My agent has begun to negotiate with my publisher about my second autism book. This book has been a torturous process, with one proposal submitted a year ago, which Shambhala had accepted, but which I then scrapped. A large reason I scrapped the project was that I have been inhabiting my own sinister amusement park for some time now, riding the old Emotional Roller Coaster and also the Crisis in a Coffee Cup until I get sick. I joke about it now, but it is a real problem, and I have been doing a lot to manage it but nothing happens overnight. Thank God for Ned, who literally always presents me with a shoulder to cry on. He lies down on the bed and silently extends his left arm, inviting me to come over and cling. He has had many wet, eye-liner stained shirts, my poor darling.

The other reason I passed on that project was more mundane: it wasn’t exactly the right one. It was too broad a topic (all special needs) and yet, too narrow (could have been all parents). In publishing, you have to get the niche just right or the marketing team balks or you find you are either overwhelmed or bored.

So I worked on my novel, Dirt: A Story of Gardening, Mothering, and a Midlife Crisis, and got that just right in the mean time. (I love Dirt! It is one of my all-time favorite books, right up there with Women About Town, A Curious Incident, and War and Peace.) A different agent is shopping Dirt around right now, so any day… Then I found, a few months ago, just the right focus for the second autism book, as well as some resolution for my own poor head, and now the newest version of Autism Book II is coming to be. I wanted to call it Notes from the (Autism) Underground, but they don’t like that so once again I will be Making Peace with editors. Believe me, that is a far better place to be than without a project at all.

The party. Wow.

It was just beautiful. I don’t know if I’ve ever organized an event that went so smoothly. But more than that, I feel like I was really able to help my parents enjoy themselves. I got my mom to book a massage with me the day before. I went with Mom and Dad to pick up the flowers. And if there was something Laura and I couldn’t do, Ned, John (Laura’s husband), or Max did it. I even forgot the dongle that connects the Mac to the projector (for Laura’s slide show about my parents and their family and friends over the past 60 years). Max, John, and Ned figured out how to play the file anyway!! Thank God for geeks who are sweethearts.

I honed my speech and then pretty much jumped off from it when it came time to deliver it, so it was natural and relaxed. I feel that I broke the ice, got people laughing, and encouraged others to stand up and say a few (or sometimes more than a few!) words. Laura’s slideshow was achingly sweet and beautiful. She dug deep in many ways, coming up with choice old photos of Mom and Dad when they were dating at 15, our grandparents as young parents, the two of us as little girls, and growing up, and then our own children in all of our favorite places. I could have watched it again and again.

Bob — the rabbi who married Ned and me as well as Laura and John, and who bar mitzvahed Nat, and who attended Mom and Dad’s wedding as a date to Marcia, Mom’s junior high best friend — gave a wonderful toast, and Marcia, his ex-wife and still dear friend, also gave one! Dad and Mom’s friend Dennis, who is like an uncle to Laura and me, and also their newer friend Steve, plus Dad’s sister Rhoda, and alot of others gave interesting speeches from very different perspectives. Check here to get more ideas on how to make your event a success.

My boys had a great time with their cousins. Nat had a happy look on his beautiful face and all three of my sons allowed me to dress them up in colorful stuff from JCrew.

I have to make a real Tabblo for the family but I am pasting in some of my favorites.

(MOM AND DAD DO NOT READ THIS BLOG POST!!!)

This weekend we are traveling to my childhood home in Connecticut to celebrate my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Laura and I have organized the party, and invited over 100 guests from all parts of my parents’ long life together. Yesterday I bought all new clothes for my four men, and I’ve been running around trying to pull together a decent look for me.

The biggest effort so far, however, has gone into the toast I want to make for them. I have never been this stymied before. I have gone through five drafts trying to get the right tone, capture the feel of my parents’ relationship, all within a 4 minute speech.

I am sharing with you what I will read on Sunday:

What makes a marriage last half a century? I only have an inkling, being in my 24th year of marriage myself. I can’t think of Mom and Dad that way, as 50-year-marriage veterans, however. They’re just Mom and Dad. Two fixtures in my life, a unit that has always functioned pretty much the same way. They sometimes feel like interchangeable parts, even though they are so different from one another.

As a kid, I could never get away with playing one off against the other. If Mom said “No,” there was no running to Dad for the Yes. Even if they were in different rooms, or one at work and one home, they would somehow know. Like there was a telepathy, a sixth or sick sense of what was going on in the family. Or “What does Mommy say?” would be the first thing out of Dad’s mouth. Maybe that’s the key: Loyalty to each other.

