Boys vs. Tropes vs. Women

Overheard in my house today, in the general vicinity of the Wii:

Neighbor Boy: Wait, what? Where did that girl come from?
Isaac: Samus is a girl, dude.
Neighbor Boy: What? I'm not playing a girl. I'm picking someone else next round.
Isaac: Good. I'll put Samus on my team.
Neighbor Boy: You want Samus on your team?
Isaac: Yeah.
Neighbor Boy: [ . . . ]
Neighbor Boy: In that case, maybe I want Samus on my team, too.
Isaac: Awesome. SAMUS VERSUS SAMUS!
Neighbor Boy: Yeah!

How do you know you have succeeded in teaching your son to respect women? When you see him teaching other boys.

(Tropes vs.Women)

Keeping Google busy since 2004

Questions my kid has asked me so far today:


"When did people stop using their father's first name or their town as their last name, like 'Robert John's Son,' or 'Thomas of Bridge Town,' and start using the same last name as their whole family like we do now?"

"Can you visit the exact spot where Lewis and Clark first saw the Pacific Ocean?"

"Who was on the first American dollar?"

"Does the Earth's elliptical orbit make summer longer in the Southern Hemisphere?"

"Did George Washington ever watch fireworks on the Fourth of July?"

"Do lithium and beryllium bond together to make a new chemical?"

"Oxygen has a heavier atomic weight than nitrogen. Does that mean that nitrogen floats on oxygen? Is there a higher concentration of oxygen compared to nitrogen the closer you get to the surface of the Earth?"

Moment of Silence

“Pause your music,” I say.

“Look.”

He obeys, comprehending

not my words

but a quality of tone.

In the box the President

pauses, too; the First Lady,

the crowd crushed together,

the bells.

Later the day goes on as days do:

the child and his music

and me in the kitchen scrubbing

pans trying not to think

about the iron scent common

to steel and blood.

Keep in Reach

Spring blows on the wind, belying the February slant of the sun. Gusts buffet with hints of March's lion, threatening to tip over all our morning's work. But as the wind tries to snatch empty pots you catch them nimbly and right them in the tray.

Our fingers are dirty from pressing soil into pots and our clothes are dirty too, from soil blown out by the wind, and we laugh together when we pick up another package of potting soil and realize that it warns, primly, KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN. Because in this moment no idea seems sillier to us than the idea of keeping children out of dirt.

And I want to tell you of doll villages built in the mud, and backyard digs for dinosaur bones. Of my grandmother's garden with tomatoes too large to hold in my hands and corn stalks waving against the sky. But I don't. I don't tell you, because when I try to remember those things I start too think too much about remembering and then this moment too seems like a not a living moment but instead another memory that I have to grab onto, quick, before it slips. I know something you don't yet, about time, and getting older. Februaries blur.

You laugh and I shove past laughter away and the future collapsing in on us, too. Snatch another pot back from the March winds blowing into February too soon.

Right now all I want to be is right here, now. Here now with your laughter and your quick, muddy fingers and the sunlight glinting on your copper hair.

Santa Writes in Cursive

Isaac's mother always writes in print. Even in letters, even on envelopes, even on gift tags. She's left-handed, you see, and she had this handwriting teacher in fourth grade who reveled in squeezing students' hands into impossible contortions and marking points off for minute smudges in ink on the practice paper. This teacher declared on the first day of handwriting class that she had no idea how to teach a left-handed person to write proper cursive, (and wasn't, in fact, to be honest, sure it could be done -- such a shame that the early correction of wrong-handedness had gone out of style). So Isaac's mother swore that once she was allowed to stop writing in cursive she would never use cursive again. And she doesn't.

Santa writes gift tags and thank you notes for cookies in shimmering green ink and perfect Palmer script. (Without smudges.)

Isaac's father is one of those people who can write a complex computer program entirely in his head and save it in memory to type out later, but comes back from the grocery store without eggs, and accidentally puts his earbuds in the washing machine. It's understandable that Isaac's father sometimes forgets small things because Isaac's father has a Busy Job and a Mortgage and Many Important Things to Remember. More important things to remember than his earbuds in his pocket, or the toys featured in this month's Target catalog.

Santa will take notes on the precise model of Nerf dart gun mentioned in Isaac's letter (the Nerf N-Strike Nite Finder EX-3), systematically search three different toy stores for the correct item, and have it purchased and wrapped (with a cursive gift tag) three days before Christmas.

Isaac's mother and father worry about spoiling him on Christmas with too many gifts. They make a point of regularly reminding Isaac, in the middle of the toy aisle, that there are children without roofs over their heads in this world, and yet here he is with a room already overflowing with toys.

Santa goes ahead and buys the activity set Isaac didn't even ask for that goes with the book Isaac did. And then, for good measure, Santa goes and stuffs Isaac's stocking with more candy that a child his size could possibly eat in a month.

Isaac's mother cries, and curses loudly too, when the Christmas tree slips in the stand and falls over, after she's already put all the ornaments on it, and there are her broken glass memories all over the floor. Isaac's mother and father argue over whether Isaac's father listened to Isaac's mother about how to cut the bottom of the tree, and Isaac's mother finally declares that she won't put all the ornaments back on again, she just can't.

But then she vacuums up the last of the glass and broken branches and gets up early the next morning and puts every single surviving ornament back on anyway. Because, Isaac says, what would Santa think?

What would Santa think, indeed.

Santa cannot, obviously, provide this level of service to billions of children worldwide all by himself. So Santa recruits helpers (though sadly, Santa never does seem to have enough of them).

When Isaac's father is asked by Santa to find a present for a little boy in foster care, he doesn't just buy one present -- he buys three. Because that's what Santa would do.

When Isaac's mother wraps the presents Isaac's father bought, she decides that a plain red gift bag from the store just won't do, and this green one won't do either. Santa does not, Isaac's mother thinks, prefer to wrap presents in boring bags. Instead, finally, Isaac's mother goes to the closet and pulls out the beautiful, glittery, hand-painted gift bag that Santa brought Isaac's first Christmas present in, the one she's been saving ever since to give again to someone special.

And Isaac's mother breaks her own rule, and writes the gift tag in cursive.

