Ten Dollar Thoughts

I am from three shelves of family photo albums whose pages have grown brittle and yellow with time, a set of brass and wrought iron fireplace tools that were handed down and are worn from use, and a red and green leather bound set of the complete works of Charles Dickens.

I am from a single story ranch style home with two fireplaces, a broad deck, and an extra bedroom with blue carpet where my mother watched us in the back yard as she ironed, learning to parallel park between coffee cans on the riding lawnmower, and the sounds of the high school marching band floating through my open windows in early September.

I am from zinnias and marigolds and phlox, giant elm trees that split down the middle during the biggest ice storm of my childhood, and azaleas that flush hot pink for a fraction of a moment each spring.

I am from family vacations filled with silly putty, mint flavored Chapstick, endless games of travel bingo, and stops at every historical marker, Sunday dinners of roast chicken and mashed potatoes and “at least one green vegetable”, and unflappable precision in the matters of grammar and usage.

I am from a cultural polyglot, from operas and rodeos, minor league baseball and Broadway musicals, roadside motels and historic B&B’s.

I am from casseroles and whole wheat bread and after school snacks, bedtimes and phone curfews, and weekly chores for your weekly allowance. 

I am from the belief that life is a banquet table from which I may choose, that you address your friends’ parents as Mr. and Mrs. unless they tell you otherwise, that you don’t have to like it but you have to try it, and that maintaining relationships with family over distance is always hard and always worth it. 

I am from a childhood on horseback, fitted breeches and tall dress boots and banded collars, fringed leather chaps and size 6 7/8 hats, the number 477 pinned to my back and ribbons pinned to my bedroom wall, strong legs and a graceful torso, and greater confidence astride a mare than on solid ground.

I am from Sunday school and the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, a large steel cross that loomed over my head in the sanctuary and whose replica sits on my nightstand, red choir robes with white stoles, and silver trays that were passed down the pews on Communion Sunday.

I am from weekend outings to tiny rural towns, chicken fried steak and cherry cobbler from rusty diners with linoleum tile floors, and the news from Lake Wobegon.

I am from a Catholic prep school with magnificently pitched roofs and a three-story tower with a spiral staircase, pep rallies for Friday night football games, unparalleled teachers, and unreasonable levels of peer competition.

I am from a small private college where everyone knows your hometown and your major, chatty sorority chapter meetings and raucous fraternity parties, and professors who were known to call your dorm room if you overslept for a final.

I am from Bob and Rosemary and Jack and Frances and Jeff and Jan, from hand-stitched quilts and homemade pie pastry, from handwritten letters, hugs and I love yous. 

I am from a family that is not perfect but whom I love, the need to carry them in my heart, and the willingness to try things my own way.

With my entire family arriving shortly for the holiday weekend, I have thoughts of heritage on the brain.  In that vein this post was inspired, with permission, by Lindsey’s poem at A Design So Vast.  As a related aside, I will be taking Friday and Monday off from blogging to spend time with my family, and I will see you back here next Wednesday.  I hope you all have a lovely holiday.

About a month ago I did something that scared the bejeezus out of me: I started researching preschools.  Yes, I know, IEP is not even two yet.  Mostly I just had no idea at what age kids start going to preschool and didn’t want to miss the boat because I was lost in a state of denial thinking, “But my baby is only nine years old.  Surely he isn’t old enough to start school yet, right?”

The comforting answer to the question spurring my research was that we have two full years before we start taking first-day-of-school photos on the front porch.  The not-so-comforting follow-up information came when I started clicking into tuition pages and discovered that many of the preschools we’re considering cost more than my high school did.  This is one of the few moments when I’m glad I don’t live in Manhattan and haven’t felt pressured to start the application process every day since my second trimester.  But I digress…

As an interesting parallel to our own preschool-filled horizon I happened across this NYT article about “The Littlest Redshirts.”  Apparently it is now de rigueur to hold your child back a year in some sort of Darwinian power play to make sure that he is among the smartest, tallest, and strongest in his class.**  Not surprisingly, I am ambivalent about this.

