New England Mamas

A Cold June in New England

I am very much a product of my New England upbringing. That is to say, I'm cold--like a November pilgrim alone in her one-room shanty mushing corn into meal. I don't tend to enthuse much with strangers. I'm slightly more animated with acquaintances. It's only with good friends (and preferably a few glasses of wine) that I begin to act like I give a good goddamn about those around me--at which point it becomes clear I'm no puritan.

When I was gestating my children, no stranger ever touched my stomach. I've heard many stories about such liberties being taken with pregnant women, but I never had to worry about it. Nobody whose name or face was unrecognizable to me would dare mention my condition, let alone feel around for it. It's like I wear a big sign flickering "UNAPPROACHABLE" in neon letters.

I belong to a mom's group where many of the members are transplants. Some are from the midwest, some from the west, others from further north. They are all very nice and quick to make friends so that, before long, it seems like they've always been here. That's well and good for them, but when they end up with all kinds of fun plans with all kinds of different people and I'm sitting at home with the family members who have no choice but to put up with me, it leaves me lamenting my roots and my subconscious determination not to weed them.

It's very hard for me to foster new friendships. I don't dig into people's pasts or predilections because I don't want to pry. I don't like asking for favors and thus it doesn't occur to me to offer them. I generally won't censor myself. I hate talking on the phone. All this comes together in an uneasy hospitality. I host play dates and visits from acquaintances, but it's usually only the friends I've had a long time who end up staying.

I don't know if I could change if I tried. I don't know where to start trying. How I've accumulated any friends at all is a mystery to me.

Some of the newest members to my mom's group are from England. They're supposed to be pretty reserved, right? Like, across the pond is where this region's particular brand of stuffiness was born. Maybe their True Englander status will be a good match to my New Englander status.

Although, if they really are like me, we'll never get to know each other well enough to find out.

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Cross-posted at the new and improved 24/7.

That Old House

The fact that I now live ten miles away from the United States' biggest and most profitable casino belies the fact that gambling makes me twitch. I hate the temporary uncertainty and the long-term losses. I hate seeing half of our state's elderly population hooked up to the slots via Wampum cards on lanyards. I hate the rank air. I do like the free drinks, but I have to imbibe vast amounts before I can convince myself that all those bourbon and cokes negate the overall soul-sucking nature of the business.

Unfortunately, there's more than one way to gamble, and we've been doing it for over a year and a half in the real estate market. We've been paying two mortgages since we relocated in July. As our new home thrives around our growing family, our original place sits forlorn on its little hill overlooking the Interstate, waiting for a buyer.

Today I got to thinking about the offers we didn't take. The price we didn't lower quickly enough. The renters that almost burned it down. Everything related to the sale of that house has been a roll of the dice. It could be sold by now if a different number had come up on just one of those tosses.

Or it could have disappeared. One of the offers early on came from a neighbor who made his intentions clear--he wanted the property for its commerically zoned land, not for the house. He would have demolished the 200 year old Cape in favor of the expansion of his business. We decided we couldn't be complicit in the destruction of an antique treasure and told him, in no uncertain terms, "no."

I'm still glad we rejected his offer (which seemed a tad low at the time, but looks higher and higher in hindsight), though there's a sting each time our bank account bleeds out the next mortgage payment.  If we didn't care so much about history, we'd have a much easier time funding the present. But so it goes. Another one of life's little lessons.

One of the most expensive locations in real estate? The moral high ground.

Cross-posted at 24/7.

It's a Boy (alternate title: Remember Me?)

My creativity has, for the past nine months, been almost wholly preoccupied with the making a human being. This accounts for my absence from the blogosphere and from most other spheres in general. Everything was directed inward. Instead of writing, I read. Instead of walking, I ate. I took copious baths and fell clean into bed for long periods of time. At the end, I even received an hour long pre-natal massage. But as nice as it sounds, I never felt totally comfortable living inside myself.

I came out again--that is, my baby boy arrived--on the 21st of this month, a day after the full moon put the birth process in motion. He weighed 6 lbs 14.6 ozs. He was 19.5 inches long. He looks just like his sister, who looks just like her father. He has no butt and, as The Partner ceaselessly marveled during our two day stay at the hospital, "he has huge balls!" I didn't realize how much I wanted a boy until I got him.

