Loving on my Fridge

In my previous post, I confessed that last New Year’s Eve, I wrote my intentions for the New Year on small pieces of red tissue paper and burned them ritualistically in my firepit as midnight approached. A girlfriend who read this helpfully texted me saying you do know that you are supposed to burn the things you want to let go, like old relationships, and write your intentions down and stick them to the fridge?

Clearly I did not know this. If I had known this, I might not have spent the entire twelve months of 2018 single. That’s 365 days. 8,760 hours. 525,600 minutes. I could calculate the seconds but I think we are all done here.

My fridge has a lot of pictures stuck to it. A photo of me and my brothers when we were kids. Snaps of my daughter and her friends. Postcards from Italy, and a picture of the Burrow Beach near my dad’s house in Dublin. Still, there could be room for an intention or two. I am actually thinking that since I’m so late coming to this concept, I should gift-wrap my fridge in paper with the words Find Love printed in tiny font on it. It could make getting cream for my morning coffee a bit of a trial, but I figure if you do not suffer a little to find love, it may not be so worth finding.

Since New Year’s Eve is rocketing towards us, I am trying to get my 2019 resolutions list in order while there is still time. To assist me in this taxing endeavor, I just ate a whole Toblerone bar meant for my daughter’s stocking. Yes, she is seventeen and still gets a stocking. But I don’t think I am supposed to eat the chocolate I had bought her for it. I feel like a bad mom, and a weak person. And yet, somehow, that it is not my fault. It’s a dark time of year. There is delicious triangle-shaped chocolate with chewy bits hiding in a bag at the back of my wardrobe. I’m alone on my couch trying to make my New Year’s resolutions list, and realizing that I have now been single more than a million minutes. I can buy her a replacement Toblerone.

It reminds me of when she was a little innocent one and I used to tell her that the Halloween Fairy would leave her a present if she would just eat a few pieces of her Halloween candy and then leave the rest in a plastic bag up on the lawn of our house. Late Halloween night I would go retrieve the plastic bag from the lawn so the raccoons wouldn’t get it. When Jessie woke on November 1st there would be a sweet little gift by her pillow, delivered directly and by hand in the middle of the night by the Halloween Fairy. Other moms had told me about this great tradition. Saves on dental bills, they said. But then I would single-handedly consume her Halloween candy over the next week. I was grateful to those moms, but I sort of hated them at the same time. I was just plain relieved when she was too old to go out on October 31st collecting sugar.

I can foresee one problem with sticking my new year intentions to my fridge. People come into my house. They get things from the fridge. Some of my intentions are a bit private. I can envision a moment during a dinner party where some guest is getting milk for their tea and says loudly Why do you have Field trip to Good Vibrations written on your fridge? Maybe I could write them in some code? An obscure foreign language that only I speak? But would they then be unintelligible to the...Intentions Gods? Or is it the Intentions Fairy, and if so, are they related to the Halloween Fairy? I feel concerned that I am losing control of my material here.

So. 2019. Forget all the work out 7 days a week stuff. My New Year’s resolution list for next year includes a crazy bike ride in northern Italy called the Stelvio; European odyssey to visit lots of family and old friends; finishing the book I’m writing. But also, and I know I won’t be alone here: gift-wrapping my fridge. 

Riding Fool Seeks LTR

The other night was the Marin County Bike Coalition’s Christmas party, and I was excited about going. It was at a pizza place in a mall, and I was still excited, because I naturally thought there might be some handsome biking dudes hanging around in spandex eating their pizza and looking for a long term relationship. 

I went with my three friends and two of their kids. They turned out to be the only people I knew at the party. This is mostly because although I’m a member of MCBC, I never go on their rides, as they always seem to be on weekday mornings. Hello? Work?

So I stood around waiting for pizza and sipping some wine and I could not help noticing that the average age of the biking dudes was about ten years old than I had hoped it would be. This was probably because all the younger single biking dudes were out on dates and not hanging around the mall waiting for free pizza and listening to MCBC board member speeches.

Anyway, in the end, I just stuck close with my friends and we had a great time and the pizzas had things like arugula and potatoes on them, and that was weird but kind of tasty, and they were free, which was cool, and on our way out we picked up little free tire patch kits from Dolan Law, and now my blog is inadvertently advertising a law firm. I did talk to one stranger, but all I said to him was one Hawaiian and one plain cheese please. He said okay, which I thought at the time was a good and hopeful sign. Maybe code for something? Like you look like the kind of woman who yearns to be taken out for lobster.