My parents took that loyalty and tweaked it to its most intense, almost neurotic level. If Dad wanted us to do some incredibly ridiculous, slay-this-dragon and then climb seven mountains kind of chore, Mom would back him up. Dad has a specific idea of how each job was to be done, and if you tried to take short cuts like scattering the grass clippings around instead of making piles and collecting them up with the wheelbarrow, he would know and you would have to redo it. One time he told me to count all the logs in a cord of wood that had just been delivered. “I want to make sure the guy gave me the right amount,” he said. But I was a teenager. I thought he was kidding. I thought this was insane. No pointing appealing to Mom. She’d roll her eyes about Dad but — Later on he asked me how many and I had make up a number. To this day I think Dad is annoyed that I didn’t really count the logs! Mom thinks the whole thing’s funny and crazy, but I can tell that she also deep down believes I should have really counted them.

There you have it: Loyalty to your mate. And it worked both ways. Sometime in my teenage years I started hanging out in the kitchen with Mom while she made dinner. Mom was into healthy, ethnic eating long before it was fashionable. I would watch and help while she concocted some wild, exotic kind of meal, so excited and optimistic about keeping us healthy food while exposing us to unusual things. The high point of those days was when Mom made a dish she claimed was African, called “Babootie,” which somehow contained both banana and hamburger meat. Dad – though he hates eating most kinds of beef — knew what it meant to Mom to take care of us this way, and so he would breathe down our necks making sure we would eat it and be kind to our mother about it.

In many ways, this is also about how a family works. Mom and Dad figured it out as they went along, like we all do. But to Laura and me, it appeared pretty seamless. Every summer they took us on a fantastic vacation: four times we went on long cross-country camping trips out West. Other times we’d go to Maine or the Cape or Montauk, depending on our age and level of adolescent crankiness. One year my parents planned a new trip, to Nova Scotia. Laura and I were okay enough with it, and we listened one night as Dad laid out the trip to us. But suddenly Dad stopped and said, “Hey. Do we really want to do this?” We looked at each other. We looked at him. No, we kind of didn’t. “So how about if we go Out West again instead?” Dad asked. We didn’t even have to stop and think. The next thing I knew, the Nova Scotia trip had been scrapped and we were going Out West again! Just like that. I loved the spontaneity, the youthful impulsiveness of that moment.

Whatever we did, it felt magical. I can say that with all honesty. The unfolding of the country’s terrain as we crossed into states we’d only read about was nothing short of breathtaking. But equally enchanting and sweet was the comfort of returning year after year to the soft sands and shining skies of Cape Cod. Wherever we went, Mom and Dad really seemed to have everything under control, from keeping grizzlies out of our camp site to teaching us how to jump the waves at the Cape, to grilling new boyfriends and setting our curfews. And from walking us down the aisle to walking around with each new baby. Mom’s soft eyes and big heart and Dad’s jokes and confidence cradled us and led us safely through the years as a family.

Mom and Dad’s working as yin and yang together did not stop at our childhood. I’ll never forget when I told Mom and Dad about Nat’s diagnosis. My world was threatening to come apart. What did this mean, I wondered, about us, about Nat? But Dad simply said, “Well, he’s still our Nat.” And Mom went out and bought up every developmental toy and engaging book she could lay her hands on, and to this day she sends me every article that was ever written on autism, including my own!

You know, I think that there’s one more bit of marriage wisdom that is strictly and completely Mel and Shelly: When all else fails, laugh. I asked Mom the other day what was one major ingredient to their particular 5-Decade Layer cake and she said, “I try to keep the peace.” Then, without missing a beat, she added, “Though Dad would disagree. ” And she laughed her Shelly laugh.

Then I asked Dad what he thought was the key to 50 years of marriage. “That long already?” He asked. Then he added, with his voice all soft and squooshy, “The love in her heart. She is just such a lovely person.”

Well, here’s to you, Mom and Dad. May you have another 50 for new adventures, cords of wood, strange dinners, and laughs, together!

I like to anthropomorphize. And this time of year, the bug world gives one plenty of opportunities to muse and wonder.

“What’s worse than a giraffe with a sore throat?” asks Ned. “A centipede with a broken leg.” And then he thinks about it and says, “Actually, what’s the big deal about a centipede with a broken leg? He’s got 99 others.”

“The fuzz takes away it’s awesome brightness,” — Ben, on bees.
I don’t agree. For some reason, I think the fuzz on a bee enhances its look, makes it even cuter. Plus, it dares to wear horizontal stripes, that ultra fashion faux pas, despite its completely round shape. Come on, Bee! It totally makes you look fat. Yet, fat works for the bee. In fact, I would venture to say that the bee is the cutest of the insects, even better than a ladybug, though I do adore the red and the polka dots.

