Happy birthday to everyone

Birthdays: I'm a fan.

Everyone deserves a day honoring their arrival on the planet. A little congratulations, a little hoopla, a day to make the birthday person aware that their presence is a gift to someone, or many someones. We spare no expense when it comes to funerals, to the mourning of a life's end. Why not expend some energy on celebrating the fact that we've given mortality the slip for another year?

Mortality. There's a heavy word. It's the key in the ignition of midlife crises. It's a word that becomes an actual felt presence as our age creeps higher. When you're young it's "Everyone dies eventually." When you reach middle age it's "I am going to die someday." Me. Solid, living, breathing, laughing, going-to-work, parenting, dog walking me, will someday cease to exist.

But not today! Well, so far so good, as of this moment.

And that is the gift we are given as we accumulate more birthdays. I understand as I never did before that each moment of life is a gift, an ephemeral gift, retractable at any moment. Sometimes it terrifies me; in my more self-indulgent moments, I wallow in that terror. But there are moments - and this is one of those moments - when I am acutely aware of being alive, and I am precisely appreciative of the moment in which I'm present. Sitting at my computer on a near silent Sunday morning, hair cool and damp from the shower. My dog is sleeping on the bed next to my desk, his breath an intermittent whisper; the man I love sleeps peacefully in the bed upstairs, the rest of our combined menagerie nestled around him. At this particular moment all is well. At this moment I want nothing more than this moment. If this is the wisdom of age, bring on the birthdays. A crop of gray hair, a scattering of varicose veins and wrinkles, and the need for an earlier bedtime is a small price to pay.

There are other, earthier perks to this middle age business. I dress for no one's approving eye but my own. I say what's on my mind more often than I keep silent to avoid conflict. I am learning to be less harsh with myself, trying to see my mistakes as human errors rather than unforgivable sins. I'm learning to say no to what I don't want and yes to things I may have not dared try before, when I was younger and less me.

Here's something else. You know when people say, "If you want to know how important you are in this world, put your hand in a bucket of water and pull it out. The space you leave shows how important you are." Bullshit. Each of us fits into this world somewhere, and each of us leaves an empty space when we depart. We count with someone, whether it's a spouse, sibling, parent, or the Starbucks clerk who recognizes us because we're at the drive-through every work morning.

Birthdays celebrate life. Life matters. We matter. Definitely calls for at least a cake and some candles, wouldn't you agree?

The "Shameless" life

So much for not getting hooked on any new T.V. shows.
I stumbled across "Shameless" on Showtime one night when I was too tired to read but not ready to go to bed. I'd read an Associated Press article about the series, and it didn't appeal to me. A dark comedy about a chronic alcoholic trying to raise five children after his wife runs off? No, thanks.
But I gave it five minutes, then ten, trying to sort out who was who in the chaotic, cluttered, somewhat grimy lives of the Gallagher family, headed by Frank Gallagher, played flawlessly by William H. Macy.
Frank Gallagher is an unrepentant addict, a scam artist, a man intelligent enough to be a captain of industry but flummoxed by an ego that insists the world owes him a living and an insatiable appetite for mind-altering chemicals of all kinds.
Older daughter Fiona is a typical oldest child, and a typical adult child of an alcoholic. At 21 she is preternaturally maternal, and ferociously protective of her five younger siblings. Her enormous, dark eyes burn with determination, but also reflect the soul of a girl worn out from bearing grown-up burdens. She's outspoken, street smart, and desperately in need of someone to lean on. But of course, when she does find that someone, a kindhearted car thief named Steve, she can't let herself enjoy it too much; she knows that good times are temporary, and the people you love will eventually drop you on your head.
The younger Gallaghers are intelligent, smart-ass, make-do kids. They stick up for one another and they stick together. And although they treat their father with cynical disregard (in one episode they all raised their hands immediately when Frank asked, "All right, how many of you have, at least once, wished you could see me dead?") they go to extraordinary lengths to protect him when he gets himself in too deep. This is partly because they need Frank around to serve as the ranking adult at parent-teacher conferences and when Social Services comes nosing around, but also because he's their dad. If you find that hard to understand, you must not know any families with active alcoholic in them.
One episode captured the pain of living with an alcoholic so accurately I thought I might have to quit watching the show altogether.
Frank comes to after nearly dying of alcohol poisoning and finds himself in the hospital, surrounded by doctors who are fascinated by his resilience. One of them offers Frank $3,000 if he'll participate in an experiment. The catch is, he has to refrain from drinking for three weeks - and wear an alcohol detection bracelet.
Being the kind of man who would eat glass for far less money than that, Frank agrees. He returns to his family a sober man. He cooks breakfast for everyone, he goes bowling with them, he listens when they talk. He's warm, he's attentive, he's involved. He's a dad.
The older kids watch all this with a jaundiced eye. They have scar tissue where their hearts used to be, courtesy of Frank's previous bouts of sobriety.
One of the older brothers gently warns his younger siblings of how this all will end. "It won't last, you know. Don't get used to it."
In an instant I was 15 years in the past, overhearing my daughter Jess telling her younger brother and sister not to get too excited about the trip their dad had promised to take them on next summer.
"He says stuff like that, but it never happens," she explained.
My husband wanted to be the good dad, the loving husband, the family man who worked 40 hours a week and took his family on fun summer vacations. But, like Frank Gallagher, his addictions drowned his best qualities and turned him into someone we wanted to love but had to back away from.
There's no despair quite like watching someone you love destroy themselves from the inside out. There isn't enough love in the world to change an alcoholic who doesn't want to be sober.
In the Gallagher household, sobriety soon changed Frank into a man with grandiose plans and more energy than common sense. When he launches a remodeling project, taking a sledgehammer to the kitchen wall, the kids know that it's time for sober Frank to go. They immobilize him and pour vodka down his throat.
In the final scene the family is watching T.V. together. Frank slumps in a chair, glowering, bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other. Fiona's boyfriend enters and says a cheery, "Hi, Frank!"
"Fuck off!" Frank growls. The kids grin. Life is back to normal for the Gallaghers. And that's a normal a lot more people than you'd expect are comfortable with.

