By: Cyndi Whitmore

Last night I was reading with Daija, and after a few rounds of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom she got out another favorite… Grandfather Twilight. I read it to her once and then she flipped through a few pages. On the last page, the dog and cat pictured in the story are curled up asleep. She said to them ‘Good night… I love you…’ then kissed them/the book. When I read it to her again, on the first page you see the door to Grandfather Twilight’s house in the trees, and she reached over and put her fist on it. I asked her if she was knocking, and then she knocked. I ask her sometimes if she can identify objects (where is the moon, where is the cat), after she pointed out to me ‘him glasses’ a couple months ago (there is a picture where the book he’s reading at the beginning of the story is placed on a table with the glasses he was wearing on top). So anyway, instead of asking her to identify objects, I asked her on the next page, what G.T. was doing, expecting her to say something about him reading. She answered ‘him sit chair’ and so I asked ‘What is he doing in the chair?’ and she said ‘him read story’ babble babble ‘him cat’ (cat was curled up on the back of the chair). In the next two pages G.T. unlocks a chest and takes out a pearl, and she told me ‘him lock’ ‘ him keys’ and ‘him open.’ Then the story continues without words and he walks through the forest to the beach, with this pearl growing each step. He releases it into the sky above the water. At this page, Daija reached out and pretended to snatch the big pearl from the sky and said ‘gimme my moon.’ I asked her if she wanted the moon, and she pretended to snatch it again and claimed it as ‘her’ moon. Then the story shows G.T. walking home, and when he approaches his house in the trees, Daija reaches out her fist again, and I realize that she was not knocking… she’s pretending to open the door. She is developing such an imagination!

By: Ann Brown

This is our four-year anniversary, Molly and me. As you know, I adopted her from the animal shelter on the day Michelle Kwan dropped out of the Olympics so the Winter Olympics will always remind me of my dog.

Speaking of which, where IS Michelle K? I haven’t seen her in the stands at the Pacific Coliseum, so unless she is being hidden from the camera by the obscuring presence of that ridiculous bong-totin’ galoot, Michael Phelps, I guess she’s not in Vancouver. I hope she is okay. I hope she is doing better – four years later – than Molly is right now.

Poor Molly. She is not doing great. She’s old, lame and incapable of sleeping for more than two hours at a time. I am back to living the life of a new mommy – up every hour, stumbling and lurching my way towards the back door to let Molly out and then falling asleep on the kitchen counter while I wait for her to come back. Not that I put my newborns out in the back yard to pee while I slept on the kitchen counter, no sireeee. I stayed awake back then. And had headaches all the time. And I was very bitchy. Very bitchy. In fact, Robin once said to me, “I guess the beauty of you being a bitch every day is that no one will ever accuse you of having PMS.”

And now, almost thirty years later, here I am back in the world of the sleep-deprived, only without a baby. In fact, come to think of it, I am the one who sleeps like a baby these days, not Molly:  I wake up every two hours, cry, and then eat until I fall asleep again. All night long. If my pants get any tighter, I am going to have to take to wearing those stretchy Onesies with the snaps on the crotch.

It’s totally fucked up that at the two stages of life when everyone around us most needs their rest – babyhood and infirm old age – we are the worst sleepers. And exhausting the people who are in charge of our very survival is probably not the smartest thing to do. Robin once put that red-hued, gum-numbing medicine in our son’s nose because he was too tired to keep his eyes open while taking his turn soothing our teething baby.  He did it, like, four times during the night and when I saw the poor kid in the morning, he looked like Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler.  My friend Julie once got her baby’s toe fungus medicine mixed up with the pink-eye medicine.  You’d think that squirting toe fungus ointment into your baby’s eyes would sober one into paying closer attention, but it just so happens that a few years later, Julie ignored her daughter’s complaints about boogers bothering her nose -ignored her for days – before realizing that the booger in there was actually one of Julie’s pearl earrings.  Oh, and my friend Wade once left his newborn baby in the car after dropping off his wife at a restaurant before he went searching for a free parking place. Which was five blocks away. Which was where he left the car – and the baby – and sprinted to the restaurant, ready to enjoy a nice dinner. Until his wife asked him where the baby was. I bet after that, it wasn’t such a nice dinner with the wife.

