Susan Senator

You’ll probably only appreciate this if you’re on the South Beach diet. Scratch that; you’ll only appreciate it if you’re me:
(Sung to the tune of “Fifteen Tons”):
15 almonds and what do you get?
Another pound lost and ketosis breath.
Jenny Craig, don’t call me,
Your plan is too slow
I’m eating ricotta — mixed with cocoa!

‘Scuse me, while I kiss the sky.
–Jimi Hendrix

I woke up to pink and lavender sky. I threw on my heaviest sweater and Ned’s socks and went down to enjoy this gift. That is how it felt. I actually smiled at the snowbound yard, marveled at the black fingers of the rhododendron leaves. I noticed for the first time, how the leafless branches act as tiny frames for the lovely sky; how clever Mother Nature is. This is the first winter I’ve ever experienced that did not level me. I have not really minded the cold or the frozen earth — and it has been bitter cold. I have been maintaining my balance, which is ever important to a Libra.

I don’t really know how it has all stayed so well-aligned for me. In the fall, I made a conscious decision to always have a book going (to read); to have several playdates a week with my friends; to take at least one dance class; and to always have a writing project in my head. I made room for teaching, and have had my heart stretched to fit in the Baby Bellies. And into that pocket I have added weekly dates with Ned; several playdates a week for Nat and Ben; and a sprinkling of having Max’s friends here, particularly his very dear girlfriend, who stays for dinnner on a regular basis.

Is regularity the determinant of pleasure for me? I didn’t think that could be the case. I have always thought of myself as impulsive and spontaneous. And yet, I have learned recently that my impulses can get me into trouble. My spontaneity, on the other hand, can lead to an exciting new plan. There is a difference. I think spontaneity springs from the head, a new idea based on the current surroundings and conditions, whereas impulse springs more from the belly, where there are cravings that spring up from the swampy innards. I am learning to recognize the difference within myself, to distinguish one from the other, the self-improving vs. the self-defeating.

Balance, to me, not only means having regularity and consistency in the present and local future (e.g., the future of the coming week); it also is about having a long-term goal, too. Book projects allow me to have a long-term goal, but that is not enough. The muse is not always with me (that bitch) so I can’t depend on that. And so lately I have come up with other long-term goals, such as some kind of more traditional work (that was what was behind applying to Anthropologie for a job. But that was probably a bit too impulsive a move, not well thought out. In hindsight, I don’t know if I would have enjoyed turning my hobby of being in a dreamworld among beautiful clothes into a job of prescribed hours, having to sell those clothes to people other than my friends and me. Sour grapes? Or turning sour grapes into wine? You decide.)

Last night I gave a talk at a community college, as a kick-off to a series of trainings the staff there has developed for professionals and students going into autism education. It was a very enjoyable evening, with lots of great conversations about how to bridge the gap between parents and special educators; how to bring parents more to the table in terms of their expertise on their children, and how to develop more trust between the two groups. It was one of those kinds of evenings where so many people were on the same page, you couldn’t help but feel that positive change is afoot. We talked afterwards about my coming back, maybe even to teach there. I drove home feeling like I was floating on air. That kind of teaching may just be my long-term goal. We shall see.

Meanwhile, a little bit of total immersion in the purple and gold haze of the present: It is called Andalusian Vision, and it is a Pharaonics of Egypt design. I had picked the very one out, in pink and silver, months ago, and did not buy it. But this one is now available in my size from my swapmeet site, and in a color combo I do not already own, that matches the intensity of my daybreak sky.

Mama Kitty tagged me, but I’ve been tagged several times already. There may not be seven things you don’t already know about me, or which I care to talk about publicly, but I’ll try because I like Mama Kitty.
1) I hate video games and I cannot play them. But there is one that may change all that. I want to buy Rock Band for PS3. I tried it in Best Buy and I was “not bad,” according to Max, when I played along with R.E.M.’s Orange Crush. The guitar, not the drums. B plays the drums, so he can do that part!
2) I am scheming to get Nat’s music teacher to come to the house and give him piano lessons. I think he loves her and she has already gotten him to listen to Mozart daily!
3) I just came up with a fantastic 50th anniversary present for my parents.
4) I am constantly making up stupid rhymes and parodies in my head. I only share them with Ned because I can always get him to laugh at them.
5) On Tuesday I was kind of firm with my Baby Bellies and they really got the message. They were quiet and attentive the entire class. I liked it better when they were wild.
6) In the book I wrote 14 years ago, The Scent of Violets, (which I am reworking into a prequel to Dirt), the main character lives in a Victorian fixer-upper with a Palladian window on the staircase landing, four rooms on the first floor, four bedrooms on the second floor, and an interesting attic on the third floor. I read this description yesterday and I realized that I now live in almost that exact house! Back then I lived in that brightly-painted condo with the long hallway that you saw in the first and second baby videos (thank you, those of you who deigned to watch). I dreamed about having a house one day but had no idea how it would happen.
7) I went to an aura reader 15 years ago, to try to understand more about Nat and myself.

I’m not tagging anyone else. This madness has got to stop!