As a September baby I always enjoyed being among the oldest in my class.  I was one of the first to drive and vote and drink (legally, at least).  Whether or not I actually did, I perceived myself as having a bit of a leg up.  And all of these things factored somewhat into our decision to shoot for an autumn baby before I got pregnant with IEP.  But in spite of our own “strategery” I have an adverse response to the idea of holding a child back to stack the deck in this way. 

Perhaps I have visions of aggressive stage parents jockeying their children for position at the top of the toddler heap.  (I certainly have visions of the scene in Baby Boom where Diane Keaton sits dejected at the playground as other alpha mommies decry her parenting techniques and shun her for not having little Elizabeth on the Dalton waiting list.)  Such visions are off-putting enough.  But I think my real objection here is the effect that this “my child is the exception” mentality has on the kids who follow the rules.

For example, say IEP was born in April.  If I enroll him in preschool the year after he turns three (as is customary, I have learned) he will be among the younger members of his class.  Kids will be up to eight months older or four months younger than my son.  Now, say I don’t like the idea of IEP being on the young end.  Say I am heavily invested in my son’s success and I want him to have every advantage.  So I hold him back a year.  Now he starts preschool as a four-year-old.  He is older, smarter, and stronger than he was a year ago and than most other kids in his class.  IEP wins!

But who loses in this scenario?  What about the child who was born in mid-August and just barely made the September 1^st cutoff?  Now that child (and lots of other summer babies) are not just being stacked up against to kids who are 10 and 11 months older, but to kids who are up to a year and a half older.  By comparison they will be significantly less developed on many levels.  And I’m certainly no expert in early childhood development, but I can’t imagine that this does wonderful things for self-esteem (not to mention standardized test results which are scored in percentiles…). 

As a parent I totally understand the desire for your child to have every advantage you can hand him in this big bad world of ours.  But what does it say to your child about your confidence in him if you choose to cheat the system to give him a leg up?  And what does it teach him about how to succeed in the world if you’re willing to leave others to flounder for your own benefit?  I think the answer is: nothing good.

**Note – I’m not talking about kids who are held back for legitimate developmental reasons.  Many kids are held back because they simply aren’t ready and that is a bird of a different feather.

On Friday morning I got a call from my mother.  I was on my way out the door and, after confirming that my Aunt B (who’s been feeling poorly) was okay, I hurriedly asked if I could call her back once I got in the car.  She assured me that Aunt B was fine and that I could call her back.  Then, more like ten minutes later when I was finally out the door, I pressed “M” on my BlackBerry and rang her cell. 

The reason for her call was not urgent, but was tragic.  A series of events had led her to phone a friend of hers that morning who informed her that she (the friend) would, later that day, be attending the funeral of a childhood classmate of mine.  It was shocking news, given that he had no known health problems and the cause of death, while known to be natural, is otherwise a mystery.  I was saddened to learn of his passing, as well as a bit shaken at being abruptly reminded of my own mortality. 

I wouldn’t say that I felt grief.  I hadn’t seen him since I transferred to private school after seventh grade.  But I felt sadness.  Sadness at a bright young life being snuffed out unexpectedly.  Sadness for his mother, of whom I have fond memories as a warm and vibrant presence in my childhood.  And sadness for his friends and colleagues who had much affection for him.

My memory of him is colored by the injustices of childhood and adolescence.  Our names were alphabetically adjacent, and so we were frequently seated next to each other in classes, line-ups, and other organized activities.  But beyond that, our paths didn’t intersect very often.  He was very cute, very athletic, and very popular, and I was (though I’m sure I didn’t understand it this way at the time) intimidated. 

And what do we do to people who intimidate us?  Sometimes, when we are young and insecure, we minimize them in the privacy of our minds in order to feel better about our own inadequacies.  To the extent that these things mattered to me at the time, I allowed myself to assume that he was uninteresting, not very nice, and not very smart, none of which, it turns out, was true.  And it is this fallacious perception that has been nagging at me since Friday. 

After our lives diverged for good at the age of 13 he was a part of my past in the most neutral sense.  I bore him no ill will, but didn’t miss him either, and in fact rarely thought of him at all.  Until I talked with my mother on Friday I hadn’t heard his name spoken in at least ten or 15 years.  But in the time since that phone call I’ve thought a lot about him.  I was particularly struck by these few sentences from his obituary which forced me to confront the long-forgotten assumptions I’d made about him as a child.

