Not A Pink Girl
I’m a proud mom… what next?
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When you get to be my age AND you have a teenager for the second time around, it’s tough trying to figure out how to navigate as a parent. I want to guide my son but I don’t want to get in his way. I want to firmly steer him in what I believe to be the right direction, but he’s old enough to put one foot in front of the other towards his own goals, too.
My son received an award at school tonight for being in the top 20% of his school academically. He goes to a small, independent (of the diocese) Catholic school that has 260 students. He & 15 of his schoolmates got this academic award. It’s my son’s freshman (first) year at this school & it is not an easy school. I am so proud of him I could burst. (Heard that before from moms, have you?)
My son also got a letter in academics. The school he goes to is exceedingly sports-minded, but it recognizes outstanding students with the same type of letter that the good athletes get. So we’re walking down the boxwood path from school tonight after the ceremony. As the cool breeze lifts my hair & I bask in the pleasure of being proud of my kid, my son turns to me with the letter in his hand & says, “This is SO dorky.”
Now, I’ve been wondering for a few months now (okay, actually since last summer vacation ended) what the heck I was going to do with my son for the summer of 2008. I don’t want him sitting in front of his laptop IMing & facebooking (okay, I love facebook; if you’re on it, check me out) & generally sitting on his butt. He’s sedentary (he gets that from his parents) & has never been athletic. So I got the idea that I would get him a personal trainer.
I joined the local gym in the fall of 2004. I’ve never played a sport (not in school or otherwise). My father said that girls should learn to cook & clean & that organized sports were for boys (no, this wasn’t during medieval times, it was in the 1960s & 70s). I have 3 sisters & none of us ever played a sport in school. My brother (the only boy in the family), on the other hand, played every sport: football, basketball, baseball, you name it.
I “worked out” at Spa Lady in the late 1980s – early 1990s, but never really broke much of a sweat. So a little over 3 years ago I joined the local gym. Suddenly, my husband decided he wanted to join too (after never lifting anything other than a 12-ounce Coke in all the many years I’d known him). So he took my son – then 11 – & signed him up, too.
My son has been to the gym twice in the past year. His father, maybe twice that many times.
My son balks at the suggestion of any kind of physical activity. But I have a friend at the gym who recently started his own personal training business after getting his national certification. This guy has a great personality & I think my son would respond well to his training. My friend’s name is Dion & he’s also the leader of a gospel choir.
I took my son to see Dion & his choir sing about a year ago. My son loved the service & the music. So he’s met Dion & likes him. We’re meeting this Saturday to talk about my son starting a training program.
I’m nervous!
I was flipping around on the TV last night (ended up on The Andromeda Strain which was rather good – not great – but it was only the first episode; I love Eric McCormack & Benjamin Bratt so the eye candy factor is high which don’t hurt) & saw a bit of Work Out on Bravo with nutty Jackie, the owner of the gym & the star of this reality series. She had some of her very-out-of-shape clients running flat out in a boot camp. Yikes! Is that what Dion’s going to expect my son to do?!
More on this subject later in the week.
Tags: Catholic high school, exercise, gospel choir, personal trainer, teenagers, teenagers in the summer
Feeling beautiful 101
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Spoke to my friend Nancy today. She got out of the hospital & is back at her parents’ house. She sounds bone-weary, but she has a great attitude.
When she first found out she had cancer (7/2007), she was horror-stricken that she might lose her long chestnut brown hair. She’s a Civil War living history re-enactor (Confederate) & she has an exceedingly authentic look about her, especially with her undyed hair down to the middle of her back. After awhile, she got things in perspective & figured oh well, if I lose my hair it will grow back.
She was lucky in that she didn’t lose a hair through her whole first round of chemo. The second round though, she figured she’d just get a short haircut.
For Nancy to willingly submit to the hairdresser’s scissors is just something I never thought I’d ever see. But she did it. She left the hospital on Friday 5/23 & headed straight for the hair salon. She had her hair cut in a beautiful & tres chic short style that really accentuated her striking facial features (remember I told you she looks like Cher). She loved it! It helped take the edge off of her extreme fatigue.
She woke up this morning with every hair on her head having fallen out overnight.
I spoke to her on the phone a few hours ago. She said, “Kathie, do you know that I have never felt this beautiful? I looked in the mirror, scared to death at what I’d see. And I’m telling you, an inner peace spread over me. In my whole life, I’ve never felt this beautiful!”
