A few good gems

You may have noticed our relaxed posting schedule this week. We're taking it a bit easy during the month of August and posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We're each launching a daughter this month and it takes a village plus a lot of shopping time, errands, and hand-wringing to launch a child!  

photo via dimasmelfi

- Saying good riddance to the clean-plate club. Some interesting thoughts from a family nutritionist about ending the ol' sit-there-until-you're-done practice. She emphasizes instead a more healthy approach of helping kids paying attention to more internal cues, like eating until you're full. What do you think? Did you have a clean-plate approach in your family growing up?

- I love the concept of Community Supported Agriculture as a way for consumers to buy seasonal food directly from local farmers. So I did a mental back handspring (the only kind I know how to do) when I read that there now are CSAs for art! For instance, in one program nine selected artists receive a commission to create artwork and then each member's share includes one piece from each artist over the season. Here's a map of existing art CSAs and some resources for starting one in your area.

- I've been a calligraphy/handwriting admirer/novice every since I spent hours reworking my handwriting during the downtime at my gig as a hospital snack bar volunteer when I was 12 (whew! that was a jungle of prepositional phrases!). Recently I've had a hankering to get my pens and ink back out again. This clip was a amazing reminder of the power of disciplined practice and the beauty of the sweep of ink on paper:

- NPR put together a list of the 100 best-ever teen novels based on a poll of 75,000+ listeners. It's an interesting line-up and might give you some ideas if your kids are reaching the end of the bookshelf and looking for some new recommendations. (As always, pre-screen these for your own kids' developmental level and readiness; there are a few picks on there I would hold off on reading until they are older teens.)

-I love a good photo project but I sometimes feel like I've already missed the bus with those cute monthly infant shots or yearly photos on the same chair. This one, fusing a shot of a grandmother and a granddaughter, both at age 20, would be fantastic to try (see below). And this beautiful series of yearly photos of four sisters over 36 years (!) inspired and comforted me because (whew) it's not too late to start it. This one was launched when the four sisters were young adults.

Happy weekending, all! See you back here on Monday.

Channeling Nora

Photo: Hilary McHone in NY Magazine

You know the question about who would be on your ultimate imaginary dinner party guest list if you could invite five people from any era? Nora Ephron always makes my list.  In fact, she has long been a charter member of the group of outstanding women I would like to grow up to be--or at least be like. If this imaginary group had a name it would be something like The Society of Dames of Wit and Panache. Right now I'm in early training, nothing but a pledge, a wannabe, a plebe. Give me another decade or few and with any luck I'll get there.

A few months ago Nora's son, Jacob Bernstein, published a wonderful tribute to his mom. In it, he recounts her final weeks, when even then she maintained her signature humor:

Sunday, June 24, was a pretty good day. The sun was shining, and Mom spent most of the afternoon on a couch in the front of her room, doing the crossword puzzle with Max. Binky was there, as was Richard Cohen and his companion, Mona. Amy stopped by with her husband, Alan. “We’re going to the Guggenheim,” Amy said. “Do you want anything from the outside world?”

“Sure,” my mother said. “A de Kooning.”

Another thing she requested was a pineapple milkshake, so Max brought one from Emack and Bolio’s, made from fresh pineapple. But as far as my mother was concerned, a milkshake is one thing that’s actually better with crushed pineapple. Dole.

“When I get out of the hospital, I’m going to go home and I’m going to make a pineapple milkshake with crushed pineapple, pineapple juice and vanilla ice cream, and I’m going to drink it and I’m going to die

,” she said, savoring the last word. “It’s going to be great.”

 . . .

The weekend I read the article, the boys were out of town on a scout campout so I enlisted Maddy in my quest for an impromptu Nora tribute day, complete with pineapple milkshake. Get ready, the recipe is fancy. (Can this even be called a recipe if there are only two ingredients?) 

1. Throw 4-5 scoops of vanilla ice cream in the blender.
2. Pour in some Dole crushed pineapple, including some of the juice. 
3. Blend and pour into glass(es). Serves two. Or one. No one will know.

