Butterflies

Tattooed.

My girl! Laura turned 11 over the weekend.

Let us pause to marvel at how, how, I could be in my second decade of motherhood when I'm STILL SO FRESH AND YOUNG. Are you marveling??? Go on and marvel, please. We'll wait.

While I have been doing this and that, not blogging, Laura has been really bringing it. A few weeks ago, she swam in a two-day meet that was her last chance to make a qualifying time for the Georgia Age Group State Championship. I had been thinking of a state time as a good goal for her to work towards, but not one that she would necessarily achieve.

The whole weekend, Laura was dragging with a cold, but she never said she didn't want to swim or ask to get out of competing. On day two of the meet, I thought her best events for qualifying were behind her, and we were just finishing what we'd started. Then, in one of her last races, Laura made the state cut time in the 100 Butterfly! And received that lovely tattoo for her efforts. I was somewhere in the north part of the county, getting my ass kicked in a mixed doubles match, in 35 degree weather, when I got Matt's text from the meet. It just said, "!!!" And I felt so happy. I thought, well, "At least someone in this family is achieving something sporty today!"

In Positive Pushing, Jim Taylor says that you should never let your self-esteem be affected by your child's performance, but sometimes it is hard! To hold yourself separate from it all! Her making that cut time really gave me a lift and I was so proud of her.

I asked her, "How do you like that event, the 100 fly?" And she said, "The 100 fly is one of the worst ways you can spend a minute and a half." Oh, so, fun! I do think it's a hard swim. I'm sure that if tried it, an entire SEAL team would rappel down from the rafters and pull me out of the pool.

That night, Matt and I had a big convo about Laura And Swimming and What Are Our Goals. He said, "Is our goal just for her to swim in the state meet? Or to do really well there? Because she made the cut time by three-tenths of a second, and plenty of kids swam faster."

I said, "Well, I just want her to see that she can swim at that level if she works hard." Plus, the state meet is in town this year, so it's worth going for just one event. And then we discussed a bunch more about effort and achievement and talent and drive and etc, mainly centering on the question, "Does she want it enough?" The jury is still out on that. We did agree that it's a great activity, and right now, it's worth the family effort and time that it takes.

Lots of families I know are having some version of this conversation. Are you?

Then we talked about Hank and his karate, and we both agreed that he will become a professional ninja, no doubt.

She's one of the ones in the yellow caps.

So the state championship meet was just this past weekend, down at Georgia Tech. Part of the point of a big meet for this age group is that they learn to handle themselves on deck with no parent involvement. Whereas, when she was littler and in summer swim league, I would walk her to her lane and literally hold her hand until she stepped up on the block, now it's all up to the kids. They need to manage their warm-ups/warm-downs, talk to the coach, watch the clock, and get to their correct event and lane by themselves.

So I sat up high and watched. I think for people who are more helicopterish than me, this was torment. In fact, I know it was, because of how many times the meet announcer had to talk over the speaker and basically beg parents to stay off the deck. Please, please stay in the stands. So I did. I watched from on high as Laura warmed up, I watched without being able to intervene as another little girl mistakenly swam in Laura's lane in her heat, even though I could see it about to happen, and I watched Laura realize the mistake, alert the timer, sort it out with the officials and her coach, and get placed in another heat. I could see her smiling and joking with the officials, and I was like, "Look at her! She is navigating the system, man. She is on her way in the world."

She told me that one of the officials said to her, "You're only ten? You're really tall!" And she replied, "You should see my dad."

(Oh, and also, please keep your observations to yourself, random person. I added in my head.)

And even though she'd barely squeaked into her qualifying time, she swam the 100 fly three seconds faster than she had two weeks ago. Whoa! I cheered from way up high where she couldn't hear me.

So we got up at 5:30 Saturday morning to head to GA Tech, and she was on deck as required at 6:50, and I was in my chair. Then she swam at noon. Then we had lunch with her team and headed home. It took 8 hours for her to swim that minute and a half. It was a good thing though, a really good thing.

Then, to round out her last day as a ten year-old, she had her BFF spend the night.

Also the child cleaned up, getting enough money from all three of her grandparents to buy herself a Kindle Fire. Speaking of navigating the system!

Kids.

xo
B

Exhalation

Friends! Everything went great with my sister Amy last night. I put a quick update post on her blog before I went to bed. Her surgery didn't take as long as we thought, and the word is that her sentinel lymph node is clear.

Hallelujah!

