Ellen Weeran Tags Me in The My Writing Process Blog Tour

Ellen Weeran tagged me in the My Writing Process Blog Tour, and in one moment, I felt both honored and horrified at the same time. She thinks I'm being funny when I say this, but really, I'm being honest. Alas, out of love for Ellen and because she did say such nice things about me (as I have never been called talented about anything. Ever. And while I call my daughter funny as hell all the time, I've never been described that way) and because it's lovely to have people who believe in you (even if they out you out of the writer closet you are hiding in) I am back on a neglected blog I was kind of hoping would just quietly go away. (Nothing against blogging. I get a lot more writing done when not blogging - I haven't gotten facile at balancing the two - but now I see Ellen will have me cause a breakthrough in this.) 

Also, before I proceed, and because I haven't updated my will or located it in my filing cabinet, I will say here that I have told Ellen that if I die before I wake or however that prayer goes or if I get hit by a truck while riding my bicycle, she gets to write my obituary. Ellen will say really nice things while others would say something like, "Tara, despite 30 years of ballet still tripped while walking upstairs, was known to leave a concert, movie, or party if the book she was reading was better, and had a tendency to laugh too damn loud at mediocre Jesus jokes."

Ellen's contribution to the My Writing Process Blog Tour can be found here, and if you keep clicking on the links to the previous writer's blog, you'll meet some pretty amazing and inspiring writers. Apologies that my contribution took over a week. I am a slow writer, and the death of Robin Williams knocked me off a kilter (I know, I know, everyone else too.). I lost two days to crying and making my children watch the Dead Poet's Society, but that could be a blog post, should I choose to continue this thing.

To the questions:

1) What are you working on? 

Just as Ellen has had her "Summer of Ellen," I've made 2014 my year to write "Some-God-Damn-Good-Stories-That-I-Can-Be-Proud-of-So-I-Don't-Die-Not-Having-Succeeded-At-Anything-Year." I have a very bad habit of writing lots, but not finishing anything. Like last year, I wrote 12 stories and 150 pages of a novel, but the stories all ended at the 3/4 point and the novel was half done. Alas, 2014 is all about completion. I do have one out making the contest and submission slush pile rounds as we speak. It's called "Reptiles"and was inspired by a drive my husband and I had to make from Denver to Texas in the midst of a blizzard as well as an iguana my husband had while he was in college and the fact that the iguana died when a blizzard hit and the power went out. Whatever happens to it, I am fairly proud of it, and I am happy to have it in the "complete" pile where I can shut the drawer on it.

I just finished another story, a true short short story, as it is only five pages, called "Your Own Death on Saturday." I just had it work shopped in my writers group, so I have one or two more revisions and I'd like to shave 150 words off it. It's one part inspired by my sister, one part inspired by a George Saunders story (though I won't say which one), and one part inspired by Jim Henson's disclosure, that when they didn't know how to close a sketch on the Muppets, they would either cause an explosion, or have one character eat the other.

I have three other stories I am trying to clear off my desk, and all three are heftier and longer, but I love them and do a lot of writing in my head on them them when I'm not actually working on them. One is called "At the Summer Palace" that I started on a trip to China, one is called "Skinny Wayan," loosely based on a tour guide we met while traveling in Bali, and the last one I don't have a good title for yet, nor do I have an elevator pitch type of description for it. 

And finally, I have another work called "The Pope is in The East River" that I have spent over a year rewriting and trying to cram into a short story despite all the suffering it was causing me. I gave it to my dad to read (as I am fortunate to have a dad who gives honest feedback, is a good reader, and is willing to talk me through something), and he came back with his questions and comments, but when I told him the vision in my head that I was trying to match, he said, "Yeah, that's not a story. That's a novel." As someone who already has three novels on her hard drive, I said, "no, you don't understand. This is my year of God-Damn-Good-Stories." My writers group has read through it at least three times (very patient and kind people they are), until one of them said, "this is not a short story..." I said, "no no no, you don't understand...." Finally, I sent it in to the One Story Workshop with a feeling of dread and that awful-I'm-so-stuck-feeling, only to find that people loved the voice, found it funny and quirky, while lovable and smart, but also had very wise insights on how to fix it. And Ellen succeeded where others had failed before her and said, "Tara. This. Is. Not. A. Short. Story. It's. A. Novel." I waved my white flag of surrender and now I walk around practicing admitting this project like someone who just left their first 12 step program meeting: Hi, my name is Tara. I am working on three longer short stories and a novel.