Oh, Little B! A hard day for B. My sweet little boy. He was having an anxiety attack about school this morning. Crying, scowling, hidden under his hair. He finally was able to articulate it: “I’m nervous.”
I said, “About what, Honey?”
And he said, “It’s mix-it-up day in the cafeteria. We have to sit with new kids who aren’t our friends.” He started making fists and clenching his teeth, with tears in his eyes. I didn’t know what to tell him. But I suddenly thought, it is time to really advocate for Ben. Just as I did for Nat, I have to stop following to a T what the school wants and tell them that some of this just doesn’t work for B.

I was not going to force him to do mix-it-up-day or anything else. I do not believe in forcing kids. I believe in development. Rarely does a person get all of their soft fatty nature squeezed out of them by forcing them into a constricting suit. You can’t mutcher it all too much. Soft fatty nature pretty much stays with us, but can be turned into muscle, used to our advantage. But we have to know what of ourselves is SFN and what is fatty habits. And what will we just grow out of, like baby fat. We also have to let development happen sometimes.

We have a great guidance counselor at B’s school, and she hung out with us for a while talking with him and me about strategies. We decided — with Ben’s agreement — that we are going to evaluate his learning style, which is a big part of the issue. He fades out sometimes, and also gets very frustrated about open-ended assignments. We are going to figure out if he needs some accommodations around homework and certain in-school activities. I think he was very relieved to be able to tell the guidance counselor exactly what he felt about certain assignments, subjects, and teachers. She made him feel very safe and he seemed really together by the end of the hour.

When B got in the car he told me his day, especially mix-it-up-day was not terrible. He had L at his table in lunch, which was good. Although he had some third graders, too! Shudder. The indignity.

B’s teacher gave him a timer to set to thirty minutes so he can time himself on his homework. If he has been working hard at it for thirty minutes, he is allowed to stop. I added a rule: he has to do all timer homework around me. To help prevent fade-out.

[Fade Out]

I am slowly and painfully starting writing a new book, which is a prequel to Dirt: A Story of Gardening, Mothering and a Mid-life Crisis. This book already has a few hundred pages, believe it or not, because I have many, many “books” stored in my hard drive that I use in different writings. These books are from years and years of raising babies and trying not to go insane with boredom. (When I say that, I have to clarify that it is not my sons who were boring, but just the work of early-childhood-mothering. To be perfectly honest, which is one of my specialties, the diapers and the feedings were not the aspect of early childhood that I hated. In fact, I loved the feedings because of the eye contact and the smells. I love baby cereal — if you have never tried Gerber Baby Oatmeal made with warm milk, I highly recommend it. This is one of the most delicious foods I have ever eaten. I love the smell of formula. I loved baby breath — a scent so delicious they named a flower after it. I didn’t mind diaper-changing, once I switched to disposable. My boys almost never had rashes or things like that. I think it’s because I didn’t use all those products that prevent rashes!

No, the part about early childhood I hated was 1) Panicking over whether or not my babies were okay developmentally, i.e., neurotypical; and 2) if they were not, wondering what I should be doing other than reading to them and talking and playing with them constantly; and 3) the making of playdates. I hated having to coordinate with other moms, sometimes hang out with perfect strangers and make small talk for two hours!)

So my “escape” has ever been writing. People ask me, “how do you find the time?” And I am stumped. How could I not find the time? I have to write. It is my favorite fun to have alone. I hate that question because it implies I’m some kind of superhuman or weirdo. Well, okay, I know it is meant as admiration, but — is it weird the way I write and write? So I worry about that.

So when Max was one, that darling little boy in those vids I posted, (and to be honest, I expected far more of a collective cry of delight from you, my readers, because I was giving you, at last, a true picture of how my boys actually were in those days, my gifts from God given to you) I wrote The Scent of Violets. That book’s plot is too weird for me to describe here, (past lives meets OCD meets child abuse meets autism) but the characters are all there. They could easily become the characters in Dirt, but twelve years earlier.

The characters take my breath away. They seem real to me, they are very like my own family, and yet they are not. They live on their own, in their own universe. It is like getting together with very old friends, loaded down with baggage and history which is sometimes stultifying, and other times, like being wrapped in a favorite old blanket.

The love/hate affair with the body is a very strange and I would guess mostly female phenomenon. I marvel at how my sons simply eat to live (rather than live to eat). They say “no” to offerings of cake and ice cream, simply on the basis of already having had some, or being full! What the heck is that all about? How did children of mine get to be so sane, when they hear me daily moaning about how I shouldn’t have eaten this or that, because now — as Lisa Simpson eloquently put it when she was trying to diet, and she ate a carrot shaving and thereby spoiled her diet day — I can’t even have toothpaste! Maybe they just don’t take me seriously when it comes to food? Hmm. Perhaps I have stumbled upon an effective parenting technique — embarrass your kids so much that they don’t want to be like you at all!

Anyway, I’m starting the South Beach Diet today, as opposed to Atkins, because South Beach allows you to have milk/yogurt, beans, and later on, joy of joys, fruit! I am unhappy with what the scale says — I have named it Injustice Scalia, because it never offers a kind or fair verdict — and other physical developments that usually occur in the wintertime.

I sound like I am in hate with myself, but the truth is far more complex. I am also thrilled with what I can now do, in terms of working out or dancing. I run three miles, or do as combination of Stairmaster and treadmill, and I dance for 30 minutes at a time. But even more than that: I feel that I have moved up a notch in my dance technique.