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the last slice of pumpkin pie
that was in 
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving for tomorrow's lunch 

Forgive me
I felt a little guilty when I took it actually, but
I cooked for eight hours straight on Thanksgiving 
by myself
while I had a migraine

in our outdated kitchen which is roughly the size of a walk-in closet
and feels like an oven itself when the oven is on
and I roasted a whole turkey for you even though I'm a vegetarian
while you mostly watched the Macy's Parade*


therefore 
I'm pretty damned sure I was fully entitled to that last piece of pie


*(Because even though 
you're a self-styled feminist
your mother, a traditionalist
expecting you would one day expect a wife to cook for you
never taught you how to make anything more complicated than macaroni and cheese
and you've tried valiantly to learn since then
but frankly we both know 
that I'm the better chef
Don't feel too bad about it though
my dad never taught me how to change the brakes on the car
either
and I'm really glad you know how to do that)

When You Have to Be THAT Mom

I am that mom who bakes cupcakes, from scratch, for the entire class.

I am that mom who brings candy for every holiday party, and stays to walk the class through the holiday craft.

I am that mom who volunteers on every field trip. The one who volunteers at the school library two or three days a week. The one who goes to every school assembly. The one who shows up, early, to every parent-teacher conference meeting.

I am that mom that students greet as if she were a teacher. I am that mom who knows the name of every other parent. I am that mom who knows the name of every last staff member at the school.

I am that mom who goes along with my son to every single classmate's or neighbor kids's or friend's birthday party, and offers to help set up beforehand, and offers to bring food.

I am that mom who almost never takes her kid to fast-food restaurants, or orders takeout.

I am that mom who regularly cooks meals from scratch.

I am that mom who goes to every single doctor's appointment, asks questions, and takes notes.

I am that mom who brings to said appointments a binder full of medical records in color-coded archival sheaths.

I am that mom who plans elaborate playdates at my house.

I am that mom who never just drops my kid off at your house for a playdate, but sticks around, just at the margins, to keep an eye on things.

I am that mom who almost never uses a babysitter, and if I do leave my son in someone else's care, I am that mom who offers that person a printed list of phone numbers and instructions.

I am that mom who can count on one hand the times she has left her child with someone else overnight.

I am that mom and at least three times a day I find myself wishing I weren't.

I am that mom and it is exhausting.

I am that mom and I do work, actually -- I have three part-time jobs that I juggle, poorly, around school volunteer gigs and field trips and parties and doctors' visits and cooking. I am that mom and there are plenty of days when I stay up until 1 a.m. working and then get up at 6 a.m. to volunteer again for eight hours at my child's school.

I am that mom and I have a college degree I finished in four years while working two jobs. I have that degree, and some pleasant, fleeting memories of feeling just on the cusp of serious success as a writer, and some fading dreams of graduate school, and a thousands unfinished work projects and ambitions of a novel or five growing dusty together on a high shelf.

I am sick of seven years of strangers assuming, when I tell them I'm a work-from-home mother, that I must not be an educated or ambitious person.

My mother often worked full-time outside the home when I was a kid and I thought that once my kid was in school I would, too. I think it's good for kids to have time away from their parents, and good for parents to have time away from their kids. I swore when I was pregnant that I would go back to work after one year. I swore that I'd raise an self-sufficient adventurer. I swore I wouldn't hover.

But I am the mother of a child with a sensory disorder, a motor skills delay and an anaphylactic peanut allergy.

I am that mom of a seven-year-old who understands beginning algebra and reads college biology textbooks for fun and can add four digit numbers in his head but can barely zip a jacket or tie his own shoes and sometimes hums and mutters to himself strangely in public to drown out the world's constant noise.

I am that mom who tells her son to face the world proudly, anyway.

I am THAT mom of a child with a food allergy -- a mom who knows that every time her son walks out the door to go to school or to a birthday party or to a holiday dinner, he's risking his life.

I am that mom who lets him walk out the door anyway.

But I'm not the mom who is ready to stop following him (at a distance) just yet.

I'm just not.

Raise Your Hand

Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and critics of your work have called you a "slut" or a "harpy" or "whore" in public. (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and readers of your work who disagree with your thoughts have publicly attacked your looks. (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and you've been publicly told that your written words permanently disqualify you for the title of "lady." (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if you're a grown woman and a male critic has opened his public critique of your work with "Little girl." (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if you've actually, literally been told by one or more apparent lovers of outdated cliche to stop writing and get back to your kitchen. (I'm raising my hand.)

Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and you've been excited to see your work featured in a mainstream media article only to watch the comments on said article devolve into a discussion of your supposed physical attractiveness, or supposed lack thereof. (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and you've engaged in an educated intellectual, political, or philosophical debate with another woman blogger, and later found that debate described in public fora online as "mudwrestling" or "a catfight." (I'm raising my hand.)

Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and your abilities as a romantic partner or parent have been attacked by strangers who disagree with opinions of yours that have nothing to do with romantic relationships or parenting. (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if you've been told that mothers should be seen and not heard. (I'm raising my hand.)

Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and someone who disagrees with your opinions (or disagrees with your hair color, or your choice in shoes, or your body type, or your disability, or your sexuality or your religion or your ethnicity or your age or the very idea of women writing things on the internet at all) has publicly expressed their desire that you be sexually assaulted in retaliation for daring to open your "pretty" (or "ugly") "little mouth." (I'm raising my hand.)

Raise your hand if your critics have said you deserve to be tortured. (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if they've said you should be dead. (I'm raising my hand.) Raise your hand if you're a mother who blogs and someone who disapproves of your words has said it would serve you right if your child were kidnapped. (I'm raising my hand.)

Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and some person who hates what you've done with your words or just hates you, personally, for daring to use words in public at all, has left a comment or sent you an email or a text message or a DM directly threatening to sexually assault you, or physically harm you, or kill you. (I'm raising my hand.)

Raise your hand if you're a woman blogger and you've wondered at times, in the midst of constant gendered insults and threats, whether you might be happier and saner if you just stopped writing. (I'm raising my hand.)

Raise your hand if you've kept writing anyway.

(Well, here I am.)

Good. Now all of you that just raised your hands -- take Naomi's example, and raise your voice.

(I just did.)

This sickness has to stop.

Conversations with a Seven-Year-Old

KID: I can't sleep by myself tonight. I'm scared.

MOTHER: Of what?

KID: I'm scared that a black hole will swallow the Earth before humans master interplanetary space flight. I'm scared that all the people living on Earth will die, and civilization will be destroyed, and maybe then there will be no intelligent life left anywhere in the universe. I'm scared that the universe itself will one day run out of energy and grow cold and dark and empty.

MOTHER: You've really missed your father while he's been out of town, haven't you?

KID: Yes.

