Ways I Am Not A Grown-Up, The Sixth In A Potentially Infinite Series

Good habits* remain entirely too easy to break and bad habits entirely too easy to establish.


*Take regular blogging, for instance. You know, just for a random example.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Time

No, not Time magazine, which is not merely reporting news but making it this last week or so with a cover that sensationalized a topic--extended breastfeeding--that need not be sensationalized at all, but time--that tick tocking force with which we all wrestle. When I was much younger, I listened to all the adults in my life yammer on about how fast time passes and thought that they must be exaggerating if not outright delusional. Obviously anyone who had ever sat through an eons-long geometry class with Mr. Edgecomb couldn't argue that time moved swiftly--those stifling hours spent in that poorly ventilated second-floor classroom stretched out behind me and before me in a seemingly unbroken line so infinite that I would not be at all surprised to find myself sitting there still.

Even then, though, I noticed that time was an elastic thing--stretching and springing sharply back to its original shape--depending on what I was trying to do with it. The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, crammed full of daily swimming and viciously competitive nightly games of cards and weekly trips to the ocean, zipped by in the time it took to belt out a couple of choruses of Wham!'s "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go."

As predicted by my elders, it has only gotten worse as I've gotten older. I read somewhere that one of the reasons time seems to go faster as we get older could be a matter of proportion. A year to a four-year-old is a quarter of her life, to a forty year old it is only one-fortieth. It makes a certain sort of sense, though it's little comfort in the face of the fact that I am stunned to find myself very nearly halfway through the month of May 2012 and a little uneasy at the thought that a few minutes from now, I will likely be stunned to find myself in the middle of June 2012.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Alarming.

Spiral Notebook Sunday: Tuesday, June 8, 2004

Tuesday, June 8, 2004

A few weeks ago, Daughter-Only, not normally a morning person by any stretch of the definition, called down from upstairs in a perky, upbeat voice, "Mom! It's 8 o'clock and I've been writing in my journal since 7:15!" Her tone of voice said it all--she was a renewed person--an example to her mother if her mother would only take it.

I have thought about that moment practically every morning since then. Here's a girl who usually communicates in moans and grunts in the mornings--who grimaces so often that I am afraid her face might freeze like that--whose first waking (or nearly waking) words are very often, "Five more minutes?" and on this morning, something, somehow, has pulled or driven her from her bed an hour early and what she has done with that hour has overhauled her entire early morning persona.

Granted, she likely didn't plan on getting out of bed early to write, but the end result was inarguable. What I have been thinking, and not for the first time, is that it would serve me well to get up early and write for forty-five minutes before trying to face the world. Every morning, when my alarm goes off at 6:45 (a full hour and fifteen minutes before I actually HAVE to get up), I tell myself sternly that I should get up NOW, get up and write in my journal, and feel better than I have before noon in years. And then there's this tiny grumbling voice that says, "Five more minutes?"

Masked Mom's Media Monday: State of Wonder

Ann Patchett's newest novel State of Wonder opens with news of the death of Anders Eckman, a researcher for a Minnesota pharmaceutical company who was sent to the Amazon to check on the progress of a company financed field team. His coworker and friend, Marina Singh is soon sent in search of answers regarding Eckman's death as well as the status of the field team, which Eckman had not satisfactorily reported upon. Singh is swept from the safe confines of the lab where she long ago ensconced herself after a devastating error during her obstetrical training drove her to change specialties to the alien world of the Amazon rainforests, where more questions than answers await her.

Singh's journey, like all great literary journeys, is both internal and external. We are with her as she struggles to come to terms with her past, her present, her possible futures. We suffer her disorientation as she tries to adjust to the claustrophobic and sometimes threatening landscape around her. Patchett does an astounding job bringing the natural world of the Amazon alive on the page--rarely does a scene pass without mention of the teeming insect life, the presence of deadly reptiles and amphibians, swift and violent changes in weather, the vegetation so dense and all-consuming that it seems at times to be sentient, maybe malevolent. Just as Singh is utterly immersed in her setting so, too, is the reader.