[He] loved his family first. Second was his fiery passion for sports, music and history that paired with a great smile and a better laugh made him an easy person to befriend and an easier person to love. He was not a musician but he had more knowledge, appreciation, and love for the art than many who perform. He was no longer a competitive athlete, but recognized, praised and admired those that were. He never fought in the Civil War but he knew the roads the soldiers took to battle and understood both sides’ reasons for combat.

After reading that description I couldn’t help but think, “This sounds like I guy I’d really have enjoyed!”  He clearly had a curious mind and an affecting spirit.  Then I got on Facebook (we have a number of FB friends in common) and found my homepage littered with condolences, memories, and tributes to a man whom I could tell was beloved.  And it was then that I realized how wrong I’d been, probably from the very beginning.  But my epiphany accomplishes nothing now; it is too little too late. 

I believe the assumptions we make about people are always colored by ourselves; by our biases, insecurities, defenses, and pride.  So often we see what we want to see.  When looking at people whom we love and admire we see strength of character, keenness of mind, and generosity of spirit.  When looking at people who threaten or intimidate us we see any number of qualities that vindicate us or make us feel superior.  But if we were to harness true objectivity, even for a moment, we would see that each portrait contains nuances we’d previously overlooked.  We would see that there is more to the story than we may care to admit. 

I was far from the most popular girl in school.  As a kid I lamented (usually privately) the fact that my insecurities and neediness masked the super-coolness I was sure lived just beneath my surface.  The cool kids just didn’t see me for what I truly was.  But I see now that – at least in this case (and probably many others) – I was guilty of the same offense.

This theme of this post is “Memory”, as part of Momalom’s “Five for Ten”.

Every Friday Nanny takes IEP to a local bookstore for story hour.  They get ready to leave, IEP drags the diaper bag to the front door, waves “bye bye” to the house, and they load up in the car for their morning adventures.  At the bookstore all the kids are treated to animal cookies and a bit of a sing-along before the story-telling begins. 

On one such outing the story had just begun, and IEP perched in Nanny’s lap on the floor.  Per her retelling, just a few pages into the book IEP started signing “more” and “please” tirelessly in rotation.  After several pages of his silent antics the reader paused the story, looked at Nanny, and asked, “Does he know sign language?”

“Yes.  He wants another cookie,” Nanny responded.  The story teller didn’t know quite what to make of such a blatant request, and went on with her reading. 

Similarly, about 400 times each day IEP says, “Mama? Mama?”  I typically respond by saying “Yes?” or “What?”  But lately I’ve added a new reply to the rotation.  I ask, “What do you need?”  Bothering over semantics with an 18-month-old may seem silly.  And I concede that it’s a subtle distinction, but it’s one that I believe matters.  My rationale is that as of recently, it’s a question he can answer. 

You see, IEP has added a new sign to his repertoire.  Words are coming slowly, but he picks up new signs quite readily.  His latest addition is “help.”  His little fists move up and down in his own modified version of the gesture, usually preceded by vigorous pointing at something.  He uses it when he wants a cup of milk or juice, but can’t open the ice box.  When he wants to ride his little toy car, but can’t pull it out from behind another toy.  When he wants to stand in our bay window and watch the street below, but can’t get up to it on his own.  His context is actually surprisingly good.

I tell you these stories not to brag about how brilliant my son is.  (He is brilliant, though.  Just like your kids…)  I tell you these stories because they illustrate something that we value in children, but yet eschew from our own lives as adults:  he makes his needs known. 

We spend so much time and energy trying to coax this kind of communication out of little kids.  We gesture.  We repeat.  We sign.  We point.  We offer this or that.  We implore them with every ounce of our patience to communicate their wants and needs with something more sophisticated than a tantrum.   At this tender age of toddler-hood we want nothing more than to hear the words, “Mommy, I want more pasta,” or “Mommy, I want to go up the stairs by myself.”  We don’t even care about please and thank you at this point (although we make IEP sign both).  Just to hear the words spoken in plain English would be music. 