2) How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I wouldn't have said it before my workshop with One Story, but now I say it's funny, quirky, smart with a lovable voice and characters (even if one is kind of bitchy). But I only say this as I don't know what else to say. I am really interested in how personal stories and experiences intersect with larger scale stories and happenings. The Pope in the East River is largely about that with a character who has a knack for getting knocked up during natural disasters (even if she just happened to give birth) and knowing that the natural disasters are a result of climate change, and how do you maintain your trust or faith that it's going to work out or that the world is reliable when you are stuck in a state of incomprehension or feel utterly out of control plus the weather is out of whack? 

I do love teasing apart those ugly moments when a relationship unravels as well as those beautiful moments when forgiveness and healing happen. For years I had E. M. Forster's quote from Howard's End posted above my desk, "Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die." I love exploring those spaces and moments where both the beast and monk exist, like the loving and inspiring marriages where people still say profoundly hurtful things to each other in an argument behind closed doors. And I really love getting under the surface where people aren't saying what they'd really like to, or those things people feel like they can't say, like mothers who wonder why they had their children, boys who would just once would love to throw a tantrum like the Incredible Hulk, but know they'll get in trouble and who feel anger and confusion about the bizarre panoply of role models that are supposed to inspire them and their morals, so on and so forth.

3) Why do you write what you do?

Coping mechanism mostly. Because I have issues that require grappling with on some level or I am trying to work something out for myself. I suspect, given that I've written since childhood, it's because I had a traumatic childhood, where my parents had a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf type of marriage (except George and Martha in the play actually love each other on some level), and after they split, my sister went to live with my dad, while I stayed alone with my mother who was depressed, angry and a frequent migraine sufferer. Even when I try to write people that are very unlike me, at some point I realize they are me, at least on the level of my childhood self who is still seeking reassurance that it's all going to work out, even when you're surrounded by crazy people or crazy circumstances.

     

Many things I write because I am curious about something. The Pope is in The East River I started all because when the Pope retired, WNYC announced it in the same sentence as they announced that there were dolphins in the East River. I just thought, huh, how often does that happen? And why are those two things connected? And for as long the dolphins were in the East River, WNYC only talked about them in conjunction with the Pope. So I started wondering what if you have someone who lacks trust or faith, not in a religious or dogmatic sense, but trust-in-the-next-day-sense or that it will work out, and who instead relies on the perpetuity of external things like institutions or dolphin migratory patterns? Also see above where I say something about liking to create stories that pivot on larger context things that connect to individual people.

4) How does your writing process work?

I do a lot of scribbling, a lot of writing, loads of revising, and I try to find the most critical or smart readers I can, hand them red pens, and shove my drafts in their faces. I go through a lot of drafts. A whole lot of drafts. I waste a lot of paper. I was never one of those kids in school who could start a paper at the last minute, pull an all-nighter and get an A. Truth be told, I kind of hated those kids. When I took that route, I got anxiety attacks while my papers earned Cs. But I did learn early on that procrastination was the devil and drafts can be a huge gift. I also need deadlines and am constantly setting them for myself. Now I have much less anxiety (thankfully), and I just enjoy playing around with how things are going until it feels right or true (and I don't mean true, like factual true, but true the way bicycle wheels get aligned and balanced so that they can support hundreds of pounds of weight at various speeds. I don't know how else to describe that feeling of when I'm on the right track.). Though when I wrote poetry through high school, college, and into my thirties, I would get sudden flashes of inspiration that would require little revision. Same with things like parenting essays, letters to the editor, and shorter or flash fiction. But I think with longer stories, academic papers, and the novels I rack up on my hard drive I'm attempting to tease apart bigger knots. 