I was halfway through a vitamin C tablet at four o’clock this morning while waiting for Molly to finish peeing outside before I realized that it wasn’t a vitamin C tablet at all; it was seven Wheat Thins with Laughing Cow cheese on them. Okay, well, I guess I knew about that, but who can blame me? When you are tired, you do not make good decisions.

I’ve been through this before. Blacky was an old cat, and for most of her life she needed nothing from us. The kids found her when we lived in LA – she was a stray; self-sufficient and completely independent. It was a relationship that knew no demands. When we moved to Oregon, Blacky came with us and adjusted to her new life by settling herself in the upstairs of our new house and never setting foot outside – or downstairs – again.

By the end of her life, I hated Blacky.  I loved her, too, because sometimes even after she’d shit on my carpet and barfed up a bloody hairball in my bed, and even after we had to have all her teeth extracted  (to the tune of a thousand dollars) so all she could eat was baby food, I could still look at that dainty cat face of hers and feel my heart stretch out and soften. But I was exhausted all the time and she cried all night long. She needed a spoonful of food at 3 AM, and then another spoonful at 3:30 and then she pooped and then she meowed that mournful, primal meow for about a half hour.

I used to lie in bed and listen to her calls. Murr-ahow it began, in a soft guttural clearing of her throat. Murr-OHWHW it crescendo-ed, louder and more alien, but I pretended not to hear her. Once, I swear, she jumped on my bed and over-articulated her meows right into my ear, the way we speak loudly and slowly to non-English speakers. Me-ow. Do-you-understand-this, you idiot American human? ME-OW.

A few years ago I complained to my mom about how Blacky was taking over my life. “It’s not worth it, you’re exhausted” she said. “Put her to sleep. You need your sleep.”

I was aghast. My mom just laughed.  “Oh, come on. Stick a little poison in some brisket and give it to her. She’ll eat it right up.”  I didn’t know if she was joking or not.

But either way, I still make sure my mom eats the first bite of her brisket at Passover. I mean, I used to keep Mom up a lot when I was a baby. She might be holding a grudge.

By: Ann Brown

I may have mentioned I have this little, er, quirk wherein I imagine kicking the butt of a man near me. As I said before, I believe this is solely a function of wondering about my own strength and not a sign of any latent violent tendencies within me. Still, I am not unaware of the reaction my confession evokes. I see you scooting your chairs away from me as you read this.

And I feel a need to explain myself.

I read somewhere that the most important thing women over fifty can do to keep themselves healthy is stretch every day. As a woman over fifty, I generally discard the advice I read because so much of it  centers around changing my negative attitude about aging and, frankly, my negative attitude about aging is all I have left of my youth so I want to hold on to it.

But this stretching thing got me to thinking. They’re right. We rarely stretch ourselves. We don’t use all we’ve got.

After The Revolution, when we all live on my commune in side-by-side yurts and grow hemp, stretching ourselves to our limits will be a regular part of daily life. I mean, just chopping wood and folk dancing to the water hole will fulfill the 10,000 steps a day quota that the makers of New Lifestyles pedometers warn we all need to stave off premature death. And I bet our children would be perfectly well- behaved because after a day of using up all they’ve got, they’d be tired. In fact, we’d all be tired. The good tired. Not the tired I usually am, bitchy and distracted by afternoon, licking the morning coffee grounds from the compost pail for a buzz, and updating my list of transgressions the world has committed against me (most recent: water in my ear that is making me dizzy when I look down to type. Ow.)

I took a lot of dance classes in college. Mexican couples dances, Indonesian Gamelan dancing, Greek dancing, every day was filled with dance classes. (Note to the college bound: be an Ethnology of Non-Western Music and Dance major. Totally rocks. And when you graduate, the world will offer you a smorgasbord of jobs. Bitchin jobs. Like, once I sang Jewish folk songs in a maximum security prison in Tracy, California. Try to land that gig with a degree in, say, medicine.)

What was my point?

Oh, right. Dance classes. At the end of a day, I was wonderfully, satisfyingly, deliciously spent. I slept like a log (as opposed to these days when I sleep like a baby: wake up every two hours and cry until I eat). I believe that when we move to the commune, there will be no fighting, no bitchiness, no whining, no interrupted sleep because we will all – children, adults, parents – be well used up. Also, because we can smoke our hemp tunics when life gets stressful.