Yesterday class was fascinating, and extremely enjoyable. It’s odd how I don’t want to learn combinations right now, as I did in the fall. These days I just want to work on technique. Probably because I don’t have much problem coming up with ideas of choreography, ways to move to songs; but I do hate it when my form is awful. Ned has taken movies of me where I look okay, and then I notice my hands are sticking out perpendicular to my arms, rather than curved and soft; or my body is rolling around trying to make a sinuous movement but really just flopping everywhere.

The worst move I execute is the big hip circle. This is a very belly-dancerly move because it is just so alien to the way we dance in the West. It is a bending at the waist, flat-back, butt-out move; done right it looks very rolling and exotic. You stand with your feet about hip-width apart, knees straight but soft, and as your hips move in a lateral circle (parallel to the ground), your upper body moves in the opposite direction. At the same time, you try to gather your arms toward you in a kind of air hug. And, perhaps most important: you have to be completely tucked and lifted. Even when I think I’m doing a large hip circle well, I see in pictures that my posture can ruin it.

Najmat broke it all down yesterday in such a way that I could feel precisely how to move, and so I could focus on sucking in my gut. I caught glimpses in the mirrors, and I could see that the entire class looked like they had gotten it. It looked beautiful, to see seven of us orbiting around our hips in exactly the same way to the fantastic music of Natacha Atlas — how much more perfect could an hour on a Sunday be?

I have been replaying the hip circle, in my mind, all day. I wanted to practice at the gym, but I know it looks strange to the women there. I waited until tonight to try it out in the living room. I just love the rolling feeling in my hip bones and the way it looks, upper body rotating on the opposite axis from lower. If you go really low and wide, you can throw your hair forward and then as you come back up, toss it back.

Like so many things in life, it looks easy, like something natural a child might do while playing; but that is deceptive. Yesterday I was doing perfect hip circles, all sucked in (despite additional poundage), and loving the way it looked and felt.

The bellydance keeps me sane. It gives me a way to feel graceful, even when the scale says otherwise. As far as South Beach — the jury’s still out on that one.

This last movie is from December 1998, when Ben was about 10 months old, at our lovely little yellow house. Ned’s dad and stepmom are in it. Also our friends Sheila, Sam and Elizabeth make an appearance in this one. Max is 6 and Nat is 8.

Here is one from 1993 again, with Ned’s sister Sarai in the mix as well.

Look what Max did for me! We took choice parts from old baby videos and put together three movies. This first one, called Baby1, is from July 1993, when Max was about 18 mos. and Nat was 3 ish (or thereabouts). It is also when Ned and I had our second wedding; our 9-year-marriage-survival mark. The middle part of the video is of Baby Nat in December 1990, when my parents came to visit. We were trying to get Natty to do “bubble, bubble” with his wrist to his mouth. This was when he was around a year old, and we were living in a house out in Arlington, Mass. I hated it there and we moved back to Brookline shortly before I gave birth to Max. There is a really cute final part, where Max is imitating Ned and the camera at his eye, and Ned does not know what Max is doing with the toy on his eye!

Why is it, that we are driven to do things that we just know are not going to work? Case in point: a pimple is emerging under my cheekbone (why there? what kind of evil oil amasses in the soft, shallow cave below a cheekbone?) and I just keep on poking and pinching it, hoping to nail it, literally, before it erupts into existence. Ned just told me that there is a little smiling nail-mark on my face, below a very angry red spot.

I’ll tell you why: we need to feel we are doing everything we possibly can, like the good Dr. Rieux, to fight evil, or to improve outcomes. People are basically good, and need to always be working towards the good.

Yesterday, as soon as I had my full house, complete with Nat’s new buddy, Max’s girlfriend, and five of my girlfriends gathered around me, (I had had a “Clothing Swap” party, where we all brought things we no longer wore, drank a lot of wine, and ended up with “new” things in the depths of ugly winter. I now have two new pairs of designer jeans, deemed too low-rise for my lovely friend L; she took home a ruched tank top which had made me look like a tank; R made out like a bandit with my old Laura Ashley silk dress and several tops, etc., etc.) and I wanted to push it to the next level.

The next level. I want Nat to get to hang out with Max’s friends, when they all come over the next time. If they’re all just sitting in his room playing with the various amusing offerings (vintage Macs, flat screen TV with PS3, Wii, DS, Tablet, and Beanie Babies galore), why can’t one more person be there, sitting on the indigo bedspread, quietly talking to himself, a huge grin splitting his face? And Max and Ben will get to see that their brother is a sweet presence, after all, doesn’t talk much but just reeks of contentment. Please God, let it happen someday. Max and Nat hanging out. Oh my God. I will pick and pick at that challenge until it bursts open into a glorious thing on this family’s scarred but happy face.

And then, there’s Ben…

Our house
is a very, very, very fine house
With three kids in the yard
Life used to be so hard.
–CSN, with me

I woke up with little pictures of Nat floating in and out of my head. Before I was even fully conscious, I was remembering how he was last night, getting into that van of kids. It’s the same way he is at Special Olympics meets; he is just grinning the entire time, waving his arms, talking to himself loudly, bursting at the seams with happiness and excitement. It is abundantly clear to me that of all the things in his life, being with friends is best to him.