Yet as adults we become reluctant to make our needs known.  Not the banal, logistical, everyday needs.  Not the “I need to get up early tomorrow” or “I need to run to the store” or “I need a drink” needs.  I’m talking about the things we need that make us feel vulnerable.  I’m talking about the things we need that we don’t like to admit.  I’m talking about the things we should not be ashamed to need, but sometimes are. 

I need a hug.  I need to talk this out.  I need some alone time.  I need to feel more appreciated. I need to laugh.  I need be able to say that I’m proud of myself.

These things – these needs – are so real to each of us.  They make the difference between connection and distance.  Speaking them aloud draws the line between confidence and fear.  Knowing that they are universal, no matter how little they are confessed, buoys us against tides that feel overwhelming much of the time. 

So why is it, then, that the behavior we encourage in our children we so often fail to exemplify ourselves?  We say we are fine when we are not.  We say we are fine when we are hurt, or bone tired, or lonely, or regretful, or ashamed.  We say we are fine because we don’t want to admit that we aren’t. 

We have needs.  So why on earth don’t we say so? 

Perhaps for many of us, it is the judgment of others that worries us.  But I suspect that it’s our own self-judgment that we fear even more.  There is something about our culture that values self-sufficiency to a fault.  We feel obligated to handle everything on our own.  We are reluctant to admit that we need help in any way.  And I can’t help but think that if we just fessed up, leaned on someone, and then returned the favor that we’d all be happier, less stressed, and more resilient in the face of our own needs, knowing that we are flanked by helpers.

The thing is, I imagine many of us are already flanked by helpers.  We just don’t realize it because we’ve never asked.

We carry our childhoods with us throughout our adult lives.  For some of us this is only metaphorical in that we are forever influenced by the experiences we had as younger people.  For others of us there is a more literal component to it.  I am someone for whom both interpretations are true. 

Over the past several years my mother has been wielding empty threats at my sister and me about culling through the artifacts of our childhood that have been sitting in my parents’ attic for more than ten years.  We made halfhearted attempts during various visits home, but never really made much progress.  Then, last fall, my entire family converged on my home for a Labor Day get-together and my parents arrived with a trunk full of boxes.

Starting that weekend and over the course of two additional weekend visits home I finally completed the process I’d been not-so-gently reminded of for several years.  Many things were thrown out and donated:  Old prom dresses and ballet costumes.  Helmets from my days of competitive horseback riding that no longer fit.  Silly serial books I read in junior high.  Board games missing cards and pieces.

But there were other things that I couldn’t, even today, bring myself to discard:  My full boxed sets of Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Avonlea books.  Leftover wedding invitations.  Berenstain Bear books.  The spiral notebooks from my my semester abroad courses, full of notes taken entirely in Spanish.  A stack of journals with every line filled.  And three shoeboxes’ worth of letters, notes, and printed e-mails from a roughly eight-year span of my life. 

The books have been stored.  So have the wedding invitations.  But the journals and the letters required a more thoughtful dispensation.  After skimming the journals I am decidedly embarrassed.  They contain the self-absorbed ramblings of a teenaged girl.  Melodrama of all stripes: friends, boys, clothes, parents, siblings, and the like.  They seem like they were written by another person.  They are fickle, insecure, predictable, and a tad shallow.  I can hardly deny that I was that girl back then – the evidence is there in my back-slanted lefty script.  But I am not that girl today.  And she’s not a girl I’m inclined to keep in storage.  The letters are less embarrassing, but only because fewer of them were written by me.  Within them also resides a portrait of a lesser Gale. 

Thus, the purge. 

One by one I’m reading sections of each journal; taking one last glimpse at a person I left behind.  And one by one, I’m tearing the pages from their spiral bindings and shredding them.  The letters were subjected to a similar culling.  Summer camp letters from old boyfriends have been tossed.  The letter my mother wrote to my Aunt B the day before I was born was not.  Long-winded e-mails from girlfriends whose bond didn’t stand the test of time are now in the trash.  My sixteenth birthday card from my first love is safely tucked away.  And each letter that GAP and I wrote to each other during the summer before we started dating – ours was an old-fashioned and long-distance courtship - is also in the keeper pile.  Many others are not.