What to expect when you're expecting... Christmas

Christmas is a time of joy and good cheer, baby Jesus, peace on earth, good will toward... Yes, yes, I know.
But for a lot of us, Christmas means stress. It means shopping, which means ricocheting from store to store, sweating in our winter coats as we wait in too-long lines, smiling weakly when cashiers wish us "Happy holidays," hoping we can manage to accomplish all we've planned for while staying within our budgets.
Christmas is damned hard work.
This year I had a revelation which led to a determination. I realized that my pre-Christmas angst is rooted in expectations - mine, not other people's. I assign imaginary expectations to my family and friends and then try to build a Christmas based on those imaginings. Forget visions of sugarplums, I'm too busy picturing the disappointment on my children's faces if I don't manage to match their (meaning my) expectations of what the holiday should bring.
Mind you, the "children" are 19, 23 and 25, and they are the most undemanding, grateful, enthusiastic gift recipients anyone could hope to wrap a box for. Again, it's my expectations that twist my guts and pull my neck muscles tight. I worry about pleasing them. I fear disappointing them. All based on a foundation of absolutely nothing other than my own insecurity and need to control and create an absolutely perfect Christmas each and every year.
This tail-chasing state of mind usually kicks in right around Thanksgiving, when the world around us becomes steeped in pre-December 25th regalia. Carols on the radio. Ads on TV and in newspapers. Christmas movies, Christmas programs. Did I mention Christmas shopping?
This year, just as I was getting a nice knot of anxiety formed, I had a revelation. What if I approached Christmas the way I try to live my recovery program?
Ba-zing! Talk about a new perspective!
Instead of being overwhelmed, I could keep it simple. Instead of thinking of Christmas as the be all and end all, I could think of it as one day, and I could approach that day with ease, one day at a time. And if I didn't manage to achieve Christmas nirvana for my loved ones, I could forgive myself, knowing I'd done the best I could, and done it all with love.
Christmas is now about two weeks away, and my stomach doesn't ache, and commercials exhorting me to get out there and shop, shop, shop don't make me feel panicky. I am aiming for a Christmas focused on family, love and laughter, which is what always ends up being at the center anyway, no matter what the big box stores say. My kids and I will all be together, alive and well. We'll decorate the tree, hanging the breakable ornaments up high so the cats can't bat them down, we'll keep "A Christmas Story" on throughout its 24-hour run on TBS, we'll exchange gifts and hugs. We'll take a day to stand still and celebrate, pure and simple, accent on simple.
May your days be merry and bright. May you give and receive. And may you give yourself the gift of freedom from self-imposed expectations.