I do get up early most mornings and write for sanity's sake, especially as my husband has been working in China on what was supposed to be a short term project but is now a into next year and longer project and I've become a single parent. I now rely heavily on the things that are grounding and make me feel good. I have 18 inches of counter space in our kitchen for my laptop and notebook. When my kids are around, I can't open the computer and maintain peace in the house, but I will scribble out story ideas and revisions on 3 x 5 cards or in my notebook and I can get quite a bit written that way. I used to time my kids' naps with a late afternoon subway ride and would stay on the train and write as long as they slept - even if it meant staying on the train way past our stop. I've gotten good at stealing pockets of time. And in full disclosure, I have help with the children and free-lance gigs that don't require too much time. I also shut off the Internet on my computer or seek out places that don't have Internet. (Again, why blogging can occasionally be a problem.) I just got approved for studio space at the Center for Fiction in midtown and that's a huge help. 

Doh! And the story about a bicycle and a voodoo doll? Do I have to tell that now? I will come back to it, I promise, as I have been staring at a computer screen long enough my eyeballs are beginning to spiral out of my head. But thank you Ellen, for calling me out. At this point the horrified feeling is completely gone, and I'm just left feeling honored that you think I'm worthy of the attention! 

Exquisite Corpse On the Go

Sis has designed a project. She has launched a series of blank notebooks out into the world with directions on the covers. The idea is one person fills a page with their choice expression, a drawing, a list, a poem, a collage, or whatever and then passes the notebook onto someone else who fills in the next page. The above is my collage for her notebook. I simply collaged it with pictures from an old copy of New York magazine I found in her recycling bin. I had to keep the collage simple otherwise it'd never get it finished (like so much of the rest of my life). She's handed out upwards of 20 books. Granted, she gave a couple to me, one I could pass around my son's group of play mates that we hang out with in the park. She also gave my son Fyo his own book that he could do whatever he wanted with; he proceeded to glue many of the pages together. Whatever. It's his book. Which is precisely the point in a way, to discover new forms of self-expression or even to reconnect to old forms of self-expression. The other point is the sense of community that emerges as the books pass from person to the next and as one person picks up another's narrative thread. When the books all come back, around the end of November, there's to be a big party of celebration and exhibition.

I have a profound love of notebooks, their blank pages and their potential creativity, the promise of an empty afternoon spent delving into an empty page. It was a welcome invitation to receive, as it's been a long time since I've had a moment to settle down and set time aside to just hang out with an exacto knife and a glue stick and just let something emerge. But in this project, it's lovely to watch my little contribution emerge with a greater community's creativity. I've never gotten to participate in any kind of group art project before; notebooks are usual my private space or a space I hide out in. Yet this particular exercise was fun, as I couldn't get too attached to what I glued to the page. It's a new way to engage with the notebook process, by passing it on to it's next contributor - and it inspired me to dig out my old unfinished notebooks and create places I could escape to for a moment here and there.

Rain in the Full Moon

Last night, my husband and I walked out of the grocery store with our children, and as we walked across the almost empty parking lot, we looked up to see this vibrant huge white full moon. The kind of  vibrant huge full moon that almost looks supernatural because it is just so huge and vibrant. It's the kind of moon that children's books and fairy tales are written about, the kind of moon that you would think you could reach out and touch if you were sitting on your dad's shoulders, the kind of moon that you just want to keep looking at and keep looking at until you thought it could swallow you whole. As I looked at that moon, I should have known it was the kind of full moon that stirs up havoc. Indeed, this morning, as I walked through the park with friends, we each shared stories of how no matter what our father's professions were - policeman, veterinarian, even my dad as computer programmar - they all said how during the full moons, people got whacko and they would get the weirdest calls. I was joking when I thought it, but by the time it was out of my mouth and I realized I had said it, I realized it did make some degree of sense, that the moon pulled on our children the same way it pulled on tides.

As Fyo had a morning on Monday that was like no other. Over the summer we pulled him off all grains and sugars (this is a much longer story for the why we did this, but essentially it's about his teeth and what seems to be a mineral deficiency that results in bad teeth), except Sunday, at a friend's birthday party we gave him a free pass, knowing that his friend's parents were ridiculously healthy - if they were going to offer cake, it was a reduced-sugar-sweetened with-dates-or-some-other-fruit-not-so-bad-for-you-cake. Fyo, knowing this, indulged. He grabbed a slice and ran off into the woods to eat it all by himself.

Fyo, in his life, has thrown relatively few temper tantrums. He's not a tantrum child. If he gets upset, there's almost always a very valid reason behind it, and one of extenuating circumstances like he's getting sick or we kept him up late for several nights in a row or something like that. And I guess if Fyo has some sort of actual food sensitivity to things like gluten or grains or whatever, that would be such a circumstance and the tantrum he threw would make much more sense. I do suspect this is the case as the tantrum he threw Monday morning was so unlike him that it would just make sense that it was a result of all the grains and sugar he had on Sunday.