So grab your teenagers, put on an Ephron movie, raise a glass of pineapple deliciousness, and deliver your favorite Ephron lines like these (extra points if you can name where these lines originated): 

• "It was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supoosed to be together..and I knew it. I knew it the very first time I touched her. It was like coming home, only to no home I'd ever known. I was just taking her hand to help her out of a car and I knew. It was like...magic."
• "I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly."
• "That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie."
• "Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address."
• "When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side."
• "When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you."
• "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

And my favorite: "Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."

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I realize you might not be as *cough* obsessive *cough* as I am, but just in case you are, here are a few good things for a Nora Ephron tribute day of your own:

• Nora Ephron's blog posts for the Huffington Post
• Hallie Ephron's article about the four Ephron sisters and their mother
• Nora's last work, the play Lucky Guy, just closed its run in NYC this month
• A Nora Ephron documentary is in the works
• Frank Rich's fantastic tribute to Nora in NY Magazine
  
• Her "What I Wish I'd Known" excerpt from I Feel Bad About My Neck 
• Design Sponge's series of posts about decorating inspiration from Ephron movie sets: You've Got Mail,  Sleepless in Seattle, Julie & Julia, and When Harry Met Sally
• Her entry for Six Word Memoirs: "Secret to life, marry an Italian." 
• A Channeling Nora playlist.  Okay, I'd better stop. Now my crazy is really showing and I can sense you are getting worried.

A few good gems

Here are some interesting things we gathered up from the nether regions of the internet for some good reading this weekend:

Painting by  Ellen Thesleff. I love this. Is she singing? Calling her kids in from a hike? Found via Pinterest.

• May I just pause here and give thanks for the gentle reminder that Pinterest gives me when I try to pin something I've already pinned and saved? (For instance, this painting, above.) I must be reaching my Pinterest (and brain) saturation point because it happens more often than I'd like to admit. Next I'd like them to have a little pop-up window that asks skeptically "are you really thinking about doing/making/baking this one? Really?"

• The essay "Our Soft Stomach, Our Broad Back: Notes to My Mother" illustrates the ways mothers can influence daughters on issues of body image and weight as a young woman celebrates her mother for what her body does and can do. A sampling:  "I noticed things during those summers, but not what you suspected. I never thought twice about your soft stomach or short waist or any of the other grievances I sometimes caught you muttering about in front of the mirror or with friends. I noticed the way your strong, freckled arms flexed when you weeded the front lawn, and the way your shapely legs sliced through the water when you started taking swimming lessons in the shallow end of the town pool." 
  

• The decline and fall of the English major. (Gulp. Say it ain't so! English majors are my people, my tribe. Sadly, we might be an endangered species.)

• Every once in a while my computer desktop needs some sprucing up. I just reorganized the mess of files and folders this week and treated myself to a new desktop image to celebrate. The Desktop Wallpaper Project has a lot of fun options; my favorite right now is this motivating one by Dave Foster.

• Speaking of motivating, I thought this advice from Karen Cheng (found via Explore) hit the mark: "Yo-Yo Ma's first instrument wasn't cello. He actually started with violin--and he wasn't good at it. So he quite violin and picked up the cello instead. Maybe you're like Yo-Yo Ma, and you just haven't found your cello yet." 

On grief and villages

I am approximately 44 million miles away from where I want to be today. I would actually rather be on a couch in Idaho, sitting with my arm around the shoulders of my dear friend who just lost her husband yesterday to stupid, greedy pancreatic cancer. I would love to go honor our friendship in person and pay tribute to Tony's life well lived, the door opened and closed far too soon. 

Admittedly I was in that frame of mind when today I stumbled across a remarkable article about a Cincinnati school engaged in supporting and embracing a group of grieving teen boys. (Well, not stumbled, exactly. I found it via Longreads, which is such a great website and service, have you heard of it? They compile the best of longer articles published in magazines and online each week.)  I think that The Rules of Grieving: They Are Still Boys should be a must-read for social work students. Or, come to think of it, for any parent/neighbor/teacher/friend/human.

photo by Carrie Cochran via Cincinnati.com

The article underlines the truth of the old adage "it takes a village to raise a child." For a while there the notion that it takes a village was diminished and appropriated for cheap political dithering. But, the fact is, it really does take a host of people to raise a child. Between the ages of 10 and 20 I think this is especially true. Teachers. Advisors. Friends and their parents. A collective of other supportive adults, nudging, applauding, and pointing the way to adulthood.