By far, the ugliest but perhaps the coolest of the insects has to be the spider, which has a kind of goth thing going on, with its all-black, or all-brown, kind of a ‘sixties vibe there. Interestingly enough, it has fur, like the far-more-adorable bumblebee, but the fur makes the spider repulsive/compelling. Why is that? I imagine its fur to be like Brillo hairs, whereas the bumblebee’s is soft and fuzzy (how do I know? it rhymes with “buzzy.”) I believe spiders are smart, too, because they can bite you without giving up their lives.

I told Ben that I have been stung lots of times and I still think bees are cute. When I was little, I remember pulling out a flower from a shrub, and a bumblebee flew out, and I watched in horror as it landed on my big toe. Of course it stung me. But I remained unafraid of bees. Makes no sense; except, perhaps, when you think about it, I had disturbed its sleep, or work, or whatever, and it was mad.

I made Ben laugh this morning doing my impression of some bugs in the world. Here’s the bee: Flies into your face, asking, “Are you a flower? No?” Lands on you anyway. Stings, dies.
Huh??
And the fly: Flies into your face, asking, “Are you poop? No?” Is swatted away, comes right back, “Are you poop? No?” Is swatted away, etc., ad infinitum, until it is squashed. The fly is the existentialist of bugs; continues to do what it has to do, regardless of outcome, even if it means its own death. Something to think about.

Whatcha gonna do when he talks like that?
Spit in his eye?
–Ado Annie, “Oklahoma!”

Those naughty Baby Bellies. I actually had to kick two of them out of class today, and I’m working on getting rid of a third. These were some of the newest girls, and they had utterly the wrong attitude. It was just test, test, test. Asking me crap like, “Why are you so sweaty?” and saying stuff to another girl like, “Didn’t you know it was picture day?” while eying her outfit. And who needs that? I just want to teach bellydance and they clearly just want to make trouble. By now, the changes I’ve made are: no hip scarves; snack at designated time only; those who do not participate have to sit down quietly or go to the Office; no running and screaming.

I don’t like setting boundaries. I’m like Ado Annie in most things: I’m just a girl who cain’t say no — that is, until suddenly I’ve had enough and my head explodes. But I’m a-learnin’ how. The Baby Bellies are forcing the issue. My two dearest students told me today that they did not want to come anymore because of all the chaos! I told them I understood, and that I was working on fixing it.

So the after school activity coordinator is getting those two out of the class. And I’m going to continue to lay down the law, or at least to clap my hands for order every now and then.

Ben and his friend C were outside of the Multi-purpose room where class is held — they would never join the class, of course — and they overheard all of it. Driving home afterwards, C remarked that I had to “learn to be meaner.” But I’ve gone about as fur as I can go.

My parents came up so that Ned and I could get a springtime getaway to New York. We stayed at the Ritz way down at the southernmost tip of Manhattan, very close to all of our favorite neighborhoods, or at least a couple of subway stops away. We walked, talked, and ate and ate. So much to see, just by putting one foot in front of the other. So great to be together, alone.

Natty boy, the groups, the groups, are calling…
–Danny Boy, old Irish song

Things have been going so beautifully I have not wanted to write and possibly jinx it all. Plus there is that matter of blogstipation. So I knock wood as I write this morning.

Nat has been so happy these days, (knock, knock, knock). Even though Max and Ben have vacation, and sleep late, break the morning routine, etc. Even though he has school and they don’t. He wakes up with laughter lacing all of his silly talk. And all he can talk about is social group. Now the guy who runs the group sends fliers and all other correspondence directly to Nat, who for the first time in his life understands the fun of opening mail sent to you. Birthday cards and presents never held his interest the way Drew’s envelopes do. Nat reads the stuff, and then periodically comes back to it during the day and repeats portions to me, with wide eyes, just like when he was a little boy turning to me to tell him what was what about the day or the world. He so openly seeks my input, my validation, or at least, my conversation, because he knows that I care as much as he does about these things.

This is why I say to people, atypical development really means atypical development. Some people get to things later than others. Just because a kid could not care less about opening presents or mail when others first learn to care, doesn’t mean he’ll never care. Just because a kid doesn’t like hanging out with other kids when he’s in elementary school, doesn’t mean he’ll never want to. Nat loves having friends and outings now, at 18. And by the way, his version of having friends is quite different from mine. He does not talk to his friends, whereas that is all I do with mine. He goes places, in vans or on the T, with them. I sit in restaurant booths or go to shopping malls or walk with mine. Whatever you do with a friend, it is good to discover exactly what it is you need. Well, Nat has, at last, and you can see how happy it makes him to have this need known and met. I am so proud of him to have grown this much, to understand himself and to let us know what he has learned — without words, but with smiles, joyful house stompies, laughter, and eagerness to go.