Perhaps surprisingly, I’m not all that nostalgic about letting these things go.  It’s freeing in a way to know that this hard evidence can be destroyed and that I am not tethered to a version of myself I’d rather leave in the past.  It makes me wonder how I would feel about my adolescent self without so much documentation.  Would I remember myself accurately?  Or would I just think back on a hazier version of the same clichéd memories of junior high and high school without being bothered by the granularity of my actual thoughts? 

While this process of reliving a few moderately miserable years (no more miserable than anyone else’s teen years) has been humbling, it has also been a bit redeeming.  In addition to some awkward moments with myself, I’ve been proud as well.  I am not that girl anymore.  And it was a long and sometimes arduous journey that brought me to today.  I spared myself no challenge, no pain, no character-building experience.  And I’m happy to report that it was well worth it.  Having such a crystalline view of what I left behind makes me realize exactly what changes I’ve made. 

As I think about it now, I deserve the purge.  I’ve earned it.  Adolescence is an unfriendly time of life.  And those of us who’ve found ourselves bettered on the other side are entitled to cut that proverbial cord.  I expected to be misty-eyed and reluctant over this process.  But quite the contrary, I think it’s been a catharsis I didn’t know I needed.

Do you cling to embarrassing vestiges of your youth?  Is your autographed New Kids on the Block poster still rolled up and tucked away in your parents’ house somewhere?  Do you still have the first CD you bought?  Do you wish it were something cooler than Poison?  Are your high school diaries collecting dust until you have the emotional fortitude to throw them out?  Do you still know every single word to “Ice Ice Baby”?  Are you ambivalent about your old prom photos, wishing never to see them again, but yet unable to discard them?

My answer to all those questions is Yes.  (Except for the New Kids poster.  I can proudly say that I was never a fan of NKOTB.  Also that I never had big bangs.  I made a couple of decent decisions.)  Our youths are full of poor, but harmless, decisions.  We look back and cringe at our fashion selections, musical tastes, romantic pursuits, and rampant overuse of the word “like.”  I am no exception.

But sometimes we stumble onto something in our more formative years that endures; something that initially smacks of a teenaged phase, but somehow holds on.  Either the emotional tether to that thing (bad hat, cheesy song, flavor of lip gloss, etc.) is so strong that no amount of humiliating hindsight can sever it.  Or maybe that thing wasn’t such a bad decision after all.  Sometimes, in spite of our adolescent selves, we managed to develop an affinity to something worth holding onto.  The novels of Barbara Kingsolver.  Baking.  Or the Indigo Girls. 

Yes.  The Indigo Girls.  These crooners of summer camp ballads and chick rock anthems found their way to me in the most predictable of venues: the Walkman of a seatmate on a 16-passenger van during a Spring Break road trip to a Mexican border town for a church mission trip.  It doesn’t get much more clichéd than that. 

Secure yourself to heaven.
Hold on tight the night has come. 
Fasten up your earthly burdens. 
You have just begun.   

Those lyrics, sung in tight harmony over acoustic guitars, slid effortlessly into my melodramatic, 17-year-old brain and stuck.  Permanently.  I was hooked, and over the next few years I accumulated every album they’d produced since 1985.  Each song oozed with melody, harmony, and poetry – an intoxicating combination for an innocent Southern girl searching for dramatic depth and meaning in her happy and complacent little life. 

But as I outgrew many of my other youthful indiscretions, I never outgrew my love of the Indigo Girls.  Perhaps I no longer bathe myself in their lyrics looking for parallels to my own life.  But my initial affection wasn’t misguided.  They have, for 25 years now, created music that does in fact ooze with melody, harmony, and poetry.  And I’m not the least bit ashamed that I’m still lured in by it.

I thought about these things the other night as I stood on the floor of a concert hall, watching them perform live.  As everyone in the crowd sang along to our forever favorites I realized that while some of my reasons for loving this band have changed, the core reasons have not.  I love beautiful music.  I love eloquent words.  I love powerful messages.  And their songs weave each of those things together into an intangible tapestry that will always speak to me. 

It was a wonderful night.  Two girlfriends and I met up at my house, leaving our husbands and sons to fend for themselves.  And out we went for an evening of pizza, drinks, much talk of motherhood, and a date with the favorite band of our youth.  I loved every minute of it. 