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More stories with a regional slant are forthcoming, like how to achieve a VBAC when the prevalent medical model of childbirth in New England is making such modes of delivery harder and harder to realize. And, maybe, what to do when a toddler-turned-big-sister has her first existential crisis. Stay tuned.

He's here. I'm back.   

St. Valentine is Laughing at Me

Just to prove to you all that I do not take myself too seriously, I am linking to a segment heard on WBUR (the Boston NPR affiliate) this morning about the book I wrote as part of a new publishing venture called One True Romance.

OTR is marketed toward engaged couples looking to record their courtship for posterity by commissioning a professional author to write about it in romance novel style. The publishers have amassed a stable of writers, but I was the first filly out of the gate as I penned the inaugural book in the series. If you click on the Real Audio link on the WBUR Web site, you can hear NPR's coverage in the form of a thinly veiled satire on the sappiness of today's holiday. I alternated between cringe and guffaw as I gave it a listen myself. While I want to say that the overall tone of the book is not as schmaltzy as the artfully chosen excerpts would have you believe, that might just be my pride talking. Let's just put it this way: while I find it a little strange that they did not credit me by name as the author of the piece, I'm not altogether disappointed by the omission.

But, as far as the sap goes--what do you want from me? I mean, it's a true story. The couple I wrote about did see fireworks. Sometimes real life just works like that.

Cross-posted at 24/7.

Making Books with Blurb

I am going to write about this fantastic service I used recently, and not because I was solicited to do so. I WISH I was solicited--it would have saved me at least $40. But I'm happy to report that I came across and utilized the services of www.blurb.com all of my own volition, and it was worth every penny.

As my husband's birthday present, I compiled most of the blog posts I've ever written that have concerned him and I made a book. A real, honest-to-goodness, hardcover book. It had a shiny jacket and everything. Using my words and my photos (okay, mostly Lauren's photos), I designed the cover and laid out all the pages. The final result was a bound production that would not look out of place on the most discerning of coffee tables.

I gave it to my husband and he got a chuckle. "Still trying to turn me into a reader, huh?" he asked. "Good idea--ease me into it with a short book, all about me."

The 8 x 10 inch hardcover was $29.95 for 40 pages. The cost of shipping and handling was approximately $10 more. The quality was fantastic. I fully expect this chronicle of my husband's first two years of fatherhood to be a memento for generations to come.

I created the book using a free Blurb program that was easy to download and navigate.  Since it's not difficult to confuse me, that's saying a lot.

The whole experience was so exceptional that I already have plans for my next Blurb book, which will take the form of my thoughts on motherhood, to be given as a gift to my own mom and mother-in-law for that May holiday in their honor.

It's exactly what my mother has been waiting for all these years. What she wants for Mother's Day--she says, each time--is good children, and maybe something homemade.

RUDY

I’m one of those blips on the political radar. I am a female voter—and a mother—who will vote according to a personal platform that rests largely on the issue of national security. I was almost part of a phenomenon. Not so long ago, the term “security mom” was bandied about by pundits to describe a new voting bloc—one crossing traditional political boundaries—that could turn the tide of the next election. Now the existence of such an alliance has been seemingly, if not sweepingly, discredited. It appears that I am a not a movement. I’m just me.

I do not relish the tears that fell every day for weeks after 9/11, the frightened upturned gaze that I employed for months, or the paranoia that hangs on me today. But I respect the recall. To shake the evocative mind-print of the most significant day of my lifetime thus far would be to take away from its significance; it would be to deny the likelihood of another attack. I am not willing to do that.

This does not mean I am giving up my rights. National security is what prompted me to register as a Republican, but it’s an obsession with personal freedoms that will bring me to the polls as a Giuliani supporter. It’s not just that I want the government out of my pocketbook; I want it away from my body. I’m pro-choice. I support gay rights. Rudy Giuliani’s actions have shown we share many of the same principles.

I believe in him because I’ve seen that he believes in me. Me--one of millions of strong, confident and capable American woman.

A Winter's Walk Where The Car Couldn't Take Us

I was detained by snow at the bottom of our 1/4 mile long driveway this afternoon on our way home from a doctor's appointment. Amidst a flurry of profanity that fell somewhere between my imagination and audible levels, I got out of the car and made my way to The Boss's backseat office. I pulled on her hat and stuffed her hands into mittens. The woven pink and white tubes where her thumbs were supposed to go hung limply. I didn't have the time or inclination to fight her opposable digits into place.