Where I was

Of course I remember where I was.
I was working as a receptionist/office assistant for an architecture and engineering firm. I took a call from Noreen, wife of Bill, our landscape architect.
"I'm watching the Today show, and a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center" she said.
My mind created an image: a single engine private plane, a pilot who was obviously inept or had had a medical emergency. I transferred Noreen to her husband's line and went into the copy room to make duplicate sets of blueprints.
Some of my coworkers had radios on, and within moments music was interrupted by news alerts. This was bigger than one person and one plane.
When a second plane hit the other tower, I ran to a computer to try to find more information online. I couldn't get online. Too many people were doing the same thing as me.
I felt the frozen fear that grips you when you know you're going to be in a car accident and all you can do is watch it happen.
Everyone stopped working and gathered around the office radios. Not being able to see the escalating destruction, only getting a vision of it from the news announcer's hushed, deliberately steady tone, was chilling. He announced the collapse of the first tower without changing his tone. Minutes later he said, "And now the second tower is going down." Then, for a long moment, he said nothing at all.
Two of our coworkers went across the street to the cable office, where there were televisions. They came back quiet and stunned. "It's even worse than it sounds," one said.
I'd been blissfully asleep and didn't know it until I woke up on 9/11. I paid little attention to the news in those days. To me, other countries' hostilities toward the U.S. meant angry, shouting mobs burning American flags in faraway lands. I could never have imagined such hatred manifested against my country, couldn't have conceived of men willing to give their lives in order to punish thousands of their fellow human beings for the crime of being American.
In the days that followed 9/11, as I tried to shape a perspective to fit the incomprehensible, what I kept returning to was how everyone had been having an ordinary Tuesday. Ordinary people arriving at work, saying good morning, filling their coffee cups, settling down at their desks. Like me, like millions of other people that day. Men, women and children settled into their airplane seats, thinking about where they'd been or where they were going. Every last one of them ordinary, unique, irreplaceable. Someone's mother, father, daughter, son, best friend.
Ten years later, I saw footage of the second plane hitting the tower and I burst into tears. I believe most of us, if not all of us, carry a scar from that day that will never quite heal, and a certain memory or image awakens that day for us all over again.
When I mentioned the anniversary to my older daughter, she brought up the fact that other countries suffer incalculable losses as a rule rather than an exception. I've heard and read that from others, too. Who are we to act so wounded when other countries suffer so much more than we do, seems to be the sentiment.
Who we are is ordinary people who were unprepared for violent acts of such magnitude. If we were naive, well, that doesn't make it any less painful. Tell the children growing up without their father that their loss pales in comparison to children in other countries. Tell the sobbing parents and spouses to suck it up and take the larger world view.
You can't. You wouldn't do it to the citizens of the perpetually war-torn countries, either. Loss is loss. Sorrow isn't the exclusive privilege of the long suffering.
I'm no longer oblivious to politics or terrorism. And I'm not oblivious to the suffering of people on foreign soil. But today belongs to ten years ago, the people lost, and the people left behind. They're who I'm thinking of, who I'm praying for, and who I'm crying for.

Tres chic? Non!

I will never be an elegant woman.
I've long suspected as much, but tonight I confirmed it. The epiphany came to me as I was walking Indy, my dog. First, there's no way to elegantly walk an exuberant, leash-tugging, wildly panting schnauzer.
I did a brisk head to toe appraisal: this morning's eyeshadow smeared across my eyelids; layers of hair lofting upward with every gust of wind; nails mostly OK, but darned if I can give up biting my thumbnails.
And my outfit? Well, that sealed the deal. One T-shirt featuring a giant chicken looming over the Capitol building. Two blue socks, one printed with little dog pawprints (cute, yes - but not elegant), the other plain blue. The battered gray sneakers I call my Chuckie Finsters, because one of them squeaks with every step, just like the shoes of the "Rugrats" character.
The entire ensemble was accented nicely by the small orange bag I carried, filled with... Well, I was walking a dog; you figure it out.
Once upon a time I dreamed wistfully of acquiring elegance. I wanted to sweep into a room gracefully, more like a swan, less like Jerry Lewis. I wanted to be as calm as a reflecting pool, lithe as a reed, with a musical speaking voice and manners to fit all occasions, a regular Yooper Meryl Streep.
And therein lies my quandry. I am 100 percent Yooper, zero percent Streep.
Truthfully, I like the idea of elegance more than the practice of it. I don't like wearing high heels, I feel like an imposter when my hair is all done up, and I'm lousy at making charming small talk. I'd rather pull on my Eeyore pajama bottoms and Phil Collins T-shirt and eat ice cream right out of the carton than slip into a too-tight silk gown and pinchy shoes and nibble caviar on crackers.
I'm not less than just because I lack certain ladylike attributes. I may be more crass than class, but what you see is the truest, realest me. I may not be at the top of anyone's invite list for a cocktail party, but if someone's ordering pizza and rustling up a game of dominoes, I'm your girl. Especially if I can come over wearing my Eeyore jammie pants and Phil shirt.