Count them throughout the article: the women who start the bereavement group. The anonymous parent who insists on making chocolate chip cookies for the group meetings. The teachers who come in, willing to show their vulnerability and share their own experiences, like this one:

photo by Carrie Cochran via Cincinnati.com

"On this day, math teacher James Jewell sits at the table. Buckley and Munafo-Kanoza invite teachers to the group meetings to show the students that adults have grief to work through as well. They do it for another reason, too: It is a good reminder to the teachers that some kids might seem like they are having a hard day because, in fact, they are having a hard day.

Mr. Jewell is holding a pair of binoculars. He tells the students that he grew up with seven sisters, so he and his father were close. When he was about 13 or so, he would go trapping with his father to sell the skins for money. “We grew up rural,” he says to the astounded boys.

One morning, Mr. Jewell tells the group, his father mentioned, casually, how he wished he had a good pair of binoculars. So the boy saved his money from the skins, right up to the dime, and one day bought the best pair of binoculars at the local hunting shop. The store owner, Mr. Jewell remembered, offered to pay the tax on the binoculars since the boy didn’t know such a thing even existed.

Mr. Jewell’s father died when he was 19, and now he sat before the boys, in his 60s, telling the story, holding the binoculars, tears running down his checks. “These bring back a lot of fond memories for me,” he said. “I’m crying now, but these are really good memories.”

The boys sit mesmerized. An adult — a teacher, no less — sharing a story they could be telling themselves. And he remains so affected by the death of his father, who has been gone for so long. For the students sitting around the table, it feels like proof that what they are going through is real."

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Here's to the village, yours and mine. We are each, after all, both recipients and contributors to it. As my mom used to say as she gathered up a meal to bring to someone who needed it, "it's just what we do for each other."

And I'll add this postscript today: I'm so glad to have been in that village with you, Tony. Thank you for blessing our family, literally and figuratively. We love you, friend.

The rescue notebook

These tween/teen years can be tricky parenting geography, especially with the oldest child (also fondly known as the beta child. Or the first pancake?). How much permission to grant, what are the kids ready for (and what are you ready for?), how to balance freedom & protection?  

I was the oldest child myself--my husband was, too--and yet it was still really tough for us to gauge how to pace the unfurling of responsibilities and privileges for Lauren. I'm pretty sure she always felt we were frustratingly, agonizingly slow and out of sync and that she needed to yank on the rope for a bit more slack now and then. (And we probably were. We were young and new at this! She was our baby! There's no map involved in this whole enterprise.) In the meantime, we clashed quite a bit, Lauren and I.

Woven map notebook photo  via (& tutorial) here

So here's an idea we tried: When Lauren was around 10 or 11, we started a notebook conversation between the two of us. At the time we were in a rut: I seemed to be finding much more negative than positive things to say to her (and of course now I can't remember the issues or why they seemed so important to me...) and she was getting moodier in that hint-of-adolescence way. Our discussions didn't lead to broadening our understanding...more often (sadly) they shut it down. I had a bunch of blank notebooks so one day I grabbed one, wrote her a note in it, and left it under her pillow. And then she wrote back. 

We could say anything or ask anything. We pledged not to correct or critique, and (my personal commitment to myself as the purported adult in this whole thing) I tried to say positive things each time.  

And we kept it confidential, of course. I won't quote our exchanges here but I'm sure you can imagine them. Sometimes she just asked what a word meant, embarrassed to ask face-to-face. Sometimes I simply praised her efforts at trying something new. Other times we passionately defended our points of view or begged for understanding. Or forgiveness.  Man, I love that notebook.

For a good stretch of time there it was a crucial thing for our relationship. Now and then I would get it back out again if we got stuck back in the pattern of frustration and clogged up communication. We both sound better in writing at those times. Friendlier. More compassionate and calm.  

As a bonus, we have a terrific chronicle of our relationship during some rugged terrain. I look back and realize how ridiculous my expectations were at times. Lighten up, Annie, I remind myself. Most often, though, a look through the notebook increases my compassion for us both and reveals what I've hoped all along: we've both been doing the best we know how to do. 

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The scales of our belonging

Last week after I wrote about my Erikson epiphany, Kristine left a fantastic quote in the comments that has been on my mind ever since. It addresses that same idea that Erikson captured: that parenting is a transformative experience and, as our kids start growing up and we have time and space to look around a bit more, we're increasingly primed for generativity, creativity, and giving back to the world more widely.