The winding, unpaved driveway leading up to our home is owned by our neighbors. An easement granting us right-of-way is the only thing that allows us legal access to the rest of the world. The problem with such an arrangement is that we have an almost total lack of control when it comes to maintaining the driveway. In the spring and summer, it is one huge mud rut that's a rainstorm or two away from total annihilation. In the winter, it's traversable only by off-road vehicle. That's all well and good for my neighbors and my husband. As we found out today, it doesn't bode so well for me and The Boss in my rear-wheel drive Caddy.

Once The Boss and I were properly protected from the storm (except that both of us were wearing unseasonable footwear), I hooked her legs to my waist and began to trudge up the hill, keeping to the impressions made by the wheels of the neighbor's Cherokee. I started to breathe heavily, as I am prone to do when exercise induces my asthma. The Boss heard my jagged exhales and turned her gaze onto me.

"You're lucky," she said.

"What?" I cocked an ear closer to her mouth because I was almost certain I hadn't heard her right.

"You're so lucky."

"How?" I resisted the urge to snort, mostly because I was already having enough trouble breathing.

"You're walking in the snow," she replied.

And in that moment, looking onto her smooth, red-cheeked face, feeling her legs against my hip as they reached longingly for the road, I saw how I could be construed as lucky. The snow fell in fluffs and landed unspoiled everywhere. Naked trees were dressed in its shimmers. The dirt was gone. My stacked heels pressed the white cover in quick, crisp steps.

The Boss smacked her lips and opened her mouth as her head fell back in abandon. Her teeth--two curved rows of hard-won enamel--surrounded a fleshy pad that was desperate for its first taste of snow.

Everything in that instant was clear. So many shades of pink, and then the whiteness. The Boss, ruddy in my arms, saw the white all around her. I couldn't keep my eyes away from the vivid hue of her complexion as it fed off blood coursing hot just below the surface. There was only truth in her newness.

Suddenly, I wondered how I could have considered myself anything but lucky.

Baking for the Culinarily Impaired

I do not enjoy baking. I have no intuition for it and I can't grasp the science. I laugh a little too hard when comedian Ron White makes his joke about the smoke alarm not being a timer.

My oven now exudes noxious pumpkin fumes because I placed a store-brought pie crust on a baking sheet instead of in a pie tin. When the oven hit 350 degrees, the  frozen crust went shapeless and took its contents with it as it slithered over the edge of the sheet. I was so distraught that I forgot to clean up the spill. "Cooking is so stressful," I moaned, falling in a heap onto our living room chair much as the pie had taken to the oven floor. With my limbs splayed loosely atop the microsuede to counteract my inner tension, my head lolled back as I directed my lament to the ceiling: "I'm strung as tight as a drum! Do you hear me? As tight as a drum!"

The next day (would you have thought I'd learned my lesson?) I threw in a load of Funfetti cookies. So simple. So tasty. So I thought. The kitchen quickly filled with smoke as the remains of my pumpkin pie changed form. The air was thick. My husband was incredulous.

"You didn't scrape out the oven before you used it again?" he demanded.

"No, I didn't. Is that so hard to believe?"

The cookies somehow made it through unscathed, baking for their allotted eight minutes on the middle rack, high above the carnage. In fact, they were so good I ate most of the two dozen by myself instead of packing them up for the cookie swap I was to attend the next day. Then, feeling sick from the sugar coursing through my veins (not to mention from smoke inhalation), I vowed never to make them again.

It works out fine, really. My lack of kitchen prowess just might be the best thing that ever happened to my lack of will power.

FUNFETTI COOKIES

INGREDIENTS:

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1	(18.9-oz.) pkg. Pillsbury® Moist Supreme® Funfetti® Cake Mix
1/3	cup oil
2	eggs
1/2	(15.6-oz.) can Pillsbury® Creamy Supreme® Funfetti® Vanilla Frosting

DIRECTIONS:

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1.	Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, combine cake mix, oil and eggs; stir with spoon until thoroughly moistened. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. With bottom of glass dipped in flour, flatten to 1/4-inch thickness.
2.	Bake at 375°F. for 6 to 8 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets.
3.	Spread frosting over warm cookies. Immediately sprinkle each with candy bits from frosting. Let frosting set before storing. Store in tightly covered container.
High Altitude (3500-6500 ft) Add 1/2 cup flour to dry cake mix. Bake as directed above.

