Say Cheese

When my kids were growing up, we took hours and hours and hours of videotape that we knew we would enjoy watching later. Christmas mornings and birthday parties, baptisms and First Communions, school pageants and family vacations, playing in the basement or in the backyard on a snow day from school.

The time has come to finally watch those tapes as we convert them to DVDs. We are watching all the moments we knew we would want to cherish, moments we forgot we had recorded, and moments we forgot had even happened. Our kids were every bit as cute as we thought they were. And they were downright funny at times, especially the things we missed when they happened, while Auntie Judy was quietly taping away. There are moments when we saw clues to the unique individuals each is today. The memories are priceless.

But…it was all Caileigh and Paige all the time. Occasionally, we would catch a glimpse of my late mother-in-law, my father or our siblings. And, despite the 1980s big hair, it was wonderful. We wanted more.

So, my holiday gift this season, is a word of wisdom. Before the end of the year, make sure you snap a few shots or record a voice or make a hokey movie of your child’s grandparents and aunts and uncles and family friends. And when someone else pulls a camera out, just be gracious and smile even if you are having a bad hair day or carrying a few extra pounds you are meaning to lose. These are the pictures your children will treasure some day. Besides, 10 years from now, you are going to think the 2009 you looked pretty good.

Twenty-five Years and Counting

In celebration of our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary the other day, my husband Paul and I did something special: We had our wedding bands cut off.

We were not symbolically severing our relationship as we severed the thinning gold from our thickening fingers. But it was time to admit that, after years of slowly adding extra weight, those rings were not coming off without help, and we were not going to be reverting to the slim bride and groom in our wedding album any time soon.

When I look at the photos of that young bride, happy and hopeful, unburdened by extra weight around the waist or lines around the eyes, gazing at her slender groom…I still feel like that. Less familiar looking is the person who looks back at me now from the mirror. I’m still making plans for the future as if it stretches out forever, and I wonder where 25 years could have gone.

The years quietly slipped away in moments big and small. A glorious honeymoon, followed quickly by a layoff. The births of our two cherished daughters, and the deaths of our two cherished mothers. The terror of knowing a sick child may not live, and tremendous joy when she did. Hours spent side by side at the soccer field, dance competitions, plays, art shows, and graduations. The long nights trying to explain algebraic equations we scarcely remembered ourselves, and long sessions doing our own math so I could stop working, so we could buy a bigger home, so we could pay tuitions. Finding time for tennis and volleyball and trips to the beach. Vacations in the snow and sun, holidays with his family, my family, our family. Paul putting in a brick walk in the summer heat because I wanted it. Me joining a sand sculpting team because he needed a teammate. Raking the leaves, cleaning the bathrooms, unclogging the sink, folding the laundry. Negotiating whether the Patriots game or Desperate Housewives gets the good TV. Laughing, crying, yelling, hugging.

Next week, we will pick up Paul’s resized and shined-up ring, and I’ll be getting a new one that is bigger and better than the old one. But that’s not the only reason I am okay with saying good-bye to the ring I’ve been wearing all these years. It has been a long and mostly happy marriage – one that has brought us closer together but has also brought us pretty far from those young, clueless pretty people in our wedding picture. It’s okay to let go of who we used to be – we really do have something bigger and better now.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Well, if you ignore the falling leaves and the children in Halloween costumes.

A number of years ago, Staples, the office supply retail giant, first came out with a television ad that was delightful. At back to school time, a father skipped gleefully through the aisles of Staples to the tune of the holiday song, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” while downcast children trudged behind him.

The beauty and humor of that ad was the juxtaposition of the familiar Christmas song during what was clearly not the holiday season. Now, the start of school seems to be followed immediately by the Christmas selling season. Relentless holiday displays and piped-in carols live next to plastic jack-o-lanterns and bags of candy corn in October. I can almost understand that. Businesses have quotas to meet and the sooner they get to it, the better their chances of ending the year in the black.
But what is everyone else’s excuse? This week, driving through New England neighborhoods in mild weather, I've seen the early emergence of inflatable snow globes, prancing reindeer and wooden “flat carolers” on front lawns. Why? What is the rush? Maybe these are just the early birds who have their shopping complete by Thanksgiving. But I suspect not.