That was a big question, as a bad node almost certainly would have meant follow-up with chemotherapy. I'm hoping nobody will want to do that now. The surgeon also felt confident that he got the entire mass, though the pathologist will confirm the margins over the next couple of days.

This is good, good, good. I talked to her last night. She was pretty groggy and going to spend the night in the hospital. So the surgeon did his job and I did my job, which was to hang around on social media and also read text messages and drink two glasses of wine. We all had important things to do.

I went to bed feeling much lighter.

Then, we slept in this morning. The kids are on holiday as of today and don't go back until Wednesday. I got to play a doubles match this morning with Pretty Neighbor and some buds, and it was 60 degrees and gorgeous. We were going to go to the mountains, as I'd said, but between it being just the four of us, and the fact that it's going to rain there Saturday and Sunday, I think we'll hang around here. It will be nice to have an unprogrammed weekend, actually. I need to reread our book club book (Serena), and Matt and I have some heavy-duty tax/financial/budget planning to do. I also hope to get some good walks in. I know, I'm pretty boring today.

And that is good.

Love,
Me

I Throw A Great Vigil

My sister's lumpectomy is tonight, which is her tomorrow in Australia. She spells this out more clearly in her post. Go read it and then this exchange will make sense.

She is at the hospital doing admissions stuff right now, which will take hours. She just informed me that she was ordered to put these on. I think they are panties.

Hot stuff! Jason looks really happy about them somehow. People, THIS is the horrifying dark side of socialized medicine. Heh, that was a joke! Paper panties are rationed in this country! They require approval by a paper panty panel composed of Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum, and some other people who don't wear panties.

How does Amy look so good pre-op? And moreover, THAT ROBE! This is like, plastic-surgeon's-office-level robe in the US. Totally jeal.

So her surgery could start as early as ten pm my time here in the east, and take a couple or a few hours. I'm going to wait up, of course, to hear how it goes. Then Amy has given me her Blogging Power of Attorney to pop in and update everyone on her blog. Which I will do. Maybe go by there and give her some encouraging words. Or compliment her on the panties.

More later. xoxox
B

Edited to add: I meant to say, I post little updates on facebook, so you could click that button up there to go to SubMat on facebook and "like" it. Then you would be in another SubMat loop!

Lovin'

When I shared my Spotify Valentine's Day playlist on facebook--this was like January 30--there was not much interest. I said to Matt, "Why doesn't anyone like my playlist?" He was like, "Well honey, people don't really listen to music for Valentine's Day."

But they totally do!

And I said, "People need to understand, this playlist contains everything I know about love!" And he was all, "I'm sure it's wonderful, baby."

....

Back in the summer, one day I had The Talk with Laura. The Talk about Sex and Babies. Laura and Mom and I were driving in the car and my mom and I said, of a couple expecting a baby, "I think they were trying for a long time." Laura piped up and said, "What do you mean they were trying, isn't it just natural?" Yes, she was ten years old, and I had been adhering to my policy of Don't Answer Questions That Haven't Been Asked. But a wise friend countered with The Child Who Does Not Ask Must Be Told. And I realized that her innocence was shading into ignorance, and that I needed to get in there.

Flattened.

So I did. We sat at the sound-side beach under that umbrella and I gave her what I thought of as the entry-level picture of the situation. First I figured out how much she knew already, which was nothing. So I told her. Bless her heart, when I got to the actual facts of actual intercourse, she was like, "Do what now?" And she was a little sad. She said, "I thought that I wanted to have like four kids, but now I'll maybe have just one."

I just told her that, believe it or not, when she was grown up she would want to do that.

So I left it there, after a brief PSA about teen pregnancy. And I felt like I was leaving out the biggest part, because though I had told her the facts of sex, I couldn't tell her its real significance. She wouldn't get it, it's like a melody she can't hear yet, how central it is to human life and how important to who we are. I guess that takes years to figure out. Or, as they say, a minute to learn, a lifetime to master.

Matt and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. Remember that movie Witness with Harrison Ford? And the beautiful Kelly McGillis? He's hanging out with the Amish, and there's that scene where she's bathing herself in her room and he sees her and she turns around and sees him seeing her? It is something. I was twelve years old when that movie came out. I remember watching it with a room full of adults, and when that scene happened, they gave a collective gasp, they were so absorbed. I had no idea what was really happening. I was like, "Uh oh, he saw her boobs!"