NUTRITION INFORMATION:

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1 Serving: Calories 100 (Calories from Fat 35); Total Fat 4g (Saturated Fat 1g); Cholesterol 10mg; Sodium 100mg; Total Carbohydrate 15g (Dietary Fiber 0g, Sugars 9g); Protein 1g Percent Daily Value*: Vitamin A 0%; Vitamin C 0%; Calcium 0%; Iron 0% Exchanges: 1/2 Starch; 1/2 Fruit; 1/2 Fat
*Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet.

Small Town Closing Down

©September 2006, 24/7. Reprinted with my own permission.

Today a local donut and coffee shop will put up a "closed" sign that won't turn to "open" tomorrow. The owners of that independent purveyor of jelly donuts and joe are looking at the end of a 30 year era, one characterized by friendships forged at the counter and a quality, no-nonsense menu. The good stuff.

We all know how franchises are sucking up the little guys into a vacuum powered by the cheap electricity of convenience. Here, it's Dunkin Donuts. In other realms, it's WalMart or Barnes and Noble or Home Depot. They uniformly lack history, a deficit from which it is hard to salvage good service or community ties.

The Boss and I put over 15,000 miles on my car in the short year* she's been alive as we traversed this small corner of our state, taking in the realities of rural New England. There's a quiet beauty in farms, orchards, wineries and fruit stands. There's melancholy in abandoned mills. The hills roll with the lilt of a practiced storyteller.

Then there are the strip malls, the coffee chains and the sprawling stations of convenient fuel that dot the Interstate. If those places have tales, they don't have the patience to tell them. And, anyway, their customers don't have listening ears.

Nostalgia has an important place in my world view, which dictates that nothing ever changes, not in the grand scheme of things. We evolve, we grow, we ascend and we transcend. I know we can't go back. Yet there are certain truths that fall in and out of favor, but can never be lost. Here in New England, there are elements of the impersonal chain store phemonemon that appeal to our thrifty stoicism. There is a convenience to the drive-thru that speaks to our fast walking, fast talking ways. But when wintertime comes, there's a need for warm familiarity that can't be replaced by something new.

And it's getting chilly out, right about now.

Looking For Lost Ponies

Sometimes The Boss's hold on sanity seems tenuous at best (though perhaps this can be said of all toddlers, and, more than likely, a vast majority of adults). In no instance is that sense of detachment more apparent than when horses are involved.

To hear The Boss talk, you would think she has a horse. She will converse at length about her imaginary equine. Once I came home from a meeting only to be cornered in the bathroom by The Boss as she regaled me with a long, drawn out story involving the horse kicking down a fence. There were cows and sheep involved, too. And hay.

When the Boss is sad or uncomfortable in a situation, she looks immediately for this horse. "Where's my horse? I can't find my horse!" The hysteria grows with each syllable; the pout becomes more pronounced. Her lips throb beneath wide eyes.

It's disconcerting to watch her search for something that doesn't exist. I can figure out what she's thinking when she reaches out for a hug. I understand what "I want to go home" means, even when she's already there. But this epic quest for her horse renders me helpless.

Today, I thought we found one. Two of them, actually. This week's playgroup was held at a house with a pasture and riding ring on its property. We brought the kids out to say hello and goodbye to the horses on our way out. But instead of warming up to these creatures that she talks about incessantly, The Boss backed away.

"She's afraid," I marvelled to the rest of the group.

"I'm not afraid." She looked up at me with defiant eyes. "I'm never afraid!" There was a strength to her convictions that did not jive with her small, wavering voice. "I'm never afraid!" She turned toward the empty riding ring and walked in that direction, away from the snuffles and thumps of the two real life horses. I followed her.

"That's where the horses jump," I said, bending on one knee to her level.

She nodded. This pleased her. She relaxed. Her back was turned to the whinnying reality around which the rest of the children were still gathered with their mothers.

She stood in front of the ring for a long time, watching imaginary horses leap over logs painted white.

"Horses jumpin," she chortled, her breath a contented and audible sigh.