But in modern life, here in suburbia, we live such contained lives. We have to share armrests in movie theaters. We have to refrain from jumping onto the moving clothes rack at the dry cleaners and taking a ride. We are not even allowed to finger wrestle prospective employers when they shake our hands. And we are left with a bunch of leftover energy that has nowhere to go. We are left wondering just how strong, fast, loud, obnoxious, fearless and mighty we can be.

So I check out the men in my classes. I take in their upper body strength, the contour of their forearms, their overall look and I fantasize bopping them on the nose, kneeing their groins and, occasionally, swinging them over my head and twirling them round and round like Brutus used to do to Popeye before the can of spinach magically appeared.  I have no reason to feel threatened by men. I’ve never been in a situation that would warrant a need to hurt them or get away fast. Well, once a guy forgot to pay me for a parenting consult but he remembered as soon as he got home and he came back. With a ten dollar tip, as apology. No need to break his kneecaps.

My point being, there is no rational reason to fantasize about this. And, let’s be honest, unless a man was in the middle of a serious heart attack, I’d probably not be the victor. I mean, I am no weakling but my 45 minute daily stroll in the park with my dog and the occasional foray into Curves isn’t gonna get the job done against a forty-something dad. I suppose I could just sit on him and that would be that, but I am too vain to use my weight as a weapon because what if he lived, and told everyone, “she fucking sat on me and she weighs a ton. I thought I was dead” and then the papers would sleuth out my actual weight and report it and, yikes. Yikes.

Still, I crave real-life experience. Tae-Bo with TV Billy Blanks in my bedroom is like practice- kissing your pillow, you know? So with my late-fifties around the corner, I am going to do a little more stretching in my life.

I believe I will begin by reaching over my computer to that glass of wine.

Ow, my ear. Damn it.

.

.

Ann Brown

By: Tanya Ward Goodman

My Mom is headed back to New Mexico.  A couple of hours ago, she walked through a set of airport sliding doors, the sunlight turning her silver hair to a spill of mercury down her back.  In almost no time, she will walk out a similar set of sliding doors into the cold, dark evening of Albuquerque.  This morning, she gasped at the beauty of a flowering acacia, each yellow bud like a fairy’s powder puff, and tonight, she might slip and fall on the icy walk to her front door.

Because it’s still winter where my mother lives, we spent the last five days in search of spring.  At Descanso Gardens in La Canada, winter and spring are just beginning the changing of the guard.  Spent camellias fall to the ground, some still bright as blood, others the brownish color of a squeezed tea bag, while in the big flower beds, tulips nudge their green noses toward the light.

Mom brings her binoculars wherever we go and pauses to stare off in the direction of a particularly interesting tweet or whir.  If she waits long enough, looks hard enough, a bird will appear where at first glance there was only a tangle of bare branches.  We see a Spotted Towhee doing a little jitterbug in the fallen leaves. Mom tells me that the little bird with the brilliant red wings was once known as the Rufus Towhee.

“It drives me crazy when things change,” she says.

Her and me both.  But what can we do?

Mom has been visiting me in Los Angeles for nearly eighteen years, though if I asked her to drive us around, she would look at me as though I asked her to tour the unfamiliar terrain of Mars.  She loves L.A, but is often overwhelmed by it and so over the course of all of these years, we have found a kind of familiar route for her visits.  Despite our best efforts at keeping things constant, we can’t seem to stop things from changing.  When I pick her up at the airport, we almost always go directly to the Rose Café in Venice where she has the quiche and I have the poached salmon.  After lunch, we take a peek at the gift shop and then we walk to the beach.  Mom’s legs are bothering her and so on our last trip to the beach, we did not walk across the sand to the water’s edge, but instead stayed on the sidewalk and looked out at the sea.  Years ago, we might have walked a mile or more, stopping to pick up stones or watch a particularly silly seagull.