When I came home, I messaged my biking buddy in Ireland about my evening. Being Irish, and thus genetically unable to sugarcoat things, he responded so you went looking for a dude and came home with a free tire patch kit? I thanked him for making this rather glaringly obvious observation and we moved right along.

Later, I was messaging another Irish friend of mine and I told him about the New Year’s Eve party I am throwing. Lots of single guys? He said. I thought about my guest list. Not one. There are no single guys coming to my New Year’s Eve party and I’m throwing the party, so I got to choose who was invited! I am beginning to suspect that I am going about my quest for love the wrong way. I am not sure how to put this right, but I am open to suggestions.

New Year is one of my favorite holidays. Being a hopeless optimist, I cannot help feeling that the next year is going to be not only better but vastly different than any that have come before. The close of the year is a great time to make resolutions and I am a sucker for them. I make ridiculously long lists of the things I’m going to do differently and new in this sparkly parade of 365 days coming up. This is in spite of the fact that at their core, my lists always contain the same few items: less sugar, work out 5 times a week and travel more. 

This year, my list also includes find love. This would not make it significantly different from my list last year, when I actually wrote that intention on a piece of red tissue paper and burned it in the firepit on my patio on New Year’s Eve. Maybe I shouldn’t have burned it? Is that where I’m going wrong? I thought the burning thing was a nice ritual, but now I am thinking of the phrase going up in smoke, and how it may not be the smartest metaphor for your hopes and dreams.

Last New Year’s Eve was a bit of a downer. I was not yet up for throwing my usual party. I did not get invited to anyone else’s party. It was just me and my daughter and her boyfriend. We lit the firepit, made ‘smores and played with sparklers. It was actually really sweet and I felt fine until they sloped off to her bedroom to watch a movie around 11pm, leaving me to write intentions on little pieces of red tissue paper and watch them curl up in smoke. Then I felt a little less than fine and it occurred to me that next year I should probably throw a party.

I’m excited about my party. But as a strategy for meeting guys, it has some flaws. Well, one flaw. This could be remedied if I encourage the friends I have invited to also bring single guy friends of theirs. I could mention this in my host message party reminder. But subtly, I don’t want to be too obvious, lest I come across as fixated. Feel free to bring a friend, I could write. Mid-50s, at least 5’8”, should like road biking, no wedding rings. Is that too prescriptive? I could leave out the biking thing.

Concerned girlfriends have asked me to focus on what I am looking for, to make it intentional, and I know that they are right. Make a list, they told me. In fact, they made the list for me one night at The Broken Drum when we were discussing my quest over beers. We were there for a long time and things got a bit hilarious. The friend with the paper and pen was a little over-enthusiastic, and the list grew until it covered one entire side of a sheet of paper. I know that my initial list items - no alcoholics, no mental illness, must have shelter - set the bar a little low. But the end result list, filling up two whole columns and even going off into the margins, went a little the opposite way. How could I ever find someone who met 172 criteria? I needed to whittle this list down.

Happily we accidentally left the list at The Broken Drum, so that took care of the whittling. But I still remember some of the items and I think they are worth keeping in mind. Sense of humor. Very near the top. Kind, smart, funny. That would be my summary list if my singles ad was only allowed to have three words. Financial ducks in row. After that, things got a bit nitpicky.

So as we head into 2019, my intentions are clear: the sugar thing, the working out, the travel. And more law firm advertising in my blog. No, wait, Find love, that’s the one.

A Post with Both Slippers and Gangrene in the Title

I was intending to write about hospice nursing, as it has been a while. And gangrene has been on my mind (this will be explored later, don’t go away). But I also wanted to mention something about how when you are single and live sort of alone - that is, alone with a teenager - you can fail to notice basic things that might be pointed out to you by a loving partner if you had one.

I am thinking specifically of slippers. Yesterday, I threw out my slippers. I’ve had them for years. So many years that I was having real difficulty walking around in them because the soles were flapping off both of them. But I’m from thrifty Irish stock, and slippers are not really things you just go out and buy yourself. They are things that you get for Christmas from a family member, sometimes even a spouse, and then sit around feeling devastated because all the love of your life can think of to buy you for Christmas is slippers.