Isn’t that stunning?
I think back on all the heartache I’ve gone through in my life to try to make myself pretty: worrying about my weight (that’s always been my number-one preoccupation with my appearance), fretting over my hair, etc. How much time & money have we spent on our hair?! I mean, Lord! When I was in second grade, my mother cut my hair in a pixie or “Sassoon” haircut (Vidal Sassoon was a celebrity hairdresser who was all the rage in the mid-1960s; he did Mia Farrow’s hair for Rosemary’s Baby).
For some reason, my older sister (the oldest in our family & 15 months older than me) was allowed to have long hair, but my mother chopped my hair off to the point where I looked like an upside-down balloon with my pinhead as the tiny knot. I was mortified! I mean you might not think a 7-year-old really cared that much about what she looked like, but I did not want to be seen in public.
I went to a Catholic school & wore a uniform. Somehow, in my desperation to figure out how I could keep my classmates from seeing my freakish hair (or lack thereof), I remembered that our uniforms – bought at the Bo Peep Shop – came with a little plaid kerchief! The saints be praised! I wore that flippin’ kerchief on my head for months. My class picture that year shows my big-eyed, chipmunk-cheeked self with that quirky bandana on my head too. I think I was the only kid in the history of Saint Mary’s in Landover Hills, Maryland that ever wore that little triangle of fabric! I looked so doofy, but I’m telling you, my stomach was clenched with panic at the thought of going to school with that practically-bald head.
Even 40 years later I agonize over what to do with my hair. I found my first gray hair when I was looking in the mirror at school, getting ready to have my high school senior portrait taken! I was 17 years old. Do I need to inform you that now my hair is much more completely-white than salt-and-pepper gray? I’ve dyed my hair since August 1989. Back then, I used to get these dainty little blonde streaks pulled through the cap. Cap Schmap! Now I let the hairdresser slap a bucketful of color on this head from roots to ends.
When Britney Spears shaved her head, I laughed at all the reporters who said, “Britney’s had a nervous breakdown!” Ha! She finally got smart. I think she did it 1) because her flippin’ hair was probably driving her to distraction; 2) she has a whole fleet of assistants at her beck & call who can tie extensions onto the tiniest tuft of peach fuzz growing on her cueball noggin; 3) she doesn’t have to stoop to the Rachel Welch collection to find a fabulous wig; and, most important, 4) there’s a theory that a woman’s hair represents her sexuality & she just said Eff it! These men just aren’t worth it! & cut those men right out of her hair. Breakdown my butt.
So, as I sit here with my light-auburnish-strawberry blonde-highlighted-lowlighted shoulder-length hair that cost me $230 (not including a $40 tip!) to get cut & colored (in the far-out suburbs, mind you, not in Beverly Hills or something), I think of Nancy who realized in an exceedingly convoluted way that it really might be what’s on the inside that makes us beautiful.
But if I could just lose about 15 pounds by the first day of summer…
Tags: cancer, hair, chemo, catholic school, prince george's county maryland, vidal sassoon
The Rarified Air of May
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What a beautiful day. I puttered in my garden & got my hands down into the dirt. This always feeds my soul. I don’t do this anywhere near often enough. Why do I deprive myself of this pleasure? I allow myself to be distracted by the mundane: going out to eat, sitting at the computer, grazing. More often than not I seem to allow life to live me.
My roses are so gorgeous. I don’t remember them ever being this beautiful. We’ve gotten rain almost every day of May this year. On top of that, the days have been breezy & sunny (not too warm). My two rosebushes love that.
I am not a rosarian. I consider myself a novice gardener. (Check with me when I’m 85; by then I may have progressed to beginner.) I don’t use any chemicals on my roses. I let nature’s food chain take care of things. A few years ago the aphids were heavy on the buds. I went to the local nursery & bought a plastic container of ladybugs (you know, like the containers that cole slaw comes in at the supermarket, except with holes punched in it). I opened the container at sunset & placed it on the ground under my rosebush. They munched away at the aphids & voila, problem solved.
This year I notice I have all these baby ladybugs on the rosebush leaves. (I suspect they’re called larvae or something but I’m not a bug expert either.) I can tell you this: baby ladybugs look almost completely unlike ladybugs. But I think they’re cute because I know they’ll help my roses be happy & healthy.