On Thanksgiving Day, several area radio stations will start playing round-the-clock holiday tunes while the leftover turkey is still warm. Come Christmas Day, they will stop the holiday tunes cold turkey at noon. Likewise, the television Christmas specials begin Thanksgiving night. But come Christmas Eve, when I am doing my inevitable last-minute wrapping, there is not a Christmas movie to be found. Why? The radio stations and networks would probably say their listeners and viewers are sick of Christmas by Christmas. Well, no wonder when they start celebrating while the foliage is still in full color.

I can be pretty judgmental about people who still have wreaths on their doors come baseball season or who seem to think we cannot see their fake icicles glistening along their eaves under the July sun. But it makes me cringe just as much to see beautiful homes that are in full winter holiday décor by Thanksgiving and then go dark by Christmas night. After all, the 12 days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day.

Those you who have your holiday decorations packed away by New Year’s Eve can go ahead and feel smug as the lights on my tree twinkle until “little Christmas” on January 6. I will continue putting my trees up in mid-December. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s—when the work parties are over, the shopping is done, the relatives are in town and we have a few days to enjoy each other and our new gifts—I will continue to sit back and actually enjoy the decorations we worked so hard to put up. As long as I celebrate Christmas, I intend to do so during the actual Christmas season.

School's Out

September 1992

She is polished and ready for her first day of kindergarten. She wears a colorful dress we picked out together, a big hair bow, white lacey anklets on her skinny legs, shiny new shoes and a great big grin. The school has provided her with a laminated bunny bearing her address, which now hangs on a length of yarn around her neck.

I haven’t really been seeing this day as the big deal “starting school” was when I was a kid. Caileigh has been in all-day preschool three days a week for three years and now will go for half a day. She has been reading chapter books for a year, and now she will be taught her ABCs. Frankly, I was looking at it as a bit of an inconvenience, the half-days of school every day, which will force a change in how I schedule my work.

Caileigh, on the other hand, has proudly announced to everyone all summer that she is going to “Mary D,” the big-kid school. She had carefully arranged her bedroom desk in anticipation of homework. She has proudly picked out her backpack, which no longer carries a lunch or a change of clothes and is, on this first morning, empty.

The big yellow bus stops in front of the house and Caileigh runs off, climbing up those giant steps, turning briefly to send me a cheery wave, and disappears. It is only then that I realize that she has appreciated the magnitude of this moment far better than I have.

June 2009

On a glistening Sunday morning, Caileigh walks across the pristine lawn of her college, surrounded by the classmates she has lived and worked with for the past four years. She wears a cap and gown, sunglasses, and a big grin. A sash and cords around her neck signify the awards she has earned along with her Engineering degree.

The past few weeks have been busy ones. She has presented her senior thesis, passed in final papers and exams, attended ceremonies and banquets, interviewed for jobs, and enjoyed a whirlwind of Senior Week events. She has spent days saying good-bye to people she has lived with, studied with, laughed and cried with. She has promised to keep in touch and, with a precious few, she will.

I am remembering with awe the joyful little girl who changed our lives so much and wondering when she became this young woman, who is everything we ever hoped she would be. Following the ceremony, she marches out with her fellow new alumni; suddenly, she spots us and gives a cheery wave. It’s exactly the moment we had pictured.

After a week’s vacation with friends, Caileigh will begin her engineering career and her life. As she turns back to her friends, laughing, I realize my dreams for her have come true, and my job is done. Her own dreams are calling, and she is ready. This time, the moment is not lost on me.

Friend Me?

It’s a brave new world.

When my kids were growing up, I did not want to be their friend. They had friends. They needed a parent, someone who knew where they were and what they were doing, someone who worried about their behavior, goals and values, not whether they “liked” me at the moment.

Now, though, as they bridge from adolescence to adulthood, I have a whole new world to navigate. I am evolving from the parent of children to the parent of adults, and I must find a balance between, on one hand, being available and supportive, and on the other, knowing too much. In this age of constant contact and living online, it’s hard to stay in the dark. But I’ve tried. That is why I have stayed away from Facebook.