So it was kind of tricky for me to get to the point of throwing them out. And yet the moment I took them off my feet and stuffed them in my trashcan was an extremely liberating one. It was a moment that said Hey Sara! If your slippers are so old they are preventing you from walking around like a normal person, you can just throw them out! I actually laughed out loud. Alone in my home. Please don’t mention this to anyone.

The thing is, now my feet are cold and I have no slippers. I know they can be purchased new for ten bucks in CVS but, you know, there are many other things I could do with that money. I could slip it in the red plastic bucket of the Salvation Army guy who plaintively rings his bell outside United Markets. Or I could get two pints of Haagen Dazs. 

That is probably more than adequate on the slippers topic. Still, we also have gangrene to talk about. Lucky!

Gangrene is on my mind (not literally, ew!) because of something that occurred recently in my work as a hospice nurse. I don’t want to gross you out with the details. You could be eating your dinner as you read this. But it got me thinking about the times I have dealt with awful wounds in my patient population. I had friends over to dinner the other night, and since rotting flesh was in my thoughts, I naturally brought it up in the course of conversation. Not during dinner, that would be abnormal, but when we were sitting around having our post-prandial tea and coffee, I happened to mention some wound care I had been doing for a patient’s gangrenous foot and my friends, who were both sitting opposite me on my couch, sort of blanched and held on visibly tighter to their teacups and one of them said in a sort of high voice, do you see that a lot?

It was at that moment that I realized afresh: you are not normal! hospice nurses, hospice workers in general? None of you are normal! I had this realization, which I have had before in my life a few times, and so I quickly pulled it together. I apologized for introducing such an unsavory topic during our after-dinner tranquillity. And then I could not help myself and I added somewhat excitedly yes! I see it sometimes! Quite a bit! More than you might think!

And this was in spite of the fact that I had no idea how much they might think I would see gangrene.

Then I launched into a description of a leg I had once taken care of. My friends hung onto their mugs a little tighter and their expressions said please stop but I did not because I am a hospice nurse and I lose all social perspective when I think about gross wounds. Then one of my friends asked me whether gangrenous flesh has a particular odor. Since they actually asked this, in real life, on my couch, I feel like it’s my duty to answer the question in my blog. And the answer is hell yes. Furthermore, although I have tried to think of a way to describe the odor, I cannot find any way to do it. Most things you smell in life, you can describe them to friends by starting a sentence with “it’s like...” But the smell of gangrene is not like anything else. It is just like itself.

My real purpose in mentioning all of this is to say that whenever I take care of someone with terrible wounds, it just makes me feel how hugely lucky that it’s not me with the wounds. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is sacred work, to care for the dying, for people whose bodies are just worn out with the business of living. And when awful things happen to the body as it exits this world, hospice nurses need to just deal, and take the best care of it they can, and feel grateful for their own health. 

As I told my friends, I have seen some things you would not describe to your dinner companions. Uh-huh, they said. And the way I deal, I told them, is that I just sort of power through it, as though everything I am seeing is completely normal. Because otherwise you can freak the patient out. But when I come out of those visits, I sometimes sit in my car and I say out loud That was NOT NORMAL! Sometimes expletives are involved in my expression of how abnormal what I just saw was. Then I put on loud music and drive too fast on the freeway. Large amounts of coffee are usually also involved.

At our weekly team meeting, we get to process some of the things we have seen during the week. Not just the deaths, but the weird wounds, the fungating tumors, and the challenging family members. I will say that I have never been reduced to tears by a wound. But phonecalls with family members have left me shaking and crying in my car. Dressing a necrotic leg has never led me to second guess my chosen career, but angry hurting people have. 

But to get back to the slippers, I am feeling better about not having any. Because I could not walk in them, and because tonight I met my good friend at the gym, and she had been home all day and she was wearing not just a pair of slippers, but a mismatched pair. And they were both left feet. So it made me feel really functional and on top of my game, because even though I have no slippers, I was wearing matching footwear. Friends can be helpful that way.

Let’s Go to a Singles Meetup Dance! Or Stay Home and Stick Our Heads Down the Toilet?

This is my third Christmas being single. I’m feeling that it should be my last. I was telling this to an old friend of mine the other day. He is my first publisher and writing mentor, and a Dubliner to boot, and he has known me since I was sixteen, so he generally has some direct and pithy advice for me when I put my conundrums before him. My conundrum was this: I really want to meet someone, but how can I write a book about looking for love once I meet someone? His advice: If Mr. Right comes along, simply keep him in the attic until you have done the pre-press interviews.