Except for that full moon...

And Tuesday morning, he woke up especially tired again. He cried about things not laying correctly in a bag, the kind of thing that disrupts the order of the world of a small child. I hugged him close as he cried, and then he crawled or did this weird thing with limbs that resulted in his knee hitting my face, specifically my jawbone and lip. My lip swelled and bled in a variety of places. I screamed louder and longer than I have screamed since, well, I gave birth to his sister Lyv. We had already all slept in until 8, I had to put ice on my face and stop the bleeding, so our usual departure time for the park of 9 was immediately pushed back. My face hurt like hell and felt that weird huge swollen feeling where it feels way bigger than it is. As I walked out the door, Husband said, "it's not so bad."

Upon entering the park, my friend saw me and immediately said, "Oh dear, it's really bad." What I didn't know was that my swollen face had turned blue on the subway ride into the park. It just got worse as the day wore on the way that bruises do. Though the clerk at one of our favorite stores pointed out that I didn't have a bruise, I had a hematoma, which is bleeding outside of blood vessels or something related to blood in the wrong places, one of those things that I might have learned in high school biology had I been paying attention.

In the park, it started to rain a gradual gentle rain that steadily got stronger until we all were pretty soaked. Nonetheless, my friends and I let our kids romp up the hill, sit in the grass for a picnic, run along the path chasing ducks from the pond and play on the playground and climb through puddles and all the other things one does as a child in the rain. Until we started to get cold and insist to our children that it was time to go home.

The kids and I were soaked through to the skin, still, the trip to the park with friends was a balm to the soul on a day when your child has literally left you bruised. Many of us have had recent struggles with our children - our children who are usually great and easy going awesome kids. We don't understand. Our children flail and say mean things, while we're left stunned thinking, "but this just isn't you. You are not like this. I can not even see your eyes because you are not there..."

They may be at the brink of developmental breakthroughs. Probably they are in fact. Nonetheless, I blame the full moon. I think we all did.

I have been so fortunate in my life that generally I have found great gatherings of friends during chaotic periods. In Middle School I had an amazing group of friends and not the usual catty gathering of girl bitches. In High School, I had phenomenal friends in my dance company and high school. In college, I worked in a flower store where the I could spend the afternoon working and laughing until my stomach was sore. I could continue my list of how I have literally stumbled into fortunate gatherings of women that have only nurtured my soul, but it would grow boring. Each still serves me daily, but this most recent group of women that meets in the park with our children, well, coming home, I felt only grateful for friends that make me sigh with relief when I find them in the park. That kind of relief when one knows one has found acceptance - that these women will love me and not think poorly of my kid for kicking me in the face. They know what to say and they know that it's not, "Clearly, this is an issue of discipline". I came home feeling grateful that they knew that Fyo's knee in my face was an accident, but that they also knew I still felt like I was struggling as a parent, even if I'm doing the best I can in each moment.

And then I was grateful, because new pajamas arrived.

Sis and I have been discussing pajamas. We all need new pairs and hate it that there's not a reliable source for quality pajamas, at least for women. For men there are, and they come from Brooke's Brothers, the kind of pajamas that get softer with washing and wearing and the kind of pajamas that last. As a woman living in New York, I am slightly irritated that the best place for quality pajamas is the men's section at Brooke's Brothers - especially since I'm a democrat and don't fit the demographic for the store. Still, I fingered the fabric and thought, oh, they are doing something right...soft, but just the right weight for fall nights beginning to get cooler as the season heads towards winter. These are the kind of pajamas to drink tea in and read long novels in - not that I get the chance for that much anymore.

Still, as it rained on outside, and my children cried on inside, I found comfort and peaceful moments in other comforts, like a spouse who just pours me wine at the end of a long day, French Onion soup, with onions from the market that have sweetened slowly over the stove simply because I was able to start them hours earliers during a brief peaceful moment when the children were playing. I felt grateful again when Fyo slurped his soup and said, "Oh. That's good." The kids fell asleep early after a good dinner and I finally have a moment of quiet. As tomorrow's soup simmers on the stove and the rain continues outside, I think of heading to the bath and then bed with my sleeping children. I will dream of small luxuries and peaceful moments in swirling chaos...