I am not averse to technology. I’ve been a telecommuter and user of email and the web for decades. Now, social networking is the dominant trend. A recent Nielsen survey concluded that time spent on social media sites has grown 883 percent since 2003. Until recently, I restricted myself to professional networks like LinkedIn, where I have built a network of professional contacts. It is fun to see where former colleagues and long-ago friends work, and to see who knows whom. I recently learned I am only three degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, that is, I know someone who knows someone who knows Kevin.

Soon, one of my daughters will graduate from college; the other is at the halfway mark. To help their respective searches for an entry-level job and an internship, they’ve joined LinkedIn. While my parents gave me resume-writing tips, I give my kids tips on an appropriate profile and how to leverage network connections in a job search.

Meanwhile, Facebook, the premier site for “connecting and sharing with the people in your life,” has gone mainstream. Co-workers tell me they’ve “discovered” this cool new site; Facebook groups for business networking have formed; and gray-haired users view the latest pictures of grandchildren there. So I finally joined. I am not alone; since membership expanded from college students to the public in 2006, it has grown 500 percent. Still, my kids raised their eyebrows—and warned me about http://www.myparentsjoinedfacebook.com/, where young users share their shame and post parents’ most embarrassing entries. Here, you can find parents who correct grammar and spelling, publicly question Facebook vernacular and share comments that should be made in private. One user found out her father and stepmother were divorcing when the latter’s status changed to “single.”

At 20 and 22, my children can hardly make an argument for “no adults”on Facebook. However, they can hope that, as in real life, discretion on their part will be rewarded by distance on mine. I am keeping a low profile, staying away from putting embarrassing messages on their walls and learning the etiquette of the virtual world they inhabit. In this brave new world, it’s their turn to decide whether they want to friend me.

What Would Connie Do?

Every year, Americans spend $13.8 billion on Mother’s Day cards, flowers and dinners—an amount that is at once exorbitant and wholly inadequate as acknowledgment for the endless gifts most of us received from our mothers.

On Mother’s Day 1986, I was a mother’s daughter—pregnant and sharing with my mother hopes and dreams for my first child. A year later, I was a daughter’s mother—selecting stories for my child that I would share about the grandmother she would never know.

My mother Connie, dying of cancer, feared she would be too unhealthy to hold my baby. As it turned out, Caileigh was the one unexpectedly and critically ill at birth. For two months, as Caileigh battled first for her life and then for her health, my mother rallied, sitting by my side in the hospital, running my errands, praying for Caileigh and organizing others to pray for her as well. As Caileigh’s prospects and strength grew, my mother’s faded. Weeks after my baby finally came home and my mother got to hold her just once in her own home, my mother slipped away. Her final gift to us was her precious remaining time, energy, companionship and faith.

I’ve missed having my mother here to share her advice, guidance and memories with me as I’ve raised my children. But most of the time when I need advice large or small, I realize I actually know exactly what she would say. In fact, I joke about having a bumper sticker made: What would Connie do?

She taught me the practical things no one had thought to teach her—what to spend on a wedding gift, always send thank you notes, forks on the left and knives and spoons on the right. More importantly, she taught, through both words and actions, the importance of having a moral compass. She thought about right and wrong and about what she believed—and she lived by those beliefs. I have not reached all the same conclusions she did about right and wrong—but I have developed a belief system that I try to live by. And I like to believe that my children, who will reach their own different-yet-again conclusions, have learned that lesson too.

She taught me that parenthood is a responsibility to be taken very seriously. But just as importantly, she taught me that it is a joy to be fully appreciated. My wonderful memories of times with my mother include shopping for shoes we didn’t need, laughing until we cried over who-knows-what, and her beating me at tennis and shamelessly gloating. I count those memories among her priceless gifts to me.

This Mother’s Day, Caileigh is 22 and an adult now, one who is healthy, beautiful and smart. One who is grounded with her own moral compass, and one who enjoys playing tennis, shopping and laughing over who-knows-what with her mother. My own mother has been gone for a long time, but the gifts she gave me are lasting. For that, I am thankful this Mother's Day.

What's a Super Bowl without the Patriots?

I’ve gotten spoiled. The Super Bowl is on Sunday but I’m having trouble mustering excitement for anything but the possibility of some cool new commercials. After all, what is the Super Bowl without the Patriots?