I am grateful to have a life that is filled with pizza, and friendship, and beautiful music.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am newly obsessed with The Pioneer Woman’s blog.  Yesterday when I pulled up her site I was delighted to see that her latest recipe was for Hot Cross Buns.  My mother made Hot Cross Buns on every Good Friday of my childhood.  And while I have lovely memories of coming home from school to find a fresh batch on the kitchen counter (sometimes with extra frosting left in the bowl!) my favorite Hot Cross Bun memory comes from my adulthood, and from China.  This story is not meant to be thought-provoking or challenging in any way.  Rather it is a cherished moment of my life that I felt inspired to share. 

If you’re not familiar with Hot Cross Buns, you can learn a quick bit about them here.

I was 26 years old.  I was less than a month away from my wedding.  I was in Shanghai in the middle of a two-week business trip to my company’s Japan and China offices.  So things in my life were pretty calm at the time.  Right.

I’d spent the first week of the trip in Japan.  Sushi, tempura, industry trade show – all the usual suspects.  The second week took us to Shanghai for a 5-day training session with our Pac Rim distributors.  We were staying at the St. Regis hotel which was then, and is still, the most mind-bogglingly luxurious hotel I’ve ever stayed in.  I had a personal butler assigned to me at check-in.  The room was huge and stunning; the bathroom even more so.  Every time I left my room – even if it was just to run down to the hotel gym for a quick workout – someone came in and refolded the towels, tidied my toiletries, smoothed the duvet, and tucked under the corners of the toilet paper.  And every afternoon around 2:00 a snack was delivered to my room on a silver tray.  It was usually a pastry of some kind.  Something delectable that made me slide to the floor and want to never return home.  (What wedding?  GAP once lived in China.  Surely I could find a back-up version of him running around somewhere, right?)

I spent each day in a hotel ballroom, giving presentations on the key selling points of my company’s products, changes to the competitive landscape, and pricing and discount structures.  I’d eaten all of the local fare that had been served and had, for the most part, been delighted by how much I loved it.  Cuttlefish, jellyfish, whole roasted fish, seaweed salad, etc.  Business dinners each evening featured dishes that rotated among the traditional menus of our distributors’ home countries – Thai, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia.  I was lost in an international smorgasbord.   

I’d gone sight-seeing with a colleague one afternoon and eaten dumplings purchased from a street vendor that have never been matched by any I’ve eaten since.  The bread was fried crisp on the outside and chewy underneath.  The broth inside was rich, salty, and surprisingly hot.  It dripped all the way down my forearms and I actually licked some of it off.  The bite of pork in the middle was tender and fatty and melted on my tongue.  I was in a food nirvana.   

I was also reaching a saturation point of visual stimulation.  Ancient gardens, Confucian temples, giant Buddhas everywhere.  My colleague and I had a personal local tour guide for two days who took us into nooks and crannies of her city that we’d never have found (or braved) on our own.  I was absorbing the culture around me like a parched sponge.  I had moments of homesickness, but for the most part I’d been able to separate myself from the impending wedding and gotten lost in the world around me.  And so it was that when Good Friday rolled around at the end of my trip I was barely aware of it.

That day our business agenda reached its scheduled afternoon break.  I returned to my room upstairs where I looked forward to slipping out of my heels, collapsing onto the fluffy bed, and delicately tearing into whatever scone, éclair, or other confection might be awaiting me.  I opened the door, walked into that now-familiar and serene retreat of a room, and stopped cold.  There, on the silver tray, was a porcelain plate with two Hot Cross Buns. 

They were beautiful.  Golden dough glazed with egg whites and studded with raisins.  Iced by hand with careful, but not perfect, crosses.  I was so touched by the gesture that I almost couldn’t bring myself to eat them.  But I did.  They lacked the delicate crumb and subtle sweetness of my mother’s, but it was irrelevant.  I was as far away from home – geographically, culturally, metaphorically – as I’d ever been.  And yet a hallmark of my childhood sat before me on a silver tray.

I still don’t know the answers to all the questions that spun through my head as I ate my Hot Cross Buns.  How did they know these tiny details of Christian culinary heritage?  Did they know I was a Christian?  Did everyone in the hotel get Hot Cross Buns for their snack that day?  Or was it just for the Westerners whom they thought might enjoy a taste of home.  Did they have any idea how their thoughtfulness would strike deep to the heart of me?

