Laura Talks

My homesickness always hits in the spring—which is strange because spring is actually New Mexico’s worst season. The only season, in fact, that pales in comparison to the mid-Atlantic’s. Spring in New Mexico brings winds that whip sand into your eyes and ears and hair. It is sometimes cold, sometimes hot, sometimes wet with snow or rain, sometimes impossibly dry—all in the space of 24 hours. Spring may be known as an unpredictable season the world over, but in New Mexico, spring is beyond unpredictable. It is schizophrenic.

Yet without fail, since leaving New Mexico six-plus years ago, spring is when I begin to feel the dull ache deep in my chest, a longing for home so much it hurts. I suspect my friends are beginning to avoid me this time of year because they know where the conversation will inevitably turn. I’m convinced that if I explain it right—if I just tell one more story just so—they’ll understand why I will never feel at home here in suburban Washington. Home will always be 1,902 miles away in Chimayó, a remote village in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains with a population of 2,000, where Dave and I lived for five-and-a-half years.

Like other rural communities, springtime in Chimayó means the resurrection of everything dormant. It is when fields that have lain fallow during the winter are tilled;  when apple blossoms begin to peak through their cocoons; when the thin reeds of grass paint the desert floor sage. But, more than all this, it is when the acequias are cleaned.

The acequias are an elaborate system of ditches that pull water off tributaries of the Rio Grande to irrigate the farmland. First dug by Spaniards who settled the area in the 1600s, the acequias make farming in an otherwise arid landscape possible. But in order for them to work effectively, the sediment and rocks and tree branches that gather in them over the winter must be cleared.

So each spring, every able-bodied man who lives on property with water rights is expected to take part in the ditch cleaning, or pay someone else to do it. It is a full day of back-breaking labor—literally digging ditches beginning at eight in the morning and ending no earlier than five. It’s a hell of a way to spend a Saturday. Sadly, employment opportunities in Chimayó are limited, so it’s easy enough to find someone to do the work for you…at a cost of just $30—less than $5 per hour. Every white person we knew in Chimayó paid someone to do it.

So imagine my surprise our first spring in Chimayó, when Dave told me he was going to do the ditch cleaning himself.

“Are you insane?” I asked.

I didn’t doubt Dave’s physical ability to dig ditches for eight to nine hours. He’s always been very athletic and strong and I knew his body could handle it. But I was less confident his body could handle the pummeling I felt certain he would get from his fellow ditch diggers. The fact is, Chimayó has a very rough element. It holds the title of the city (for lack of a better word) with the highest number of drug overdoses per capita in the nation. Not surprisingly, crime is a real issue. Murder is a too frequent headline in a newspaper that boasts a readership of just hundreds. I imagined Dave, in all his whiteness (and Dave is very white…white-blond hair, fair skin) showing up at the ditch digging with a bunch of ex-cons psyched for the opportunity to earn $30 to buy their next hit of heroin.

Now I realize I’m stereotyping. Many people who participate in the ditch cleaning are surely fine, upstanding citizens who are upholding a centuries-old family tradition of participating in the community event. But I knew plenty of the scarier part of the population would be there, too. At the very least, Dave would be an outsider, and I worried what that would mean for him.

The morning of the ditch cleaning, he readied himself. He put on his well-worn Carhart overalls and work boots, which, thank God, at least made clear that he was used to working outside. Then he filled his Camelbak (a backpack with a bladder in it and tube that runs over the shoulder) with water and ice cubes. Next came the sunscreen, which he applied like spackle. Finally, he found his Epi-Pen and inhaler (bad allergies) and put them in the pocket of his Gortex raincoat.

I watched this the way a wife watches her husband packing his rucksack before he ships off to war.

Dave smiled and said, “I’m sure every man in Chimayó is doing the exact same thing right now.”

***

We drove towards the place where the ditch cleaning would start. I say “towards the place” because we actually had no idea where it started. The only communication we’d seen was a hand-written flyer posted on the bulletin board of the post office that said (in Spanish): “Ditch cleaning. Rincon de los Trujillos” and the date. Dave asked our neighbor Seferino where he should go. He told Dave it started in Cordova—a village about five miles up the highway from Chimayó—but he couldn’t tell him where exactly. “Just drive up the road and you’ll find it,” he said.

So I drove Dave “up the road” that leads through Cordova. Sure enough, after a few miles, we saw two men and a boy whom I guessed was about nine years old walking with shovels in their hands.

We pulled over and asked if they were headed to the ditch cleaning. When they told us yes, we offered them a ride if they’d show us where it was.

“I won’t say no to that!” said the man I assumed was the grandfather.

They piled into the car and soon I heard the unmistakable hiss of a can popping open, followed by the smell of beer. It wasn’t even eight in the morning.

“Breakfast of champions, bro!” one of the men exclaimed as he knocked back a Budweiser in a matter of seconds. “Want one?” he asked Dave.

“No, that’s okay, I had oatmeal,” Dave said.

They all laughed.

These guys didn’t worry me. They seemed harmless. So, they were drinkers? Drinking was the past-time of choice in Chimayó and, although it was certainly the cause of a number of social ills, it didn’t bother me much. I guess when you live in a place where the community health center hosts a mobile needle exchange at the bottom of your street every week, a little drinking doesn’t seem so bad.

I drove them as far as I could, until the road started getting too narrow and too rough for our 1984 Nissan Sentra. I stopped and they disembarked. Dave closed the door and leaned in the window. “I love you,” he said. “I’ll see you at some point, I guess.”

“Okay,” I said tentatively. “Don’t get killed.”

***

Dave survived. And he survived the following three years, as well. I have no doubt his willingness to participate in the ditch cleaning instead of paying someone with dark skin to do it earned him a respect in the community we otherwise never would have had.

But our final year in Chimayó, he didn’t go. Noah had just been born and we were too frazzled and sleep deprived to imagine it: I couldn’t imagine surviving a full nine hours alone with a baby, and Dave couldn’t imagine mustering enough energy to make it through a day of hard labor. So he paid someone $30 to do it for him. I’m not sure Dave has ever felt so ashamed to pay someone for a service in his life.

The ditch cleaning always ended right in front of our property. That afternoon, our last spring in New Mexico, we could hear the rhythmic ping of metal shovels hitting rocks drawing closer and closer. Eventually, we looked out the window and saw the group of more than 30 men standing waist-high in the ditch that bordered our property; their arms and shoulders rising and falling in time.

We didn’t know then that it was the last time we’d see it. We didn’t know that in a few days, Dave would get a call offering him a job in Washington, and that, in less than six months, we would be selling our house and property and moving to northern Virginia. We didn’t know that we would leave behind a rural life that bows to the will of the seasons for an urban life that, thanks to concrete and gutters and asphalt, gamely ignores them. Water now comes from a hose or faucet—not a ditch that has seen the turn of a thousand shovels. And whenever I think of that, I wonder why a life that has been made so much easier and more comfortable by modernization feels so much harder and more difficult?

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I’m on deadline, which means I don’t have time to write my blog…at least not until later this week. So I offer you a little something that always brightens my day…

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A Short Story

Cindy was starting to get breasts, there was no doubt about that. And it was about time. Most of her friends had started to develop in the sixth or seventh grade. Everyone in her gym class wore a bra. Actually, she did too, but she didn’t need one. The polyester triangles of fabric puckered pathetically under her cotton T-shirts. But now, the pink circle around her nipples was widening to the size of a quarter and protruding just enough to stretch the fabric of her training bra so it was tight and smooth across her chest.