Patchett's ability to bring such a hectic and diverse place alive on the page without a hint of heavy-handedness is reason enough to pick up the book, but she brings an equally deft touch to her characters and the themes playing out in their lives. This adventure story touches on the topics of corporate greed, personal ambition, cultural interference,  medical and scientific ethics. How do we measure the value of a human life? Where is the line between exploration and exploitation? Who decides? Are there ends which can justify any means? Is there a limit to the moral transgressions we will overlook when in the presence of true brilliance? What happens when it becomes clear that arrogance and altruism are not only not mutually exclusive but may in fact be interdependent?

State of Wonder is a lushly written book that left me with lots to think about.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Riveting.

Spiral Notebook Sunday: Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Tonight's Spiral Notebook selection is something of a teaser for a forthcoming post that is written in response to the prompting of our talented taskmaster TangledLou, who recently asked us all to write of first loves. I have written of Mr. High School here before, and will again, at least once more since Lou has provided me the excuse I'm always looking for.

This entry was written not quite two years after his death.

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008



...All this time, I had clung to that notion--how grateful I was to have had that sliver of time with Mr. High School as an adult and how gratitude overshadowed any remaining questions or unresolved issues in my mind. And, last night, I saw that notion for what it was--a delusion.

A delusion born of self-preservation no doubt, but a delusion nonetheless.

How could I have thought, even for a moment, even under the duress of there's nothing to be done about it in any case, that our renewed contact resolved things in any permanent way? How could I have imagined that the questions it answered could somehow outweigh the questions it raised? Perhaps most foolish of all--how the hell did I trick myself into believing that his death was any kind of resolution at all? Wasn't my Mr. High School thing always as much in my head and heart as it was about him? All his death means is that the "facts" can't change--but my perceptions of them are as unlikely to stand still as ever.

Ways I'm Not A Grown-Up, The Fifth In A Potentially Infinite Series

I continue looking for the best in people long after repeatedly seeing what seems to be their worst. I continue believing in the best in me long after behaving at my worst all too often.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Daily Posting

"So did you make any time to work on your writing project this week? Probably not, if I know you. I was serious when I said I thought even 10 to 15 minutes of writing a day would be good therapy for you..."

~~Mr. High School, in a letter dated August 6, 2005

On November 1, 2011, I did the same thing I'd done on the first of November for the preceding five years--I committed myself to NaBloPoMo. I never dreamed that that month would turn into another month, and another, until finally, I had somehow racked up six months worth of daily posting.

Tonight marks my 182nd consecutive daily post; I have somehow achieved a goal I never really set for myself--though I committed to one month at a time, making six months never entered my mind. In NaBloPoMos past, I was lucky to make it through the month of November without a string of "I've got nothin'" posts. (My favorite of which can be found here.) This year, things were different because I "met" so many wonderful people in the blogging world and so relished that connection that it spurred me on.

Things were different, too, because I felt motivated and inspired toward writing in a way I hadn't in a while. When I first started daily posting, I was hopeful, almost determined, that the spark and energy I was getting from blogging daily (which includes reading other blogs) would translate into more writing away from the blog as well. It hasn't, though, which has made me rethink my commitment to daily posting.

For the first time in six months, I'm not registered for the upcoming NaBloPoMo. I may still post daily--and I will definitely be posting regularly, but I feel better with that particular commitment off the table.

That said, I've learned a lot of things from six months of daily posting. Primary among them is that I can make a commitment and keep it. I've also learned there is a difference between quality and quantity--and while quantity can be entertaining and challenging, it has made me miss quality all the more. There is also a difference between posting every day and writing every day--and while I may be posting less, I'm hoping to be writing more here and elsewhere.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Educational.