Ned and I are going away to New York this morning, after my parents get here. I have not written anything down for Nat, but I have talked about it a lot with him. As long as tonight’s social group outing is all set, he is not all that interested in what ever else I need to tell him. Tonight he is going to social group without an aide, which is new. But I checked with Drew and he knows Nat so well; his staff also felt that Nat would be fine without the aide. I trust them.

I pay around $40 per outing, including the aide. But to be able to say, “I trust them,” and to see Nat’s face when he bounds from my car to the vans on Friday nights, I’d pay a whole lot more.

Walk along the river,
sweet lullaby, it just keeps on flowing,
It don’t worry ’bout where it’s going, no, no.
–Allman Brothers

Yesterday, Patriot’s Day, was a double header for Boston: the Marathon, and the Red Sox. I think Patriot’s Day is one of my favorite state holidays here because it is almost always a beautiful day. The combination of outdoor activity + late April in Boston makes people want to go outside in droves and feel their hearts beating and their muscles working.

When I was driving back from my morning work out at the gym, I heard Ned’s voice in my head, asking me to try to take Ben with me food shopping. We are feeling so anxious about Ben’s love for the Great Indoors that even a trip to the supermarket would be something of an accomplishment. Truly, we are worried a bit about him and we continue to wrestle with his truculent, overly-focused psyche and infuse him with gentle flexibility, open air, and empathy.

But, I thought, food shopping? I hate food shopping. There is very little to love about it. Why treat Benji like an appendage to my shopping cart? I knew what Ned really wanted: to get Ben out into the world a little more. And I wanted it, too. Especially given the day.

I told Ben and Max, when I got home, that we were going to take a little walk with our cameras, and we would see what they photographed afterward. I thought maybe the Arboretum, which is in bloom with pear trees, crabapples, and cherries right now. Ben seemed mildly interested, especially when I mentioned the trails. Max looked at me as if I had told him it was time for his surgery.

“Just an hour,” I said. “You guys can pick the place we walk, okay?”
Max brightened at that, and said, “Can it end in Best Buy?”
Being a veteran shopper myself, I couldn’t see why not. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll try out Rock Band again.”

They gave me no trouble, and as we walked over to Brookline Ave., Ben said, “Do I have to take pictures?”
“No,” I replied. Max offered to carry his camera. Ben began to complain about the distance right away, but we kept going. Max wanted to show us where he liked to walk with his friends when they didn’t have enough money to take the T there. It was a dirt path along the Muddy River, for which our town was originally named, that led along The Riverway through to the Emerald Necklace, the riverside park leading into Boston and designed, I believe, by Frederick Law Olmsted himself (who created Central Park in NYC) in the 19th century (The Olmsted Homestead is actually a National Historic Site and is located in Brookline). I had never seen The Riverway this way, because I had always kept to the sidewalks or, of course, the road.

We passed people lounging on benches, Canadian geese sitting and staring, and even a pair of perfectly good, vacated Bean boots. Max kept taking pictures, I think he was looking for graffiti. We went under bridges and up an embankment to a small, circular building with a cone-shaped roof, clearly an old fixture from the park’s beginnings. Utterly dirty and smelly inside. I felt a moment’s irritation with the City of Boston for allowing this bit of history to just crumble away, and for allowing the homelessness of its inhabitants to begin with.

But the day was for my sons and the sun and not for political invective, so we kept going, arriving at Best Buy tired but psyched to play. After our time there, we went to Coldstone Creamery, a strangely dark red ice cream store, and we all had ice creams (they had a fat-free, sugar free white flavor, which also turned out to be flavor-free). At first an exciting place, filled with over-the-top flavors like “cake batter” and things like that, but it is very confusing, hard to decipher the offerings, and the help is all college students who could barely give a shit. I spent nearly $15 on three ice creams. But sitting outside in the sun with my boys made it all worth it.

We took the T home, and it was full of happy Red Sox fans who had left after the sixth inning because the Sox were ahead 8-0. There was also a Marathon runner or two, finished with their 26-mile mission. Within minutes we got to our stop and after the brief walk home, we were finished with ours. A good day.

It was such a good time. I was bereft when everyone left. But there’s always the Tabblo, to remember it by!