Lucky Seven

Seven years ago today, on Mother's Day, I held you in my embrace for the first time, and my arms trembled just a little with the strangeness and the sweetness of the new weight they had to bear. I wondered that day just whom I was greeting. Now I know.

I was holding a boy who would one day know the names of 50 varieties of butterfly, who would run for a jar to put spiders back outside saying "Quick, before someone smashes it," who would befriend the garter snake in the backyard, who would sing to his pet fish, who would never, ever, not even once, pull a cat's tail.

Seven years ago today I was holding a child who would one day step between fighting friends and push them apart. Who would hear me crying in another room and draw me a picture of flowers and slide it under the door.

Seven years ago I was holding a boy who would fight, fight harder than a child so young should have to fight, through a a sensory disorder and a motor skills delay, and win, again and again, learning to climb a ladder and ride a bike and kick a soccer ball and frighten his mother by climbing too-high chainlink fences.

Seven years ago I thought I was already falling in love hard. I had no idea, then, how much harder I could fall.

I look at you, my once-and-only-baby, all unfolded into bottomless brown eyes and tangled flaming hair and a laughing gap-toothed grin and long gangly limbs running full tilt away from me into a future I can only imagine now, and will only ever get to see part of. And the trembling woman from seven years ago is still here, longing to fold you back into the arms you have made so much stronger.

But instead, I will just say, keep running. Run far.

Overheard in My Backyard: A Space Odyssey

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD NEIGHBOR:  My scout ship just landed on Mars. If you're landing behind me, watch out for this dust storm I just picked up on my radar.

SIX-YEAR-OLD:  It's okay. The dust storm won't affect me. My ship just landed on a planet far, far away from Mars, in a different universe. The planet has a name, but that name wouldn't make any sense here.

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD NEIGHBOR: Another planet? A far away planet? What, you mean Pluto?

SIX-YEAR-OLD (patiently): No, not Pluto. This planet is not in our solar system. My ship just landed on a planet in another universe.  Beyond our solar system. Beyond the Orion Nebula. Beyond the Crab Nebula. Beyond the farthest arm of the Milky Way. Beyond all known galaxies. Beyond the expanding edge of time.

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD NEIGHBOR: Oh. okay. Well, whenever you're done with that, could you help me out with this dust storm on Mars?

Bye Bye Baby

For years now my son has been asking, with some trepidation, about losing his first baby tooth. "Will it happen soon? Will it hurt much? Will I bleed? Will I get sick? What if I swallow it by accident? Has anyone ever choked on their own tooth?" he worries. "What if the new tooth doesn't come in right? What if the place where my tooth was stays empty forever?"

I lost my first tooth at age five, biting into an apple. (I did swallow it, actually, much to my chagrin. I did not choke. I did not even notice the tooth was gone, in fact, until several minutes later, when a teacher pointed the fact out to me. It's a good thing my mother happened to know that the Tooth Fairy decorates her house with pictures of teeth drawn by those unfortunate children who have lost their lost tooth, or I would have considered the incident a much more serious injury to both piggy bank and pride.)

I assumed, in that casual way parents tend to assume that our children will be just like us, that my son would probably lose his first tooth at five, or thereabouts. But he didn't lose a tooth at five. He didn't at six and a half, either. My son is nearly seven, but all twenty of his original pearly whites still stand in neat rows.

At school, one after another his friends have lost teeth. Some have lost several, now bearing adorably jagged half-grown-in grins.

Witnessing in his classmates this repeated proof of his mother's assertion that baby tooth-deprivation is not, in fact, commonly deadly to children has, I think, made my son somewhat less anxious about the potential for some personal tooth-loss related disaster.

But he is now the only one in his class who has yet to lose a tooth. He sees himself missing some bloody badge of maturity. His difference irks him. When we last went to the dentist, he asked her, nervously, "Are you sure I really have grown-up teeth waiting in my gums? What if there aren't any?"

This drawn out drama of the teeth has made me wish hard, for months, that he would just lose a tooth already and get over it. So he can see it's not that big of a deal. So he can be like everyone else in his class. So the Tooth Fairy can leave him two quarters, or a dollar, or whatever the inflated price of first lost teeth is these days, and he can start calculating the value of his remaining teeth with a gleam in his eye.

When I help him floss I surreptitiously tap his front teeth, hoping for a wiggle. I've never felt one. Not even the slightest wobble. Until three days ago.

His right front bottom tooth budged. I tapped it again to be sure. It moved again, unmistakably.

The boy officially had a loose tooth.

Again and again, I've imagined how proudly and cheerfully I would tell him. I've imagined how I would stave off any frightened tears with visions of the respect of his peers, the admiration of younger children, and cash.

Instead, I found myself turning my head and furiously blinking against a sudden vivid vision: my first glimpse, more than six years ago, of the top of my baby's first tooth, pushing in a sharp gleaming white arc through the gum. His first tooth. This same tooth. The loose one.

"What is it Mommy?" he asked.

"Oh," I said. "Oh. Your tooth. Your tooth is loose! You finally have a loose tooth. See? It wiggles. I bet you'll lose it pretty soon. Your first tooth. Your very first one. That's good news! You're growing. You'll get grown-up teeth soon."

"Oh, that's cool," he said. "It won't hurt too much, when it comes out will it?"

"No. I've told you already," I said. "I mean it. It won't hurt much at all."

I lied. It won't hurt him.

Dreaming

Nearly three weeks ago I came down with a cold that I have been not at all hyperbolically referring to in public as The Cold From Hell. Despite a few days now of feeling finally able to breathe during daylight hours without the blessed aid of Saint Sudafed, certain symptoms have lingered. My ears still feel clogged. I still feel tired. And my voice keeps failing me unexpectedly mid-word, cutting out like a bad audio cassette tape. 

Last night I hypothesized that my failure to recover must be the result of not getting enough sleep at night. Because despite feeling better during the day, I keep waking up struggling to breathe through a nose that feels stuffed with wet cotton, or coughing the sort of chest rattling night cough ordinarily associated with elderly chainsmokers.

So in an attempt to get at least eight hours of decent rest, last night I abandoned my bed and my husband (who is certainly handsome to look upon as the last thing I see before I close my eyes each night, but, sadly, snores like a rusty chainsaw). And I bedded down on the sofa, propped diagonally atop a pile of scientifically arranged throw pillows.

I felt more comfortable than I had in days, and fell asleep almost instantly. 

So of course, at 2 a.m., the phone rang.

