I suppose you’d like one for all those pictures I threw up here — pictures from the Blackberry because I was stupid and forgot the good camera for which I am kicking myself.

A long, long time ago my high school sweetheart and I broke up over his roommate, who I subsequently married. Said roommate had a sister who I became (and remain) great friends with. About 26 years ago, ex-boyfriend called heartbroken because he’d been dumped. The wheels of my plot were set in motion that night.

Sister-in-law was living with us at the time, with her young son. I invited ex-boyfriend over to the house to drown his sorrows, then left for the market. A year later, I stood up at their wedding.

It’s 25 years later, their son is married, a business owner and their daughter is a (very tall) lovely college graduate who has a lovely boyfriend with a great sense of humor. They threw a party for their parents. A vow renewal. I thought it would be pretty straight up, but when Elvis came out to do the ceremony, everything changed into a great celebration of a couple who, through thick and thin, has stayed together and remains committed.

I take no credit for anything beyond introducing them. As incompatible as I may have been with my ex-husband, I truly love his sister and regard her as the salt of the earth, and let’s face it — that first boyfriend always has a special place, so it was only natural to play matchmaker where it seemed so — necessary. She’s the kind of person who keeps everything glued together no matter what, that reliable, steady type who just really loves her life and those in it. The folks at the party tonight reflect the strength of their partnership.

The party was grand, from the appetizers, to the soup, to the salad, to the filet and fish. But seeing their daughter’s boyfriend marry them (having been ordained in the Dudeist church) — that was something special. Hence, the spatter of photos.

I loved sitting at a table of strangers half my age and extolling the virtues of the Blackberry over the iPhone. Technology is the great equalizer — there were things they knew that I didn’t, and vice versa. What fun it was to hang out and not feel old or intrusive! Hearing their kids talk about how cool it was to have parents that stayed together and talk about how they wanted to honor that — also very cool.

Perspective and nostalgia, all in one evening. Merging my past into my present, seeing the next new generation admiring the older while forming the newer, all wrapped up in Elvis priest.

A night to remember.

Tomorrow will be the capstone of a weekend of dance and fun. Hope you have a great one, and tip a Guinness for me…I’ll be driving.

Technorati Tags: st patricks day, irish, irish dance

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It’s the season for high school enrollment and planning for DG, and it’s an interesting dilemma. Unlike Sticks, she has no ‘mainstream passion’ that she can channel into her high school years, which means we can plan her academics easily enough but not the electives.

In a sincere effort to help, she was descended upon by five “career women”, who explained that she really only needs to focus on one goal — getting to college and studying for a career in accounting, dentistry, teaching or medicine.

She was appalled. She told me she felt pressured, boxed in, angry a little bit that they would limit her future so severely. She said she might want to travel, to see the world, to feed the poor in Afghanistan, help build Iraq, and why were they so narrowly putting her into such a tight pathway?

I agree. Are we so focused on our girls being traditional successes that we would push them into the traditional “men’s careers”? And why just those four? What about rocket science, web design, social media, art?

Here’s what one of them said to a bright and talented girl drummer: “The band won’t get you anywhere; math will.”

Such narrow thinking! Imagine a world 20 years from now where we pushed our daughters into dull, boring, uncreative jobs, where we told them they needed to train for employment instead of entrepreneurship? Why aren’t we encouraging them to think past the traditional, into the ‘cloud’? Why not technology, why not the web?

This reminds me of the narrow thinking of my mother, the cautious “don’t give up your day job for the arts” ever-practical and incredibly stifling advice. Surely we can do better for our daughters.

I told her I want her to tune that stuff out and listen to me. At age 14, she shouldn’t have a clue as to what she wants to do, but should be encouraged to learn at her very highest potential, to explore, to dig deeper than the surface, and to dream of what she thinks she can do rather than what they tell her she should do.

The rest will follow.