Spiral Notebook Sunday: Monday, June 13, 2011

In the past ten years, the entries in the Spiral Notebook journal that are really just entries about why I'm not writing more entries have steadily increased. This is a pattern I am none too happy with.* Writing about writing is one kind of writing, but writing about not writing is something else altogether. Occasionally, though, some bit of useful insight pops up, which is kind of like finding a lint-covered gold nugget while studiously cataloging the contents of one's navel.

Earlier on in the entry excerpted here, I wrote: "It came to me that it might be helpful to list any specific fears I could pinpoint. Just getting to this point has caused me some anxiety--I've gotten up and wandered off a couple of times...to eat breakfast, to run some stuff to Hubby at a job site (not self-initiated but accepted a little too eagerly to be purely innocent)...My point is, I'm afraid to even list the fears, so that's fear number one--"

So, it started out innocently and rationally enough. As so often happens when I put pen to paper, though, I ended up in a place I didn't entirely anticipate. 

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Monday, June 13, 2011

...6. Having too much to say--and this is probably the biggest issue--that I will be led down the rabbit hole of my psyche--and it is no mere burrow, but a warren of interconnected tunnels looping back on themselves, dead ending in darkness, full of debris, rotted leaves and globs of toxic mud. I know and I'm knowing more and more that there are things down there that I don't really relish the idea of digging around in. And here is the rational response to that (gigantic) semi-rational fear: that stuff is down there REGARDLESS of whether I'm digging around in it. It is down there and it is polluting the groundwater in my psyche. It is down there, in the dark, and it is impacting my quality of life, whether I pay conscious attention to it or not. Paying attention here--the kind of random, roundabout, half-assed, hit-or-miss attention I am likely to pay here--is an imperfect solution, but it is better than no solution at all. I think. I hope.

*In fact, it is likely that the mere mention of this phenomenon will lead to yet another entry full of that sweet-and-sour combination of admonishment and encouragement that I've come to expect from myself.

Random Quote Saturday

"...she had recently been able to see that life gives you openings both false and true, and that one of the measures of genius is knowing which doors to walk through and when."

~~Haven Kimmel, The Used World

Toys For Girls And Boys

Two things struck me as I was typing tonight's post, which is a short essay that originally ran in November 1996 in a parenting newsletter published by Lexigraphics Publishing and distributed by diaper services around the country. First, I am crazy lazy sometimes and instead of writing a new post (which I theoretically had plenty of time to do today), I am serving up yet another reheated helping of older stuff.

Second, even though 1996 isn't so very long ago (though slightly longer than I really wish to dwell on), there are things about this piece that strike me as hilariously outdated. Maybe that's a good thing.

Toys For Girls And Boys

As an enthusiastic junior warrior in the Battle of the Sexes, my uniform at age seven was a red-trimmed halter top that proclaimed, "Anything boys can do, girls can do better."

Decades later, the battle rages on. Gender roles are in flux and as the mother of three sons and a daughter, I am on the front lines in this war. A good general must use the weapons she has at hand, which in my case are toys.

When our first son was born, there was no question his toy box would be filled not only with traditional boy's toys--cars, trucks, and three-inch superheroes, but with a sampling of "girl's toys" as well. At holidays and birthdays, we spread the word among family and friends.

When word reached my grandmother, who was raised in a generation in which gender roles were taken for granted as divinely ordained, she took me aside. "Just between you and me," she whispered,"your daddy had a Little Lady Housekeeping set when he was four." To my grandmother's surprise, he's turned out okay, despite the hours he spent mopping, sweeping and ironing as a child.

A good general must pick her battles. My grandmother was years ahead of her time in choosing toys, so I didn't bother explaining to her how boys can benefit from playing with girl's toys and vice versa. Different types of play teach different lessons, the theory goes. Girls who play with toys aimed at boys may be learning to assert themselves in ways the Little Lady Housekeeper set can't teach. Boys who play with girl's toys learn lessons in nurturing that plastic superheroes can't teach.