I have two rosebushes. Both are antique roses. One is called Zephirine Drouhin & it’s a Bourbon rose from 1868. It has the loveliest dark-pink flowers that smell heavenly. (Did you notice how roses you get for Valentine’s Day [although I haven't gotten roses for Valentine's Day since 1991] never have a smell? That is a calamity! I love the fat classic blooms but… no smell? How sad.) The blooms last about 4 days; as the flower matures it turns a lighter pink until the petals start to fall.
My other rosebush is called Hansa. It’s a rugosa rose. I think rugosa means wrinkled in Japanese or something. (The leaves do look different than regular rosebush leaves.) This rose is from 1905. I got this rose in Texas. (I wanted to hate Texas. I am a DC native & a lifelong Redskins fan, so I hate the Dallas Cowboys, & therefore thought I would hate Dallas, & therefore Texas. I also despise George Bush [junior more than senior but...]. When I visited Texas for the first time, I loved it. The men in Dallas were utter gentlemen to me [although they were completely in shock that I was traveling with my children & "no man & no gun"]; Houston was wonderful too; & I adored Amarillo [yes, there was a Texas Tornado there when I was visiting & I was camping in a tent so it was an event]).
My Hansa rose has deep magenta-purplish-pink deeply-ruffled blooms & smells wonderful & strong but different than my ZD rose scent. What an embarrassment of riches I have in my tiny backyard just because I have these two gorgeous rosebushes.
This evening, just before sunset, I deadheaded my roses. I weeded a bit & planted sweet pea seeds (Captain of the Blues & High Scent). I checked my compost heap for my friend (a black rat snake); he was not in evidence. Then I headed back upstairs to the deck to pot out some plants.
I’ll tell you all about my new container garden tomorrow! The evening air smelled so nice. It had the smell the spring air gets before it gets too hot outside. It was sweet & pleasant. I could tell the birds liked it too; I heard a catbird (don’t hear them too much around here) in the woods; also a robin or two; a mourning dove (I like them but in small doses because they remind me of when I was 12 & had to get up to deliver newspapers at zero-dark-thirty on Saturday & Sunday mornings), &, of course, the Twilight Bark.
Goodnight.
Girlfriends: the ties that bind
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In my last post I introduced you to my friend Nancy. We’ve been friends for 13 years; now she’s going through a life crisis. This has naturally caused me to ponder our friendship.
Nancy & I couldn’t be more different. She’s from the west coast; I’m from Washington DC. She’s eight years older than me. She has no children; I have two. She was married once for five years; I’ve been married twice, to my second husband for 19+ years & counting. She’s always been slim, I’ve always carried extra pounds. I am kind to a fault, always choosing my words with care; she is verbally-challenged. I am outgoing & bubbly, always with a kind word to friends & strangers alike. She’s the type to send back the salad because the bowl’s too cold. She can be crotchety & snappish (yes, even before her illness) to those in the service industry; I’d never dream of being impatient with people who are on their feet all day for minimum wage.
But you know what? We share a lot of the same interests. We both love history (she’s a Civil War [Confederate] re-enactor) & nature (we became friends through our love of gardening, flowers & long walks together through the bike paths in our suburban neighborhood). We love animals (especially cats & dogs). We both had difficult childhoods that involved a violent parent. Both of us are on a spiritual path & have an interest in the metaphysical.
I met Nancy in the fall of 1994 when she was working as the dining room manager of Champions restaurant (now defunct) in the neighboring town of Herndon VA. I’d had an argument with my husband (again) & I took my son, then almost 2 years old, out to dinner to get away from the tension & sadness. Nancy was drawn to my cute child (she told me later). She came over to the table to make sure we were happy & goo-goo-gah-gah’d at Anthony in his highchair for a minute or two.
A few weeks later I was pushing the stroller down the sidewalk in front of my house. I turned the corner & saw a woman arguing with a man who looked drunk. I didn’t want to get into the middle of anything so I turned to go. The man then got into his car & drove away. The woman stood stoically on her front stoop. I turned back to her & realized she looked familiar. She agreed, but we couldn’t place where we knew each other. I introduced myself & she told me her name was Nancy. After a few minutes we realized we’d chatted at the restaurant! She lived six houses down from me.