We always make a trip to a nursery, even if only to visit the plants.  We like the Sunset Nursery in Silverlake with its cramped aisles and proximity to Pioneer Chicken.  We’ve never eaten the chicken, but it’s funny when the wind shifts and the aroma of scented geraniums or mint mixes suddenly with fried chicken. Lincoln Nursery in Pasadena is wonderful because of their wall of Italian seed packets and vast array of ceramic pots and a trip to Theodore Payne is almost like returning to New Mexico, so drastic is the change in landscape from Los Feliz to Sun Valley.  Over the years, Mom chose plants for pots on the porch of my first apartment and helped transform the weed-choked yard of another apartment into an approximation of an English garden.  She encouraged me to buy a butterfly bush and to start composting.  On this most recent visit, my son harvested little carrots from our raised beds and put them into Mom’s hand and she laughed and showed him how to rub the dirt from the orange root.

Antique stores are another staple in a typical Mom Visit itinerary.  In the past, we’ve wandered the streets of Orange, and Ventura ducking in and out of crowded antique malls until we couldn’t handle the sight of one more Bauer bowl.   On this trip, we headed to Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, where in four blocks, we found Japanese table lamps just like the ones on my Grandma’s side table (marked at $800!), enamel Catherine Holm bowls like the ones in my kitchen cabinet and a life-sized wax figure of an elderly man asleep in a wheelchair.  His price wasn’t marked, and so I said “hello,” before I realized he wasn’t real.

As at the garden and the nursery, we reach out to touch a beautiful thing.  Mom and I spent the last five days running our fingers over leaves, leaning in to smell flowers or cupping our hands around a perfectly round ceramic pitcher.

“I’ve got enough to last until the snow melts,” Mom said when I dropped her at the airport  “I think I can make it, now.”

The light is fading now as I write and when I look out the window, the big Sycamore in my neighbor’s yard looks like an ink drawing, it’s bare branches stark against a bright pink sky.  Mom’s plane is just landing and as she makes her way out into the cold, the last five days will be tucked inside her heart like a tight bud waiting to unfurl.

Tanya Ward Goodman also writes at http://youdearestyou.blogspot.com and http://twgoodman.blogspot.com

By: Ann Brown

Well, it’s all over but for hockey. And downhill. And short track. Oh, and the closing ceremony. But women’s figure skating is finished so there’s really nothing left for me. I feel pretty sure that my exit from televised Olympic coverage won’t be noticed; I mean, I get it – I get it – that life does go on without me although when I stopped watching “Deadliest Catch”, Captain Phil died. I’m just saying.

All in all, I was underwhelmed by Olympic figure skating this year. My mind wandered during most of the event. Oh, I started out glued to the tube, of course, but after a few seconds it suddenly seemed extremely important that I get a tangerine. Or check my emails. During the short programs I even hand stitched a hem in my beige pants, so unglued to the television was I.

I did perk up, however, when a Canadian won anything because I got to sing along with their national anthem. I know all the lyrics, you know, having spent a summer in the wilds of Quebec.

It was the summer of, approximately, 1972 and I took off to be a counselor for an Outward Bound kind of deal in Canada. If you know me at all, you would know that if given the choice between leading a camping trip and pouring hot tar up my nose, I’d reach for the tar and start snorting – and doin’ it, as they say in Quebec, TOOT SWEET. It would take a court order to force me to camp for an entire summer but I was following something stronger than the law: I was following a boyfriend. I am an outdoorsy sort of person in only the loosest definition of the term: I like being tan. I love the whole back-to-nature, outdoorsy experience of getting tan – the comfy chaise lounge, the paperback novel, mango iced tea, the way my silver bangles look against my sun-kissed arms as I dip my chip into guacamole and reach for another mojito. You know, nature.

Clearly, I was a natural for the counselor gig. Heaven help the kids whose survival was to depend on moi that summer. Thank God my boyfriend, Chris, and my friends, Donny and Joanie, were waaay more skilled in camping than I, in that Donny could play all of Jessie Colin Young’s songs on his guitar, Joanie knew how to batik and Chris brought pot. It was going to be fine.

As it turned out, the campers didn’t need us for their survival. Or much else. They were pretty much a self-sufficient group, many of them, ironically, having actually been court-ordered to the program. My job, basically, was to wake them up at the crack of o’ dark hundred and get them gathering and chopping firewood for breakfast, and even at that small task I was not a stellar success with those kids. They ignored me, they mocked me, one young man responded to my daily request that he get up and find the  wood for the morning, by showing me his penis and saying, “hey, Ann, I got your morning wood right here.” I only recently got the joke.