At first, in my first-good-sleep-in-three-weeks fog, I associated the harsh ringing sound with the tornado sirens that woke me up this past Sunday evening, announcing the storm that did this to my porch.

There's something wrong with the house, the small, awake part of my brain tried to explain to the rest of me. You have to get up.

Then as the ringing continued I awakened enough to realize that the sound was in fact the telephone and also that it was a ridiculous hour for anyone to be calling my house unless there was some sort of terrible emergency.

So I threw off the covers and popped out of bed, er, couch, only to hear the answering machine pick up. A deep, drawling drunken man's voice screamed, "WHAT?!?" so loudly my answering machine's speaker crackled. And then the line clicked off.

Wrong number.

(I hope. Because if that was some sort of prank, Mr. Drunk Dialer on a Cell Phone in 636, you need to go back to phone pranking class and learn how to block your number. Ahem.)

After that I had a hard time getting back to sleep. The streetlights outside my living room window were too bright. The furnace downstairs was too loud. I tossed and turned for about an hour and then I fell asleep and I dreamed two dreams. It feels like ages since I've had a dream I can clearly remember. And yet, whether thanks to my couch, The Cold From Hell, or Mr. Drunk Dialer, last night I had two: 

In the first dream, I was volunteering at my son's school on a field trip. It was lunch time and I was helping to prepare a set of boxed lunches that had been brought along for the kids but I realized that despite telling me otherwise no one at the school had contacted the catering company or read the ingredients on anything to see whether or not the lunches were peanut-safe. So I was reading the ingredients on every variety of lunch to see which one might be safe for my son to have. And people from the school in the dream (who weren't actually people in my son's real life school, just people with vague and anonymous faces) kept telling me, "You have to take care of this problem this yourself. We don't have time to help you." And then as I was sorting through the boxes one of the sandwiches fell out and it was peanut butter. And I tried to get to the sink to wash my hands but other parents (who again, weren't actual parents I know in real life but some sort of Platonic stand in) kept blocking me and saying "We were here first. There's no room."  And then one of the dream school's administrators said to me, in a smarmy voice, "Well it will be a shame if your son has nothing to eat today, and it would have been terrible if we had served him that peanut butter. But at least this is the first time we have made such a mistake." And as I stood there wringing my hands like Lady Macbeth trying to get the peanut butter off, I started screaming, again and again, to no one in particular, "THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE!"

It was very melodramatic. And, I have to say, the first time I have ever had a nightmare with food as a villain.  Or for that matter a dream that in any way involved peanut butter. I get the feeling, however, that this anxiety dream might wind up as a permanent replacement to that recurring dream I used to have where I would spend all day on the first day of college trying to find my classes and yet somehow manage to miss all of them and then my advisor would scream at me and tell me I was kicked out of the program.

Ahem.

The second dream was much better. In my second dream I was at a BlogHer conference, sitting in the audience at a panel, and some political argument broke out among the audience members, and women were standing up and shouting and one well-dressed young woman even gestured a threat to splash another with a bottle of Fiji water.

(For people who have never been to BlogHer, allow me to note that this sort of bloggers-gone-wild wet t-shirt catfight thing would NEVER HAPPEN. Well, except for maybe at the MamaPop party but that would be totally acceptable.)

And then in my dream my friend Erin Kotecki Vest stood up, looking as healthy as she ever has, and walked across the entire large room to a microphone and made some sort of brilliant, unbelievably logical, earthshaking statement of the sort that makes sense beyond sense within a dream and seems to expose some important cog in the inner workings of the universe, even though you can never remember, after you wake up, exactly what was said. And everyone grew silent and then burst into applause. And everyone was hugging.

I don't believe in prophetic dreams. But a dream of mine ever deserved to come true I do think it would be my dream of Erin, healthy, walking, and kicking rhetorical ass.

Besides, if a politics-based water splashing fight ever broke out during a panel at BlogHer, I think it would be great publicity, don't you?

You Really Didn't Have To

Before we were married I made you cancel the layaway on the diamond engagement ring you had so carefully chosen, the one with the pretty leaf pattern in two-tone gold.

It made practical sense, under the circumstances. The non-profit you were working for had gone bankrupt and suddenly closed -- your last paycheck had bounced. After that we were both juggling part time jobs with no health insurance. And then we found out I was pregnant. Surprise!

A diamond ring didn't seem so important to me, under those circumstances.

So we were married in the courthouse, with no pomp, and no rings at all. And we carried on with none until a couple of months later, when I snuck into a store without you and I bought a matched set of plain wedding bands in silver as a surprise.

Through the years of our marriage since then, we haven't found much time to mark our romance with ceremony . The holidays and anniversaries I remember best are the ones we spent turned all upside-down -- the Christmas we spent unpacking boxes in our new house, the Mother's Day we spent repairing a storm-torn gutter. The birthday I spent at your grandmother's memorial service.

A few days ago I asked you what you wanted to do for Valentine's Day and you shrugged and looked guilty and said "I hadn't really thought about it much yet." And I wasn't surprised because -- let's face it -- I know and you know you buy gifts at the last minute, and you couldn't remember to make a restaurant reservation a week in advance if your life depended on it.

But the truth was, I hadn't really thought about what to do on Valentine's Day much yet, either.

There was a time when I would feel a slight pang of jealousy when I watched a bride walk down an aisle full of flowers in a beautiful gown. There was a time when I felt a little envy when some couple we knew told us about their romantic anniversary getaway. There was a time when I cared about flowers and fancy dinners on Valentine's Day. But I don't anymore.

Because Saturday you folded all the laundry while I read email, even though I hadn't asked you to.

Because you fold my clothes more neatly than I do.

Because Sunday when you were at the grocery store without me you bought me marinara sauce with portobello mushrooms and wine even though you don't really like portobellos or wine, either. And then you served it with dinner.

Because you bought me a box of chocolates that had only dark chocolate in it.

Because you gave our son his bath last night and read his story even though he really wanted me to read his story and we both knew he would whine about you doing it instead, so I could lay down on the sofa, because I was tired.

Because even though we said in sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live, and believed it, by all stereotypes and cold hard statistics, this crazy, met-too-young, married-too-soon, stressed-too-often relationship of ours should never have lasted this long. Not through three homes and two cars and seven job changes and six birthdays of a decidedly not-neurotypical child.

And yet, here you are, still, remembering that I don't like milk chocolate. Folding my jeans.