As Cindy stood naked in front of the mirror, she said three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys, asking God to make her breasts full and round, like Jennifer Hamm’s. She also prayed that she would start her period before the school year ended in exactly one month. She was certain that she was the only girl in the eighth grade who hadn’t started yet. Not that she wasn’t prepared. For the last two years, she had carried a tampon wrapped in tin foil and tucked inside a box of pens to keep it hidden from the boys who routinely stole her purse in math class. Of course, Cindy wasn’t sure if she would even know how to use a tampon when the time came. She thought about carrying around the directions, but they wouldn’t fit in the pen box and anywhere else would have been too great a risk.

Cindy looked long and hard at herself in the mirror—at her square hips, flat butt, and round, pot-bellied stomach. She didn’t look a thing like the girls in Seventeen magazine or the copies of Playboy her friend’s father kept in his garage. And even if she had a nice body, her hair was enough to scare anyone away. In an attempt to look like Jennifer Hamm, who had long, blond hair with soft, loose curls cascading down her back, Cindy got a perm. It turned out that her hair was too short and the perm was too tight, so she looked like a brunette Orphan Annie. Braces filled her big mouth. Cindy tried smiling with her mouth closed, but the braces just made her lips stick out funny.

She turned to the side and looked at her profile. She sucked in her stomach as far as it would go. She said the Apostle’s Creed and asked God to make her stomach flat. When she finished, she looked at the clock. She had only five minutes before she needed to meet Robin to go to the pool. She quickly slipped on her swimsuit and looked at herself one last time in the mirror. The suit did little to hide her inadequacies. She thought for a moment of not going—of calling Robin and making up some excuse. But she knew Robin would know the real reason and tell Cindy she was being stupid. Of course, it was easier for Robin; she had her period and small, perky boobs.

—-

Cindy rode her bike to the corner where Robin was waiting for her, wearing her bathing suit and flip-flops, with a towel draped over her neck, just like Cindy. They pedaled fast to the neighborhood swimming pool. It was the end of May but already hot and humid, as it was most days in southeast Texas. They rode fast past the big houses with their broad green lawns and heard the splash and calls of swimming children in the backyards. The trees that lined the street sagged under the burden of Spanish moss that hung from their branches and cut the yellow afternoon light like fingers.

Cindy stood in the pedals and pumped her legs harder. She loved the feel of the wind in her hair. She loved the whirring sound of the tires on asphalt. She loved the dryness that crept into the back of her throat and the sweat on the back of her neck under her hair. She sat back in the seat and leaned forward, pedaling faster after Robin, who led the way.

At the pool, Cindy and Robin staked out a spot on the grass far from the water’s edge and laid on their backs in the sun. After about twenty minutes, Randy Olson, Pete Waters, and John Meeks—the most popular boys in the eighth grade—walked into the gate and ran to the high-dive. Cindy couldn’t believe it. There were no popular girls there. In fact, there were no eighth-grade girls at all, except for Misty Marsh, who was a total dork and there was no way they were going to pay any attention to her. Cindy thought now was her chance for them to notice her. Randy was in her history class, so he knew who she was, but he never talked to her. Sometimes she wondered if she was invisible.

Cindy turned to Robin. They covered their mouths and giggled.

“Let’s go off the high dive!” Cindy jumped up off the grass.

“Are you kidding?” Robin grabbed Cindy’s ankle. “They’re going to know we’re going over there to see them. And besides, do you really want them to see you in a bathing suit?”

Cindy looked down at herself and saw her pathetic little girl breasts and her round stomach and wondered what she was thinking. She wished she had brought her T-shirt, then she could have put that on over her swimsuit. She grabbed her towel and tied it around her waist, and then sat back on the grass with Robin and watched as the boys did cannonballs and jack-knifes off the high-dive. Cindy imagined having a beautiful body and no braces and wearing a bikini. She imagined walking by and hearing them say, “Is that Cindy Singer? Wow!”

After watching the boys for a half-hour, Robin suggested they leave. “Your legs aren’t going to tan with that towel wrapped around your waist anyway. Let’s go to the Stop-n-Go and get some Jolly Ranchers.” They put on their flip-flops and stood up, brushing off the backs of their calves that were thatched with the imprint of the grass.

As they walked towards the exit, they noticed Randy, Pete, and John following behind them—not directly behind them, but close enough. Cindy’s heartbeat quickened. She wondered if they were coming to talk to them. She licked her lips so they would be shiny and pulled the curls of her bangs individually to try to straighten them. She prepared to turn around and smile. All of a sudden, the boys burst into a cackling laughter. She wondered if she should turn around. Were they laughing at her? Maybe they were just trying to get her attention. She looked over her shoulder casually. They were looking at her, so she smiled.

“Hey, Singer,” Randy said, still laughing and pointing at her, “you’re not supposed to go swimming when you’re on the rag.” Cindy laughed with them, not sure what they were talking about. Just then, Robin grabbed Cindy by the arm and pulled her into the bathroom next to the exit.

“Oh-my-god, Cindy!” Robin’s look was horrified. “You started!”

“What?” Cindy laughed nervously, trying to make sense of all that had happened–and was happening still–too fast–like someone had pressed the fast-forward button.

Robin pulled the towel from around Cindy’s waist and there, on the back of it, right in the middle where Randy, Pete, and John could plainly see, was a spot of blood the size of a margarine cup. Cindy couldn’t say anything. She just stared at the perfectly round blood stain and burst into tears. All of her planning, all of her preparation, all those years of carrying a tampon in a box of pens, and this had to happen. She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to die. “Get in there,” Robin spun Cindy around and shoved her toward a stall. “Go in there and take off your suit.”

Cindy collapsed onto the toilet and began sobbing, deep and full. “I can’t believe they saw. I can’t believe they saw,” she said over and over again. She buried her head in her hands, hoping it could hide her, make her disappear.

“Just give me the suit.”

Cindy handed the suit under the stall door to Robin. As Robin ran the suit and towel under the faucet, scrubbing them together to get out the blood as she had done to her own clothes a number of times, Cindy sat shivering on the toilet, replaying the events in her head. She thought of going to school on Monday; everyone would be talking about it. Her sobbing grew even more violent.

“Here,” Robin handed the suit and soaking towel back under the door and then dropped a quarter in the sanitary napkin dispenser. Robin handed her a pad. “Put this in your bathing suit and tie the towel around your waist.”

Cindy did as she was told, unquestioning. The pad was stiff and bulky. It rubbed her inner thighs. She emerged from the stall, her face blotchy from crying. Robin stood outside the stall door, smiling, “Well, at least you started your period!”

Cindy laughed and started to cry again at the same time. She slapped Robin on the arm. “Shut up!”

“Let’s get out of here. You can come to my house. It’s closer. And you can borrow some of my clothes to go home.” Robin turned to walk out of the bathroom.

“Robin!” Cindy grabbed her arm. “They could still be out there!”

Robin peaked her head around the corner of the bathroom door. “They’re here, but they’re at the high-dive. They won’t see you.”

They rushed out the gate, looking over their shoulders to make sure the boys weren’t watching, and unlocked their bikes chained like prisoners to the rack. Cindy swung her leg over the narrow seat and sat down. The bulk of the pad and the wet towel were uncomfortable. They pedaled slowly to Robin’s house, stopping every few blocks so Cindy could adjust the towel or, more discreetly, the pad, which was causing small welts on the inside of her thighs. As they made their way slowly to the house, Cindy remembered the ride to the pool just a few short hours before. When the wind made her throat dry. When the sweat ran down the back of her neck. When she could pedal as fast as she wanted.

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I’ve had it. I’m actually surprised I made it this long—that I was able to endure the seemingly endless days that bled into one another like some sort of Jean-Jacques Rousseau film. (Okay, in truth, I’ve never watched a Rousseau film. I actually have no idea who he is. I googled “French absurdist filmmakers” and his was the first name that popped up…although he’s really Belgian. But this alone should give you an idea of my state of mind lately.)