Technorati Tags: futures, college, career, dreams

That’s what Kristine says and I agree…

My theory is that the evening news is having a deleterious effect on everyone, kids and adults alike. After all, when everyone is yelling at everyone else on the news — pundit, candidate and surrogate alike — what do we think the kids are going to do?

Earlier on Twitter I posted my own spiral into meltdown mode. I’ve recovered, but only barely.

Technorati Tags: kids, control, candidates, news, insanity

Yesterday was DG’s 14th birthday. I don’t know how it’s possible that she’s 14, but she is. She always gives me a hard time about her birthday cake, because my mother-in-law is the Queen of Cakes and always makes hers, rather than me. But the in-laws are all on Maui this week, so birthday cake baking fell to me, and she threw the gauntlet. Would I bail, buy a Costco cake, make MUFFINS? One year I was so sick with the flu on her birthday muffins were all I could manage, and they did not go over well. So this year, I met her challenge head-on:

That cake had 14 stars and Happy Birthday lit in candles, with her name on it, even. All done by me, myself and I. It had so many candles she didn’t manage to get all of the “Happy Birthday” blown out, but she did get all 14 stars on the first try.

I love this age. She thinks, she talks, she writes, she learns. And of course, she dances. So to her, the same wish she leaves for me: Peace. Love. Dance.

Technorati Tags: birthday, cake, candles, 14

Yesterday was the Eldest’s 27th birthday. DG is 14 in a week — my baby.
With all of them shoehorned in here, I feel like the old woman in the shoe. It’s one thing to have three kids in the house when they’re kids. When they’re adults and teens, it’s a whole different proposition.

Sticks holes up in his room with regularity, reluctant to come down and be part of the group ever since the girlfriend popped back into his life just before Christmas. He speaks grunt; I’m learning to live with it. Eldest is at least trying to be part of the cooperative effort, and the brightest spot in all of our days is DG, who is starting to show her thinking, funny, cool self daily. I like that. We all do, except for Sticks, who doesn’t like much of anything we do these days unless it’s for him.

It’s almost worth it to me to send him down to the dorms. I think we probably will try and do that next semester, because this is definitely not working for me.

I think I’m suffering from parenting overload. In some ways it’s harder now than it was when they were little, because when they were little I knew what was my responsibility and what wasn’t. But this is like getting all the work with none of the reward.

I’m on a downer tonight. I’m sure I’ll feel differently tomorrow.

I come home from work and turn toward the garage only to find Sticks’ car parked behind it. Have to get Sticks, make him move the car, park the Prius, close the door, so he can then park behind it again so that I can’t get out to take the daughter to dance class. Make him drive.

Ask him how his work/school day was, get the answer “Fine.” I dare to ask if he’s finalized his speech class which he had and then had to bump when he was drafted into an Improv class at the same time. I get the one-grunt answer which means to shut up and mind my own business and don’t dare ask again. Nervy of him.

Sticks leaves for 7pm rehearsal after a two-word dinner. Eldest asks us if we’ve heard that Sticks is going to get collaborative credit and $$$ for two book projects he’s been working on. Says Sticks told him about it when he picked him up from work. I say no, we only get two-word answers, sometimes just two-grunt answers.

I’m pissed, a little hurt, actually. Am I just the meal ticket and human alarm clock for the deepest sleeper on the planet? I can understand not sharing bad news, but why hold back the good news?

Lately I feel like everything spins out around me and I am the spindle that holds the foundation in its place, just sort of marking time until maybe there’s a place for us to have a life instead of sort of revolving in and out the door to work and back again so we can work some more. Especially when the reward for it is grunty silence and the hoarding of good news, as if we are somehow not entitled to hear it. There’s too much sullenness, secrecy and cynicism around the house right now. You know, like when you feel in your gut that you’re being BS’d every day but don’t have proof? That kind of environment. One that hasn’t existed here until lately. I don’t like it.

Which one of us is cranky?