Dinner out and roses would be a nice gift, one of these February 14ths. But a present like that would be a very little thing compared to the thousands of simpler, mundane, yet much more important everyday gifts you have given me over the years.

That diamond ring we wanted once might be nice to have, someday, too. But if you ever get around to getting me one, it had better look nice next to my old scratched and dented silver wedding band. Because I'm not taking that off.

A Cookie Like My Heart

It has been over a year now since my son had a sudden and violent allergic reaction to a peanut butter cookie, after years of eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and peanut-flavored granola bars and Peanut M&Ms and french fries fried in peanut oil without a problem.

I've already cried over it; I've already ranted; I've already reorganized my pantry and sent lists to the school and compiled the careful, well-researched, incredibly short list of Restaurants That Are Mostly, Probably Safe. I've already dutifully, repeatedly reminded myself of the much longer and much more upsetting list of Childhood Diseases That Could Be Worse.  I've already adjusted to the constant mental presence of  this terrible knowledge, that the wrong bite of food could hurt or kill my son at any moment. I've made the syringe that contains the emergency medication that could save his life as essential an extension of my body as my glasses or my purse.

Out of life-and-death necessity I keep his allergy in mind every waking minute which after a while from an emotional standpoint is pretty much the same as not thinking about it at all.  There seems to be a part of my brain that just does it, now. Like the part that remembers how to walk. I read ingredients and thoroughly question and instruct teachers and party hosts and babysitters and waitresses on autopilot. Solving a safe path through the world for him has for the most part become an intellectual not an emotional enterprise.

If I weren't like this, now, I'd be constantly crazy with worry and guilt and regret over aspects of childhood that I never recognized as being all that important until they were lost to him. Which just wouldn't do. Anxious, guilty, regretful people make mistakes, and this is an area where I cannot bear allow myself room for serious error.

But there are still moments, once in a while when the fact of his allergy hits me like a kick in the chest, the way it did on the day I first learned of it, and I struggle for a minute to breathe.

Like today when I was at a fancy little boutique grocery store and walked past their bakery display, blooming with beautiful extravagantly decorated heart shaped Valentine's cookies in every flavor and size.

I used to make a point, when he was younger, of buying my son, on the spur of the moment, little surprise presents of candy or food. Ridiculous things, sometimes, like rainbow lollipops the size of his head (that I knew he would never finish). I'm quite a stickler for health food in general -- in my house, whole, natural foods rule the table and fruits or vegetables are required with every sit-down meal .  But I'm also a foodie, and a hobby baker, and I'm not ashamed to confess that I've never met an oversized artisan brownie I didn't like. And my son started out as a pathologically picky eater -- so resistant to eating, in fact, that for a frightening period of time he made himself  ill.

So once his palate began to expand it became a joy to me to surprise him on impulse with pretty and decadent foods. Once in a while, when I saw a giant, artistically frosted cookie or a beautiful piece of chocolate artifice at a store -- the sort that makes your heart skip a beat when you see it, that reminds you of pressing your childish face to the glass in sad longing while your mother said, "No, not that, the smaller one" -- the sort you aren't supposed to spoil a child with -- I would buy it and give it to him, trying to tell him without words, See, this is what I wanted to tell you about the fun of food. This what you have been missing.

But today I knew without looking -- I've shopped hear before -- that not one of the beautiful heart shaped cookies would be labeled PEANUT FREE. I couldn't just pick one without thinking and buy it and meet him with it at the door when he comes home from school. The cookies at the bakery are just another one of so many things -- like the cake at most birthday parties and the candy from most candy shops and the ice cream from ice cream parlors -- that are off limits for him now, and may be off limits for life.

Which is why this weekend I am fairly certain I will wind up baking more homemade heart-shaped cookies, in every hue,  than one child could possibly eat, and wishing I could make them as pretty as the ones at the store.

Beautiful

Yesterday afternoon I sat in a cafe with my son, tapping away at a blog post for work on my netbook while he calmly ate a bagel and read a book on animal habitats for homework. "That's a well-mannered young man you have there," a grey-haired man noted approvingly as he walked past our table toward the exit. It wasn't the first time I've received a compliment on my son's behavior from a stranger. On good days, which are most days, these days, he is uncannily proper in adult-centered places like libraries, churches and restaurants.

It was only twenty minutes or so later that another little boy, perhaps eight years old, sat down at, or rather bounced into, the table next to ours, as his mother waited in line to place an order. My own son had finished his bagel now, but was still reading intently, oblivious to the new arrival.

"Hello," the stranger boy said." At first I assumed he was speaking to my son, trying to get a potential playmate's attention, but when I turned to glance in the boy's direction I saw that he was staring straight at me, expectantly. "Hello," I said, and smiled, then turned back to my work.

"It's-very-nice-to-meet-you," he said in a very measured tone, even though I was no longer facing him, and I knew at once that he'd been taught to say that, and had practiced saying it, diligently, after "Hello." I turned around.

"It's very nice to meet you, too." I said. "Thank you."

"You are using a computer in a restaurant instead of eating," the boy said. It was a statement of fact, not a question.

"That's true," I said.

"But you are not in a computer lab." This the boy said a bit more loudly, in a tone that fell somewhere between mildly accusatory and utterly perplexed. My son looked up from his book at the boy quizzically for a second, smiled politely, then went back to his reading.

I glanced at the boy's mother, still in line.

"That's true," I said to the boy. "I'm not in a computer lab, but they do let you use computers here. I'm not breaking the rules."

"Oh.  Oh.  KAY!"

His volume was all out of sorts, whisper one minute, too loud the next.  I could see that the boy's mother, still stuck in the line, saw us talking now. Her forehead crumpled a bit, as her mouth fell into a pressed line. I smiled briefly and brightly at her, trying to convey that I was not bothered. NOT BOTHERED.

"Do you know where the restroom sign is?" The boy asked me. Not the restroom. The sign. But maybe he meant he needed the restroom, and wanted directions?

I pointed helpfully. "It's over there."

He bounded gently off toward the restrooms, then, to my surprise, came straight back to the table without going in, eyes shining.

"They're beautiful," he exclaimed. Seeing my confusion, he added, "The letters on the restroom sign on the door. They're gold. They're shiny. It's just what I wanted." Then he sat down, in his chair, blissful, as his mother hurried over, her order finally taken. She took hold of his arm and guided him quickly to an emptier corner of the room. Over the clamor of  the kitchen and the chatter of the diners, I couldn't hear all that she said, but I caught the words, "Inappropriate," "talking to people," and lastly, "Now we'll have to eat in the car." She looked exhausted.