With these enlightened thoughts in mind, I could not resist a self-congratulatory pat on the back the day Son-One, then four, asked if he could take his baby doll, Jason, outside to play. In the Battle of the Sexes, it was clear my side had a new recruit.

A good general never celebrates victory prematurely, however. Peeking out the window in hopes of catching Son-One in the act of sensitive nurturing, I saw instead Jason-the-doll with a jump rope around his ankle being dragged behind Son-One's bike.

Three years later, the battle rages on. The doll, nearly a casualty of war, recovered and received the Purple Heart. Son-One reminded me the other day that his doll's clothes needed washing and his dolly diaper hadn't been changed in months. That's progress I suppose. But I won't rest until Son-One puts those clothes in his Little Mister Housekeeper automatic washing machine all by himself.

Ways I Am Not A Grown-Up, The Fourth In A Potentially Infinite Series

"So what?" still strikes me as a perfectly serviceable comeback*. I think of it as the workhorse of comebacks--it may not have mastered the dance moves of a Lippizzaner or have the lightning speed of a thoroughbred, but it pulls its weight when there's work to be done.



*Granted, it's no "So's your face!"

Welcome Back, Karo*

One of my favorite bloggers, cdnkaro, made her triumphant return to blogging yesterday after a month or so away. We are all so happy to have her back that we're hoping, on the suggestion of the infinitely wise Jane and her co-conspirator, TangledLou, to flood the comments section of this first post "Testing The Waters" with cheerful and supportive comments. Please take a moment out of your busy blogging day today to stop by and welcome her back.

In other bloggy news, I have been thinking lately about the fact that even though I've never met any of my bloggy friends in person, they have taken up residence inside my brain and sometimes change the way I see the world. For instance, on Saturday, when I drove over a certain stone bridge, I couldn't help but think of Larissa over at Papa Is A Preacher and her fantastic facial   recognition photo posts. So I backed up and took a (waterlogged) photo just for you, Larissa:

*Like Welcome Back, Kotter, without so many sweaty 26-year-old men pretending to be teenagers.

Random Quote Tuesday

"He had good days and bad days. It was as if when he lay down in bed for a night certain humors pooled in the right or wrong places, like marinade around a flank steak, and in the morning his nerve endings either had enough of what they needed or did not; as if his mental clarity might depend on something as simple as whether he'd lain on his side or on his back the night before; or as if, more disturbingly, he were a damaged transistor radio which after a vigorous shaking might function loud and clear or spew nothing but static laced with unconnected phrases, the odd strain of music."

~~Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Catfish

I don't get out much and I'm not much of a movie buff. Even if I were, the town I live in has one movie theater, which can show only two films at a time, so, needless to say, anything labeled "documentary" is unlikely to make it up on to that marquee. The nearest multiplex-style theater is more than forty minutes away.

All this is to explain how it is that Catfish, a documentary that was released in 2010, has only now pierced my consciousness. It came to my attention on Saturday when Daughter-Only and her boyfriend, A.M. could not quit raving about it and basically held me hostage and forced me to watch it.

I'm so glad they did.

I've spent a good deal of my waking moments since then trying to figure out what to say about this film without giving away too much. I've decided that it's virtually impossible to talk about the details meaningfully without spoiling significant portions of the film.

I can tell you, though, that the main subject of the film, Nev Schulman, is appealing and his enthusiasm is infectious. So, too, are the other emotions we see him struggle with as he makes his way through one of the strangest life experiences he is ever likely to have. I can tell you also that Catfish is a story about how people aren't always what they seem and, perhaps even more importantly, it's a story about the way choosing one path in life, choosing to be one self, sometimes feels like selling out all those other possible selves we might've been. It's a story about where those other selves go. What do we give up when we ignore them? What happens when they refuse to be ignored?

It's a significantly deeper story than Nev and his filmmaker friends, Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (who is also Nev's older brother), set out to tell. It is difficult to watch in places--raw and even a little creepy sometimes--but it is impossible to turn away. At some point during the final half hour of this film, I realized that I had lifted my hand to my mouth in shock and I had no idea how long it had been resting there. At the heart of this film is a somewhat predictable deception, but what I didn't anticipate was the courage and generosity and even compassion that came after that deception was revealed.