Since you might have missed the quote, imbedded as it is in the comments, I wanted to pass it along (edited a bit for brevity; see the whole quote here in the comments):​

​A Mother and Child with its Head in her Lap, Pieter de Hooch

"As mothers, as fathers, we have at our disposal a wonderful time of rehearsal. We may set aside our interests time and again; we may practice watching the interests of others. But if that sacrificial love starts with our children, and stops there, we will have lost our opportunity to fulfill Christ's commandment, and so have everything that He has promised. Christ's commandment is that we love, not just our children, but one another!

​"...This is the best news of all, because, mothers and fathers, when our time has come, when, having fulfilled the duties of our state of life we are free to address ourselves to the needs of the world, when it comes time to love one another as Jesus loved us, we already know how! We have already learned! How to teach, how to feed, how to tend, how to heal, how to care, how to love. But it is different with us this time, because we act not out of duty. This time, in addition to knowing how to love, we also know why.​

"...Having practiced our scales, played the daily exercises of love for our children, the scales of our belonging, now we come to the concerto. Now the music begins. Having loved our own, we now can love the world. Now we rise to the task for which parenting prepared us...because although we lost ourselves in our mothering, God remembered us, and brought us forward, and made us new."​

- Reverend Canon Susan Harriss, Mother's Day sermon

It's a reminder I needed--that, in all the mundane and profound daily sacrifices that parenthood requires, we also launch ourselves.​

Erikson, epiphanies, and me

​Taking It All In by Karen Offutt

I was making the bed today when I started thinking about Erik Erikson. I'm not sure what it was about the mundane act of fluffing wrinkled pillows and tucking sheets that made my thoughts alight on him in particular but there he was, in my mind on a Monday morning. 

Maybe it was because it is Memorial Day back in the US. I thought of the many family members making their pilgrimages, with flowers in their arms and memories in their hearts, to stone tablets marking the lives and legacies of loved ones.​  

Erikson, bless his theory-making heart, is one of my top-three developmental psychology gurus. He thought about development as a lifelong proposition, with stages progressing fully into old age. Each stage has a conflict that influences biological, social, and individual psychological development. The successful resolution of each conflict--which must be done before moving on to the next stage--leads to a resulting virtue. Each builds on the one before it. Just as a quick runthrough (that will thoroughly cheat his theory of its deserved explanation), the stages look like this:​

• Birth-1 year: Trust vs. mistrust. Leads to hope.​
• 2-3 years: Autonomy vs. shame & doubt. Leads to will.
• 3-5 years: Intiative vs. guilt. Leads to purpose.
• ​6-12 years: Industry vs. inferiority. Leads to competence.
• ​13-18 years: Identity vs. role confusion. Leads to fidelity.
• 18-40 years: Intimacy vs. isolation. Leads to love (and partner/family formation).
• 40-65 years: Generativity vs. stagnation. Leads to care (giving back)
• ​65 years and older: Ego integrity vs. despair. Leads to wisdom.

I think I might be the poster child for that seventh stage right now! (Never mind how gut-dropping is it that I am now in the seventh of eight life stages! Zoinks. Oh, and we will tackle his teen identity stage another day, I promise.)  I think "generativity" could also be replaced with "creativity." If you are anywhere near that age range, maybe you can relate, too? 

This stage, says Erikson, is all about a new, dawning awareness and need to make an impact in the world, to understand the bigger picture, and use our own voices.  It's all about creating a community, a legacy beyond stone memorials, and giving back. It's the pull to keep learning and not stagnate.  It's why I returned to grad school, I think, and why I leapt into this blog project. It's why, in the middle of a rather scary series of mammograms a couple of years ago (it turned out fine, whew) I thought "but I haven't written my book yet." Oh, Erik. Spot on, sir.

This clip of an interview with the always inspiring Maira Kalman goes along with this sentiment/stage perfectly (found via Brain Pickings):

"It's love and it's work. What else could there possibly be?...What is the most wonderful thing I could be doing and who are the most wonderful people I could be with?"

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How does your life compare with Erikson's stages? Are you aware of the drive for generativity/creativity? What kinds of things are you planning for the life-after-children years? Are they the same or different from what you're doing now?​