But we could sing. And sing we did every morning upon arising.

“Oh Canada, our home and native land.…”

I sang loudly, feeling a rush of militant activism. Those were challenging years for the two of us – America and me- those Nixon/Agnew years, and I was pissed off most of the time. It felt good to cheat on “The Star Spangled Banner” and climb into bed, musically speaking, with “Oh  Canada.” Every morning, when that  big red maple leaf flag was raised, I was stickin’ it to Tricky Dick.

These days, at least since the presidential election of 2008, I am feeling better about my country but I still love to sing, “Oh Canada”. And that is the song I sang during the medals ceremony for women’s figure skating last Thursday night, even though the Korean flag was being raised. It wasn’t just that I was not wowed by Gold Medalist Kim Ju-Na; she’s perfectly fine, but let’s just be honest, her mother did not die of a heart attack two days before she had to skate the short program so fuck her. Points, shmoints, give the gold to Joannie Rochette. The girl with the saddest story wins.

Kim Ju-Na did cry a little on the podium, however, and that warmed me a bit to her. But I wonder if she was faking, squeezing out a tear or two so she’d be more likable. Tying to think about a cat she once loved that was run over, perhaps, or about the fact that she clearly did not know the lyrics to her own national anthem and she was gonna catch shit when she got home. And I really don’t mean to sound bitchy but it’s not like trying to memorize the fucking Periodic Table.

The pine tree atop fore mountain

stands firmly unchanged under wind and frost as if wrapped in armor

As is our resilient spirit.

I mean, shit, I remembered it by heart just after looking it up on Wikipedia. I think that girl needs some more fat in her diet.

Oh, and little silver-medaled Mao Asada. She cried as she watched the Japanese flag wave. But I bet she was crying because she was afraid to go back to Japan without the gold. I am a little bit worried for her.  I think I saw her coach pinch her when she came off the ice.

Snow White and the Three Figure Skaters: Sad. Glad. Scared. I smell a Disney hit.

So, my Olympic coverage has come to an end. It’s time for me to put my socks back in the drawer and hang up my costume until 2014.

I hope by then I’ll be able to zip it all the way up.

By: Tanya Ward Goodman

Friday evening, when the clouds are as heavy as my exhausted eyelids, I pay my first visit to a Korean spa.   Though I am in the company of a dear friend, I have to admit, I’m a bit nervous.  First, there’s the whole walking around naked thing and then there’s the scrubbing.  Fierce, fierce scrubbing.  The kind of scrubbing that in a perfect world could turn back the clocks; the kind of scrubbing that could also leave a mark.

At the front desk, my friend and I are issued numbers and locker keys.  In the locker are two extremely small towels and a pale green robe.  Nudity is postponed momentarily as we both pull the thin fabric around our bodies.

“Number 72?”

I raise my wrist to show my bracelet and a stout Korean woman wearing only black panties and bra takes my hand.  She quickly divests me of my robe and gives me the kind of firm pat you might give a horse.

“You soak,” she commands, pointing to a steaming pool.

I slip into the water next to my friend and feel my shoulders relax into the warmth.  Too soon, my number is up.

“Number 72,” my guide says, gesturing for me to get out and follow.

I trail her to an area behind a low wall where there are five or six tables covered with oilcloth.  The walls are tile and next to each table is a large drain in the tile floor.  My guide pats the table and gestures for me to lay face down.  I look across at my friend a couple of tables away and she gives me a huge smile.  I smile back and hoist myself on to the table.

Warm water is poured over my body and then the scrubbing begins.  And it is wonderful.  I feel myself relax as these big, scratchy mitts make their way over my body.  I let my shoulders loosen and give over control of my arms and legs to this kind woman and her cleaning powers.  Her belly bumps against me from time to time, like a friendly pillow.  It could be weird, but it’s not.  She’s has an efficient thoroughness that is almost parental.  And it goes like this: scrubbing, rinsing, scrubbing, turning, rinsing… for over thirty minutes.  When it ends, and I am sent to the shower to “rinse well,” my legs wobble.

I return and my guide slips her fingers under my arms, makes a little “tsssk” sound with her tongue and sends me back to the shower.

“Rinse longer.”

Like a dutiful child, I rinse and rinse.