I’m of course talking about the snow. In case you hadn’t heard, the east coast was walloped last week with two back-to-back storms that resulted in the shut down of the federal government for almost an entire week. The kids have missed seven straight days of school (today, although a holiday, was supposed to be a snow make-up day, but it was—whadayaknow—canceled due to—wait for it—snow!). If you count the two weekends we’ve been snowed in, the children have been home for 11 straight days.

I think those of you who read this blog regularly know a few things about me by now:

1) I like horses.
2) I like to sleep.
3) I have a very low tolerance for spending lots and lots of time with my kids.

And I have to qualify #3 because that’s really about me, not my kids. I need a lot of alone time to function in the world. There’s really no one I can spend that much time with without growing tired of them. And really, my kids are great and actually very low maintenance. As I write this, they’re downstairs playing nicely together. Oh wait…no, they’re not…I just heard the television.

Me: “Kids, who told you that you were allowed to watch television?”

Silence.

Me: “Since when can you watch TV without permission?”

I was answered with a chorus of very unconvincing “sorries.”

Sigh.

They know I’m weak. Like a lion watching the lone antelope limping far behind the herd, the kids know I can’t hold out much longer. Any semblance of routine and discipline I’ve worked hard these six years to establish is one juice box and a snack-pack of Hershey kisses away from crumbling. At this point, I’d let the children draw on the walls and set the living room couch on fire if it means I get fifteen minutes of uninterrupted quiet.

So, yes, the snow. I actually did quite well for the first week of it. There’s no getting around the fact that the snow is beautiful. When I woke up in the morning, I would look out the window ready to grouse and grumble, but then be so taken by the pure white landscape filling the window frame that I couldn’t help but whisper—usually to the dogs—“Isn’t it beautiful?”

And the fact that we had so much snow meant no cars were out, which meant I could walk the dogs all over the neighborhood down the center of the street. The night the last storm hit, I took the dogs out around nine o’clock. The snow was falling in giant, pancake-like flakes. No one was out but us. It was absolutely silent. I could have walked forever.

Then, of course, there’s the fact that the kids love the snow. Our neighbors built the equivalent of a skeleton track in their front yard, and every day the kids would trek down the street with their sleds in tow and spend hours zipping down it like they were training for the Olympics.

And because the government was closed, Dave was home from work for the week. So we’ve had FAMILY TIME like nobody’s business. We played cards. We baked. We cooked. We watched movies together and ate popcorn. We shoveled snow. We drank hot chocolate. Seriously, Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted a better scene—except for the parts where Noah would serenade us with arm-fart covers of “Happy Birthday” and “Here Comes Santa Claus.”

For the most part, I’ve enjoyed it. I commented to Dave how rare it is to have time with the kids where we’re forced to do nothing. Even on vacation, we’re usually running from one place to the next. But being snowed-in, running wasn’t an option. Our lives, typically scheduled to within an inch of our lives, all of a sudden had no boundaries. We didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything. No Tae Kwon Do. No Ballet. No horses. No buying snacks for the Valentine’s Day party at school. No homework. Aside from the little bit of work Dave and I were able to squeeze in from time to time, we did nothing for over a week.

But we all knew I couldn’t enjoy it forever. A refrain throughout Dave’s and my life together has been, “What fun is vacation when you don’t have anything to compare it to?” Whenever we’ve had stretches of unemployment or slogged through too-long, too-boring vacations, we’ve said how important it is to have the routine—and work—of normal life from which to take a break. Otherwise, it’s not a break. It’s Groundhog Day.

And that’s what these snow days have become. Nothing distinguishes one day from the next. Thursday night as we were going to bed, I said to Dave, “I can’t believe tomorrow is going to be exactly the same as today, and exactly the same as the day before that. When is it going to end?” Even the dogs have had it. Our young dog Clara, who spent the better part of the first five days of snow bounding through it like a sled dog (in fact, I even bought her a harness and hooked the kids’ sled to it), now stands on the steps leading out our back door with a kind of bewildered “not-this-again” look on her face.



(Our older dog, Barrabas, has been unimpressed since day one.) They keep waiting for me to put on my riding boots and load them in the car to drive to the barn, but that hasn’t happened in ten days because the roads to the barn have been impassable as well.

In a perfect summation of what this snow has done to our spirits, my neighbor Cy sent an email the other night: “I’ve even lost the will to drink.” To which my friend Lee Ann replied, “I haven’t lost the will. We’ve just run out.”

I was ready to take the dogs for a long walk and never return.

Luckily, our friends Heather and Vince came for a visit from Philadelphia this weekend, reminding us that life existed beyond our single, half-mile block. It was like Noah (of the Bible, not my son) seeing the dove with the olive branch in its beak for the first time that signaled to him the floodwaters had receded. The end of the snow tunnel was, however dimly, in sight.

We got a babysitter Saturday night and went to the city with a group of friends for dinner and then to a bar to watch a band. I drank and danced and reveled in the fact that I wasn’t at home watching Ella Enchanted and eating my bodyweight in popcorn yet again.

…and then came the email yesterday afternoon from the school district telling us schools would be closed Monday…and the weather report predicting another snowfall, albeit lighter, tonight. And with all this went my sanity and any hope that life will ever return to normal. The dove with the olive branch in its beak just took a nosedive into a snow bank. But, alas, I still have my will to drink.

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I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. And I realize I should write now about Haiti or Afghanistan or Iraq or the Democratic Republic of Congo—or any of the other hundreds of places in the world where death lurks in every corner. But what’s actually been preoccupying me lately is the death of horses. And I want to say right here that I believe the death of a human being—whether hundreds of thousands or one—is more tragic than the death of an animal. But I also believe that whenever a soul leaves a body—whether that body is two-legged or four-legged, or crawls or runs or slithers or flies—there is a mourning. It means a subtraction from the sum total of life in the world, and I grieve for the loss. I feel this way even when I kill bugs.

So the reason I’m so preoccupied with horse death lately is my friend Stephanie in Charlottesville called a few weeks ago and told me, through a voice choked with anguished tears, that the vet would be coming in a few days to put down Dee Dee.

Dee Dee was my first horse. I don’t want to bore you with the details of how Dee Dee came to be my first horse and then came to be my friend Stephanie’s horse, so let give you an abbreviated version: Shortly after we moved to northern Virginia from New Mexico, it was clear that Dee Dee, who by this time was 24 years old, was ready to retire. As luck would have it, one of my best friends from high school, Stephanie, lived just three hours south of us on five beautiful acres, and was looking for a horse to do some light trail riding and be a safe first horse for her two sons. I offered her Dee Dee. She took her.

When Stephanie called to tell me Dee Dee was going to be put down, I wasn’t surprised. She had just turned 29 years old, which puts her, in human years, solidly in her mid- to late-80s. Few horses live that long. I last saw Dee Dee in November, when we went to visit Stephanie and her family for the weekend. Dee Dee still looked remarkable for her age, but it was clear she was declining. She had lost weight and was losing her eyesight. When she would walk, I could tell her hind legs were stiff and likely hurting. Stephanie and I talked about it and I told her if she was still my horse, I would have her euthanized now, while she was still relatively healthy and happy. The alternative was to risk a catastrophic event—colic or a fall on the ice and broken pelvis—that would force the issue and put her through unnecessary trauma and pain. The fact was, she couldn’t live much longer. It was better to give her a peaceful, pain-free death.

Stephanie agreed in theory, but as the person who had to make that very real decision, it was torture. She had a horse who, by all measures, seemed okay. How could she make the decision to end her life?

***

Dee Dee was, quite simply, an exceptional horse. I’ve ridden probably fifty horses in my lifetime, and I’ve never known one who was as kind, trusting, and willing as Dee Dee. She took me over my first fence. She carried me over miles of trails. She would be the guest horse for anyone who came to visit. She would give pony rides to my nieces and nephews. She taught Dave how to ride. She was the first horse both of my kids ever rode.