Eggs For Our Friend

Here's our first batch of eggs to give away. I was hoping for six, but the girls are still getting in to their groove. Out of the six chickens, we're getting 2-3 eggs a day. Neither child can eat eggs, but after coming home from the park, Fyo loves to run outside first thing and check the coop. I too have become quite attached to soft boiled eggs with butter and salt. I just learned that eggs are the perfect food; they have all vitamins and minerals except for vitamin C.

Once the girls hit their groove, we'll be getting 4-6 eggs a day - enough for us with some to give away. This is our first almost-half-dozen for our good friends we met in the park.

Surrendering to Summer

Before Summer even officially began this year, Lyv and I had sunburn after sunburn. I'd slather sunscreen on both of us, walk out under cloudy skies, and both of us came home pink. I'd slather sunscreen on us again, walk down to the corner bodega, and again, come home sunburnt. Every time I went outside, I got bit by ten mosquitoes. It was barely June, and I decided I was over Summer. I have spent my life trying to enjoy it, trying to pretend that I'm not completely fair skinned, that I could perhaps not get burnt if I applied enough sunscreen or spent just ten minutes every day out side, so my skin could develop a degree of sun tolerance. But the truth is, in Summer, I get sunburnt, and if I don't, I get a reaction from the sunscreen I am wearing to prevent the sunburn.

This year, I decided I was old enough and comfortable enough with myself that I no longer felt I had to pretend to like Summer. I have spent enough of my life researching, sampling, applying and reacting to sunscreen and mosquito repellent. I thought I had made my peace before, when I switched completely from inefficient nasty chemical sunscreens to mineral sunscreens like zinc oxide or titanium dioxide, but this year I could no longer ignore that those too, especially my beloved Badger sunscreen that saw me through my stay at the equator, made me want to claw my face off. 

This year, rather than pretend that I love the heat as much as everyone else, I didn't. I freely now admit that I hate it. I hate the heat, and hate how depleted I feel in a heat wave and when I spend all day constantly sweating. I hate sweat running down my face or in my eyes. I also hate taking off my skirt or shorts at the end of the day to find a soaked waistband. Disgusting. 

In my rebellion against Summer, I bought a variety of big rimmed hats and light weight long sleeved shirts for me and my daughter.  I put minerals in my water, carry coconut water for the kids when it's heat advisory weather, and made some degree of peace with that from now on, I'll be that woman with a big hat, carrying a handkerchief to wipe my face like an English old lady, constantly popping a salt tablet while drinking yet more water. My friend's daughter gave me her Chinatown parasol (they're from Ecuador, so they don't get sun burnt walking to the bodega), which I find completes the look of someone trying to live their life, visit the parks they love, while simultaneously hide from the sun. It's ridiculous, but it beats hiding out in a cave for three months of the year.

Then I went on with my summer.

The kids and I went off to Central Park like we always do. We hit the Farmer's Market where we found fresh berries for jam making. First strawberries and rhubarb came into season for crisps and pies, then the blueberries. Now the corner bodega has organic raspberries for a dollar. My new Popsicle cookbook from People's Pops arrived and now I'm thinking of new Popsicle creations and if I can meet the nutritional needs of my family via a diet that consists completely of Popsicles (which I think I can, but I don't know that it's compatible with a Paleo diet...). I made my first batch of pickles. I have yet to make my annual summer pies of peach, strawberry-rhubarb, blueberry, only because we're so inundated with summer fruits, I have to use them quick - I don't have the time to whip together a pie crust. Instead, I've been making crisp after crisp after crisp. We have friends over or my sister with her fiance. Someone runs for vanilla ice cream or Coconut Bliss, and we silently devour warm fruit with ice cream melting into the juices.

On heat advisory days, when we're too hot to eat, we make a batch of guacamole. When it's too hot to do that, I slice an avocado, add salt, call it a salad, and have a beer - something I only drink when I'm too hot to think. The kids are listless on these days, and there's even been a couple of days, when I've asked Fyo what he wanted to do on that hot afternoon, and he said, "take a nap." I expected him to say he'd like to go up the street to the neighborhood pool, or for a bike ride or to the playground to play in the water. But he's right, when it's a hot summer day, the way to handle it is to sleep through it...