And then the massage begins.  Despite being on a table in a brightly lit, very public room, it is incredibly relaxing.  The sounds of running showers, the little splashes that accompany an entrance or exit to the soaking tubs and the liquid sound of water being poured over the prone bodies of my neighbors on the tables creates a kind of lulling ambient noise.  Just above the music of the water, hushed voices engage in conversation.  The woman massaging my shoulders chats in Korean with the woman working two tables over. Their words are simply sounds to me, blending in and then standing out from the sounds made by sinks and faucets and drains.

I realize that I am having the kind of experience that a baby has every day.  Even as a child grows, I think the words of grown ups continue to form a kind of unintelligible cloud around their heads.  My seven-year-old understands more and more, but I know he often finds himself exactly where I am right now.  It feels good to me to return to this watery, mysterious world, but it also helps me understand why my son is often so filled with frustration.  My return is voluntary, while his journey is canted forward as a kind of escape.

The massage ends and my friend and I dress slowly and prepare to re-enter the world.  Once outside, in answer to a question posed by our rumbling bellies, we head to a nearby restaurant.  At the table, over a feast in small bowls, we share our birth stories.  Hers were hard, slow labors and mine both began with a spectacular burst of water.  It’s been a long time since I repeated these stories.  My children are so tall, so sure of themselves, it’s hard to believe they were once swimming inside me.  Perhaps it was our own trip to a watery world that brings these tales to the mind’s surface and makes them so fresh.  We raise a glass in toast to our friendship and to our children while, outside, the clouds let go of their weight in rain.

Tanya Ward Goodman also writes at http://youdearestyou.blogspot.com and http://twgoodman.blogspot.com

By: Brandy Black

Susan ran the half-marathon this weekend and Sophia and I went out to cheer her on at the 9 mile water station.  While we waited to see mom run around the corner, we watched all the beaten down runners pass us.  When they heard Sophia yell “Good Job Guys, Yay Runners!” (I was coaxing her along) they all began to pick up their pace and their faces lit up.  We were the only ones out there apart from the marathon volunteers and even though we were there for Susan, it seemed to make the difference for everyone.  I was so emotional as I stood helpless on the sidelines -I had only my encouraging words.  Susan came running around the corner to see Sophia holding her “We love you mom” sign and there was a sweet moment of surprise even though she was expecting us.  We hugged and kissed her and off she went to finish the race.

Soph and I jumped in the car to make it to the finish line.  As I was driving to the Pasadena Rose Bowl I began welling up thinking about the marathon Susan and I did 8 years ago.  It was life changing.  When I committed to running it alongside Susan, I had never run more than 3 miles, I had no concept of what 26.2 miles meant to me physically or mentally.  Susan had been planning it.  She’s a personal trainer, it made sense for her, and I being her girlfriend at the time thought “sure I’ll tag along”.  We got a beginner’s marathon guide and followed it religiously.  As we conquered big milestones –8, 10, 12 miles –I found my outlook on life beginning to change – just little things to start,  but I began to feel more empowered and in control.  As the runs got longer and the marathon closer, I realized Susan and I were transforming.  At the time, we lived in a tiny studio apartment in West Hollywood and when we did our runs we would visualize what we wanted for our lives: the dream condo, the wedding, the kids, the eventual house.  We spent hours running and planning out how our lives would turn out together; we had nothing better to do other than search for the candies that we had strategically pre-placed in bushes of various houses while we drove the mileage before the big runs.  More than anything those runs were a bonding experience for us. We learned a lot about each other.

When Marathon day finally came, we were as ready as we could be.  Our longest run had been 18 miles and we felt prepared. The first 19 miles were a breeze; I was slapping hands of spectators on the sidelines and gulping down Gatorade and glazed donuts at every pit stop. At mile 20 Susan fell from grace and begin to drag her way through. At 22 I hit my wall and the last 4.2 miles were the longest 45 minutes of our lives.  We could barely breathe let alone talk.  My eyes were so blurry that I couldn’t see the Wiltern theatre standing right in front of us.

Me: Where are we?

Susan: We’re 3 miles away babe.

Me: I can’t do it.

Susan: Remember the visualizations; let’s talk about our condo.

Me: No, don’t talk about that right now, I can’t do it.

Susan: Ok I want you to picture the finish line, we’re raising our arms and crossing and all of our friends are watching.