And yet none of that really describes why she was exceptional. This is just what she did, not who she was. The essence of her was much greater than that…

Our property in New Mexico was bordered by a narrow, fairly deep irrigation ditch. The only way to get off the property was to either drive across the cattle guard that lay across it, or walk across a small, very old, very rickety footbridge that was about eight feet long and only three feet wide. Within a few days of Dee Dee’s arrival in New Mexico (from California, her home state), we decided to take her across the footbridge. This was a really bad idea. The bridge was barely strong enough (or wide enough) for a full-grown human to cross safely, much less a half-ton horse. But I was stupid and didn’t realize this, so I led her across it. She hesitated, but trusted me and followed. The bridge held.

The way back, however, was different. Once again I crossed first and once again she hesitated. Once again I encouraged her to follow me, and once again she did. But this time, the second her hind legs were on the bridge, Dave and I heard a crack. The wood buckled and broke to pieces under her feet. She fell into the ditch. She managed to pull her front legs onto the other side of the bank, but her hind legs were caught. For a frantic minute, she struggled to pull herself out. She snorted and dug her front hooves into the dirt, but kept losing her footing. The whites ringed her eyes. I dug my own heels into the ground and leaned back on the lead rope that was attached to her halter, hoping if I could bring her head far enough forward, she’d have enough weight in front to pull herself out. I pulled; she continued to scramble for purchase. Finally, she lunged forward and dragged herself out of the ditch. I was relieved, but as she walked away, she hopped on three legs, refusing to put any weight on her left hind. I looked under her to see a deep cut on the inside of her thigh and blood running down her leg.

We called the vet, who drove out to the farm to look at it and assured us the cut wasn’t bad. She would need a few weeks off for it to heal, but no muscles were torn. She wouldn’t need stitches. Still, it was clear she was in pain and I felt terrible that I was responsible for it. After the vet left, I stood with Dee Dee for a good while, my face pressed into her neck, whispering my apologies. Every instinct in Dee Dee told her not to cross that bridge—but she ignored them and crossed because I asked her to.

A few weeks later, after she was healed, and after we had built a strong, solid, wide bridge with rails that the horses could cross, I led Dee Dee up the driveway to it. As we approached, she stopped and stretched out her long neck and snorted at it. I stepped onto the bridge and told her, “Come on, girl. It’s okay. I promise.” She took one hesitant step, and then another, until all four feet were on the bridge. She stood there for a moment, and then tentatively walked across it.

This was the essence of Dee Dee: her willingness to trust the people around her again and again, even after they’d betrayed her. But she did it with a certain dignity. She didn’t follow blindly. Rather, she had the air of a monarch who bends to the will of her subjects because she knows her duty is to serve.

***

Stephanie called me the afternoon Dee Dee was put down. “She’s gone,” she told me quietly. It was clear she had been crying, but it wasn’t the anguished sobs of her earlier phone call. It was a cry of grief, unadorned and unburdened.

She told me how, a few hours earlier, when the vet came and inserted the first syringe to sedate Dee Dee and the second syringe to send her into an irreversible anesthetized sleep, Dee Dee quietly bent her legs and laid down with the dignity that had accompanied her the span of her long life. She told me how peaceful it was and how she could feel her spirit leave her. She told me how it was not so much a death as a moving on, a transition from one place to the next.

I’ve written a lot here about my agnosticism and reluctance to believe in things I can’t see, including heaven. Yet for some reason, whenever an animal I’ve loved has died, I have no problem imagining it in paradise. I can easily imagine Dee Dee in a field with endless green grass and clover, in a herd where she is most definitely the boss, perhaps with a foal at her side. There are no flies in this place and no predators. Mostly, she spends her time grazing and galloping with the herd and taking long naps in the sun. Occasionally she jumps a log on the ground because she remembers how much fun that used to be. And she eats the apples and carrots the kids bring to her, and she’ll even take them for a ride every now and then.

But even as I write that, I doubt it’s true. It’s not that Dee Dee’s spirit doesn’t live on. It does. But it’s not in a place. Where Dee Dee lives is in the lives of all the people who rode her throughout the years. All the people, like myself, she ferried over their first fence—giving we earthbound mortals the sense that, for a moment, we were flying. All those she took exploring over unknown hills and across vast deserts. All those who rode her in horse shows and won ribbons that they hung on her bridle and could see in her a pride that told them on some level, she knew she had won. Where Dee Dee lives is in all those who asked her to trust them, and felt her whisper a quiet “yes” in reply.

4 Comments | In: Horses | | #

Sunday, January 31, 2010, Orlando, Fla. – I fear I’m becoming a curmudgeon. Or maybe I’ve always been a curmudgeon and am just now realizing it. I’m not sure.

I’m writing this from DisneyWorld. The Happiest Place on Earth. Where You Wish Upon a Star and Dreams Come True. Where Magic Happens. I’m here with Dave and the kids (I hope that goes without saying) and my parents, who very generously bankrolled this trip. It’s our fourth and final night here and, I have to say, we’ve had a really great time. We’ve ridden the rides. We’ve seen the shows. We’ve eaten cotton candy. (Okay, I’ve eaten cotton candy.) We got to enjoy 70 degrees and sun while it as 20 degrees and snowing in DC. All in all, a really great trip.

And yet, when it comes down to it, I don’t like it. I don’t like Disney.

I’m sure writing that sentence just put me on a terrorist watch list somewhere. After all, how un-American can I be? That’s like saying I don’t like football or beer or apple pie (incidentally, I don’t really like those things either). But the truth is, something about Disney gives me the creeps…something beyond the ubiquitous animatronics and mouse ears. It’s the singularity of it all—both commercially (Disney owns virtually all of Orlando) and metaphorically. As metaphor, Disney represents the small world. The belief that we’re all ultimately the same. One nation (nay—one world) united under Mickey. It feels suspiciously like groupthink. Walking around DisneyWorld, I feel like the only one who hasn’t drank the Kool-Aid and that it’s only a matter of time before I’m found out and put in the fake stocks in Frontierland for the rest of my life.

DisneyWorld to me feels eerily similar to the 1960s British TV series “The Prisoner,” of which my high school boyfriend was a huge fan. It only ran for 17 episodes but, as luck would have it, Blockbuster Video carried every single one. So on Friday night, my boyfriend and I would rent them and go back to his apartment (although he was in high school, he lived alone in his own apartment—my parents were thrilled about this fact) to watch it. The series chronicled the life of a British secret agent who resigns from service only to wake up and find himself held captive in an unknown village on an unknown coast, where everyone is happy and pleasant and the weather is always sunny and 75 degrees. No one in the village has names, just numbers (our hero is “Number Six”). Number One is the leader, but no one has seen him (her?) or knows who it is. Everyone in the village seems content with their happy, perfect little life, and Number Six distrusts all of it.

Needless to say, it was the perfect TV show for a couple of high school kids who lived in a picture-perfect suburb of Houston and fancied themselves rebels who raged against the machine on a daily basis. As it turns out, it was also a business model for DisneyWorld (which, suspiciously, opened just three years after the finale of “The Prisoner.”) In Disney, all the little girls are referred to “princesses” (not quite numbers, but close). All cast members (not employees, but “cast members”) smile pretty much constantly. “Dreams come true” is the inescapable theme of everything—every song, every ride, every show, every piece of merchandise…even sections of the park closed for renovation are plastered with signs that say “dream builders.”

Then there’s just the fact that everything is a façade. The buildings aren’t real. Most of the plants are fake. Even the “mud” that the safari trucks drive through in Animal Kingdom (where, to Disney’s credit, the animals are real) is actually plastic molded to look like mud.