I could hear the boy's words clearly. "I'm so sorry, Momma. I didn't mean to. I won't next time."

I stood. I walked over. I said to his mother, "Excuse me. I wanted to let you know. He wasn't bothering me. Not at all. I think he's sweet."

"Thank you," she said. "But you see, we're pressed for time anyway. It's been a long day. He just got out of a class . . ." While she said this, she looked not at me, but at my son, sitting so properly at the table.

I wanted to say, four years ago I hid with that boy you see there in a phone booth in a restaurant, unable even to make it out the exit, holding the booth door shut with one hand  and desperately trying to calm him with the other while his face flushed and his eyes bulged and he screamed a terrible wild pained scream, as if I were beating the life right out of him, because he had been overwhelmed by the noise of the crowd, and I was half-convinced that any moment someone would call the police.

I wanted to say, years ago on my birthday I was ushered out of  my favorite Indian place with the check and a box before I'd had five bites of food because my son was humming almost silently and rocking in his chair and biting his hands because he was terrified of the food and even though there were two other toddlers playing loudly and bumping into waiters in the very next booth while their parents ignored them, the people sitting next to us were disturbed by him, not them, and complained.  

I wanted to say, there but for the grace of God go I.

I wanted to say, your son is beautiful. I know you know it. Don't you see I can see it, too? He sees the beauty everywhere that others miss. He made my day just now, reminding me to look at the world instead of rushing and bumbling through it with my eyes ten steps ahead. He's a joy and he's welcome to sit next to me anytime.

But as I saw her looking wistfully at my son, a six-year-old sitting there reading a twelve-year-old's science book and sipping his juice like a perfect model of what is expected of a child in a cafe, the only words I could eke out were, "I understand. Please trust me. I do understand," and then she smiled a tight smile and nodded and left in a hurry.

So That Happened

I don't really want to write about turning 30. Not in public! Not on the blog, anyway. Not where my friends will see it. Most of my friends already turned 30. Two or ten or 30 years ago. As someone who got her first job at 16, who moved out of her parents' house at age 17, who graduated college and became a paid professional writer at 21, who had a kid at 23, who started a blog at 24, I've spent much of my life as the youngest person in the room, and my friendships reflect that. Most of my friends have already survived their own inner crises about turning 30. (Or even celebrated turning 30 with no crisis at all.) Hell, some of them have even already written about turning 30 on their own blogs. They won't want to read about my issues with 30, will they? What if they find my anxieties about growing older insulting? Or silly? Or trite? What if they laugh at me?

****

Thirty is definitely too old to be worrying about whether people will laugh at me for things I write on my blog.

****

I told my husband that what I wanted for my birthday was a shirt that said I'M TOO OLD FOR THIS SHIT. He didn't buy me one.

****

In the days before my thirtieth birthday, my husband kept saying, "Thirty isn't so bad, you know." Sometimes it sounded like he was teasing me. Sometimes it sounded like genuine reassurance.

****

When I was just 21, an abnormally, dangerously large cyst that had silently grown on my left ovary for months without my knowledge suddenly and violently ruptured, causing massive internal bleeding. After I woke up from an emergency surgery that definitely saved my fertility and probably saved my life, the surgeon, who was a woman, a woman who seemed about 30, said, in a very sincere, serious, sympathetic voice, "The bleeding was severe. You will have extensive scar tissue. The effects of scar tissue on your fertility may well get worse over time, especially if you develop more cysts like this one. If you want to have children without expensive help, you should start as early as possible. If I were you, I would definitely try for pregnancy before 30."

****

When I got pregnant just two years later (while using contraceptive measures) it was by accident, at an exceedingly inconvenient time, and frankly terrifying. Nonetheless, as I stared at those positive lines on the stick, the surgeon's words echoed in my head, and I could not help but feel vague sense of triumph. Before 30.

****

My son has asked me "When can I have a little brother or sister?" at least once a month since he was old enough to ask the question. I never answer him directly but I always used to say, to myself, in my head, Not now. Not now. But surely before I'm 30.

****

Every doctor I talk to about my past surgery tells me rather gravely that my insides must be positively riddled with scars. Time after time, the mantra I hear from doctors has been the same, "If you want more children, try now. Or at least try before you are 30."

****

At various points in my life I have had no less than five English teachers mention to me their firm belief that most of the best writers peak before they are 30. Crane, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc. "Write a novel before 30," more than one of them urged me. On the day I turned 29, I swore to myself I would finally finish one of the five or six books that keep rattling around, unwritten, in my head. I'll write a book by my thirtieth birthday, I promised. I didn't.

****

Maybe those doctors are wrong about my prospects, anyway. How would they know? How could anyone know if I'd really have trouble getting pregnant again when I haven't even been trying? I should say we. After all, it takes two people to make one. We, mutually, deliberately, have not been trying.  In a marriage, ideally, making a baby requires a set of two of matching plans for the future. Plans do not always match, you know.

****

Thirty is the age at which I always picture my mother, when I think of her, in my mind's eye. My platonic ideal of my mother is my mother at 30. I don't really remember what she looked like before she was 30, but I remember her face at 30 clear as day. I was 12 then. She was very young, for a twelve-year-old's mother.

****

Why do those babymaking expert doctors always say 30? Why 30? I know I'm not the only woman they are saying this to. When they say it it always sounds like they've said it a thousand times. That seems so blastedly arbitrary, that invisible 30-year line. Hey, I'm no scientist, but I did happen to ace the A.P. Biology exam when I was in high school, which wasn't that long ago, thankyouverymuch, and therefore I do know that the technical, scientific term for individual medical predictions based on general statistics is bullshit. Sure, it may be true that women on average become strikingly less fertile after 30, but you can't expect that rule to apply to every individual. And anyway someone's 30th birthday is a totally arbitrary point in time at which to draw a line. What if I'd tried to get pregnant at the age of 29 years, 364 days? How would that be so different than trying to get pregnant tomorrow? Of course not. Not really. It wouldn't be. Anyway, I haven't been trying at all. Maybe if I did try tonight I'd get knocked up with twins, just like that.