I wondered many things, lying there in my tangle of sheets. How can I make that happen more? How do I find him more friends?

I love the fact that these are my worries. I used to worry that Nat did not understand what was good about being with people. I feared that he would never enjoy his peers; that he would miss out on that deeply satisfying aspect of life.

And I feared that I would miss out on his having friends, too. Perhaps selfishly, I wanted to experience Nat going off with friends, seeing their delight in him, hearing them laugh at secret things, watching how they respond off of each other and I just sink into the background. Rather than having to facilitate, moderate, and teach, teach, teach “social skills,” to just sit back and let it happen, come what may.

This is the way Max’s life has gone, after all. Over the years, I have had to intervene, explain, set up, organize, oversee, and referee with Max and his friends, but there has always been a larger reality than my oversight, in Max’s case. Max’s social life has always had a life of its own. Sometimes it has gone off in directions that make me worry, but I have tried to stay connected to him, a spider-web-thin strand that sticks to him no matter what, but one which I hope does not get in his way.

To me, the Promised Land has become having kids here. I think that for years I was afraid to have kids here, because it would mean a lot of effort on my part. Effort regarding Nat: making sure he was appropriate, not aggressive, etc., with the friends that were here. Effort regarding Max: making sure his friends were kind to him and he to them; that no one was fighting or hurt; that the mess stayed within reasonable bounds; fetching snacks; getting the kid to leave when it was time. All of these efforts replaced much of the joy and made me stop focusing on having a “typical” house overrun with kids.

I may have mellowed over the recent years, but I have recently become aware of a hunger for that kind of house. It may be because I now see that Nat truly enjoys having people here now, with no effort needed on my part. It has been years — knock wood — since Nat pulled the hair of one of Max’s friends, or was somehow inappropriate.

It may be because once Max hit 7th grade, he was often not here, but somewhere else with friends, and I missed him. I mentioned this to him the other day, “So do you think you’d ever want to have your friends here? I mean, is there something I could do to make that more comfortable for you? I would love to meet them.” He thought about it for a while and shrugged. It seemed that he hadn’t really considered this option. I continued, “I mean, even if you want to have [his girlfriend] here, that’s fine. That would be great!” I let him just think about it, and hoped he would trust us, his family, that it would all be okay.

He did. We have tried it a couple of times. The first time, I was very nervous. I wanted it to go well. I wanted what I think of as normalcy. A strange kind of normalcy that is actually extremely self-aware, but that’s okay. It’s okay to be fully aware of what you want. There is no other way, ironically, that our family can have “typical” family life. We are just too vigilant. But — that is now who we are, what we are used to.

And it is so clear to me now what is important. A kind of happy, sloppy fatigue that comes from making that effort for your kids. You get that from the chaotic, jumbled, social knots of new people in your house. I have really missed that, without knowing it.

The thing is, I have grown up as my kids have grown up. I, like them, am ready for that now. So now we are trying things, having people over, sending Nat off with others. It’s making our life expand, and it’s making me aware of new possibilities, some which don’t even have a shape yet. But the promise of my boys’ (and my) growth lies waiting, like an unopened present.

Max decided to give it a try. “Really?” I asked. “She’s coming over here?“

She walked in, totally adorable. Sweet, young, beautiful, happy. There was a moment, when they were upstairs, I checked on them, and I saw they were just playing wildly and very silly with the Wii. Door — open. Strange to hear a girl’s laugh in our house, but really nice, too.

Nat was downstairs smiling. He seemed happy about it all, too. Ben was his usual very busy, hyper-focused self. I was very tired all of a sudden. So I just lay down on my bed for a few minutes, feeling very, very full and deeply content. Although very little was actually happening, it seemed to me like something really momentous was going on in our house.

Strange and wonderful to only have Beastie home with us. Max is at a party, and Nat is with his gang at a fancy Italian restaurant. He was so excited to be going, he has been talking about it since yesterday. He loves that group, and going places Friday nights with them. It’s all kids: high school and college age (those are the chaperones). It is a brilliant venture, and the organization has been in operation for years so they really know what they are doing. Nat has been participating in things like this since he was around 9 or 10, but this is a teen group. It is the first time he doesn’t get dropped off at a center, but rather, there are vans to take the kids to all sorts of events like Monster golf, laser tag, video game arcades, restaurants, movies. There’s a girl whom he seems to really like, and who sat next to him as they got in the van. Right away he turned to us and said, “Mommy and Daddy will leave.” What could be better than that?

So we did go. We went with Bii to try a Korean/Japanese BBQ place that opened recently downtown. I had fed Beast beforehand, knowing he would not even try a bite of it. (He had delicious fluffy scrambled eggs.) Ned and I had sushi and other good eaties. After that, a coffee and cookie. Ned showed Benj how to make a star out of wooden coffee stirrers (something each child of ours has enjoyed).