I'm embedding one version of the trailer here--the one that I feel does the film more justice. (Apparently, a lot of people who saw the original trailer were under the mistaken impression that it was a horror film of some kind. Please know that that is not the case.) If you click through to watch it directly on YouTube beware spoilers in the comments section.

Before I close, let me add that in searching for the trailer and other information about the film, I came across some "controversy" online regarding the authenticity of this documentary. There are a number of people on the internet who are apparently convinced that the entire thing (or large parts of it) was staged. I will say only this: I personally believe that it is authentic, but to be honest, if it's not, it changes my feelings about the film not one tiny bit--except perhaps to make this accomplishment even more impressive.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Absorbing.

(PS--If you have seen it, I would love to hear what you think. Leave it in a (spoiler-free) comment or send an email.)

Spiral Notebook Sunday: Friday, February 5, 1993

Keep me home all day with a chest cold, three boys (ages 4 1/2, 3 and 19 months), a dog, a cat and a spiral notebook journal and tonight's entry is one possible outcome.

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Friday, February 5, 1993

You know you're the mother of preschoolers when you measure the success or failure of a day by the amount of food you have to pick out of your hair. On the good days, there are only appetizers up there. On the bad days, you might find a nutritionally complete meal up there. (And on the worst days, you use the hairspray before you notice the cauliflower.) So here's a bit of advice from someone who's been there: on the bad days, take heart in the fact that at least you're feeding your kids a well-balanced diet.

Guess what kind of day it's been in the Masked Mom household? Actually--it hasn't been bad. I DID find a stray morsel of semi-moist tuna cat food in my hair, which is what inspired my opening paragraph. Other than that, my only complaint is a nasty chest cold (hack, hack, hack)...Being a mommy with a cold is hard. Not only do you get no sympathy or nurturing, but everything the kids do drives you twice as crazy in half the time as when you're healthy. But even taking that into account, today wasn't bad. I've survived worse and, hey, the cat food could've been canned.

Ways I Am Not A Grown-Up, The Third In A Potentially Infinite Series

I am 43 1/2. I still count the half. Except when I don't. Like, for example, the two times this week when someone asked me how old I was and, both times, I said, "I'm forty-uhhhhhh-three. Forty-three." But in those cases, that hesitation was really me just trying not to count the half out loud.

When I was 32 1/2, I was on a flower delivery with eleven-year-old Son-Two along for the ride. We came to a traffic checkpoint where the state troopers were checking for seatbelts, valid registrations and inspections,etc. As we rolled up to the checkpoint, the state trooper checked our stickers and our seatbelts and started to wave us on, but then he said, "Hold on. How old are you? You don't even look old enough to have a license."

I said, "I'm 32 and a half." Trust me when I say that adding the half in that moment did nothing to convince the officer of my maturity.

He did not merely laugh, he guffawed. He said, "Don't you know that once you turn ten, you're supposed to stop counting the half?"

Perhaps I am more mature than I give myself credit for--or at least I was in that moment--because I did manage to stifle the urge to stick my tongue out at him as I drove away.

Pass It On

I had an almost entirely unproductive day today--the one notable exception was that I packaged up my copy of Creative Is a Verb and sent it on its way across the country to Graciewilde. Here's hoping she enjoys it as much as I did and takes the same delight in passing it along.

Thanks again to Jane for starting this chain of creative generosity.

Random Quote Thursday

"Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness..."

~~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Comparison Shopping, Part 2 (A Companion Piece)

[I guest posted at Periphery today. This piece is a tangential companion to that one.]

"Revision is when you finally get to recognize the distance between what you wanted to write, what you thought you were writting, and what you actually did write. That recognition often makes you want to throw up."