It all started in Egypt, thousands of years ago.  But our Passover started here, in the kitchen.    My mission:  to make a brisket out of seven pounds of Kosher beef; to hard boil 16 eggs (part of our seder is to eat eggs and I wanted everyone, all 12 of us, to have as many as we wanted).  Also I had to assemble the seder plate:  parsley sprigs, roasted egg, haroses (chopped walnuts, wine, cinammon, and apples, to imitate bricks and mortar used by the enslaved Jews to build the Pharaoh his Pyramids), roasted shank bone (Mom brought it and cooked it) to remind us of the lamb’s blood the enslaved Jews smeared on their houses so that they would be PASSED OVER by the Angel of Death, who was the 10th plague visited upon the Egyptians, who refused to free the Jews.   … See my Tabblo>

I have been utterly blogstipated lately. Every time I sit down to write, I find myself thinking, “Oh, you can’t say that because you always say that,” or “you can’t say that because it is too personal.” But if I stop to think, of course there are things to write about, if I just give it the time it deserves, and bleed a little bit onto the screen. The trouble is knowing how to open up just a little, and not injure myself in the process.

That is the crux of the issue for me and my sparse blogging. I don’t want to completely give myself away. I need to preserve boundaries better and not tell, tell, tell. I have had trouble lately separating what I can write about from what I need to think about.

And, there is a conservation of energy in creative pursuits as well as life. When you use energy in one medium, you are taking it from another. I have been doing a lot of thinking about what my front yard garden is going to become and what to do to make the porch more hospitable to our lifestyle. In other words, thinking outside of the (computer) box. I sit down to write and I get distracted by the way the sky is partially obscured by the fuzz of new leaves, and the flash of bellydance-cossie pink of the cherry tree that I forgot was there.

Nat, too, is so happy these days. What a blessing that is. He wakes up laughing and talking, but it is a blissful twist on what he did when he was seven and we were living a nightmare of interrupted sleep at 2 a.m. If he had only pushed that five hours ahead, the story would have ended so differently! Although I probably would have panicked over the unfamiliar words he uses or the fact that I could not tell what was so funny. I would have been unhappy no matter what, because Nat was waking up autistic.

I’m so glad I don’t feel that way anymore, and that I’ve come to know him and not be afraid of his differences. He feels it, and he responds to my comfort and he rewards me with his thousand-dollar smile (almost literally, because of the braces). I am learning compassion for my younger self; to see fresh, plump, scared Susan as almost a daughter of mine and to be glad that she has grown a bit wiser (though also a bit wizened). I am also learning protection for my current self, a thin covering of springtime growth in the summer of my life.

I think about the opening line of Ben’s very first comic, which was a drawing of a robot. The caption was, “Robot didn’t notice…” And of course, something terrible was about to happen to Robot. Truths, revelations and change unfurl suddenly, like the new leaves on my maples. It happens so regularly, however, that it can be commonplace and unremarkable — unless we take time to notice.

Our local elections are imminent (May 6). As a former politico in my town, I stay plugged into what’s going on, and I am almost never at a loss for an opinion. I have been fairly silent on the issue of the Proposition 2 1/2 Override (which would raise taxes and provide several million more a year for the town coffers) not because I am opposed in any way to the tax increase; I am annoyed about how this particular campaign has been managed. I think it is a mistake to have all the moderates in town as the central command, and to invite none of the more passionate others (like me) into that particular smoke-filled room. Sure, it would have driven me crazy to have to breathe all that in, but they were all overthinking it way too much and they have produced a slow and uninspiring campaign as a result. They should have asked me and people like me to be part of it and because they did not, they have a lackluster, plodding message and material.

Lack of Override sparks aside, I finally was moved to write something in favor, because in the end I am a school proponent, I love my town, and I hate to see people miss out on an opportunity to improve things. Plus the cost of this particular tax increase is negligible, compared to what we will get (restoration of some of the staff cuts that have occurred because of state and federal cuts in the last six years; a possible World Language program in the Kindergartens – sixth grades to produce true fluency by high school; a 20-minute longer school day to comply with the state’s time and learning requirements).

If you are reading this and you are a voter in my town, Vote Yes on both Override questions on May 6. Enough with the cuts, already. And so, in honor of Passover beginning tomorrow, in which we will sing “Dayenu,” which means “Enough” in Hebrew (it’s all about how grateful we are to God; it would have been enough merely to have been brought out of slavery in Egypt, but look at how much more He did for us, etc.)

Opinion: With education, like most things, you get what you pay for

By Susan Senator/Edge of Town

Wed Apr 16, 2008, 05:24 PM EDT

Dancing avec soie to ‘Mon Ami de Rose,’ the Natacha Atlas version (Egyptian-style Edith Piaf). First time trying out the new silk veil, which flutters on every air current, like a rose petal itself, falling to the ground.