There is only one problem with this approach. I don’t have an attic. I live in the bottom half of a house. I do have a pretty nice basement though, so I deftly modified his advice to include a basement. My basement is dry and full of a motley assortment of items, which Mr. Right could definitely fashion into a sort of makeshift home. There’s furniture. There are blankets. Many camping items. Plus a jar of my spare change, should he need to venture out for snacks. There is also my washer and drier, so he could even do my laundry while he waited. This idea is really taking shape.

Actually though, there is more than one problem with this proposed scenario. If he really is Mr. Right, presumably I will be very attracted to him. One would hope? So how easy would it be to lie in my single woman bed in my single woman bedroom with Mr. Right maybe less than comfortably situated on all my old blankets in the basement just ten feet away? This problem is consuming me right now. Way more than the problem of finding Mr. Right, which is maybe ass-backwards.

Another problem I could foresee, and I don’t mean to be pessimistic here, is the bathroom. This is a girl house. Our bathroom is tiny. We both need to take showers at around 7am. What if Mr. Right also needed to shower at that time? You could reasonably expect him to wait on his shower, as we are a teen student and a working mom, and he is living a life of leisure in our basement. I’m just saying. Could be a problem. Plus there’s the toilet-seat-up thing, but I might have to contend with that after he emerged from the basement, so I’m just not putting it on the list of things to be concerned about right now.

I suppose there are some vaguely possible problems involving Mr. Right’s own life, his job, and all his responsibilities. We have WiFi though, and there’s even a light in the basement, so I don’t foresee any of those things being too much of a barrier.

Anyway, regarding the singles meetup dance thing from the title, I know I said in a previous blog post that I am allergic to anything with singles in the name, but I’m having to rethink that philosophy. You cannot really be single in this world and desirous of meeting someone and yet not do anything that involves singles. I mean, how chicken is that? So I signed up for the singles meetup dance on the 29th. I did! First, of course, I found a single friend who was willing to come with me. And she’s driving us. And she knows how tentative I am, so I can’t hide in my bathroom when she comes to pick me up. She is a fairly forthright woman, I like that about her, and she will seek me out. We are going to the singles meetup dance. I’m dressing up, that’s decided.

If there are no men there (it’s Marin...) or they all have 70s mustaches, we have decided to become lesbians for the evening. Not with each other though, that could make the drive home a bit weird.

If the singles meetup dance goes well, as in I don’t spend most of the event outside the venue pretending to be a smoker, I may try some other singles events. Or I may just stay home writing love notes and slipping them shyly under the door of my basement.

Let’s Go on a Meetup Yoga Hike!

After my brief foray into online dating this Summer, I decided that meetups were a better way for me to go. Most meetups have the advantage that they are random groups of couples and single folks, friends, and strangers, all with some interest in common. I went on a couple of meetup bike rides, and a meetup hike with dinner after. I met some cool people. They met me. 

Since I am allergic to anything with Singles in the title, I have not joined any singles meetups yet. There is a singles meetup dance on December 29th. I am trying to get up the courage to think about considering possibly perhaps going. Maybe. Or not. It could be that I drive there, sit a while in my car, and then drive home. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, once you join one meetup group, the Meetup app seems to think you want to be bombarded with emails about every single group and activity within a hundred mile radius. Thus it was that while I was preparing to go in to one of my patients yesterday, a message popped up on my phone: New Meetup Group: Yoga Hikes. I was a bit distracted, thinking about my dying patient and all, but still I had to grapple with this concept for a minute. Yoga hikes? How can you do yoga if you are hiking? Conversely, how could you hike if you were also, simultaneously as it were, doing yoga? Do you hike to the yoga? Yoga, then hike, then more yoga? I am also kind of allergic to yoga, but I know enough about it to understand that the concept has a lot to do with staying in the one place and centering yourself. And hiking? It’s all about striding around and going somewhere. I quickly gave up trying to understand this strange marriage of hobbies, and went in to see my patient.

The yoga thing: I tried it. Everyone was banging on endlessly about how it changed their lives. So I went to a few different classes. I tried hot yoga. I tried cool yoga. I tried really really gentle zen yoga where most people fell asleep. I tried really annoying yoga where a 25-year-old instructor ruined my shivassanas with her 25-year-old life advice. I kept thinking how I really didn’t like yoga. But who doesn’t like yoga? It’s like saying you don’t like the Dalai Lama. So I kept trying. Because people kept telling me it was just that I hadn’t done enough of it. I didn’t like it in the beginning, they would assure me, usually with more than a hint of smugness, but I finally got it. And now? It’s changed my life!