It’s easy these days to be a loyal sports fan in New England. In recent years, the Red Sox have won two World Series, the Patriots three sets of Super Bowl rings. Just when their grips on perfection slipped just a bit, the Celtics stepped up and recaptured their championship and former glory. The Bruins and the Revolution also give us cause to be proud.

And we are proud. But why is that?

Certainly, we all like to be associated with winners. Experts call that “basking in reflected glory.” But even if our team wins, we can’t claim the credit. None but the most deluded of us claims that our loyal viewership, our yelling at the TV from our couches, has a direct effect on a team’s success. We can’t even claim that we were smart enough to spot something in the team we liked and knew it was going to be a winner. Rather, we were born to it. We are New England fans because we are New Englanders. (Ironically, very few of our professional athletes are from here.)

Identifying with something larger than ourselves is surely a human inclination. By why do we insist on it, even when our team is losing? After all, 1918 to 2004 was a very long stretch of maybe-next-years. Or is that just good old-fashioned Yankee—scratch that, Early American—stubbornness?

Team loyalty does seem to thrive here in the Northeast, powerfully and consistently, as it does in few other places in the country. Last year, I attended an Atlanta Braves game on a glorious spring evening. The park was nearly empty, with most of the concessions boarded up tight. A local’s explanation that it was, after all, a Monday night, seemed downright silly to the Red Sox fans there. After all, Red Sox Nation is populated in part by people who circle the day Fenway tickets go on sale months ahead of time, and then spend the day working multiple phones and multiple computers in a more-often-than-not futile attempt to land tickets at outlandish prices.

I might not understand why I care whether my teams win, but I do care. Prior to the 2007 World Series, I made a bet with a co-worker in Colorado, a Rockies fan, and delighted in her sheepishly wearing a Red Sox cap to the office for a day after we won. I made a similar bet with a friend in L.A. before the 2008 NBA playoffs. I was downright smug that my team had won.

I will watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, but with more interest in the commercials than in the game. As other Patriots fans know, football season has been over since December 28, when our team won the game but lost out on the playoffs.

So…how about those Celtics?

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

It’s the best of time and the worst of times.

Tomorrow morning, I will turn on my TV in search of inspiration. I will be home alone but I will be joining millions of Americans—Obama, Clinton and McCain supporters, as well as people who didn’t vote at all—who realize that the inauguration of our 44th president is truly an historic moment. At long last, we have a minority president, something many of us had despaired of seeing in our lifetimes. At long last, we will face down the divisiveness and fear that dominated the last eight years. At long last, we will have a “decider” who makes the difficult decisions but does so with the benefit not only of a great leader’s intuition, but also of informed, intellectual curiosity and of the insights of the best minds, including those who don’t necessarily agree with him. This is truly the best of times.

Meanwhile, tomorrow morning, my husband will head to work—and find out if he still has a job. His company will lay off several hundred workers who will join the millions of Americans who are already unemployed. If he is laid off, he will likely be out of work for some 17 weeks and he will likely never regain his current salary level. We will have to figure out how—and if—we can continue paying our mortgage and two college tuitions. And we will not be alone. Unemployment has gone up every month for 13 months, reaching 7.2% in December, the highest in 16 years. We are entering the second year of the longest recession in 25 years. And every prediction is that things will get worse. If my husband is “lucky,” he will still have to watch colleagues and friends pack their belongings and leave the building for good, work longer hours to compensate for the missing hands and brains, and wonder how long until the next workforce reduction. Either way, his professional life will never be the same. In many ways, this is certainly the worst of times.

We don’t know yet what words President Obama will use as he stands on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Like Franklin Roosevelt, he will surely remind us we cannot embrace fear if we are to conquer our very real challenges. Like John Kennedy, he will surely call upon us to think beyond our own problems and work together for the benefit of all. And simply by standing on that podium and raising his hand, he will be a powerful reminder that there really is an American dream and that anything is possible.

It is not a coincidence that we elected Obama during this economic crisis. I am convinced that is what tipped the election in his favor. But it is the worst of times that summons the greatest leaders and inspires the very best in all of us. For that reason, I am convinced that this is the beginning of the best of America’s history.