Max is selling his Riku Robe and one of you may want to buy it, for $75, free shipping within the U.S.

Slightly Used Kingdom Hearts Organization XIII Coat Cosplay Costume

Please note, this is not a new custom-made costume, it was made custom for me, meaning it only comes in one size.

It fit me pretty snugly, but then again, it fits the characters in the game pretty snugly, too. I’m 74 inches tall, with a 27 inch waist, 35 inch chest, and 33 inch hips. It looked absolutely great for my Riku cosplay.

Includes one necklace (see picture), it originally came with two but one broke. Most Organization XIII members only have one necklace anyway,

Unfortunately, it smells faintly like gasoline, has been aired out for a couple of weeks and fabreezed a few times, which helped the smell a lot. Only worn twice, once to try it on and once to Anime Boston for a day, meaning it’s in great condition.

Originally purchased from Honest Dragon China. It really is a great costume, superb quality, I just have no need for it anymore and no way to store it.

A day of energy and collected wits. Some days are like that; I find I am more articulate, more patient, more energetic. More. It is good when I feel this way in the early part of the day, because then I can set myself up for a good, productive day, a la Mom. Mom likes to exercise first thing and really start her day off with her best possible self.

So this morning, after drop off, I decided to finish the yard clean-up. I have already done around 20 bags just raking up remaining leaves and dead grass from the back. Today, the front.

Zorn, as the rabbits say in Watership Down. This means, “utter destruction,” in Rabbit. The sewage pipe replacement left in its wake tons of small stones and a few upended roots, where once there was a large bed of lillies of the valley. Now that side of the front yard is ugly, broken, gaping, and brown, like a hobo’s mouth.

I raked out all the full-sun beds all along the stone wall that rims the front and side of my property. I collected sticks and pushed rocks to the side, to be carted away by my landscaper (once I hire him). I filled six big paper bags. I uprooted a dead pine. I raked the soft, chocolately black earth and uncovered bulbs and newly green plant clusters. Tiny tufts of green everywhere.

Well-satisfied with my work, I then hurried to an appointment which I shall not write about, because I just cannot bring myself to. But it went well. After that, Beastie pick-up and Baby Bellies. Or should I say, “Bratty Bellies?!” They were so bad last week! There are now fourteen girls, whereas last session there were around 8. Be careful what you wish for. Needless to say, it is a world of difference. Hard to get anything done. Word got around the school that Susan Senator’s class was acting up, and the Mom Network swung into action. I had offers from three or four people to help out with discipline if I needed it.

I didn’t want to rely on other moms though. I wanted to solve it myself. I knew I had to set boundaries, lay down some rules. Stop being so soft. I was determined that today would be better. I thought for a bit today about what to do. I asked another mom for a little help and also a teacher came in and gave me a little advice, mainly saying, “Yeah, this bunch is a handful, I know most of them;” and “you can send them right to the office if they misbehave.” Yikes! Okay. Well, I didn’t think I would need to do that.

I started off by leaving my veils and hip scarves home. The Bellies would have to earn them, I decided, with good behavior. I didn’t want my stuff to be abused (dragged across the gym, swung through the air, worn into the bathroom). I also told them what we would do today, a la Nat: first, next, last.

I showed them some performance pieces from the Bellydance Superstars, to familiarize and remind them of why they were here. Then we worked on isolations and hip lifts. (So cute!) Some things they can do really well because of their little flexible bodies. Some things, though — ! I really worked them hard, delaying their snack until I was satisfied that they all were trying their hardest. It is very difficult to convey how to do a hip lift, I have found. They all bring their legs out to the side to jerk their hips up and they straighten their knees, which is all wrong. But you can’t say, “No! All wrong!” You have to pick out the small thing that’s right and then try to get them to change the rest! Also I had to come up with metaphors, like, “pretend you’re sitting in an invisible chair,” to make them understand how the butt sits on the back, bent leg.

They were all very good today, minus the part where they laughed at me for sweating a lot. I told them that when they were 45 they would understand. “You’re 45! My dad is not as old as you!” Oy vey.

All it takes for me to have a good day, I think, is to have a positive purpose or two, and the time to accomplish them. And a sunny yard and high-spirited children within reach.

I woke up not only on the wrong side of the bed; I felt as if I’d woken up with someone else’s head. I had taken Nyquil last night because of that horrible choking tickle cough, and needless to say, it worked. I could barely open my eyes.