When we got home, Ned read to Ben while I danced. I had a lot of practicing to do because of my two very demanding classes. In both we are learning the absolute most correct form for doing hip drops and hip lifts. Of course the key is staying extremely lifted, insanely stretched out in the torso; the other key is to keep the back knee bent the entire time so that your “high-heel” foot does not move. That way only the one hip moves and you get that eerie isolated- body-parts look that bellydancers get. I put on my best (purple velvet) cossie and practiced. It looked pretty good. I am now pleasantly tired, ensconced in my fat yellow armchair, feeling lulled by Ned’s low voice upstairs. Soon we’ll watch a little Seinfeld or stand-up until our teenagers come home.

Yesterday was the hearing at the State House for the use of aversives in the State of Massachusetts. I could not attend, because of appointments, but The Globe has a front page story about it, with a photo of my very own State Rep. Jeff Sanchez hugging his nephew, who is a Judge Rotenberg Center student, claiming that the JRC saved the boy’s life. The boy’s father reportedly pleaded that if the school is closed, his son goes home and he cannot do that.

I find myself completely stymied by that testimony. I am looking into residential placement for Nat at a behavioral school, but one where they use positive reinforcement, not electric shock therapy. Is that because I have found the right place, the right people, and my State Rep’s family have not? Or is it that the Sanchez’ situation is just so different from mine, that I have no idea? But don’t I? What about my friends, who had had the police to their house several times because they could not handle an aggressive autistic child? Do I know how difficult life can get with the behaviors that can arise with the challenges from severe autism? Or do I not know? I am asking honestly. I hear stories about the most minor infractions that end with a shock, and that these are justified because if you give in an inch the kid will not understand and will take a mile? The article gives as an example a girl who repeatedly pulls her own hair, and how she receives a shock to her hand even if her hand is just “close” to her head. Sometimes a so-called “antecedent” is actually something else. Isn’t anyone concerned about the error that people can make when observing other people’s behaviors? What if the girl had a dry, itchy scalp from the winter weather? Is the staff savvy enough to tell a pull from a scratch?

How can that be the way to do things? By using shock therapy you instill terror in the person; is this what we are reduced to, as a society? Difficulty = simple solution of violence? Ends justify means?

I am also angered by the assumption The Globe makes implicitly about how this shock therapy is somehow preferable to the use of psychotropic medication. Actually, the psychotropic drug Risperdal has had some very good research backing up its uses as a buffer against aggressive behavior, and its major side effect is weight gain, rather than burns or psychological trauma. Why is there so much skepticism about medication use, but not nearly as much skepticism on the part of my Legislature and The Globe about something as patently horrific as electric shock for even the most minor of infractions?

In terms of the incident where two students were shocked and shocked repeatedly, dozens of times, as the result of a prank, the founder of the school Dr. Matthew Israel says in the Globe article that this was his, “9/11.” How terrible for him. What, then, was it like for those burned boys?

I am so sad about this. Why my state Legislature cannot find their ass from their elbow, and ban the use of aversives is beyond me. Some things should not be tolerated. Dr. Israel is wrong and shock therapy should be banned.

We had our entire duct system thoroughly cleaned a day ago, by a really great company. They were fantastic. Apparently our ducts have not been cleaned in years, certainly not in the 7 1/2 years we’ve lived in that monstrosity we call home. They came out with old Legos, toys, socks, all kinds of crazy things, back from the days that Nat enjoyed throwing everything he could down our Byzantine floor heating units. Even after this activity no longer enthralled, he continued to pursue it because of how much it bugged Ben.

So this is why, night after night, for years, but more acutely this year, I have been having trouble breathing at night. Our air has been filthy. You put the heat on, and dust puffs out onto the floor, immediately. And with someone as wimpily allergic as I am, this is a terrible situation. It’s just that I have been in denial over my dust allergies. Who wants dust allergies? It means either you have to clean more, take antihistimines, or suffer. Needless to say, I don’t want to do any of that.

Truly, there is nothing as terrific as clearing the air, literally and metaphorically. I have now had two wonderful nights of cough-free, itchy-throat-less sleep. (Also, I dreamt that I was a Middle Eastern Studies grad student and I woke up thinking, “Hmmmm.” I could, at very least, take Arabic at Harvard Extension or something like that. )

I am a real believer in the air power-cleaning, otherwise known as the confrontation. I am sitting in Boston Volvo right now because I told them honestly how I felt about being greeted with the “ABS system in need of service check” message every time I drive The Amazon. It seems that every time I go over a little patch of ice, she feels it is necessary to tell me, “Oh, my, I may have skidded, and I had to use my anti-lock brakes, I’m not at all sure that is what you wanted from me.” Why would such a large, powerful, beautiful creature be so self-conscious, and lack so much confidence? Why indeed.

So two weeks later, after Boston Volvo told me “not to worry,” the light came on again. Instead of driving around with a Lego on my dashboard to block unfavorable messages (like I used to do when I drove Fat Boy, my Jeep Grand Cherokee, a car that I absolutely hated; if you get one, you have only yourself to blame), I called Boston Volvo and pretty much made them see The Amazon today. And now I’m sitting at a salesman’s desk blogging. And I feel great. Also because I’m still under warranty. And all my Legos went down the drain — er, the vent.