****

I don't think of 30 as old. I have plenty of friends who are 40 or 50, and I don't think they are anything remotely resembling "old." I do think of 30 as the end of youth, though. I always have. I always think it's weird when people call 30-something people young. Thirty used to be called middle-aged, not that long ago, remember? I don't really have a problem with that, being thought of as in the middle, immersed in life, in the thick of things. Part of me actually sort of resents the fact that fashionable people will probably keep calling me "young" until I'm 40, or 50. I've been to college. I'm married. I work. I have a son. Hell no, I'm not old, but I don't feel young, either. Haven't I done enough yet to be considered all grown up?

****

My mother was so much older than most 30-year-olds at 30. When my mother was 30, she had two kids already and a third on the way. She already had two marriages, two careers and a master's degree under her belt at 30. She had already helped organize marches on Washington and taught hundreds of students to write and taught herself to refinish old furniture and filled notepad upon yellow notepad with poetry at 30. 

****

If I don't try to write The Great American Novel, I can't fail.

****

In the week before my birthday, when my husband would say, "Thirty isn't so bad" I usually replied, "You know, I don't really think you're old." But a couple of times, instead, I snapped, "It's different for you. You're a man."

****

When I think of myself as 30, I can't help but feel rather strangely that I have somehow transformed, overnight, into my mother. When I look in the mirror now, I catch glimpses of her face.

****

I am so relieved to finally be 30. Twenty-nine, honestly, just felt like an entire year of almost-30. The anticipation of 30 is far more annoying than the actuality of 30. No one will ever ask me again "How do you feel about turning 30 this year?"  Also now I can stop asking my husband what it feels like to be 30. I am sure he is relieved.

**** 

I remember when my stepmother turned 30, I childishly asked her if getting older bothered her, and she said, "Actually, I'm thrilled to turn 30. To tell the truth I feel like I've been 30 my whole life, and my calendar age is only just now catching up."

****

People used to put black candles on your cake when you turned 30. They used to decorate your party with black balloons and paper tombstones. They used to call you Over the Hill. No one does that now, of course, unless they're doing it ironically. I blew up a couple of black balloons for a friend's party two years ago. Ironically, of course -- I mean, hell, over the hill? He'd only recently been married. He was just about to finally finish his PhD and get out of school. Thirty is just getting started, these days. Of course my friend knew I was joking. But lately I kind of feel like a jerk for those balloons.

****

When my mother was 30 she looked 25. When she was 35 she didn't look a day over 30. No, really. This one time I tried to pick up my little brother at kindergarten, and no one would believe I was his sister, because the teachers had seen my mother, and thought could not possibly have a daughter who was 17. They nearly called the police on me. Of course my mother was very proud that I'd nearly been arrested over her youthful face. The face that nearly launched a kidnapping investigation. She repeated that story for years.

****

At parks, I still regularly get mistaken for my son's babysitter. Not bad for someone my age, eh? I'm really only sort of bragging, though. It's sort of disconcerting, actually, to have people think I'm my own child's babysitter.

****

For my 30th birthday, my husband snagged a babysitter, got dressed to the nines, and took me out to the same club we went to on our very first date. I know, what a crazy romantic, right? The sushi was great; the cocktails, just as awesome and ridiculously strong as we remembered. But the music was lame, and the couches were worn, and the crowd seemed vapid, and the whole place was annoyingly smoky. We left at eleven.

****

For months now, I've been fibbing about my age. This summer a 70-something man at the local historical society meeting asked, "How did such a young thing like you get interested in history?" and I laughed carelessly and said, "But I'm nearly thirty!" A firefighter I met on a volunteer voter education stint said, not even flirting, "You can't be older than my daughter in college," and I retorted, "Oh, you flatter me! I'll be thirty in just days." A month ago a little boy at my son's school asked how old I was, right in front of his forty-something mother, and I outright lied. "I'm thirty," I said, and shot her a furtive glance, deeply relieved to see that she didn't raise her eyebrows and purse her lips in the way every mother at my son's school inevitably did last year whenever I mentioned my age. I felt guilty for lying. I felt like I was squandering the last year of my 20s, erasing 29, and yet, I kept doing it. I couldn't stop myself. It seemed to me that in most cases telling someone I was almost 30 had a totally different effect than telling them I was 29. There's something magic about 30. People take 30 seriously.  I haven't fibbed this much about my age since I was nine years old ("I'm nearly ten!").

****

All day on my birthday, I couldn't stop thinking, again and again, I really, really, really must finish writing a book before I turn 31.

Five Reasons for Apathetic Voters to Vote

Hey you. Person who is planning to skip voting today? DON'T. Let me tell you why.

5.) There is more than one question on the ballot. So you don't like either of the candidates for U.S. Senate, or you think the choices for U.S. Representative all suck and you're sick of their negative ads. So what? Your local ballot will most likely feature important local initiatives that could change your daily life in key ways. Tax legislation. Bond issues. Regulatory laws that may affect local businesses. There may also be good candidates running for city council or school board -- these might even be people you personally know from your neighborhood. If you don't vote today, you won't get to make your voice heard on local issues.

You don't have to answer every question on a ballot when you vote. If you hate your national level candidates, you can skip them. Cross them out. Vote for yourself as a write-in candidate, if it gives you a thrill. But don't let your distaste for a single political race keep you from casting your vote on other issues in your community.

4.) Seriously, it doesn't take that long. No, SERIOUSLY. It does NOT take that long. Your polling place is probably a five minute drive from your house. It might well be on your way home from work tonight. If you don't know where it is, you can find it in moments using Google or your state's Secretary of State website. I know you have heard horror stories of people standing in line for hours to vote. But those incidents are isolated. Long lines at the polls pretty much happen when there are problems with voting machines, problems with ballots, or extremely high turnout. In a midterm election, long lines are unlikely. In most elections I have voted in, I have been in and out in 15 minutes or less.

3.) Your vote actually does matter. In 2008, Al Franken won the race for U.S. Senate in Minnesota by 312 votes. If just 312 of his supporters had decided voting wasn't worth the trouble, he would have lost. If just 313 of his opponent's supporters had shown up, Norm Coleman would be Minnesota's Senator. Every vote counts.

2.) If you don't vote your complaints about bad government lose their force. You of course, can complain about your elected government officials even though you refused to participate in choosing them, but people who actually bother vote can also logically refuse to take your complaints seriously.

1.) Not everyone in the world has the right to vote. Good people fought and died to win you that right. For their sake, please: don't waste it.