Now I realize this is the whole point of a theme park. It’s intended to be a world of pretend into which you escape for a brief period of time. You shouldn’t go there expecting reality. If you want to go on a real safari, take a trip to Kenya, right? I get that. And I have to say, as a patron, I appreciate that the parks are well run and well maintained and the staff is courteous and helpful. But I just can’t lose myself in the fantasy. I don’t trust it. Instead, I spend my time walking around the park looking for glimpses of reality. I try to glance through open doors that say “cast members only” to see if I can spot the scaffolding propping up the saloon wall, or Snow White taking a smoke break, or, hell, even the bathroom attendant scowling and muttering under her breath, “Damn tourists.”

I was talking to my parents about this, and remembering how, as a child, I never liked books or movies that were set in fantasy worlds. I loathed Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The book James and the Giant Peach freaked me out. Even now, I rarely read or watch anything that would qualify as sci-fi (thus why I have no desire to see Avatar and haven’t read any of the Twilight series). My dad said he’s the same way. He tried to read the Harry Potter books but couldn’t because the whole time he kept thinking, “If they have all this magic, why don’t they just use it to stop the villain?”

My mom shook her head. “But if that’s your approach to life, you never enjoy anything. If you’re always skeptical, you can’t lose yourself in a book or movie.”

Both my dad and I protested that we could, but only if the book or movie had an element of realism.

Yet I can’t help but wonder if my mom is right. I’ve often wished I could suspend disbelief long enough to read and enjoy a really cheesy romance novel, or spend three hours watching a self-indulgent James Cameron film, or believe in God. Am I missing out by being so hell-bent on what’s real?

I once read about how, when Captain Cook’s ships first arrived off the coast of Australia in the 1700s, the aborigines didn’t see them. Or, rather, they could see them, but they couldn’t perceive them. Because they had never seen these huge sailing ships before, their minds were unable to create an image of them. It wasn’t until they saw the rippling wake of the ships on the water that they could then perceive what they were.

The veracity of this story is widely debated. New Agers like to use it as proof that we are, indeed, surrounded by all sorts of things—spirits, energies, auras—that most people don’t have the mental vocabulary to see. Scientists say the story is apocryphal and that the mind has no problem perceiving things it doesn’t understand.

While I want to believe the New Agers are right, I tend to side with the scientists. It’s kind of sad. I’ve always loved Hamlet’s words to Horatio, who doubts the events that are transpiring: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” But even if I love the sentiment, God knows (if He exists) that I don’t live it.

And what’s worse, I’m passing this way-too-healthy dose of skepticism on to my children. Noah lost his first tooth a couple months ago, and already he doubts the existence of the tooth fairy. He’s not too sure about this whole Santa thing, either. Gwyneth told Dave today that the only princess she likes is Pocahantas “because she was a real person; the others are made up.” Dave blamed this on his genetic contribution (his side of the family is lousy with scientists), but I know I’m responsible, too. Not just my genes (which are weighted heavily in favor of engineers), but my very outlook on life, which seems to be slowly sucking the magic and wonder of childhood out of my children.

Last night, we were at the Magic Kingdom for the fireworks. And I have to admit, it was, for lack of a better word, magical. We arrived just as the first firework made its arc through the air. Amazingly, we even managed to find our own private little spot from which to watch the display burst in all its pyrotechnic glory above Cinderella’s castle. For a few moments, I forgot that the castle was nothing more than plywood and plastic. I forgot that the music being piped through the loudspeakers wasn’t a live orchestra, and that the fireworks were specifically designed for Disney using a reduced-smoke chemical (which Dave informed us). For a few moments, I completely lost myself in the beauty of the show. I looked down at my kids and could see the wonder of childhood seemingly steeled against escape and locked deep within them…until about half-way through when Noah and Gwyneth turned to us and said, “Can we go now?”…reminding me that magic, even in its truest form, is always short-lived.

2 Comments | In: Life, Motherhood | | #

This isn’t a blog post. No, really, it’s not. It’s just a note to tell you I won’t be writing a blog today, and possibly not at all this week…or the next. The Time Gods apparently read my blog last week and decided I had way too much time on my hands. So they punished me by sending me to the racetrack on Thursday for 16 hours of research and interviews for an article I’m working on; and then sent me to the barn yesterday for 10 hours and today for eight hours for another article–all of which resulted in 75 pages of crappy handwritten notes that I need to transcribe. Now don’t get me wrong…I’m thrilled to have two paying jobs that require me to write about horses. But even I have my limits. Add to this an essay that I have to write to meet an end-of-week deadline and news on my arrival home tonight that Noah has a 103-degree fever…and we’re leaving town Thursday.

I know I will garner little sympathy from you, my gentle readers, given that I am simply getting what I deserve after tallying up my free time like a British monarch. But the downside of all this is that the blog gets neglected. And for that, you have my apologies.

I’ll be back–soon, I hope. But know that while I’m gone, I’m thinking of you. Totally.

1 Comment | In: Life | | #

The text came from my friend Lee Ann first thing Saturday morning: “Read the Washington Post Magazine, if you have time…Not even halfway through but I’d like to punch the guy they pull quoted already.”

Uh-oh. I knew if Lee Ann’s hackles were up, mine would be, too. After I made my bleary-eyed way downstairs, said good morning to the kids, let the dogs outside, and opened the curtains, I found the Post’s weekend magazine and opened it to the cover story: “The Test of Time” by Brigid Schulte. The subhead read: “An expert told her she had loads of time. She decided to see if he was right.” Immediately I saw the pull quote Lee Ann was referring to: “Women have time. Women have at least 30 hours of leisure every week. In fact, women have more leisure now than they did in the 1960s, even though more women are working outside the home.” The quote was attributed to John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland who is known as the Father of Time-Use Studies.

It didn’t say whether he is the father of actual children, but it did mention that he is now, at the age of 74, divorced and living alone. As soon as I read that, I, like probably 99 percent of the women who read the article, thought, “Of course he is.” Because either he never had kids and doesn’t realize how time-consuming they are, or he had kids and his wife did all the work and promptly divorced him.

I really, really didn’t like this man.

I’ve actually read this argument before: that we have more free time now than the generations of women before us. And why wouldn’t we? We no longer have to scrub clothes on rocks or cook dinner for twelve over an open fire. I remember reading an article years ago in Ms. magazine that interviewed women who were at least a hundred years old. It asked these women what, in their century of living, they thought were the greatest achievements for women’s rights. The first thing all of them cited was the right to vote. But do you know what came second? It wasn’t the Pill, or women being accepted in greater numbers to law and medical schools, or women flying into space. It was the washing machine. Almost all of the women talked about how being able to toss clothes into a machine instead of scrubbing them by hand on a washboard revolutionized their lives. It gave them free time, something none of them had had before.

So I get why we should have more free time. But I also get why we don’t. Or, rather, I get why most women don’t. Because as I read the article, I realized that I actually have what seems to be an inordinate amount of leisure time.

I hesitate to write this for fear that you’ll all find a way to stone me through the computer screen. But it’s true. I did a quick calculation and found that I spend more than 30 hours each week doing leisure activities:

• Four days a week, I ride my horse. If you count my drive to the barn, grooming, tacking, etc., it’s about a four-hour excursion: 16 hours
• On days that I don’t ride my horse, I walk the dogs for roughly an hour: 3 hours
• I read for pleasure (a book and/or newspaper) at least an hour each day: 7 hours
• I watch TV (including movies on the weekends) an average of about two hours a day: 14 hours
• I take a half-hour nap every day. Okay, I know this sounds like the epitome of laziness, but I’ve always believed the Spaniards were on to something with the whole siesta idea. And now multiple studies have proved it: we’re much more productive if we close our eyes for just a few minutes each day. So I do: 3.5 hours

Weekly total: 43.5 hours. And that doesn’t even count Facebook.