~~Carolyn See, Making a Literary Life

One night when I was ten, I had a particularly vivid dream about a talking horse. I no longer remember anything the horse had to say, which is a shame, because I almost remember that there was a vaguely philosophical bent to his rambling--perhaps he bestowed upon me priceless wisdom that I am poorer for having forgotten. I do, however, remember with certainty waking up the next morning with a clear mental image of this horse, with his glossy coat and flowing mane and tail.

So clear was this image that I felt certain that even I could draw it. Please believe me when I say that I approached the page with a deep confidence wholly unjustified by any of my previous artistic productions. Here is what I drew:

*This sketch has been darkened by tracing the original lines with pencil so they would show up for this photo. Apparently, pencil starts to fade after a couple of decades; I should probably be grateful.

You will perhaps note that this glorious specimen of horseflesh is hiding his head in shame.The shame, rest assured, was all mine. By the time I had gotten to his head, I was so demoralized, I made his neck longer so I wouldn't have room for my horrendous approximation of his head.

It's surprising to me that this page was not torn out of its notebook in a fit of frustrated humiliation, but I am glad that it wasn't because now I have preserved forever(-ish)* evidence of my first memory of that particular variety of artistic frustration.

I have long since given up on the visual arts--though I occasionally dabble and doodle, my expectations are so low that I'm never devastated by inferior results. Writing, of course, is a whole other story. You know that feeling that you get when you know what you want to say, but there is some weird glitch between your brain and your pen or keyboard so that what comes out is as similar to what you meant to say as a ladybug is to a giraffe?  Yeah, that.

In my guest post over at Periphery today, I talked about the sick feeling we get in the pits of our stomachs when we compare our work to the work of others and find it wanting. The only thing that compares to that feeling--and maybe even surpasses it, for me--is comparing my own work to the picture of it I had in my head.

"A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." I've had that Thomas Mann quote etched in my brain for so long, I can no longer even remember when or where I first heard it.  But, as someone who makes multiple drafts of practically everything I put to paper--friendly letters, school excuses, notices to delinquent customers, incident reports, everything--I understand exactly what he meant.

I am a perpetual tinkerer, trying to get incrementally closer to what I meant to say, and I will mess around with stuff I've written almost indefinitely unless I have a deadline. Daily blogging has been great for me in that way because it's meant a daily deadline (albeit a self-imposed one). I have to admit to having quite a long way to go, though--and on those nights when you see a Random Quote (or, say, a picture of a roll of toilet paper on my bathroom sink) posted it is likely that there is a three-quarters-of-the-way written post in my drafts folder that has stymied me.

One of the things I am learning, however gradually, is that when I can't get a thought or an image to come out just-so, it's quite possible that it's not time yet and no amount of tinkering, or thinking at it is going to get it ready any faster. The only thing that helps (when I can force myself to do it), is to set it down and come back later--maybe every day for a week, maybe not at all for six months.

One of the other things that I am learning, also painfully gradually, is that the utter delight in getting it right can carry me through a whole lot of getting it wrong. There's another Carolyn See quote that I adore--and it's taken from the same book as that semi-despairing quote above: "I have to say--self-absorbed or not--that there are sentences of my own I love so much I quote them to myself...Maybe the world wasn't waiting in radiance for me to write those sentences, but maybe I was."

Sometimes, I know just what she means.  And it makes all the difference.

Paging Dr. House

It is truly a House-worthy medical mystery. How else to explain that in a household of four people, the youngest of whom is very nearly 18, and all of whom are ostensibly of at least average health and normal physical development, I alone possess the manual dexterity required to thread the plastic roller through the cardboard tube of a new roll of toilet paper and actually replace it properly in the brackets where it belongs?

My apologies for the graphic nature of this photograph. Please understand it is in no way gratuitious. It is my hope that showing the grisly effects of this as yet unnamed disorder will spur the medical community to action and hasten identification of the illness and the development of treatment options. With enough awareness and action, perhaps--dare I dream?--there may even be a cure in my lifetime.