You go to work
You be a jerk
You do your job
You do it right:
T.V. tonight!
–Frank Zappa

Now that I’ve mailed off Dirt: A Story of Gardening, Mothering, and a Mid-life Crisis, I feel myself walking close to huge pockets of time; that huge void is threatening to open up. There is no rest; I hate rest. I’ll rest when I’m dead. I want to work. I was raised to work, work, work for everything. From the time I could stay by myself, I was a babysitter. I worked in a movie theatre selling (and eating) popcorn and candy. I waitressed at restaurants and country clubs. I had work/study in college.

And now, my work is an odd mixture of housework, boycare, volunteer stuff, teaching, and writing. Not enough of any one thing. Not enough big blocks of time to expand any of them.

So I tried to get a part-time job at my favorite clothing and home furnishings store, Anthropologie. The interview was great, I was assured they were “so hiring,” and then I filled out the online “opinion survey” set up by the corporate headquarters. Beware corporate headquarters. Somewhere in there I displeased someone. Or maybe I am too old to represent their demographic? Me, with my closet full of Anthro clothes, my house decor of the same. I have a scary knowledge of their products and how their stores are laid out. I get my friends to shop and buy there. Yet, somehow, I was not right for the job. Eeek. That stung.

I heard a similar story about CVS Pharmacy from a dear old friend. Her “high-functioning” autistic son walks to their CVS all the time; it was his first independent outing. He stocks shelves there at a school program. He knows and loves CVS and their products better than anyone I know, knows it like he knows his own bedroom, or better yet, like he knows the train routes. You know what I’m talking about. And yet this wonderful young man cannot get hired there because everyone must fill out the corporate questionnaire, which has statements like, “I work well with people” to which you answer yes or no.

This dear boy does not know how to lie. He knows he does not work well with people. He works well in the stockroom. As long as everything is operating according to expectations (toaster in cafeteria working, and as long as you don’t say one particular kind of statement to him, he will do beautifully. But he cannot answer “correctly” because he cannot be imprecise.

Which made me wonder: what does “reasonable accommodation” mean? Is it only about building ramps, low toilets and reserving parking spaces, or is it also about training your staff and your corporate survey-makers in the particular ins and outs of neurological differences? This is an able young man who has overcome tremendous behavioral and sensory difficulties (bolting, tantrums, undressing in public) to be the responsible, sweet young adult he is. But he can’t get hired by CVS.

We need employers to understand that “accommodation” can mean many different things in today’s world of well-educated autistics and the college-degree-holding cognitively disabled. If little kids can be trained to work next to their atypically developing peers to the point where they barely bat an eye at a guy who flaps in class, why can’t the business leaders of today get a clue? I don’t need that job at Anthropologie, but my young friend really does need to be able to work at places he is trained to work in. For now, that might mean he has to be trained to lie on a job questionnaire. Stupidly ironic, isn’t it?

Total whiteout outside. Last night we heard we were going to get 8″ – 12″ of snow and by evening, our superintendent had already canceled school. This was a very good thing, I felt, because I had made a terrible glitch on Nat’s calendar: I had thought that today was MLK day, because actually tomorrow is MLK’s real birthday (Happy Birthday, Martin! I wish he were still alive. I remember when he was shot. I was in kindergarten and the principal announced it on the loudspeaker. I remember thinking, “But I thought we don’t have a king!” And indeed, we no longer did.).

So I had written, “No School, Martin Luther King Day.” And yesterday, Nat kept insisting that there would be no school tomorrow because of that. I went over to his calendar to show him that MLK Day is next week, but there, in my chicken scrawl, it said, “No School, Martin Luther King Day” on today! D’oh, D’oh, D’oh! Addled Mommy strikes again! No amount of apologizing would change Nat’s mind or attitude. He was hopping mad about it. I even rewrote it on his calendar, in the correct space, and he picked up the pen, and crossed it out, saying, “NOOOO.”

Nevertheless, Nat had a terrific time at the MLK tournament (yes, MLK, another reason I was confused!). He is a great team member, provided you don’t require your team members to either catch the ball or throw the ball. But if you want a team member who is always where the action is and smiling his face off, Nat is your man.

He will run and run and run,
His face shining like the sun
up and down the court,
Among those boys he is short!
Arms in the air,
Completely without a care
He is Basketball Man
Though nary a ball gets in those hands.

His candle goes out when he is called out. He hates sitting back down.

And so, I woke up at 4:17 a.m. thinking of snow and Nat. I looked outside and the street was black with rain. “Stupid!” I muttered, about Superintendent Chicken Little (whom I actually hired, and whom I like, in reality).

But then, while sleeping a little more,
I thought I heard a distant roar
that was — for once — not my Ned’s snore.
And I knew that the plows were coming, for sure.

When I looked out the window, a gorgeous heavy snow was falling. Nat came down fully dressed as if it were a holiday. To us, it is.

Yesterday was fantastic. I could tell that it warmish outside because the grass actually looks greener (literally on on the other side of the fence: my neighbors all have better lawns than we do). I packed my gym bag but I thought, maybe, maybe… and sure enough my car thermometer read 42 degrees. If I put up my hoodie hood and pulled the sleeves over my hands…? The Reservoir looked beautiful in that winter ghostly way, with a white surface, empty of birds. I parked in my usual spot and took a three mile run. The air did not hurt going in, and by the third mile I could undo my hood. There was almost no one there, an added bonus (no distractions). I felt powerful and healthy.