In the morning, before my family wakes up, and I get up early to write and enjoy my coffee in the quiet, one of my favorite things is to water the garden. None of the vegetables are producing anything. Not a single green tomato on a vine anywhere, but my herbs and flowers are thriving. Even if the family is up, if I ask Fyo if he wants to come out and help me water the garden, he does. In the backyard, as he waters, he tells me about the progress of his strawberry plant, and how there's a new little strawberry beginning to grow.

Fyo started swimming lessons, we got the bikes fixed and a new family cargo bike. Fyo got much more interested in his bike and riding it around the neighborhood when we go to the post office and hardware store. The Celebrate Brooklyn Concert Series started in Prospect Park, and a couple of weeks ago, the New York Philharmonic played in the parks of all five boroughs. We've headed off to Central Park for a picnic on the Great Lawn to hear the symphony just two nights after we rode our bikes up for a picnic in Prospect Park to hear the music. On the way home from our trip to hear the NY Phil in Central Park, Fyo and I discovered our favorite ice cream stand was still open at 10:30 at night. We were beat, but excited to find it open, so we each got cones. It felt indulgent to grant a 3 year old late night ice cream, but I thought, "Isn't this summer? And when he's older, will I remember all the nights he was in bed on time with proper dinners? Or the night we stayed up too late on a Summer evening having ice cream?"

Fyo taught me how to ride a scooter with instructions like, "Watch me brake, Mom." and "No, we don't go to the corner. We go to this house right here, and then turn around." It was hard not to  love that childhood tradition of riding out on the sidewalk in front of the house and hitting the invisible boundary (in this case, set by the kids and not the parents!) to turn around and head back.

After my first scooter lesson, we rode our bikes up to the neighborhood pool, and went for an evening swim. I realized while riding my bike (my bike that turns twenty years old this summer! I wish I had counted all the miles I've put on it!) that I actually love summer.

I may hate the heat and mosquitoes, but I love bike rides and evenings where we all play outside until dark. I love that we can spend all day eating fruit and avocados, but nothing of actual substance. I love the days that are so hot, that even as an adult, it becomes perfectly acceptable to lay down in the fountain at the American Museum of Natural History. I love camping trips with good friends, good food, and good conversations and being out of the city where the kids play so hard, they look like they survived the Dust Bowl and they're still sleeping it off two days later. I love watering my garden and walking through the Markets to see what's fresh this week. I love how we see friends at the playground that we haven't seen all winter long. I love sundresses and sunglasses. I love evenings with Sangria and vegetables my husband cooked on the grill. I love the fireflies that blink like magic and disappear. I love the summer reading (I don't know why reading during the summer is different, but it is - maybe it's the heat that stirs those childhood memories of free reading, and reading whatever I wanted all day after hours spent in the library.) I love the summer rains, and that last week, after the hottest day, we got absolutely soaked in the season's most amazing downpour (with Fyo screaming, "I'm getting wet! I see lightening! It's so wet!). I love that despite all the things I have going on, in the back of my mind, I'm already planning next year's garden and next year's camping trips.

Riding my bike home from the pool, I couldn't help but feel like a kid again, that there was something about being active in the late sun that made me feel ageless and eternal simply because in the heat, it will always be fun to ride bikes, go for a swim, have avocados for dinner, fall into bed late, but happy. I felt like Fyo, when he shouts, "Oh! This is fun! I love this! I think I love summer! Let's do this forever!"

Except at 4:30 the next morning, my bike was stolen from in front of our house. Oh...the heartache...

Arguing Against Resilience

My 3 ½ year old fell head first in the duck pond in Prospect Park this past spring. The incident left him scared and rather traumatized. So much so, that when his friend lays on the ground, and throws leaves into the duck pond in Central Park, he screams, cries, and then pulls her back from the edge by her dress while yelling, “It's not safe!”

My son and I spend a lot of time in the park and around a variety of duck ponds, so we talk a lot about water, being scared, learning to swim, how to stay safe, and how still, he doesn't want to go to the parts of the park where he saw a kid fall face first into a deep puddle, so that his entire head was submerged under water.

Oddly, in reference to the duck pond incident, I have been told randomly, that my son will get over it eventually, because kids are resilient. Not only are kids resilient, but people are, generally speaking.