Finally, I decided that I really like my life the way it is. I feel perfectly grounded and centered, and it’s completely okay if I don’t like yoga. I don’t much like being told where to put all the different parts of my body, or for how long. Nor do I like being told to inhale through my nose then open my mouth and exhale slowly making a HA sound. I don’t want to make a HA sound. And I really hate downward dog. I like the Dalai Lama though, so we’re good there.

I also like hiking, so after work I had to check out the yoga hiking meetup thing. Turns out you hike somewhere and then, just when you’re having a really great time swinging your arms and chatting with your meetup buddies, marching along and taking in the view, you have to stop at a flat place, unroll your yoga mat and start...doing yoga. Imma skip that meetup.

I do have a pretty bad yoga confession, now that you’ve got me started. I’m all about live and let live. If other people want to do yoga, go right ahead. But there’s something about seeing people walking round town in their LuLu Lemon yoga pants with their yoga mats slung over their shoulder that just sort of irks me. Usually when I see them I’m driving off to visit my first patient. I’ve just spent an hour setting up my day and making sure nobody died overnight. I’m on my second coffee and playing music, and I’m feeling pretty good. And then I have to stop at every pedestrian crosswalk in Fairfax to let the yoga folks cross. I know they’re about to spend 75 minutes on the clean wood floor at Yoga Mountain clearing their energy and aligning their chakras. And I really want to just let them. But sometimes, I also want to rev my engine while they’re in the crosswalk, see if they drop their yoga mats.

It’s the same at my gym. If I walk in and there’s a dance class going on, that’s cool. The music is usually some sappy Hawaiian thing, and I long ago gave up trying to follow dance instructions (I am really bad at this, see yoga complaints above), but I’m happy to stick in my earbuds to drown out the crooning and get on the treadmill. But if there’s a yoga class going on, I immediately feel annoyed. I have to pass through the class to get to the spa and changing rooms, so I can’t avoid hearing at least thirty seconds of yoga instructions before I shut the changing room door on them. 

It’s not so much what they say. I think it’s hugely important to connect with your inner stillness and feel yourself root into the earth. It’s the tone of voice. Yoga instructors generally seem to think that their instructions won’t sink in unless intoned in a cloying, fake-spiritual sort of voice. It’s the kind of voice I have to shut a door on and go get in the hot tub. I almost always connect with my inner stillness in the hot tub.

As well as being a failed yoga practitioner, it may not surprise you to hear I am a failed meditator. This is the subject of another blog post, but I just want to mention a great video I found on the Internet that did help me meditate for a bit, even if I was constantly giggling during the experience. It’s called F*ck That: An Honest Meditation, and it’s by a guy called Jason Headley. Gradually let the horseshit of the external world fade from your awareness, he intones, in exactly that fake spiritual voice I was mentioning. My kind of guy. Maybe if he was on the yoga hike, I might give it a whirl.

Single Mom of Teen Cooks Tasty Dinner

We are decorating our Christmas tree. There’s me, contributing by sitting at the table typing this. There’s my daughter, contributing by showing her friend her Instagram picture of my terrible ornament placement two nights ago [see previous blog post]. And there’s her friend, who just sampled our candy canes, confirming that when candy canes are three years old they have zero crunch left, but are completely chewy. Who knew? People who put the same candy canes on their tree three years running, I guess.

Decorating the Christmas tree, as I may have mentioned, is a skill best left to the teens. Apparently, once you pass 50 you are no longer to be trusted with a holiday ornament. So they are on duty, and I’m...well...off-duty. Happily typing this. 

There is a phenomenon that occurs when your teen’s friend arrives. Where you might have had reasonable or semi-reasonable answers to their questions before the friend’s arrival, once the friend arrives, your answers are suddenly completely wrong and unhelpful. But the friend’s answers? Even if they are the same ones you were giving, they are correct. This is not a discovery by me, it has been noted by parents throughout the ages. You have to just roll with it.

Naomi brought with her an impressively huge handwritten spreadsheet of every detail about every college she wants to apply to. The three of us gaze at it, spread out on our shag rug. Jessie and I are in awe. We tried to do a spreadsheet for her college applications, but gave up after two colleges. Tedious! I ask Naomi what college she would most like to attend, you know, in a perfect world? Mom, says Jessie sternly, that’s not helpful.