So, as much as I don’t like Mr. Robinson, I’m living proof that he’s right. And it’s embarrassing. Most working mothers I know, like the woman who wrote the article, barely have time to shower, much less spend 16 hours a week on a horse. Admitting that I have this much free time makes me feel spoiled and lazy and, quite frankly, unimportant.

The reason I feel this way, according to Edson Rodriguez, a professor of cultural sociology at the University of Southern California, is that being busy is a status symbol. As the article observes, “Everybody who aspires to be anybody is busy. Gone are the days when the goal of the wealthy and elite was to laze around doing nothing.”

But the weird thing is, I’m not the wealthy and elite. We’re far from rich. I don’t have a staff taking care of us. Aside from having someone clean the house twice a month (which we just recently canceled), everything else it takes to run a household (grocery shopping, cooking, daily cleaning, shuttling kids to and from activities, laundry, paying bills, filling out school forms, and so on and so forth), we do on our own. And, in truth, I do most of it. So how in the world do I have all this free time?

Right now, the answer is easy: since the economy went south, my contract work (the corporate communications stuff I do that actually makes money) has slowed to a crawl. I still write for several hours each day (working on articles or this blog or my book), but I don’t have the pressing deadlines looming over me like I have in the past. But even when I think back to those days when I was juggling multiple projects and working 50 hours a week (often including nights and weekends), I realize that, although my leisure time activities were truncated, I still found time to do them. I don’t think a week has gone by since I started riding horses that I haven’t gone to the barn at least once.


Part of the reason for this is that I work from home and am my own boss. So I can decide, in the middle of the day, that I’m going to leave my work for a few hours and go ride my horse, or take a shorter break and go walk the dogs. I might pay the price later by having to work after the kids go to bed, but still, I can make the choice to do that. If I worked in an office, I wouldn’t have that kind of freedom. Any leisure activities I might do would be crammed into the small windows before 8 a.m. or after 6 p.m.—at which time I’d also be juggling kids.

The other reason I have the luxury of free time is, no doubt, a supportive husband. It kind of amazes me that in all the years Dave and I have been together, I can count on one hand the number of times he’s looked visibly annoyed when I’ve told him that I’m going to the barn. Most of the time, he’s happy that I go (in part because when I don’t, I turn into a raging lunatic). I return the favor and encourage him to take time to go for long bike rides on the weekends. But there’s no question my horse habit sucks up infinitely more time and money than his cycling one. Still, he enthusiastically supports it.

But I think the biggest reason I have more free time than most other working moms—and this is the hardest part to admit—is that, when it comes to my kids, I don’t feel the guilt most other mothers do about spending time with them. I don’t think it’s ever crossed my mind as I was riding my horse (even those times when I was working nights and weekends), “Wow, I really should be home right now. My poor kids.” I have no problem when I’m reading the newspaper telling them not to interrupt me. I don’t feel bad when Dave and I get a babysitter and go on a date. And I don’t think twice about telling them I’m going to go lay down for 30 minutes, so they need to play quietly.

And as I say all that, I immediately want to start qualifying it by telling you that I love my kids and I love spending time with them. Because I do. But I don’t feel this compulsive need many other mothers have to spend my every spare moment with them.

Dave and I were talking about this over dinner last night (while grandpa babysat the kids) and how masculine this approach to parenting is. He was saying that if he were a mother with the career he has now (which involves many late nights and fairly frequent travel), he would feel incredibly guilty about all the time spent away from the kids. But he’s not a mother; he’s a father. As such, he doesn’t have that kind of guilt. That doesn’t mean that if he had a choice, he wouldn’t forgo the late nights and travel to spend more time with the children, but he doesn’t necessarily feel bad that he can’t. And neither do I.

When I write things like this, I often wonder what my children will think someday when they read it. Will they doubt that I ever really loved them? Will they print out this blog entry and take it to their therapist as proof of what a selfish, self-centered mother I was? Or will it just tell them what they knew all along: that I love them, but I also love being able to pursue other things I love away from the demands of my family? More than likely, the answer will be: both.

I know because I lived it. My father was an astronaut who loved flying above pretty much everything else in his life. He has said (and even wrote in his memoirs) that if someone had come to him and told him that he could fly into space only if he sold his wife and children into slavery, he wouldn’t have hesitated before handing them the shackles and chains, saying, “Take them.”

I see more of myself in this statement than I care to admit. Although I wouldn’t give up my children for anything (and I don’t really believe my dad would have either…ummm…would you have, Dad?), I understand that children can be one of the important things in a person’s life without being the only thing. This was my father’s approach to parenting, and it’s mine, too. But I can safely say I always knew my father loved me…even if I wasn’t the center of his life. I’m hoping my kids feel the same way.

And with that, I have to go. The kids are awake and I need to get them breakfast. I wish I had more time…

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I’ve started writing three different posts today, and abandoned each after a few paragraphs—bored to tears by what I’d written.

And then I found a “One Step Ahead” catalog in the pile of mail on my desk and started thumbing through it. I’ve now decided this catalog is my muse. Because it is such a rich treasure trove of crap to make fun of.

For those of you who don’t know what “One Step Ahead” is, it’s a catalog that bills itself as “Thoughtfully Selected Products to Help With Baby…Every Step of the Way.” But what it should really be called is, “Thoughtfully Selected Products For the Most Paranoid and Guilt-Ridden Of Parents.”

Ok, a quick disclaimer: I’ve bought several products from this catalog, thus why I’m on the mailing list. Some of them are really useful: the baby gates, the booster seats, the outlet covers, and the like. And it has some cool, creative toys. But so many of the products seem so outside the realm of normal, I shudder to imagine the parents who are buying them.

A few examples:

• The “Relax Right Memory Foam Pillow”: A $24.95 pillow for toddlers ages 18 months to five years. “Ordinary pillows push the spine out of alignment; that’s not good for growing bones!” it tells me.

Oh really? Every night when I put my kids to sleep, they ‘re laying with their heads on their $5 cotton-poly pillows. By the time I check on them before I go to bed—three to four hours later—their heads aren’t anywhere near the pillow, which is a good thing because usually it is either on the floor, or wedged into the corner of the bed against the wall. Why in the world would I spend that much money on a pillow that would likely suffer the same fate? I’m going to take a gamble and say that my growing bones did just fine on the pillows I had as a child, which were likely made out of asbestos, and assume that my children’s bones will do just fine, too.

• The “Gummi Crib Rail”: For just $13.95, you can turn your baby’s crib rail into a teether! I’m not exactly sure what this is. From what I can tell from the picture, it looks like a strip of rubber you attach to the crib rail, that your child can then suck and chew on. “Protects both baby and his crib,” the catalog reads. I really didn’t know either of these things were an issue. I’ve never heard dentists warn parents about the myriad dental problems that result from chewing on bed rails. Nor have I heard of paint ingestion or gum splinters. I mean, I have a lot of friends with kids and never once have any of them complained about their teething babies chewing the furniture to pieces like a new puppy. But a product has been developed, so I assume this is a problem for at least some children? Or was this a product that was developed in search of a problem? I seriously suspect the latter.

• “Infant/Child CPR Instructional DVD”: “In a mere quarter of an hour [and for just $19.95], you can learn how to save your child’s life!” Okay, there’s nothing wrong with learning CPR. It’s a good skill to have. But I hate the paranoid tactics used to push CPR classes onto parents. They talk as if babies are suffocated on an hourly basis and the only thing standing between your child and certain death is your resuscitation skills. Further, this DVD in particular bothers me because, according to the ad copy, “it uses real kids—not dolls—so you learn more effectively.” What the hell? It uses real kids? What child actors did they find to agree to that: “Here, Kate, inhale this marble into your wind pipe.” Or, “Here, Josh…we know you can’t swim yet, but two words: ‘Canon ball!’” [splash.]