I know what these people mean: that children go through difficult things and survive, even turn out well, despite an aversion to water.

Yet, it's the English teacher in me that just has to point out that it's not a correct use of the word “resilient.” I find it hard, in these conversations, not to quote Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride by saying, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

To be clear, the word resilient means the ability to recoil or spring back into shape after bending, stretching, or being compressed. This definition suggests that kids simply endure whatever trauma or hardship, from falling in the duck pond to being bullied at school or by their parent, and simply spring back into shape, as if that event never occurred.

Granted, the alternate definition of resilient is that someone withstands or recovers quickly from difficult conditions. Still, this definition suggests that the difficult conditions do not leave lasting marks or at the very least, that kids (and people in general) can endure rather a lot, without much harm coming to them in the long run.

I just don't think this is true of kids, or of grownups either.

After my son's fall into the duck pond, he has not just bounced back as if he never fell head first into dark murky water. Even in the alternate definition, he is recovering from the fright of his fall, but quickly? He fell in three months ago. Is that quickly? I have a friend who lost her gorgeous off the grid house in the Colorado fires. She is recovering, but she is grieving, raging, crying, yelling, and grieving some more. Is that all part of withstanding?

The word resilience devalues the experiences that shape us and impact us. It asks that we experience life by acting as if things don't.

I think the better word is adapt. Instead of saying children are resilient, we could say, children adapt. Because they do. They develop coping mechanisms. They make decisions about the world and they make decisions about themselves. Some children who are abused are scared into behaving well, because they adapt with the notion of, “if I just stay quiet and out of the way...” while others adapt by becoming physical fighters. But spring back as if nothing ever happened? I don't know anyone who does that. Humans collect experiences the way a child collects shells at the beach; it doesn't serve anyone to act as if those experiences don't leave some imprint long after their moment has passed.

After my son's fall, he's adapted by staying away from the edge of the duck pond. He only goes in the ocean if he's holding my hand, and he won't let the waves go higher than his knees. This week he begins swimming lessons, an adaptation we're hoping lessens his fear of water. He will recover, and I do believe this whole process will contribute to who he becomes, but I don't expect him to bounce back as if it never happened. To do so would be a disservice to who he is and his experience.

On Judgment

On Saturday mornings, the Fort Greene farmers market lines the side of Fort Greene Park. The location is ideal, as families can pick up the weekly groceries and then take the kids to the playground just inside the park. Or in our case, my husband takes my son to the playground, while I pick up the vegetables, meat, half & half, and enough strawberries and rhubarb to satisfy my addiction for all things strawberry-rhubarb for the following week.

As I walked through the market this morning with my sister, we were once again talking about a thing that we often talk about, how women do this funny thing where we either judge the bejeezus out of each other or we accuse other women for judging the bejeezus out of us. Once we become parents this trait goes into hyperdrive to such an extent that all that has to happen is that another mother shows up with artfully arranged organic snacks in a stainless steel container and we feel judged because we have decided that with our snacks – the standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich (made of course with organic peanut butter and jelly but no one knows this since we left the jars where they belong in the refrigerator at home) in a plastic container that may very well contain BPA (or not, we just don't know because we've had them so long we can't remember if we bought them before and after BPA starting making the headlines) – we fall short. Or in some way, we feel invalidated, just because someone else does things differently. It's a leap of mental energy – mental energy that we very much need for other more important tasks, but nonetheless we use it anyway and carelessly – to accuse the other person of judging us or making us feel judged simply because they do something different.

My sister and I talked about this leap that happens, about how there are times we don't understand it, how it happens, how just because we do something differently than someone else, someone else feels judged by us. Yet, I concede that the places I judge myself the harshest are the places it doesn't take much at all for me to feel judged. The other person doesn't even have to say a word.

I've been on both sides of this coin. I've had mothers come up to me and admit that they feel intimidated by me because I write parenting articles and posts on how to be the perfect parent, or that because I write, I must have it all figured out. I've corrected them, to say that I have written no such thing about knowing how to be a perfect parent, that I actually write how I'd like to see the word “perfect” dropped from the English language or at the very least redefined to mean that as perfect parents, we lose it and then apologize and forgive ourselves and start over, just so our kids know that it's okay to make mistakes, to try, fail, and try again or that's okay for my kids to see that I too have emotions, or that I get frustrated or angry – and that I understand my anger and frustration impacts them and can even scare them. I correct them and say that generally the times I do things “wrong” are what I write about, and the times I do things “wrong” actually teach my children how to be resourceful like how to handle things when we end up on a subway ride without a toy to play with or in the park without snacks or a spare diaper or the baby's spare outfit.