I spent a lot of the day right here, diningroom table, finishing my Dirt manuscript. Well, I guess it is done, at least this round of editing. Every time I open it to a random place and read it, I like what I see and I don’t feel the need to change anything, so that tells me I am done. 80,000 words, 279 pages. And no, (dear Matt), it is nothing like Danielle Steele, it is more Sue Miller meets Mark Haddon meets Curtis Sittenfeld meets Nick Hornby. Meet Susan Senator. This book, I promise you, is worth reading. I have read and reread it countless times and I’m still not bored of it, and I’m a tough crowd to please, believe me.

Nat had a swim with his buddy, which went fairly well (the Brookline pool is always too cold) and then they walked to Starbucks. Max was at his friend’s house learning D & D. Ben spent hours writing a script and designing characters to a game he is making. All three boys = happy.

So I was free to do more stuff. I bought coffee downtown and a new bok, the new Sue Miller as a matter of fact. I got home and all was well, so I worked on my lesson plan for the Care for the Caregiver workshop. I did this into the evening, making three pages of bellydance instruction and accompanying songs.

We went out to dinner, all five of us, at Zaftig’s, which works best en famille, because of the huge menu, breakfast all day long, and excellent wait staff. Only one meltdown, this time it was Ben, over where he would get to sit.

Max helped me burn the music for my class CD and I printed out a lovely jewel case cover listing the songs. I have over an hour’s worth of appropriate music for the class. I also organized all my hipscarves and veils (I have about 14 each) and realized my new silver zills are truly lost. 🙁 Ned said he’d get me a new set.

By the time everyone was in bed and Ned and I had time to ourselves, all I could do was lie down against his chest while he watched Dave Letterman on the Tivo. I tried to stay awake but I was so comfortable that I fell asleep, and slept until it was time to go to bed!

Nat’s basketball tournament is today!

The language of a family is unique and fascinating. By living together and by sharing a collection of genes and experiences, you learn to speak each other’s language. Most humans — and indeed, many animals in general — have the capacity to read each other. Some are more adept than others.

I had always loved reading and figuring people out. I was a communication major at the Annenberg School at Penn, and there we mostly studied how people interact, all the various modes and media. But even before that, I prided myself on my ability to decipher others’ minds. My parents were probably my first “projects.” They have always fascinated me, because they are like me, and then again, they are completely themselves. Sure, you could say that my deep interest in understanding my parents sprung from a kind of Freudian survival instinct; who doesn’t need to be in sync with their parents during childhood?

My connection with Mom and Dad continued into adulthood because they have continued to be full-fledged people in their own right. They have their own lives that they are still leading, and a marriage that has so far lasted 50 years (on the 25th). And they have their own language, complete with history, baggage, and jokes that they have shared with me, somewhat. I feel that I know so well how they think that I can imitate them and predict certain of their reactions.

Dad and I have always played a game called “opposites,” ever since I came home in first grade describing this bit of curriculum I had learned. It started out with Dad giving me fun little quizzes like, “What is the opposite of up?” That kind of thing. But, like other family interactions, this opposite game took on a life of its own. One time, on his way back from work, Dad reported that he almost went off the road laughing because he had finally nailed an opposite to “Yassir Arafat:” No Ma’am, I’m Skinny. It goes like this: Yas = No; Sir = Ma’am;
Ara [You’re] = I’m; Fat = Skinny. You may think you understand this now, and maybe you get the basics, but there is also so much family history here. Like the fact that many of Dad’s opposites are about historic figures, particulary World War I and forward. Dad is a historian. But also, he is fascinated/obsessed with certain questions in history like “How could the world have let the Holocaust happen?” It is personally and also intellectually interesting to him.

Mom, who is kind of a walking encyclopedia, almost always can provide Dad with the accuracy checks. They are perfectly paired, in some ways.

I am not doing this subject justice. Thinking about Dad and Mom and their way of thinking just makes me laugh and laugh, a love-filled laugh. I think you know what I mean. Maybe you know your own dad this way or your mom, or your sibling. Here, I will try to give you an example of the most recent set of opposites that came my way. They exemplify Mom and Dad’s obsession with breads, eating, not eating too much, history, etc.

See if you can get any of these Bakery Goods.

1- an ordinary German citizen of the pre World War 1 era/to remain stable at sea
2- girl/guy
3- treat people harshly/five dollar bill
4- ally/throw/she/i’m not surprised
5- mom/under
6- buck/very sane person (slang)
7- very speedy runner
8- worker/ounce–speaks softly–ear

Last night I had my Prozac dream, which I have not had in such a long time. It is odd because I am now reducing my dosage, so you would think that I would not have that dream. My Prozac dream is of a place I call “The City,” for want of a better description. Years ago, when I was in the throes of therapy, grieving, OCD, growing up (even though I was in my early thirties), and all sorts of other mean-and-nasty things, I dreamed about The City all the time, and its various neighborhoods.