We were to leave by 9 a.m. for Nat’s swim qualifiers at Babson College in Wellesley, and all I could think was, “I don’t wanna!” Even after sucking down 2 1/2 mugs of strong coffee, my eyes still felt slightly crossed. How was I going to stand there for hours in that crowded gym and the steamy pool area with best solar pool cover, making small talk and mustering up the energy to cheer for Nat? All I wanted was to go back to bed, or just sit and read.

“So, don’t go,” said Ned.
Don’t go? I thought. Don’t go? It was not even an option. “I will need to stop for more coffee,” I said in response, dismissing this “don’t go” nonsense, and packed up Nat-snacks and lunch: kidney beans, chili powder, grapes, cookies, water. Salami, cheese, and Atkins bar for me (don’t ask). Yogurt for Ned. Plenty of dollars for the soda machine.

We drove up to the brick buildings of Babson and as soon as we saw the clusters of families and the big yellow signs, the fog in my brain started to lift a little. What is it about walking into one of those Special Olympics events that just sweeps over me like a river and washes away all the crud? Even Nyquil stupor can’t last at one of those. You just can’t be there and also be in a bad mood.

There is just so much going on there that makes me think, smile, and my heart beat fast. Is it seeing parents I’ve known for years, and exchanging stories about our kids, of growth and setbacks? Is it the brightly-shirted sea of volunteers, who run the events with the finesse and polish of master showmen? Is it the athletes, high-fiving coaches and calling out to anyone nearby — even strangers — that they got the gold? And expecting them to care?

Yes, I’m sure it is. But most of all, it is seeing my Nat stomping a circuit all over the gym, around his teammates, puppet hand a-flapping, and a huge smile on his Shaggy-Doo face. I’m never too tired for that, and I’ll never get tired of that.

And, well, seeing him get the gold in all three of his events sure didn’t hurt.

Got my first Passover bit of email today (click below for a Pesadicka parody of Marguritaville). Pesach is a comin’ as surely as that frickin’ Angel of Death came for the Egyptian first borns all those years ago (you shouldn’t know from it, says my Bubbe). I am hosting the first night seder this year, like I did last year. I love to do that. It is a real spring holiday, complete with gorgeous fleurs everywhere. Dad leads the seder, Mom brings the chicken soup, Laura comes with her family, and all is right in the world. If you’re Jewish, you will probably love this video; if you’re not, you might find it kinda weird…

As much as I try not to, in the end I still assign roles to my children. Then I am surprised when they show me that they are not what I thought, and indeed, they are far more. I should not be surprised; why do I have to keep learning the same lessons over and over? I never like to be thought of as just one thing. I feel that to define is to limit, in almost an existential sense, a la Martin Heidegger: once you posit what a being is, its real self is no longer that. Naming brings something into the light, only to lose the connection to the unnamed thing-ness it was before.

Growing up, my sister and I seemed to accept such narrow roles for ourselves. Sometimes, ridiculously, I thought of myself as “the pretty one” and Laura as “the smart one,” for example (She is, needless to say, quite beautiful.) Or I was the fuck-up, and she was successful. It is so unfair to ourselves and to each other to think this way. She should have the chance to be the fuck-up, the needy one, and I should get to be successful and together sometimes. So when suddenly I scored much higher than Laura on the verbal SAT, it was practically a crisis in identity for me.

With the boys, I have often found that I am wrong about Nat, and who he is, and what he can do. He is continually surprising me, refusing to be defined. I am also guilty of thinking of Max as the more successful student, and Ben, the struggling one. But although it is good for Max to be encouraged to be the best he can be in school, sometimes he is not. He needs to be able to occupy that role, the role of the child in trouble with his parents at times, and that does not come easily to me or to him. Sometimes when I am trying to speak to him seriously about the need for more A’s, now that he is almost a junior, we exchange a glance that seems to say, “we both know that you’re going to do just fine, humor me.” But I feel that it is my duty as his parent to keep pushing him, anyway. He does, however, give me that feeling of ease and calm, and he always has.

Ben has always worried me. Even in utero we had troubles that required one or two emergency room visits, only to find that little sprite practically grinning at us from the ultrasound pics, seeming to say, “Gotcha!” As a growing boy, he has never really enjoyed schoolwork, because he always has his own fish to fry, something else he is thinking about, reading, or drawing, and so we often have conversations like, “Who invented school anyway?”

And I reply, “Irving School.” (This is an old Senator family joke. My father has always answered the question, “who invented …?” with “Irving ….” I always thought it was simply funny, that he would pick that name, the name of his dad, my grandpa, every time. One day, though, Ned explained it thus: “Well, who invented your dad? Irving!” I laughed and laughed. Still laughing, with only one cup of half-caf in me at 6:12 a.m.)