Since I’d left home after college I’d never made Hot Cross Buns of my own.  I guess I didn’t realize what meaning they held for me.  But in that moment I became keenly aware of their significance; significance to which I’d been heretofore oblivious.  The next year I made my first batch of Hot Cross Buns.  They too didn’t measure up to my mother’s, but they were good.  And they were mine.  And it felt good to take my traditions into my own hands.  I have plenty of time to perfect my technique.

I haven’t made them every year.  But I will make them this year.  I think IEP would like them very much.  And I want his memories of them to be as ingrained as my own.

Home can be a slippery concept. 

The city that I now call home is not the city where I grew up.  My hometown, however, hasn’t been “home” since I graduated college ten years ago. 

This comes up because I spent last weekend visiting my parents.  My sister was also in town, but neither of our husbands joined us.  So, with the exception of one IEP (whose abilities to change the dynamics of a weekend should not be underestimated), for a couple of days we were the same family of four of my childhood.

Visiting my parents is an odd mish-mash of emotions as it relates to the concept of “home.”  They still live in the house where I spent my adolescent years.  And for several years after I moved out, going back there still felt like going home.  It felt familiar, comfortable, and still in some way mine.  It still feels comfortable and familiar, but no longer mine.  Throughout the course of the past ten years I have moved to a different place along the continuum of “home.”  It’s a strange experience to realize that home no longer feels like home.  And I’ve puzzled quite a bit over when and why this happened. 

There is the physical.  One by one, every room in my parents’ house (except the kitchen) has been redecorated since I lived there.  The coffee table in the living room that I once stabbed with a letter opener as a toddler is now in my sister’s house out West.  The lilies-of-the-valley wallpaper that I picked out for my bathroom (and which was installed upside down…) has been removed and replaced with textured green paint.  The leather couch where I did my best napping was donated to charity.  The dark mahogany pool table in the den that occupied me and my friends on many weekend evenings throughout high school has been taken down and replaced with an exquisitely arranged seating area.  The dining room, whose walls used to be covered in bold stripes, now displays a more muted floral pattern.  And so on, and so on, and so on. 

There is the temporal.  The city itself has changed since I left.  Like any city, my hometown is not a snapshot of itself.  Naturally some things are the same, but many things are different.  Restaurants open and close.  People move to new homes.  Land is developed and re-developed.  Family members move back.  Friends move away.  And so on, and so on, and so on.  A city is an organism with a pulse that beats according to the people in it.  As those people grow and change, so does the city around them.  So even if I were to move back tomorrow, I could never return to precisely the city I left, because it doesn’t exist anymore. 

There is the emotional.  I have never lived in my hometown as an adult.  When I finished school I had a strike-out-on-my-own mentality.  “I can move back there any time” I thought.  “This is the time to go explore new places.”  And so I did.  But once GAP and I had settled into our current city and built our networks of friends and colleagues, it became clear to me that my logic had been backwards.  For numerous reasons, I have understood for several years now that I will never move back to my hometown.  This was a strange realization to face.  Even stranger?  I’m okay with it. 

And most importantly, there is the issue of family.  There are many maxims about home.  (It’s where the heart is.  It’s where you hang your hat.  It’s where your dirty laundry is.)  For me, home is where my family lives.  Of course my parents and sister are my family and I love them dearly.  But they are no longer the sun around which I orbit.  My hometown no longer feels like home for a few important reasons:  GAP has never lived there.  IEP has never lived there.  My giant, ever-shedding dogs have never lived there.  For me, home is where IEP’s toys clutter the floor of our sunroom.  It is the place with the telephone table in the kitchen whose corners were once chewed by Bernese Mountain Dog puppies.  It is the place where GAP’s and my bookshelves stand opposite each other because even now we refuse to co-mingle our books.  And it is the place where nearly ten years of academic, professional, and social roots have descended into the ground.

Over time I have grown to love this city and the life we have built here.  It may not always be home, but right now it is.  I doubt I will ever feel as bonded to it as I once did to my hometown.  But ten years ago I also would have doubted that never again living there would become a perfectly comfortable path for me. 