Technorati Tags: cranky

This post is not about politics, at least, not about politics in the sense that I’m going to argue for or against a specific candidate or platform or even party. This post is about life in our bipartisan household, or how we survive in spite of being political opposites, which do not attract under many circumstances.

BD is a lifelong Republican; I am a lifelong Democrat. Well, mostly lifelong, except for when I was 13 and rebellious and ran off with my friends in our very, very conservative neighborhood to help them campaign for Richard Nixon in 1972. As recently as two weeks ago, my beloved uncle who loves and respects BD but cannot understand how I could possibly marry a Republican and look myself in the mirror every morning, cast that transgression at my feet. In front of my daughter, no less. I reminded him that it was teenage rebellion and there were sure a hell of a lot worse things I could have done than campaign for Nixon. He doesn’t think so. To this day, it rankles and so my uncle can never resist a needle when he has the chance. Unfortunately, he speaks with a high degree of moral authority in the political department, having spent 30 years in the Foreign Service, beginning in the Nixon administration and ending with the Clinton administration.

My family and I are not quiet Democrats, either. We do things like work for campaigns, and watch debates, and listen to stump speeches, and blurt things out in the middle of the nightly news like “Will we ever be rid of that evil Bush and his little Cheney, too? And we don’t stop there, because I was also raised to understand that just as parents have a duty to instill morals and ethics into their children, so too should we enter their names in the rolls of the Democratic party the day they are eligible to register to vote.

This is not optional. On their birth certificates, it is written Democrat by design. It is as fundamental to my family as raising children in the Church is to Catholics. On Sticks’ 18th birthday he got his drivers’ license and registered Democrat. It was my birthday present. Seriously.

Still I married a Republican and so we had to figure out how to negotiate a standing truce when it came to politics. I am convinced was only possible because my husband is an incredibly tolerant and confident man who does not believe I am insulting him personally when I look at him with hurt eyes and say things like “I can’t believe you voted for Bush. Twice.” And then I remember all of the times that I was incredibly tolerant and confident when he looked at me with mocking eyes and said things like “I’m sorry Bill Clinton’s blowjob turned into an impeachment. Really, it’s too bad.” I knew he was trying to say that he shared my pain, but my pain was nothing compared to the anger I had about a blowjob becoming an impeachment in the first place, and besides, I suspected there was a little bit of inward satisfaction gained with that meaningless gesture of sympathy.

The reason our 20-year marriage is as strong as it is because of the Internet. Because as long as we have the Internet, I have a place to say (he would say “spew”) all of the things that he’d have to listen to if I didn’t have it. All of the cheerleading, all of the criticism, everything that goes into a political season, goes to the Internets instead of his face. When he sees me typing furiously during the nightly news I’m sure he heaves an inward sigh of relief that he never has to know what I’m writing. I somehow doubt that he’s ever even peeked out of morbid curiosity, because he’s the kind of guy that would never be that curious.

We both agreed many years ago to be intellectually honest about our politics and to respect one anothers’ opinion. I confess that the intellectual honesty part is easier for me than respecting opinions has been, especially over the last eight years. But I try, I really do. When we find common ground it’s a reason to break out the ice cream and celebrate, because it’s not there very often but when it is, it’s usually on an issue like global warming, or energy conservation, or something really major that we can completely agree upon.

So far this season has been unusually peaceful. We agree on the war, and Hillary Clinton, at least to the extent that he doesn’t froth at the sound of her name and I don’t wave the flag in his face over her. That’s something. We agree on reducing dependence on foreign oil, and we even agree that healthcare reform has to be a priority this year. I’m starting to wonder if he’s secretly leaning toward becoming a Democrat.

What I do know is that his absentee ballot is still on the table, unopened. Here’s something else I know, but shhhh, it’s an undisclosed secret still… That ballot is not a Republican ballot this year, for the first time ever.

I know why I love this man. It’s that intellectual honesty thing. He may be a Republican in his heart, but he’s ready for change, too. There’s always hope, anyway.

Technorati Tags: love, marriage, primary, election, issues