Paying Attention

This evening while we were eating dinner, with the television news speaking softly in the next room about a pastor who wants to publicly burn a sacred text, my six-year-old son said to me, suddenly:

"Hey, remember a while ago on The Daily Show when they were talking about that mosque in New York, and they made the Bank of America logo change to Death to America, and they turned Burger King into Burger Sheik, and Church Street into Mosque Street? That was sooo funny."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Municipal Land-Use Update - Ground Zero Mosque
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

And in the space of about three seconds, these are the thoughts that flew through my head:

Wait. My kid was paying attention to that news about people burning a religious text? At dinner? Crud.

Wait. My kid actually pays attention to The Daily Show reruns I sometimes watch while the he is supposedly distracted by homework or video games? The reruns he always complains about us watching when, according to him it would be "more educational" to watch Mythbusters?

How much attention is he paying to, um, er, all those penis jokes they tell on TDS? Um. Hmm. Erm. Note to self.

Wait. My six-year-old has been paying so much attention to the news in general that he not only knows enough about the supposed "Ground Zero Mosque"* to have correctly interpreted that Daily Show segment as pertaining to it, but also knew immediately to associate the furor over the Islamic community center with Dove World Outreach's Quran-burning publicity stunt?

WAIT! I haven't even really talked to him about the Park 51 Islamic Community Center in New York yet, or about Pastor Crazypants' planned burning of the Quran. I haven't talked about how when the Founders put freedom of religion in the American Constitution, they did in fact mean all religions not just Christian ones. I haven't explained to him how wrong I think it is that some people in this country are persecuting all Muslims because of the actions of a deranged few. I haven't told him about all the moderate American Muslims I went to high school and college with, who were just as appalled by 9/11 as any other sane human being, and who yet live even now with harassment and profiling. I haven't talked to him about how fear and pain and loss can sometimes cause even good-hearted people to make bad decisions and hurt their neighbors.  I haven't explained well enough, have I, about people sometimes being afraid of people who are different from they are, just because of the difference? I haven't had a real discussion with him yet about how politicians and members of the media sometimes purposefully stoke public fear and anger in order to gain attention and power, and how that seems to me to be happening now every time someone brings up any news story remotely involving Islam.

Agh! I am totally unprepared for this discussion!


I mean, he's six.

And then the six-year-old said, "People think that mosque is at Ground Zero, but it's two blocks away." He shook his head.

"Oh," I said, "You've really been paying attention to the news, huh?"

"Yeah," he said. "People should pay attention. So they know what is true."

And he went back to his dinner.



*Park 51 is, for the record, folks, NOT at ground zero, or, in fact, even technically a mosque — it's an Islamic community center. Plans include a basketball court and space for cooking classes as well as a small prayer room. Thank you very little, 24 hour cable news, for your clarity on this issue!

Seeds

Straight green stalks rose almost twice my height. I ran my fingers along the grooved green husk leaves tight-wrapped around one ear, and touched the spilling silk. It was prettier than the corn-husk doll at home on my mother's shelf.

Pick one, she said. And she helped me twist the ear until it snapped. In the kitchen she showed me how the husk peels back to reveal the golden kernels in their stately rows, how to pull out the last stubborn threads of silk. And I asked, how does this get in a can? And with a knife she sliced off the kernels, neatly. Oh please, I begged, can't we make something with it?

And she pulled a step stool up to the stove, and she taught me to make garden vegetable soup. And when I tasted that corn it was like a revelation of corn, a Platonic ideal of the Original Corn. But of course I didn't know those words like Platonic then. Platonic is what I think now, when I remember that taste. On that day I just knew that despite eating canned corn at least twice a week for dinner at home, I had never really tasted corn before. 

***

She came to pick us up in her blue Ford Cordoba, the car with impeccably clean seats. My younger sister, the sweet one, the pretty one, like always, simpered and batted her eyes for shotgun, pointing pitifully at her once-broken leg (the leg that had already healed perfectly almost year ago— the leg that posed her absolutely no problem, thank you very much, when climbing trees or running on the playground). But the charm that almost unfailingly moved my mother and father rolled off this tiny, twinkle-eyed woman like rain off a duck.

"She's older. She has longer legs."  And I sat in the front seat of a car for the first time in over a year, marveling at my good fortune, while my sister, who would have cried fat crocodile tears in any other person's car, pouted silently in the backseat, wondering how her spell had been broken.

At the Piggly Wiggly, as we marveled at porcelain figurines of ballerinas, she bought us each a Sprite. "Don't tell your mother," she said. My sister drank hers in conspiratorial glee, but I, ever the Puritan, took tiny sips. Everyone knew my mother had secret, invisible, almost-all-seeing eyes in the back of her head.

I didn't know, then, about the universal Soda and Candy Exception that is granted to grandmothers.

I should have drunk that soda.

***

We heard third-hand that she was riding through Vegas on the back of a motorcycle. A few weeks later, we heard she'd gotten a tattoo.

My mother was still furious at her for selling the family house. I was a little mad too, considering we'd been staying there at the time and had needed to move on short notice.

Secretly, though, I was thrilled by the image of her speeding past the neon lights, the wind ruffling her cropped grey hair. When I told my the kids at school, "My grandmother rides motorcycles in the desert and has a tattoo," they didn't believe me. Of course, I never told them the tattoo was of a panda. That made the whole picture seem somewhat less daring.

***

Last month, my aunt emailed to tell me that my grandmother was slowly, stealthily turning the entire grassy landscape of her assisted living community into a decorative food garden. "I try to tell her to save her money for a new computer," she wrote, "but she just keeps buying plants." Her neighbors, my aunt reported, had been recruited, and were now in cahoots in my grandmother's revolt against the grass. There were fruit trees and bean plants popping up everywhere.

In response I emailed my aunt a picture of my son standing in a tomato jungle twice his height, and said, "Grandma might like this picture." And I asked my aunt to show my grandmother my new blog on sustainable food.

A few days later I received in the mail a handwritten note on a scrap of blue paper, in my grandmother's familiar stilted left-hander-forced-to-be-a-right-hander scrawl, announcing my uncle's wedding. The last line, squeezed at the bottom like an afterthought, read, "Love your internet stuff."

***

Yesterday evening I was standing in my vegetable garden, tending to my overgrown tomatoes, when my husband brought the cordless phone out to me. And I stood still pruning and tying tomato branches in an automatic motion like a prayer on a rosary even as I heard the tremble in my mother's voice, and asked, "What's wrong?"

***

As I hold the blue note in my hand, staring at the last words my grandmother wrote to me, knowing there will never be another note, never any more words from her to me, to anyone, I can taste that corn.