• But I think my favorite product the catalog has to offer is the “Portable UV Pacifier Sterilizer.” That’s right, Mommy! If you’re tired of your baby dropping his pacifier in the tobacco-spit in the Wal-Mart parking, now you can sterilize on-the-go. For just $29.95, you can have this “ingenious, palm-sized sterilizer” that is “clinically proven to destroy 99.9% of germs” in just six minutes!

First of all, I’d love to see a kid attached to his pacifier wait a full six minutes for it to be sterilized before it’s returned to his mouth. By definition, children are an impatient lot, and I can’t imagine any child kicking back and reading the latest issue of Scientific American while waiting for the advanced UV technology to work its magic on his binky. If a child does have that kind of patience, that’s a clue that he’s way too old to be sucking on a pacifier.

Second, aside from children with suppressed immune systems, is there any mother out there who thinks any sickness her child has ever had can be attributed to a dirty pacifier? If your baby is mobile and has any contact with other children in any way (at the park, in Kindermusik, in preschool or daycare), the number of germs they’re swapping is so astronomically high, it makes the bacteria swimming around on a recently crash-landed pacifier look like a sample taken from a clean room. I’ve seen toddlers eat each other’s boogers. I’ve seen them lick ketchup off tables in restaurants. I’ve seen a baby regurgitate a cracker and then hand it to his playmate, who quickly swallowed it. Do you really think the pacifier that spent three seconds on the ground is your biggest worry?

Oy.

Mostly, I just enjoy laughing at this stuff. It gives me something to do between eating and checking Facebook. But when I stop laughing, I find myself really, really annoyed by it. Because I think marketers who hawk products like this do a real disservice to parents and, ultimately, their kids. We already live in a parent culture ruled by fear—why propagate it?

The answer, of course, is because it makes money. In this way, the baby products industry is eerily similar to the beauty products industry: Make people insecure so they’ll buy products that give them the illusion of control. No one wants to be the parent who didn’t spend $13.95 on the bed rail teether and then have a child with an abscess from a splinter. Nor do you want to have the kid who catches the rare auto-immune disease from the contaminated pacifier. These products shout at us, loudly and insistently: “What if…?! What if…?! What if…?!” and leave us to fill in the horrifying blanks.

I’ve spent the better part of my time as a mother rebelling against this. When the preschool Noah was attending as a two-year-old offered a low-cost CPR certification class, I refused to sign up. “How many people do you know who’ve had to do CPR on their kids?” I asked Dave, who thought I was being unnecessarily stubborn.

“None,” he answered.

“Right.”

“But what if something happened and you needed it?” he countered.

“That’s what 911 is for.”

As I recount that, I realize it sounds a bit cavalier. How could I not take a course that would teach me how to save the life of my child? But being a parent means constantly balancing our natural fear for our children’s safety with reality. I used baby gates because the risk of my toddling baby tumbling down the stairs was high. I put squishy rubber things on the corners of our coffee table when Noah and Gwyneth were little because it was very likely one of them was going to clock their head on it. I kept medicines and chemicals locked up and out of reach. I put plastic thingies in the outlets. But a specially designed pillow to help my child’s bone development? A bed rail teether? A portable pacifier sterilizer? Really?

I remember my grandmother looking at the small mountain of gifts I’d received at my baby shower before Noah was born. She shook her head and said, “And to think I raised six kids without all this stuff.” At the time, it annoyed me. As a rule, I don’t subscribe to the whole, “Well, you ate lead-based paint chips as a kid and you turned out fine!” parenting philosophy. But now that I’ve had two kids and successfully raised them through babyhood, I realize what she meant. There are actually very few things you really need to get you through your child’s early years: a good nursing bra and breast pump; a good baby carrier and stroller; and a lot of diapers. What you really need, you can’t buy: patience, perspective, a good night’s sleep, and love—lots and lots of love.

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I’ve long believed that the key to being a good parent is accepting (and embracing) your children for who they are. This means that no matter how much you love football—and no matter how much you’ve dreamed of spending Sundays on the couch watching the NFL with your son and then watching your son play football himself—if your son has an affinity for musical theater and Bette Midler, you need to be okay with that. In short: we can’t hold our children hostage to our own dreams and expectations. Their lives are not ours to live.


I always thought this would be the one area of parenting at which I would excel. I would proclaim loudly to anyone who would listen that I would love and support my children no matter what path they strode or stumbled down. If they decide they want to be circus performers, I’ll be the first to sign them up for carnie lessons. I see so many parents (especially in the uber-competitive world of Washington, DC) who seem to have their children’s futures mapped out for them with total disregard for the child’s own interests. I talked to a mother of three the other day whose children are all under the age of nine, yet she’s worried about how few high school seniors from Northern Virginia schools are accepted into the University of Virginia. As a result, she’s getting her kids on the honor track and scoping out which schools are the most successful so they’re more likely to be competitive when they graduate. I nodded commiseratively, but wanted to ask, “But what if your children have no interest in going to UVA, or any other college for that matter?”


So I pat myself on the back and tell myself how I will allow my kids to create their own futures and be their own people. As a result, they will be happy and successful in their own right.


And then I turn around and find myself pushing my kids to do things they don’t want to do.


Case in point: Thanks to the generosity of Dave’s dad, we spent the last six days in the Colorado mountains. Last year we did the same, when Noah and Gwyneth took snowboarding and skiing lessons respectively. Noah loved it. Gwyneth, not so much. But after some discussion (yes, that’s what I’m calling it, rather than “prodding” which might be more accurate), she decided that this year she would like to try snowboarding. Skiing might not be for her, but snowboarding most certainly could be.


Uh, yeah.


Both Dave and I were nervous about sending Gwyneth, who favors the climate-controlled indoors to snow and a high of 15 degrees, and tutus and halter tops to long underwear and ski pants. When we took her backpacking for the first time this summer, I was careful to let her wear whatever she wanted on the trail. When she stepped out of her bedroom in a mini-skirt and spaghetti-strap tank top, Dave said, “Sweetie, you might want to wear long pants and a t-shirt.”


“But this is prettier,” she replied.


I pulled Dave aside and whispered, “Let it go. If she associates backpacking with ugly clothes, she’ll never want to go again.”


Then there’s just the fact that she’s not too enthusiastic about going into environments where she doesn’t know anyone. This is probably the way in which she and Noah differ the most. Noah could make friends at an anthrophobia conference. He’ll strike up a conversation with anyone, adult or child, and be exchanging phone numbers by the end. Once, when he was four, he introduced himself to the couple sitting next to us outside a Baskin Robbins…asking them how old their daughter was and telling them about how he and his sister were only 16 months apart. At the end, the husband shook his hand and said, “Well, Noah, it was a pleasure meeting you. I think you’ve got a future in sales.”


Gwyneth has always been shyer. Strangers to her are, well, strange. And new situations are unpredictable and a little scary.


But she said she wanted to take snowboarding lessons, and, in truth, we really wanted her to. Both Dave and I have been skiing since we were eight years old (Dave grew up skiing three days a week, having the good fortune of living just 15 minutes from a ski area) and love pretty much everything that has to do with the mountains. We want our kids to have the same love.


Does that sound suspiciously like an expectation?


So we woke up early Wednesday morning and suited up the kids in their 85 layers of snow gear and drove to the base of the ski area, where we waited in an excruciatingly long line to check in for lessons, then rent helmets and boots and boards. As we waited for the helmet and boot fitting, I could see Gwyneth’s confidence begin to erode. She started hanging on my leg, looking up at me with eyes that were growing increasingly bigger, tears rimming the edges. “I’m scared,” she told me.


First, I tried the confident, no-nonsense approach. “Oh, you’re fine, sweetie. You’ll be okay.”


Then we waited in another line to get her board. Gwyneth’s grasp on my leg was growing tighter, her eyes wider. Again, she told me she was scared. This time I tried the affirmation approach. “I know it’s scary meeting new people. I get that way, too. But you can be scared and still try new things, right?”