Fast forward to when I was nineteen, reading Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. A book I still love. It was an education to me to realize that a man would cheat on his wife with a woman who was not as beautiful or desirable as his wife. Sometimes I think of the part where the narrator says, of the doomed Dick and Nicole Diver, and Dick's dalliance with the girl Rosemary, "Back at two o’clock in the Roi George corridor, the beauty of Nicole had been to the beauty of Rosemary as the beauty of Leonardo’s girl was to that of the girl of an illustrator."

That gave me a lot to think about for a long time.

Fast forward again, twenty years, to the other night. We talked of this and that, women and men. Matt, musing, said, "I want a woman who's easy to please, and I want to work hard to please her." I laughed that it sounded like a line in a blues song, but I knew what he meant and what he meant by saying it. This sentiment might have been unintelligible to me as a girl, and even in my twenties. But here in my late thirties, well absorbed in the unfolding of what is becoming a long marriage, it makes complete sense to me. I couldn't add anything to that and just nodded. Amen, brother.

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you're having a sweet day with those you love. xoxo

But Other People Have Needs Too

I just got off the phone with my parents, who never call me lately because they are busy with their own affairs, and it's like, my sister has cancer now so suddenly she's all anyone can talk about. If you don't have cancer? Back of the line.

I was calling to say that we four are going up to their mountain house for the long weekend, and might we see them sometime? And they were all, no, we're meeting your brother in Huntsville for this and that, blah blah, and no, you are not on our itinerary.

And I was like, "It's not as good being at the mountain house when there are no grandparents to get up with the kids." And they were like, "Uh huh, oh, and also the hot tub needs cleaning so you might want to take care of that."

Then I asked if they had figured out their plans for when to go to Australia to be with Amy and help out with her family now that her surgery is scheduled for this week. Oh, well, yes, they had gotten tickets last Thursday, hadn't I heard? They're leaving at the end of this month and staying seven weeks.

Seven! Weeks! Spanning a period when I thought that yours truly might have need of their domestic services for times when Matt or I are traveling. One weekend in particular, they will be gone and Matt's mother is busy and I'm going to a conference for four days. I guess the children will have to be cared for by their father? These retired "active adults" kill me. Get a job!

I sputtered. "Well, I'm glad that you guys are going to be able to go and stay so long. Of course I'm glad. It's just that I'm going to miss you."

Dad said, "Well, think of these seven weeks as a preview of our deaths."

Got it.

So you can see why he is so in demand at sick beds and in the homes of the ailing all over the globe. Sunshine, just constant sunshine. Coming at you, Amy.

Friday Quickies

Today didn't feel like a Friday, right? I don't know, maybe because we have a busy weekend planned, it felt more Wednesdayish.

Tomorrow morning, Hank has a karate "graduation." Before you send cards and savings bonds, know that these happen every twelve weeks. He is graduating from an orange belt to an "advanced orange" belt. I think that is an orange that is gearing up to be red? Paging Dr. Roy G. Biv. I don't know, but I wonder if when this crop of kids actually achieves something, like graduation from medical school, if they'll be like, yawn, I walked under an arch of swords when I got my yellow belt.

Not that I'm down on cute kids being cute in public. I'm a fan.

Then Laura has a swim meet both Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Matt is taking her to those sessions, and I have a tennis match on Sunday. My partner is Pretty Neighbor's husband. Swinger's Tennis!

Pretty Neighbor and I didn't have time to work out until 7pm tonight. Then we had a beer and were just brimming over with our own virtue. Friday night workout! Above and beyond! Never mind the fact that we just did the first level of our Jillian Ripped DVD and we can talk almost through the whole thing. Whatever, it's Friday and I was sweaty at the end.

I cooked a bunch of food today and one of the things I made was this pesto using Italian parsley instead of basil. Mark Bittman said I could. Well, Hank is my pesto eater around here, but unfortunately his tastes have been formed by the pesto in the plastic tub at the grocery store. So I made this fresh pesto, and I will say, it was weird. Too strong maybe. But I tried serving it to him anyway, mixed with his favorite rotini. It took him about one second to announce that it smelled bad and that usually when things smell bad, they taste bad. I urged him to taste it anyway. He said that yes, it tasted bad. It didn't taste bad really, but it was different from what he was used to and different equals bad. I took it from him, put it back in the pot, and poured a lot of marinara sauce over the whole shebang.

When he tried it again, he said, "Thanks mom, I can hardly taste the badness that it had."

A home cook loves to receive a rave like that.

Amy texted me tonight and told me how much she and Jason are enjoying reading everyone's comments on my last post. Me too.