Why is that not helpful? Actually, I’m not even trying to be helpful. I’m just interested. Naomi mentions a couple of colleges and I go back to the kitchen table, where I have a chance of being less unhelpful. Plus the spreadsheet is making me dizzy.

So I’m there writing Christmas cards while the girls make our tree look fabulous with the artful hanging of the decorations. It is the first time I have written Christmas cards in three years. I bravely tried a few the first year after the divorce, but writing “love Sara & Jessie” just did me in, and I couldn’t write ‘The Tolchins’ on the envelope because there are only two of us now and somehow a mom and her daughter don’t seem like a family, so I just gave up. Last year I couldn’t even contemplate trying. Actually,  if memory serves, I just wanted Christmas to go away. This year, I was enthusiastic about buying cards and find to my surprise I can write “Love Sara & Jessie” just fine. Progress.

I cook dinner for the teens. It’s weird, but it seems every time Naomi comes over, I have cooked a meal. This may not seem weird to people who cook dinner every night, but as I do not belong to that club, it’s pretty remarkable that the three last times Naomi came to our house there was a tasty nutritious homecooked meal on the table. I’m not the only one surprised by this phenomenon. As I keep producing more dishes (this is a kale/apple/feta salad, this is a butter lettuce/avocado salad, oh, and here are the roasted carrots and garlic bread from the oven) my daughter exclaims mom! You cooked a meal!

I fear a lot has been made in previous blog posts about my impoverished cooking skills. I just don’t want you to think I was exaggerating. When Jessie’s not home, I generally dine on a cheese sandwich. Occasionally I forget to eat dinner altogether. Anyway, Naomi’s happy. She still remembers the day I met her on our road on my way to work. She was coming to visit Jessie, but Jessie wasn’t home. Never mind, I told her,  if you’re hungry, there’s a crockpot meal cooked, just let yourself in and help yourself. She did exactly that. When I got home later, I found a note beside the crockpot: Just what I needed! Thanks Sara, delicious! Naomi probably thought I cook tasty crockpot meals every other day. That was the first one. There have been no others. One can live in hope.

Now, however, she’s under no illusions. Although she insists that every time she comes to my house I’ve cooked, Jessie strives to impress upon her what a series of weird coincidences that is. I can see that Naomi is unsure, so I weigh in. Really, I almost never cook. You’ve just been lucky. She looks a bit confused, but finally accepts the general weirdness of the situation. We finish dinner and pile the dishes in the sink. Who will wash them? I will leave you to guess at that one. It may take three days, but finally I will cave. Because I am a bad parent with no boundaries. And because I will have run out of dishes.

The teens repair to the bedroom and I continue writing Christmas cards and try to imagine what it would be like if there were any dessert in our house. Eventually, my fertile imagination proves too strong for the realities of the situation and I walk around to the 7-11 for ice-cream and chocolate. On the walk home, I look in the lighted windows along my road and wonder how many households sat down to a nutritious home-cooked meal tonight. Probably all of them. It’s not really all that exotic outside of our house. When I get home I deliver the ice-cream to the teen bedroom (the chocolate did not quite make it home). Now Naomi thinks that as well as cooking dinner, I provide tasty desserts. Well, let the poor girl think that. Who knows, the next time she comes over, she might just hit the jackpot again. As long as it’s not for a few months

Mom Three, Teen Zero

I just spent the entire day with my daughter. We had planned it, lots of fun things, and it was a really great day. This may sound like I know how to spend an entire Saturday with my teen with no eye-rolling, expressions of disgust, or instantaneous brush fires. This is not entirely true. But as we are both not just still alive, but unharmed, I feel that I have some small amount of authority to speak to this subject. So I’m going to blog on it before anything changes.

Let me just say up front that my daughter is pretty damn great. Her dad and I used to joke nervously between ourselves when she was little about how awful the teen years would be, how we might just ship her off to some distant relative at 13 and drive out to pick her up on her 20th birthday. After four-and-a-half of those teen years, I can thankfully say none of our fears were borne out. She makes good decisions and picks great friends. At 15, she weathered the divorce of her parents with consummate grace. She’s an all-round expressively loving and responsible kid. I haven’t actually tried to give her away once. 