Saturday morning, after my sister and I walked through the market and entered the playground where my son and husband were playing, I tried to figure out how I could put my market bag down without all of its contents spilling out. I had my 11-month old in her carrier and didn't want to have to bend over to pick up escaping apples or potatoes. One of my friends came running over. She was cute in her usual hip Bohemian Fort Greene mom way. She was especially energetic and happy. I instantly assessed that to be so hip and energetic, she must be very well rested and that it must be smooth sailing at her house with her two children, while at my house, we were lucky to get all four of us dressed to stumble out the door.

And so I said, “Oh, you're one of those smart, quick-witted mothers, one of those mothers with the answers...”

She said, “Are you kidding? Here you are wearing heels and a baby and carrying a bag full of vegetables. It's like a vision of perfection.”

I started to explain that I wasn't really wearing heels, that I was actually wearing heels made by the clog people so that they felt like clogs, but then I realized it was besides the point. I had just done that very thing my sister and I were just talking about; I had looked at someone else and instantly judged myself. It was like a bad habit left over from puberty, but worse, because I was still doing it and doing it without even thinking about it, almost as if it was an unconscious hard wired brain pattern, the kind of wiring that has you breathe without realizing it.

It wasn't even a thirty second interaction. We didn't discuss the usual hot topics that can cause parents to get weird, or their feathers ruffled, the topics like diet and snacks, discipline, TV watching, schools, or god forbid, vaccinations. It wasn't one of those conversations where I felt baited, like when a friend asked what we were going to do about my son's Pre-K in the fall. When I answered that we were going to try homeschooling, she immediately began defending her decision to send her son to school, and what a great school they had found for him. Even when I said, “That's great. We haven't found that – or we haven't found it close to our home or for less than $28,000.” She continued to defend her decision and her son's school. Even when I said, “Different families need different things.” She still defended. I left feeling weird and wondering why she had asked in the first place.

I have noticed since I've gotten caught in the judgment back and forth often enough and often without even meaning to or doing anything, that now, unless I'm with my closest friends (or friends that I know while we may do things differently, we know that we're all slightly neurotic about different things, and we're very good at respecting each other's neurosis) I no longer fall into the judgment trap because I don't casually disclose our various choices, or if I do, it's not without thought, or briefly explaining why we've done what we've done as an attempt to simply say, this is what works for us. Like that we no longer let our son watch TV because it made him violent and caused temper tantrums and I simply was unwilling to do it anymore. We don't do sugar because it also makes him nutty, not to mention, even with a lack of sugar (and juice, milk, bottles, candy, soda, or dried fruit), he has a mouth full of cavities that has the dentist stumped. I don't talk about vaccinations because that's a potential heated argument I have no desire to get into. When a friend asks for advice, I deflect with “Well, we're a little untraditional, but what we've found is...”

After talking with my sister and the brief interaction with my friend, I realized once again how comparing myself to others is just a reflex of my mind. It's not something I have to stay focused on. And, while I didn't know it in puberty, I know now that often others are also comparing themselves without even meaning to.

Recently, in an email with some beloved friends (versus some random online moms group), one mother asked, “How do the rest of you do it? Get snacks made? Get out of the house? Get time to yourself and get work done?” The discussion that followed was reassuring for all of us, as we all thought the rest of us had it all pulled together. Instead, we found that many of us often wear the same thing days in a row or that our children do, or that people pack snacks the night before, or drop the laundry off for someone else to do, or cook soup on Sunday so the week starts off with a few nights of leftovers. Some of us admitted that we throw parties just so we have to clean or that we've pulled the majority of our children's toys just so we don't have to continually pick up the pieces. I admitted that if you actually came over to our house, you'd discover that with two kids, two adults, two cats, a large dog and six chickens in the backyard, our home more resembles a circus than a peaceful sanctuary. Yet it's a circus that works for us, which is what I now remind myself when I notice that I'm feeling judged or inadequate.