Oh yeah, did you check out the Obama campaign's playlist? Its composition is a whole nother topic that is being ably analyzed by others, but I will say that ever since it was posted, I have been enjoying AgesandAges on repeat. Great find! They're like a happier Arcade Fire. I want to get six friends and just drive around the country, all singing and shouting into the same microphone. We'll do lots of hand clapping too. Who's with me?

Thanks for joining me for this Friday night chatty chat. Goodness, just so much living, you know?

Have a good weekend, y'all. xo

Unexpected Inspiration

This morning I was in Pretty Neighbor's basement and we were starting our workout. She said, "I saw your sister's new blog post but I haven't had a chance to read it yet." I paused in mid lunge--or for the purposes of this story, let's say I paused in the middle of a one-handed pushup, yeah--and said, "Wait, Amy has a new post? I just checked it and nothing!" Then I realized I've been clicking through to the post I linked in my last post instead of refreshing her page. Oh, duh.

So Amy has a new post with a bit of good news, though as she says, one's definition of "good news" can be radically reshaped in a short time.  She's also very funny. She's doing it again, being funny when I'm trying to stay mad.

On a related note, I was thinking the other day that I have these little mantras that I repeat to myself in certain situations, and they actually help me. Naturally I'm sharing them:

It is what it is. 

I know, terrible, right? Terribly overused and supposedly drained of all meaning and what does it mean anyway?

My personal history with this phrase is that, several years ago when I was taking the qualifying exams for my doctoral program, I sat for hours in a room in the Literature department office and typed answers to two or three long essay questions. They were questions designed to both draw out my ideas for future dissertation writing and to test my knowledge of the field. If I succeeded in this part, I would get to take a multi-hour oral exam given by four smart professors. So it was a big deal. I wrote and wrote. Then my time was up, and the sweet, hippie, department assistant came to get me. She printed out my work and took it, telling me that she had placed magical crystals (!) around the doorway of my exam room to help channel energy or something. I thanked her, but I kept babbling a little bit about how I wasn't sure I said enough about X or I wasn't convincing on Y. She listened to me and she said, "Well, now it is what it is." And I thought, "Yes. It is. That is finished and I need to stop worrying about it."

And when this news about Amy having breast cancer arose, I was so lodged on the terrible coincidental unfairness of it. That feeling was like a rock in my shoe. And then I thought, "It is what it is." There's no need in striving for it to have been different, that thing in the past that is now fact. It just is. What it is. It was calming to me.

Do the thing and get the power.

Matt and I say this to each other sometimes. Usually it's when we're talking over something that is hard to do or that we need to do and don't necessarily want to. Its meaning is likewise vague. I don't think it will be engraved on a monument anytime soon, but somehow it resonates with me. I think I heard this from an eccentric professor I had who is renowned for his koan-like pronouncements. Seriously, his facebook status updates are OUTLANDISH. But he said, offhandedly of some grad-school obstacle, "Do the thing and get the power." I dunno, maybe these things can't be held up to strong light. But still. Just do the thing. That thing? Do it.

Let your body hurt.

This one I heard from Laura. She says her swim coach says it to them during practice. She takes it to mean, don't stop because you're uncomfortable, just keep swimming. I often think of it during my workouts--feeling strain and discomfort will not kill me, in fact it is necessary. But I kinda go deep with it sometimes. Like, pain is not alien to human life or unnatural. It's part of living and it's part of the world. Let your body hurt and see what happens after that.

Have I taken you to a weird place? I don't know. I'm going to collect up my magic crystals and go unload the dishwasher now.

Do you have any personal mantras? Things that help you out?

Bad Times

Well, I didn't know my sister Amy was going to blog about her situation when I went ahead and put up my adorable post about soup. A post which will now move on down the page. Instead go read Amy's post. She has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

I know. I know. I can't believe it either. We are all struggling to process this news.

She is 35, and I was 37 when I was diagnosed. So far it seems like she might be about where I would have been had my disease been found two years earlier. A smaller mass with no lymph node involvement. Or we hope and pray she is.

I was talking to my friends about how we all have this idea that there is a "fair" amount of misfortune that is meted out to each family, and any more than that is "unfair." But of course we know that is not the case. We need only look around us and around the world to see that.

I know she will come through it, whatever it is, like I have come through it. And she will be brave and I'll be funny and we'll blog our way through it and we'll probably be as charming as fuck. But today it just makes me sad and I don't want to do any of it. Not any of it.

But Amy is not such a downer and she would love to hear from you. Go by and say hi and then come back here and say swear words with me.