I could tell this wasn’t working, so I told her to give me her hands and I would put kisses in them, and she could put those kisses in her pockets, and then when she was lonely, she could pull the kisses out and put them on her cheeks.


This seemed to bolster her, but only slightly. Not near enough for the terror of drop off, which was looming.
Helmet, boots, and board in hand, I took her to where the instructors were standing in front of an elevator. I would say goodbye to her there, I told her, and she would take the elevator upstairs to a room where the other kids would be.


The whole elevator thing seemed like a serious design flaw. If Gwyneth had been able to see a room full of kids, she probably would have been more willing to go. But sending her on an elevator? Here, little girl, get on this elevator with a complete stranger to take you to a place you can’t even see. I couldn’t blame her for being reluctant. But I put on my most positive face, and confidently walked her to the elevator, where a 20-something man greeted us. I knew this would mean trouble. Gwyneth loves women. If a cute, pig-tailed, 19-year-old woman had greeted us, I think Gwyneth would have been much more willing to go. But a man? And not a father- or grandfather-like man, but a snowboarding dude with a soul patch. This won’t go well, I thought. “It’s going to be fine,” I told Gwyneth. “You ready?”


Gwyneth looked up at me and the tears that had rimmed her eyes for the last 15 minutes tumbled down her cheeks. Her mouth opened into a full scream. “Mommy! I don’t want to go!” Her hands covered her face and she started sobbing uncontrollably.


“Gwyneth,” I said, kneeling down to meet her face, “it’s okay. I know you’re scared, but it’s going to be okay. You can do this.”


Her sobs only intensified. What killed me was that I could tell she didn’t want to cry. She was wiping away her tears as fast as they came to her eyes and trying really hard to stop, but she couldn’t. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than watching a child trying desperately to control him or herself, and losing. It feels mature beyond their years. They shouldn’t have to act so grown up when their bodies are so little. “I’m scared, Mommy!” she kept saying. “I don’t want to go!”


I hugged her, trying to comfort her, but it was useless. I knew the only thing that would make her feel better was to tell her, “Okay, you don’t have to go. Let’s leave and get some hot chocolate.” But what would I be teaching her if I did that? The fact is, throughout our lives we’re faced with new and scary situations, and running away isn’t an option. I think of how often I’ve walked into a conference room or an interview or a cocktail party and felt my heart rate spike and my throat go dry. I hate it, but I go anyway because I know bailing would hurt my career or someone’s feelings. Sucking it up is, quite frankly, a really good skill to have. This was a chance for Gwyneth to learn that.


But she’s five, not fifteen. Was I pushing her too fast too soon?


The snowboard instructor stood there looking at us. I gave him an “oh-boy-I-bet-you-have-this-happen-all-the-time” smile that was met with a blank “holy-shit-what-the-hell-do-I-do” stare. The poor guy was terrified. I looked back at Gwyneth. “Honey, I know you can do this. It’s time to go. Do you want to push the button on the elevator?”


She looked at me with absolute, sheer terror in her eyes—like I was a Nazi asking her to flip the switch on the gas chamber. “Noooooo,” she sobbed.


“Okay,” I told her. “Then I’m going to do it. And when the elevator comes, you’ll have to get on it, okay?”


She grabbed onto my coat. By this point she was hyperventilating. “Can you [gasp, gasp, gasp] go [gasp, gasp, gasp] with me?”


“No, sweetie, I can’t. See the sign?” I pointed to a sign next to the elevator. “It says ‘Parent-Free Zone.’ I have to say goodbye to you here. But I’ll pick you up at three o’clock. Okay?”


I pressed the button to the elevator. The doors opened.


She was still crying, but, without any more words from me, she walked into the elevator with her instructor. I waved goodbye to her and blew her a kiss. The doors closed and I could hear her sobs behind it.


I turned around to find Dave, who had dropped off a very happy Noah at his class, and arrived just in time to see the tail end of Gwyneth’s tearful goodbye.


“Jesus,” he said.


“I know.”


“That was awful,” he said.


“I know.”


“Do you think she’s going to be okay?”


I shrugged. “They’ll call if she isn’t, I guess.”


We walked away somberly. We spent the rest of the day cross-country skiing together—enjoying our kid-free date as much as we could. But Gwyneth’s sobs were a constant companion. We talked about whether we’d done the right thing. “If I knew for sure that she was going to have fun once she got going, I wouldn’t feel so bad,” I told Dave. “But I’m just not sure that’s going to happen. I worry she’s going to hate it.”


But more than that was the other issue this raised for me: the worry that I might very well have a daughter who isn’t tough, who doesn’t like to ski or snowboard, who doesn’t like to hike and camp, who doesn’t like the mountains, who doesn’t (God forbid) like horses. It’s possible, right? Dave’s and my genes aside, she could very well decide that she prefers asphalt and air conditioning to the great outdoors and animals. And, seriously, as I write that, my heart sinks.


And I tell myself it shouldn’t matter. What about the whole accepting and embracing thing? That doesn’t just mean accepting and embracing a child who prefers Emily Dickinson over Edna St. Vincent Millay; or who supported Hillary instead of Barack; or who loves warmbloods instead of Thoroughbreds. That means accepting a child whose interests and values are fundamentally different than my own. A child who is a conservative, fundamentalist Christian who thinks Glenn Beck is the smartest man alive. A child who becomes a member of PETA and thinks riding and competing horses is inhumane. A child who would rather spend her day in the mountains indoors playing board games than on the slopes.


These are the possibilities that I need to accept and embrace.


As the day wore on, Dave and I checked our phones about a hundred times, waiting for the voicemail that said, “Gwyneth is in the fetal position in the corner. You need to come pick her up.”


But that didn’t happen. Instead, at 2:30, we made our way to the lesson hill, where we could watch Noah and Gwyneth demonstrate their newly honed shredding skills. As we approached, Dave and I braced each other: “There’s a good chance she won’t even be outside. They might have just let her stay in and color. I hope she doesn’t see us and burst into tears.”


To our surprise, we arrived at the hill to find Gwyneth riding the Magic Carpet (a short moving walkway) up the hill. She saw us and waved enthusiastically. “Mom!” she yelled across the snow. “I can snowboard, Mom! Watch!” She got off the walkway, cut in front of the boy standing in her way, sat in the snow, took off her gloves, and buckled her boot onto her board. She then pushed herself up and started gliding down the mountain—arms out, legs bent in a squat, looking straight down the hill. At the bottom, she rocked back onto her board, spraying some snow as she stopped.

She turned to Dave and me and yelled, “Did you watch me?”


“Yes!” we called back, giving her a thumbs up. “That was great!”


She did it again. And again. And again. After the instructor said it was time to stop and all the other kids took off their boards, Gwyneth asked to go one more time. And she did.


Afterwards, we talked to the instructor, who told us Gwyneth cried for the first 45 minutes after I dropped her off. He said he kept trying to distract her with other things, but she would have none of it. Eventually, she just walked over into a corner by herself, sat down, and cried for 10 minutes. After that, she walked over and joined the other kids and became his most enthusiastic student. When we asked her if she wanted to take lessons the next day, she didn’t waver before telling us, “Yes!”


I realize this doesn’t mean much of anything. As I said earlier, she’s only five. As time wears on, she might decide that she really doesn’t like snowboarding. Or skiing. Or the cold, or the mountains, or the outdoors. Noah might discover these things, too. But for now, I don’t have to worry about that. For now, I’ve got a daughter and son who love to snowboard. I’ve got a daughter and son who love to camp and love horses and love being outside. If someday they decide none of these things are for them, I’ll make sure to accept and embrace them. But for right now, I’m going to enjoy watching them shred the slopes.


[Noah on the slopes:]

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