One leaf at a time

I'm nursing a resentment against leaves.
Not the emerald green leaves fluttering above me on the trees; no, it's the quitters I begrudge, the crispy orange-brown defectors already scattered across the sidewalks, crunching under my sneakers as I walk with my dog Indy.
That's August for you, though. August, the hand at your back pushing reluctant you toward September, the end of summer. August has never been my friend. As a child it meant the end of schedule-free days spent reading, playing Barbies and riding my bike, and a return to school, where I was an awkward, uncomfortable misfit.
As an adult it meant folding my own children back into the routine of early to bed, early to rise, juice boxes, clean socks and homework.
This year August will mark my younger daughter's departure for college in Minnesota. I've been trying to imagine what it's going to feel like to hug her goodbye and leave her behind, an eight-hour drive away. I happen to be blessed with an Academy Award-worthy imagination, but I still can't picture how that's going to feel.
But about those leaves. Yesterday I woke for the day at 6:30 a.m., an unprecedented event for a Saturday. I took Indy for a walk down by the lake and saw the pink sun morph into white, felt the cool breeze surrender to warmer, humid air. A perfect summer morning, of not for those accursed leaves.
"Look at this," I grumbled to Indy, who ignored me. He doesn't share my distaste for the premature leaf drop. To him it's just one more interesting thing on the ground to sniff. I looked up, thought I spotted an orange patch on a neighbor's tree, and felt my heart give its familiar pre-autumn sink.
Then, mercifully, my recovery thinking kicked in - specifically, One Day at a Time.
It's still summer, I reminded myself. It's going to be beach day. At this moment in time all is well. You're walking your four-legged best friend on a stellar summer morning. There's a fresh pot of coffee waiting at home, where your three beautiful children lie sleeping, all together under your roof for a little while longer. You're going to hang out with friends today. This day is all you're promised. Don't waste it mourning the chillier, leafier days that haven't arrived yet.
Fall is on the horizon, and winter not far behind it. But today, today I am alive and well, I'm barefoot, and my windows are wide open, with a fine summer breeze wafting in.
Rather than nurse a resentment, I'm going to sit on my porch and nurse an icy glass of lemonade. Just for today, it's summer!

Small town mom, big city daughter

In the past two days I've discovered two things about myself. The first is that I'm not as ready as I thought to say goodbye to my younger daughter and leave her eight hours away, at college in Minneapolis, Minn.
Melissa and I attended student/parent orientation at Augsburg College on Friday and Saturday. Due to the mechanical unreliability of my Jeep (and the woeful lack of big city driving skills of its owner), my friend Kathy was kind enough to get us to Minneapolis. While Melissa and I were oriented, Kathy explored that jungle of excess known as the Mall of America.
As we neared the city I was gripped by a mix of sorrow and distress. How could I let go of my daughter? How would it feel to not see her every day, to face the end of our comfortable girlie rituals of tea and "Desperate Housewives" on Sunday nights and occasional Saturday afternoon strolls through the stores of downtown Marquette?
What I wanted to do was burst into tears. What I did was suck it up. Melissa had worked hard to get accepted to Augsburg. It was her dream school, this was her dream moment, and I had no right to compromise her happiness with my quivering reluctance to face the fact that my baby was all grown up.
So this was actually a twofold discovery. I am a) More bereft than expected at the prospect of Melissa's leaving, and b) A loving enough mom to push my own feelings into the back seat for the sake of my child.
Discovery number two occurred during parent orientation. As I sat in the modern, glass-doored conference room, listening Augsburg staff enumerate the many cultural advantages of living on an insular campus with a major metropolitan city mere footsteps away, a yen to live in the big city myself stirred in my brain.
I could do it, I thought. Imagine packing up and starting fresh in a city with so many opportunities for cultural enrichment. What an adventure it would be!
Later that day, Auggie parents were offered walking tours of the surrounding neighborhoods - abbreviated tours, courtesy of the high temperatures and obscene humidity.
The neighborhood my group toured was tidy and vibrant, a colorful mix of older, well-kept homes and ethnically diverse businesses, shops and theaters. I could easily imagine Melissa eagerly exploring it all, expanding her cultural horizons in a way I never had the opportunity to do.
What I couldn't imagine was me living there. The houses are so close together you could practically reach out and knock on your neighbor's window. The yards were square green handkerchiefs of grass or garden. No lakeshore. No tree lined bike paths. Just lots of concrete, cars and people.
I couldn't do it. I don't want to exchange my slow-paced, small-town life for any advantage the big city can offer. I know Melissa will thrive there. I'm proud of her for her adventurous spirit and intellectual and cultural curiosity. I look forward to hearing all about her new life as it unfolds.
Meanwhile, I'll keep the home fires burning. This trip taught me that I'm destined to be a small town girl. Maybe that's another way of saying timid, or lacking in a spirit of adventure. Or maybe it means I know where I fit - and I know enough to value it.