The City is probably not a real place, but — to utterly remove all the magic from it for a moment — a collage of places I’ve been to and then some. Its urban part is like Philadelphia (especially the South Street neighborhood, and also the subway system); its excellent shopping district is like Harvard Square the way it used to be ante-Starbuckum, pre-chain boutique; and like Paris. There is store after store of antique, Fin-de-Siecle gowns, jewels, etc., which actually fit me. There is also a mall that is kind of low-rent but has its fun stores, too; some kind of department store with tons of great sweaters.

There is also a very bad neighborhood in The City. It is very close to the subway area, and sometimes it is the subway itself: extremely complicated with gears and machinery that can actually kill you if you don’t understand how the mechanism works. The worst part of The City is this area that is very much like West Philly, where I used to live when I went to Penn. Only West Philly was not this way, in reality. It only looked this way. I never had anything bad happen to me in the five years I lived there; just a lot of run-ins with very interesting people who somehow were always interested in me (like the man who sat down with my friends and me in a booth at the McDonald’s on 40th and Walnut (?) or Chestnut (?) and tried to be a part of our conversation and the three other young men I was with froze in fear (one was Ned). Eventually the guy leaned in and said, “Tell ‘er I said ‘hi'” and left. Another time, a different man sat down with us at our booth there and was much more animated. When I said, “Ned, I want those fries!” the guy yells out, “Don’t be so selfish!” At which point the four of us made a mad dash out of there. Another time there was the guy at the movie Witness, who interrupted every scene every few minutes and we were scared of him, too, and it turned out he was a midget. And when we got outside of the theatre, several blocks away, Philadelphia was on fire, but never mind…)

The bad part of The City is not populated with interesting homeless men; it is full of gangs and killers. So whenever I get lost in that part of The City it is sure to be a bad dream.

The best part of The City is the part that leads to the seashore. You have to go through these beautiful wooded trails to get there, and you are almost there when you get to this amazing resort. This place is psycho-gorgeous, over-the-top fun. This resort puts The Atlantis to shame. There are indoor pools with slides that turn you upside down! Pools with ball pits, somehow! Outdoor pools with multi-level waterfalls you can slide down!

After the resort you eventually go down winding beach roads that lead to an area where there are cliffs. This is the most beautiful ocean vista you have ever seen. I mean, up there above and beyond the beauty of Ocean Drive leading to Coast Guard Beach on Cape Cod. But like that. But the cliffs. Well, the cliffs. The thing is, every now and then the ocean in The City rises up over those cliffs, huge waves, impossible to predict. Then the dream is scary again.

Last night I was only at the resort, and having the time of my life. I was going to head out to the ocean anyway, despite the danger, but I woke up before I got there.

Sometimes what I think is that The City is kind of like an uber-world, a bit like C.S. Lewis’ real Narnia, which you learn about in The Last Battle, the last Narnia book, a world that was somehow more real than the world we are all in, but you could only get there in certain ways somewhat beyond your control. I don’t know what makes me visit The City, I only know that I wish and wish that I could really be there, even with all of its fearful parts.

I don’t want to talk about what I think The City really is because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone, especially me. I’m just happy to have been there last night, and that I had the good sense not to go all the way to the cliff.

I am having an incredibly good day. First of all, it was really warm! The snow has been reduced to ashen gray piles here and there with brown crackly leaves sticking out of them. Mud is everywhere. The sky has strange light; even Max commented on it!

And, aside from getting that workshop flyer finalized, I also had a class tonight with Melina, a teacher I’ve had before (a year ago), and I had forgotten how great she is! She is so bubbly and positive and lovely. Her style is Greco-Turkish, which is a little different from the Egyptian/Arabic style I love, which I’ve been learning (and will continue to learn with my pal Najmat). Greco-Turkish is a bit more wild and less straight up-and-down than the Egyptian. It seems a bit more suited to my body and my personality. You wear flowing skirts and fringed belts rather than the straight stretchy skirts. You can imagine dancing around a fire with a sword on your head with this style.

(And, by the way, I bought a real, curved sword while in San Juan, from a fantastic bellydance shop. I practiced with it in the store and the shopkeeper was quite impressed! It should arrive any day and that will be a whole new dimension in my practicing.)

She also makes class interesting by throwing in tidbits of Greek culture, Goddess references, and all with the same happy demeanor. She never criticizes or singles anyone out; she keeps everyone laughing but working very, very hard. We had bent knees and ultra-straight backs for long minutes at a time, practicing slow, controlled knee shimmies and also alternating hip lifts. The class was packed, and no wonder. We ended with a traveling step back and forth, and this looked really good en masse. We moved to the song, “Simarik,” by Tarkan. It is a great dance song, that starts with a kiss and periodically has the kiss sounds punctuating the ends of the phrases.

On another front, I have been very busing writing. I am nearly done editing Dirt: A Story of Gardening, Mothering, and a Midlife Crisis, (my novel) and so I will be sending it back to my agent for her to give it a final read before shopping it around! I absolutely love how it came out. I love the characters so much I don’t want the book to be done because I’ll miss them! It is just the kind of book I like to read, and I now think it is one of the strongest, loveliest things I’ve ever written.

And just now, quite incongruously, I had a gut-busting, pants-peeing laugh with Ned about this blog post he came across. (I hope no one is offended; I just think typos, etc. are so funny.) Ned and I first got together over having a similar sense of humor, and that, my friends, is the best adhesive a marriage can have!