That said, I had no idea how dim I would become during the passage of her teen years. But just this morning, I was reminded of my extreme lameness as we embarked on our day together. She showed up around 8am, having seen her boyfriend off to the airport. My first glimpse of my general inadequacy centered on a discussion of how she had missed two dentist appointments recently. My sense was that she had known they were scheduled, but had double-booked and had to cancel at the last minute. Her sense was that “we totally forgot about them.” How I could have forgotten a dentist appointment I didn’t know was scheduled was difficult for me to understand. I tried for a minute. But already, I was implicated in the general imperfections of the situation. Just the fact that I hadn’t even known the appointments were scheduled turned out to be evidence of my lameness as a parent. And I hadn’t even got out of bed yet!

I got out of bed, determined to improve upon my parenting excellence before my second cup of coffee. My first cup of coffee had been consumed at 5am when I woke up. After that delicious hot beverage I fell asleep again for a wonderful extra hour. Nevertheless, when I relayed this information to my teen, she very kindly let me know that it is really dumb to consume coffee at 5am. I tried a spirited defense that it was decaf and I am a chronic insomniac. Her expression confirmed that this evidence was not permissible in court.

After an hour or two of home-based activities, we headed out to breakfast. As we got into my newly purchased car, and I rejoiced aloud at the driver-side door handle and windows that go up and down at the press of a button [see previous blog post], Jessie laughed and said “mom, you’re like one of those people who live at the poverty line and you give them a crappy car and they’re just so grateful because it’s better than walking everywhere.” Once again, she had me pegged. Except my crappy car is a 1999 Jaguar Xj8 and I happen to be in love with it. So ha! Take that, teen! One-zero to me.

Breakfast was at the Hummingbird in Fairfax: a New Orleans eatery complete with beignets, local color, and mardi-gras beads. We ordered our favorite dishes. As I embarked on my Fairfax Sunrise Breakfast, I must have been grinning more foolishly than usual, because Jessie asked me what was wrong. I looked out the window at our town, sparkling in the recent rain, clean and bright and full of good people, and around the Hummingbird, clean and bright and full of good people. “I’m just really happy,” I said. “Breakfast out with my girl, y’know?” She smiled back at me and nodded. Yeah, mom. Me too. 

Skip ahead a few hours. We picked out our Christmas tree and brought it home on top of the car. Takes a village to put up a Christmas tree, but not really in our house. It takes the two of us to get it straight in the holder, but after that I am off the hook, because apparently I lack the skills to decorate a tree properly. She strung the lights, and they looked really good. Then she put on a few ornaments. I started feeling bad that I wasn’t helping. I kind of like the tree with just lights. So uncluttered. But our ornaments have a lot of memories and history for us. Especially the ones she made in preschool with the bowtie pasta. So all helpful like, I hung an ornament.

Apparently not in the right place. I know this because moments later she posted a photo of our tree on Instagram with the caption: Decorating our tree and my mom puts this ornament here. I case anyone missed my ornament placing faux pas, there was a big red arrow pointing at it. But I was fine with that, because it meant I didn’t have to hang any more ornaments but could go back to futzing on my iPad. Ha! Two-zero to me!

Moments later, her friend arrived to scoop her up for the evening. Most of the ornaments were still in boxes on the sofa. I was reminded how most of the laundry had been on the sofa earlier, in little folded piles, as her laundry chore did not quite get carried through to the putting away of the laundry. When I called her on this, her watertight excuse was that she didn’t know where most of the stuff goes. Of course! So it should stay on the couch! Where mom likes to sit, but now she can’t because the laundry is there!

The laundry got put away. But now there were boxes of ornaments on the sofa, proving the age-old teen law that if there isn’t folded laundry on the couch, there will be boxes of Christmas decorations. Oh no wait, that’s not the law: it’s that if you are in the middle of something and your friend arrives, you should immediately stop what you are doing and leave, because friends arriving trump homework, chores, and decorating Christmas trees. An unintended consequence of this law may be that stuff gets left all over the place. But that is really beyond any teen’s power to address, because they are just obeying the law.

The good news is that the tree mostly just has lights on it still. And it probably will for a few days, until #1 daughter person has time to finish the task. When I came out to the living room before dawn this morning, the tree sparkled and winked cheerily at me with its lights and its barely discernible few ornaments. So ha! Take that teen! I may not be able to sit on my couch, but the score stands at three-zero!