Ben always talks about how people should be born already knowing what they need to know; how school wastes his time; how he needs more time to do X, Y, or Z. So when he brought home a homework assignment that was three parts long, including an essay, I just about fainted, anticipating the nudge sessions I would have to endure.

But Ned started in right away, just getting Ben to work on it a day at a time. He discovered that if he lets Ben dictate his answers, and Ned records them, it goes incredibly fast. So I took over the next day. I typed on Precious while Ben formulated essay sentences.

I was amazed at the gorgeous sentences Ben constructed, out of thin air. But why should I be surprised? He also does large math problems in his head. It is the “show your work” demand that stymies him. So his essay evolved into a very interesting and well-worded piece, about the Stinky Cheese Man. I did nothing but type. Even when he came up with an odd construction or weird syntax, I let it be. I was merely the facilitator.

Then came the part of the assignment where Ben was supposed to draw the Stinky Cheese Man, precisely the way the artist had in the book. This was as close to a murderously insulting assignment as Ben could ever have. Ben, the artist, being forced to copy someone else’s art. Disgusting.

But, the idea was to get the child to see what it feels like to create a Caldecott-Award winning illustration and book. (I really don’t like this assignment, but I’m just the parent, and even when I was on the School Committee, there was no real forum in which we could change the kind of assignments teachers gave. Thou Shalt Not Micromanage is the First Commandment of the School Committee member.)

Once Ben realized what he had to do and that he had to do it, he got out every colored pencil we own and worked for hours trying to color the picture exactly as it was drawn in the book. No matter what Ned and I said about it being great, or just fine, or finished already (!) he would not let it be until it was exactly the same as the book’s picture. Needless to say it was a fantastic rendering. He told me that when the teacher held it up to the class, he could not tell at first which was his and which was the one from the book. Obviously he was very proud of himself.

I have not been accustomed to thinking of B as a dedicated student, and now I see I was wrong. The thing is, to Ben, assignments are so incredibly important, that he leaves himself no room to do simply what he can. Being so literal, he believes that he must do exactly as the teacher asks, or what he thinks she’s asking. And then he becomes overwhelmed, of course! So the thing is, Ben may be kind of a perfectionist, and that is why he gets so resentful of school work and so reluctant to even start it. But when he does do it — wow.

This is a bit off-topic, even for me, especially given my previous (Un)Explained post. But I need to talk about Starbucks’ new logo. First of all, I never even realized to begin with that the original logo was a mermaid. I guess I thought it was just some kind of sun goddess being, because the hair is all zig-zaggy, like energy lines. The image definitely is not like the mermaids I know and love, Peter Pan’s hussies are a good example, (the ones who gang up on poor Wendy, who may have deserved it because she is just so proper! But really, they almost drowned her! But actually, you’d expect a little salt from a gal who has to spend her days swimming deep underwater.) Another great example of the beautiful, strong-willed mermaid is Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid that I talked about here a while ago. I don’t really like Ariel in Disney’s version; she is too much like Barbie: good to look at but doesn’t offer much otherwise. Besides, who would give up their voice for a man?? Or for legs?

Anyway, I was having coffee with Emily, and having a great time catching up on our book projects, when she turned her cup towards me and showed me the new Starbucks logo: the splayed-tail mermaid. She laughed about how a mom in her PTO would not let them use the cups at a fundraiser because of this! Plus, her breasts are almost visible under her hair.

Wow, I nearly horked my grande decaf breve misto. I totally love the new logo! She is based, apparently, on a 15th century mermaid drawing. She is fantastically not modern; she has a belly and a heavy tail section. She is definitely as real as the Dove women. Good for her! A little dash of reality for all of America’s coffee drinkers who are probably entirely too used to the nipped and tucked females shown everywhere in the media, but practically nowhere in real life.

Still, I wondered what was with the splayed tail? It turns out that she is a siren, not a mermaid: and sirens have two tails! I wonder what the story is behind that… I’ve heard of being two-faced, but two-tailed?

To think of all I never knew —
The brilliance of music, the sugared hue
Enhanced perhaps by flickers and gaps,
Of fragile, or evaded synapse.

The pockets into which I fall
The descending curtain, the heavy pall
When time expands, and lung explodes
Have something to do with flawed brain nodes?

There’s more, of course; my tapestry
my past, my now, the woven me
The way I was loved, and taught to be
The paths that I choose, the way I see

But now, to know a piece of why
Gives such relief — a triumphant cry
And tenderness towards my forty five years
Pale green hope for fewer tears.