Me: No, I can’t do it.

Susan: Ok, I’m here, we’re doing it together.

We ran silently weeping, silently cursing, silently together.  I ached in every muscle and shivered from dehydration.  We hobbled along for what seemed like eternity.

Me: ARE WE THERE YET?

Susan: Yes baby, can’t you hear the people screaming?

Me: No, where’s the finish line?

Susan: Right ahead of us, see the balloons?

Me: No! where?  TELL ME THE TRUTH!

Susan: It’s right there baby.

Me: I can’t see it.

Susan: We’re ten feet away, we’re there baby, we’re there, we’re here, we’re under, you’re ok.

I slowed to a stop, someone wrapped Mylar around me and I crumbled to the ground.  We were broken and I could never have made those last 4.2 miles without Susan by my side.  We had conquered the biggest physical challenge of our lives, together.

A few months later we bought our dream condo and got married.  The walls that I had built around myself had crashed to the ground.  I had no boundaries, my world became limitless and I realized that I was capable of anything.  I had changed because of that marathon.  Since then I have always vowed that if I ever felt “stuck” I would prescribe myself a marathon.

Standing with Sophia in my arms, I watched Susan race to the finish on her own and conquer yet another challenge.  I knew what that meant to her and I couldn’t have been more proud.

By: Cyndi Whitmore

Our appointment was Friday.  Despite the fact that I left the folder that contained the thirty-sheet packet I needed to give him and had to drive all the way home to get it, we walked in the door right on time.  The appointment went smoothly, which worries me a little bit.  ‘Super Tyler’, complete with manners, was at the appointment.  There was no evidence of ‘Troll Tyler’ (although Troll Tyler is back at school, and in the Time Out Room, as we speak).  ADHD kids often don’t exhibit their regular behaviors in new settings, which I’m sure the psychiatrist knows… but I’m still worried that it may have skewed the results.  We talked for about 1.5 hours, then I filled out a couple more forms while he and Tyler did some hands-on activities together.  He’s going to review all the info he has (the questionnaires, evaluation results, and info I brought him) and I meet with him again this Friday for the results.  I’m not sure if I want to take Tyler or not.

By:  Tosha Woronov

It’s 4am on a Wednesday night – err, Thursday morning, and I am up studying –cramming -for my BIG KIMONO presentation tomorrow at Leo’s preschool.

Yeah, that’s right. I am freaking out about having to speak before 4 and 5-year olds.
My insecurity has fallen to a new low.

Leo goes to a Montessori where the kids take yoga, cooking, French, music, drama, etc., all as part of the daily curriculum (music and Spanish on Mondays, art and gymnastics on Tuesdays…). And because it’s so sweet and done with such joy, it isn’t the kind of pretentious place that would normally make me gag or roll my eyes.

The annual Multicultural Fair is next week, and it’s a BIG DEAL. For a whole “semester”, the kids learn about the continents while incorporating a particular country or region into the normal curriculum (make quesadilla, paint a Frida Khalo). All season long, parents are invited to give mini presentations on various cultural traditions. One mom henna’d the teachers’ hands, another passed out dreidels. The whole celebration culminates in a multicultural potluck and gallery showing of the children’s artwork.

This is our 3^rd and final year with the school, and I had yet to sign up for multicultural month. Don’t get the wrong idea. I volunteer like crazy, but it’s always behind-the-scenes stuff: going to the flower market, painting the backdrop for the winter show, bringing juice boxes for harvest festival lunch, donating Leo’s new-ish basketball hoop and a few soccer balls, etc. I will not be the head of any Winter Show committee; I’m more comfortable at the minion level.

So to give an ACTUAL presentation? Me? Not so much. I get nervous. I sweat. If I know I’m to be around a group of people, for any type of reason, I will choose to wear a tank top in January because of the fear of lip sweat. I also talk fast. Really really really reallyreallyannoyingly fast, even though in my head, I sound perfectly articulate and well-spoken. I will be at a birthday party, and watch in amazement as other moms –each wearing some combination of a sweater, jacket, scarf, and a woolen beanie–not only enunciate their words, but do so while completely sweat-free.

But this is the year of the Tiger (go get ‘em and all that); I’m too old to be such a freak (I mean really, Tosha, pull it together); life is fun and worth every nervous butterfly; it’ll be great; it’s for Leo and …THEY ARE ONLY 5 YEARS OLD!