Like cities we too, quite literally, are organisms.  We change over time; not only in our looks, tastes, and interests, but also in the way we interface with the world around us.  In many ways I am vastly different from what I was at 22.  In other ways I am exactly the same.  And I suppose that the same is true of home.  Home is now “here” instead of “there.”  But it is still the place where I live my life on good days and bad.  And it is the place where my husband and son are at my side.

There are many people in the world whom we identify as role models.  Many of them are athletes.  Some are government leaders.  Others are astronauts and soldiers.  Others still are people who have overcome incredible hardship.  And all of these people certainly deserve our admiration.  But there is a different breed of role model that this collection excludes.

For all of the attention we pay to people whose stories are worthy of glossy magazine pages, the honest truth of the matter is that they probably influence our lives very little.  We may be inspired as we read about them, or watch their stories play out in front of us in the form of a collection of slow-motion clips, narrated by Bob Costas and accompanied by touching background music.  We may tear up in these moments and stand in awe of these impressive people.  But when we close the magazine or turn off the television, very few of us carry these people around with us afterward. 

Most often the people we carry with us are those whose faces we can see when we close our eyes; whose voices we can hear when we find a quiet moment.  They are people who have taught us things big and small.  They have watched us succeed and fail.  They have shown us what maturity and integrity look like at every turn.  They are the people whose lives have left an indelible impression on our own.

Because I have led a blessed and lucky life so far, I have a number of people in my life who fit this description.  But only one of them celebrated his 90^th birthday last weekend.

Steady.  If I had to pick one word that describes my grandfather more than any other, it would be steady.  In today’s world where we flit about, jumping frenetically from one thing to the next, steadiness is a trait that has become increasingly rare.  Today we value speed, multi-tasking, and efficiency.  We do not always appreciate the value that is brought by doing something well or with consistency.  But such quality and consistency are hallmarks of my grandfather’s life.

For forty-odd years Granddaddy was a physician; an internist.  He was an army doctor during World War II.  And when the war ended he started his own private practice which he ran until he retired in his sixties.  Throughout his practice he saw patients in his office, made his own hospital rounds, and made house calls.  He was home in time for supper.  He has gone to church nearly every Sunday of his life.  He played tennis with my father every weekend of his teen years – rain, shine, snow, or sleet.  He took a two-week vacation with his family every summer.  He made double mortgage payments every month until his house was paid off. 

When I was a little girl I did not always appreciate these qualities.  To a child some of this steadiness can seem a little stuffy, even rigid.  He has playful moments, to be sure.  And he is always full of affection for my sister and me.  But the same steadiness he exhibits each day he also expects of those around him.  As kids we knew exactly what the rules were, and what consequences might be handed down if we broke them.  Those consequences were never more than a stern expression accompanied by a few castigating words, but they always did the job.

In my life today I notice the ways in which we embrace and endorse many aspects of our lives that don’t quite measure up.  We have starter careers and starter marriages.  We eat fast food and watch reality television.  We carry credit card debt and spend more than we save.  In light of all this I am especially thankful for Granddaddy and the example he has set for me.  Because of him I have come to value reliability and consistency, and I can see what a life looks like that has been built on decisions that were made, one after another, with stalwart integrity. 

Granddaddy has always been a little bit formal.  But this past weekend at his birthday party I watched him soften a bit.  I worked collectively with my family to create a memory book from years’ worth of photos and stories for his birthday gift.  He unwrapped the book to find a front-cover photograph of himself and my grandmother taken in their front yard in 1960.  She wore a pale blue dress with a belt cinched around her impossibly tiny waist.  He stood in shirt sleeves and a tie with his arm draped over her shoulders.  They were so obviously happy.  As he flipped through the pages he smiled and sighed.  Stories spilled from his mouth as the photos cast fresh light on memories that had grown dusty with age.

It gave me real joy to watch him in that moment.  And it inspired me to more fully incorporate into my life the values that he embodies.  Granddaddy can sit happily today knowing that he has lived his life well.  I hope that I too reach my 90^th birthday someday, and that I too will be able to look back over my life with a similar sense of satisfaction.