books I once believed could tell me how to be a parent. There’s a strange sadness at watching my children nonchalantly toss a once-begged for toy in to a box marked 25 cents. “How can you throw that away?” I want to ask. “Don’t you know how short your childhood is? What if one day you need a pink plastic light up wand?”
But throw it in the box they do and on Saturday another child will come and see something important in that pink plastic wand. A pregnant woman will pick up “The Baby Whisperer” and think she’s discovered the secret to parenting.
The good thing is that by design or carelessness some things will stay. A toy no more special than any other will not make it on to the yard sale table so that one day it can become a talisman of safety and security for its owner.
by advicefrommarta | Jun 21, 2012 | Family Life
The other day while lying on the beach my six year old son asked me if everyone died. I said yes.
Talking about death is incredibly difficult for me. I’ve explained how babies are made, the electoral college, and taxes to my kids without blinking an eye, but I hate talking about death. So, I was surprised and relieved when his next question was, “Is God already dead?” Questions about God, I can handle! I have a standard answer, “No one really knows about God. But lots of people have lots of theories and beliefs. What religion you are is based on what you believe about God.”
I knew we were back on safe territory when the next question was, “So, was Jesus real?”
Having grown up Jewish in Kentucky I’ve been explaining the Jewish view of Jesus since I was younger than my son. “We believe Jesus was a real person, who did a lot of great things. Other people believe he was part of God or related to God differently than other people. That’s what makes them Christian.” We went on to the next thought that pretty much every Jewish kid not living in New York or Israel has had when he said, “It would be easier to be Christian, then I’d match my friends.”
After a little back and forth about whether or not it was actually important to match your friends, the conversation took a stranger turn when my son told me that he didn’t think dinosaurs were real. He is convinced that Megalodons (prehistoric sharks for those of you not up on your six year old trivia) are real but not so much the dinosaurs. After all, the scientists could be wrong and those could just be bones from other animals. He then asked me if we could go play catch in the water. The conversation was over, no more God, religion or dinosaurs just water, sand and a football.
This is why talking to six year olds is the best. One minute they’re nihilists, the next creationists but really, everything can be answered by a good game of catch.
by advicefrommarta | Jun 14, 2012 | Family Life
Last night I dreamt I went to Southfork again. It’s no secret that I have always been a sucker for soap operas. In my mind, soaps solve the biggest problem of fiction and of life, they don’t end. In a soap opera, nothing is ever permanent, even death.
When Dallas started I was ten years old and home most Friday nights. This was in the days before VCRs, let alone DVRs (actually, other people may have had VCRs or Betamaxs, but my family did not). If you weren’t home for a show, you didn’t watch it. I lived for Friday nights and Dallas. In those times, a twelve or thirteen year old could not only stay home alone, but actually babysit for other children. So, in the next few years on Friday nights, I babysat and watched Dallas, on Saturday nights I went to Bar/Bat Mitzvah parties and on Sundays I went to Cotillion (yes, really).
I got older and started dating and when I didn’t have a date on a Friday night, there was Dallas still waiting for me. It was nice to curl up on the hammock chair in my family room and revisit the old homestead. No matter how long it had been since I last watched, no matter what had happened to me at school, there was JR, still scheming.
But my favorite memories of Dallas watching are from my Freshman year of college. Channel 41 showed reruns every night at midnight. My roommate, his boyfriend Mark, and I lay on the floor of our under-furnished living room eating M&Ms, snorting poppers, smoking cigarettes, and watching as Charlene Tilton grew from perky teenager to full-fledged scheming Ewing in record time.
It’s hard to explain the way we lived then. We thought we were adults with an apartment and jobs, but we were only teenagers, Mark was still in high school and I wasn’t even 18. Back then, people weren’t so serious about things like carding and we easily went to bars and bought beer with our groceries. We paid the rent (usually) and went to classes in the morning (usually). We had a huge apartment with no furniture decorated in life-sized posters of Madonna and Humphrey Bogart. We lived on Ramen noodles and tuna and a special occasion dish we called “Golden Pasta.” But when we were sick of that we went to the country club and drank Arnie Palmers and ate Crab Louie and put it on my roommate’s parents’ account.
Our friends lived behind us and we moved easily between the two apartments as if downtown Louisville were our own college dorm. As though the people who lived there for real, not because they were hip and having fun, had nothing better to do at 2 a.m. then listen to our music. We had our own dramas, break ups, betrayals, and pregnancy scares and we danced. My god how we danced, every night in the apartment and every weekend in clubs. Somehow the hyper-sped-up unreality of nightly viewings of Dallas fit perfectly with the fantasy land we lived in.
Then, we really did grow up.
Mark died of AIDS almost twenty years ago now. My roommate is a lawyer who dances only when tipsy. I did not move to Paris or write a novel. I live in the suburbs. I go to Zumba class instead of dancing. It’s not that I’m unhappy with real life, but I do sometimes miss being young and careless and not really understanding what real life is all about. And I miss the dancing, my god how I miss the dancing.
So last night, with my husband out of town and my children asleep, I recorded Dallas on my DVR. I sat with some M&Ms and watched as JR returned to scheming and calling people “darling.” Because that’s the thing about soap operas, in the world of soap operas nothing is permanent and nothing is ever over, nothing is ever real and no matter what else has happened, you can always go home.
by advicefrommarta | Jun 5, 2012 | Family Life
Like a lot of parents of grade schoolers, I’ve been trying to find the right balance of independence and safety for my eight-year-old. I’m conflicted on the issue. On the one hand, I think most parents today are way too over-protective.
Children are safer than ever from crime, physical injury, illness, and car accidents yet we routinely act as though our children live in a war zone with child molesters hiding around every corner.
On the other hand, being over protective, being mothery, is in my nature. Ask any guy I dated in college (gay or straight), my mothering instinct was developed long before I had kids.
So, my child is allowed to stay home alone for brief, known periods of time. She can walk alone to and from activities where someone is expecting her on both sides (school, a friend’s house, a park where I know an adult will be present). For some parents this is too much too soon, but this weekend I became convinced I was right, and that maybe I should go a little farther.
Why? Because my daughter was almost killed this weekend.
After finishing her first piano recital across the street from home she went to cross the street. A too-large SUV was parked on the street in front of her, she looked but didn’t see the neighbor coming too fast down the street. Luckily the neighbor was simply going too fast and was not also texting or talking on her phone. She slammed on her breaks and swerved, my daughter ran to safety and I collapsed on the sidewalk.
But, she wasn’t hit. Now, she knows that if there’s a too-large SUV parked on the street she needs to be extra careful. She knows that cars don’t always obey the rules.
There’s not a reasonable person in the country who thinks an eight year old is not capable of crossing the street. Yet, that almost proved more deadly than walking to school by herself.
You can do everything right. You can be as careful as possible, and still accidents happen. Smoke detectors fail, cars go too fast, lightening strikes. You can buy all organic foods and wash hands 20 times a day, and your child can become deathly ill.
We can’t parent as though we’re preparing our children for disaster. We have to parent as though we’re preparing our children for life, a life of too fast cars and unpredictable danger. We have to let them live and gain the skills they need to be safe.