So I volunteered. My grandmother was Japanese, which makes me ¼ Japanese, but more importantly, Leo 1/8th. Grandma shared with me as much of her Japanese culture as she could, and apparently, I am one of the few grandchildren who really cared about that stuff while she was alive.  Once she passed, well, we ALL miss her, and we ALL want her egg rolls, and sushi; we miss her so much we might even be willing to try the Mega-Japanese funky food she made just for herself. We, her ½ and ¼-only Japanese progeny, could not believe the stuff she “cooked”. Live octopus and peacock eggs and I don’t know what else. She even had a separate refrigerator in the kitchen! It was right across from Grandpa’s / Everyone Else’s, which was stocked with bacon and whole milk and ketchup and grape jelly, and all the other stuff an old Iowa farm boy would have loved (different mustards. He loved different types of mustards). Grandma’s fridge held- Get out glandma’s flidge!

She was the best. She was creative, and funny, and kind of grumpy in a way that wasn’t really grumpy at all.  She would stuff a $20 bill in my pocket during a hug. She stayed up all night making beautiful (and sometimes weird) Japanese crafts – paper flowers, beaded ornaments.

When I was a teenager she gave me 2 kimonos and an elaborate and gorgeous brocade obi, and funny white “Tabi” socks, which have a big toe in them and about 15 metal snaps. I thought it would be nice to show the kids how to properly put on the kimono (“Kitsuke” – noun. The study of wearing kimono), and so I tossed off an email to the school a few weeks’ ago:

“Hi there! I would love to do a presentation on how to put on a kimono. Is that something that might interest the kids for the multicultural celebration? I am a kimono expert. I am wearing one right now! So is Peter! So is Leo! I am a certified kitsuke teacher. Or Master. Or Mastress. Please let me know what dates work for the school. Domo Arigato, Tosha (Leo’s Mom), Room 2.”

You saw this coming: I don’t know how to put on an f-ing kimono!! I never have! Grandma, pleeeeeease help me remember! All I can recall is me at 16, standing very still for a very very long time (I started to faint, and sweat), as you knotted and tied -rigorously tied -and pulled, and molded, and shaped into artwork this wicked long piece of fabric (“Obi” –noun. The long belt used to fasten and decorate a kimono. Japan.) around and around and around my body. Aunt Gracie and I just giggling! over your cute accent (“Wha?! Wa’s so funny?”).

And now I’m 37 years old grandma, and I have a baby – he’s 5, I wish you could have met him (you missed each other by about 6 months), and he needs me to NOT be a total freak tomorrow. He is excited about it – still young enough to be happy that I’m coming to his school, rather than mortified by the thought. He gets to help pass out the little take-home gifts I got for each child – gorgeous kimono bookmarks ordered straight from Japan.

Thanks to the internet, and YouTube in particular, I have been able to pull together a pretty shoddy idea of how to do this. I also learned some interesting facts to tell the kids (There are more than 400 ways to tie an obi! And Leo’s mommy cannot do…ONE!).

But I wish more than anything you were here, Grandma. So we could go out there, you and me, me as your sweaty dummy-model, and you with your perfect skin, and tiny frame, and grace, and adorable-ness, and together we could teach these kids a little somethin’.

Artcile from The New York Times

For over a decade, the issue of same-sex marriage has been a flashpoint political issue in the United States, setting off waves of competing legislation and ballot initiatives attempting either to legalize or ban the practice. Rifts have also opened among religious groups over the decision to recognize same-sex marriage or condemn it.

Proponents of same-sex marriage say that the institution is a unique expression of love and commitment and that calling the unions of same-sex couples anything else is a form of second-class citizenship; they also point out that many legal rights are tied to marriage. Those opposed to same-sex marriage agree that marriage is a fundamental bond with ancient roots. But they draw the opposite conclusion, saying that allowing same-sex couples to marry would undermine the institution of marriage itself.

Gay rights supporters felt the tide was turning in their favor for much of 2009. With President Barack Obama they felt they had an ally in the White House, and the movement was making remarkable progress in state legislatures, with lawmakers in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire approving bills allowing gay marriage in 2009.

More on this article go to New York Times