I had a dog-walking business & I cared for her mutt. Nancy & I went on junking forays into Harper’s Ferry WV, the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland (near Camp David), & other flea markets & antique shops & shows all over the Washington DC area. I also cleaned Nancy’s house periodically (Nancy worked two jobs; I was an at-home mom with a dog-walking business & a budding career as a seller on eBay).
As women, how many of us really work at our friendships? We see friendships portrayed on television & in the movies where either everything is always resolved in 22 or 48 minutes, or the friends say exactly what they think about the other friend’s behavior, shooting from the hip, with seemingly no forethought. And, of course, because these aren’t real relationships, everyone smiles & makes nice-nice & works out their disagreements until, at the end of the program, someone says she’s sorry & everyone lives happily (until the next episode).
I find friendships with women to be virtual minefields for me. I’ll talk about that more in my next post.
Friends for life?
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I heard from my friend Nancy today. She’s single (divorced), works for a Fortune-500 company as an accountant, & found out on her 55th birthday in July 2007 that she has liver cancer. Right now she’s back in the hospital because her white-blood-cell count is too low.
She’s on her second round of chemo. She had surgery a month ago (surgery she had to fight for because her primary-care physician threw up his hands [literally] & said, “I don’t know what you want from me.” He meant that she should just accept that she’s going to die – probably soon – & it would be a waste of his time to refer her to a surgeon). Nancy’s parents – in their mid-70s – are using their savings & retirement to get her treated by a surgeon at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore MD (not too far from where we live).
Nancy is a former smoker. When I met her in 1994, she smoked about a pack a day of Virginia Slims (at one time, my cigarette of choice). She started smoking as a teenager in Seattle & quit when she was 46 (in 1998). She had met a guy (the “toe-curler,” she called him [meaning he made her heart skip a beat, in a good way]) who was a Seventh-Day Adventist & didn’t believe in tobacco use. She cared enough about him to quit. That was about the only good thing she got out of the relationship. He was a controlling jerk, toe-curler or not.
I was surprised when she stopped smoking. She just seemed like a lifelong smoker to me. Nancy has always been slim. When she was in her 20s & 30s, she looked just like Cher (who turns 62 years old today). The resemblance is still striking.I have always been overweight. I know in my heart – although we’ve never discussed it – that Nancy’s had a hard time being friends with someone as “big” as me (her term). I think my size rather overwhelms her. I think she can’t believe anyone would actually walk around in public looking like me.
Yes, I am heavy, but if you met me or if you’ve seen my pictures on facebook, you’d know I’m not going to be featured on Intervention anytime soon. I’m 5′ 10″ & maybe I can carry extra weight a bit easier than some can. I’m trying to give you an idea of the misperception of weight that some people have. Just as someone can be anorexic & look in the mirror at their 78-pound, 5-foot-7 frame & think, “I am so fat,” so also there is a percentage of the population who look at other people & think that if you have any extra pounds you are just deformed & should probably just become agoraphobic now so you don’t have to burden the general population (& “normal” weight people) with having to be forced to look at your grossness.
When Nancy quit smoking, she gained about 20 pounds. Now I must tell you honestly that Nancy looked great. But she was devastated. She felt huge. “Kathie, I had to buy size 10 denim overalls! Do you realize that I was a 5 when I graduated from high school [in 1970]?! I’ve never been bigger than an 8!” Mind you, this woman just quit smoking. After over three decades, she QUIT SMOKING. How wonderful is that? How positively life-changing is that? But she flippin’ went up a size or two in her jeans. Time to slit her wrists.
Nancy’s never been particularly good at articulating what she’s feeling. What I mean is, she’s hurt my feelings on many occasions. She doesn’t know it though; I always kept it to myself because I know she didn’t mean to maliciously hurt me. Many times, Nancy’s let it slip how awfully overweight she thinks I am.
Once she described a coworker who wanted to join her carpool. Nancy told me, “Kathie, I don’t want her in my car because she is huge [like the woman could damage her shock absorbers or something]. I mean she’s even bigger than YOU.”
Another time Nancy & I were over a mutual friend’s. Our friend had a little wooden chair handmade of chunky wood from Scotland. Our friend wanted me to move closer to her but chairs were at a premium, so she grabbed the little chair & motioned for me to sit in it. I looked at it uncertainly & our friend said, “Don’t worry, I sit in this chair all the time.” (Our friend is overweight too.) Nancy piped up (trying to be helpful & kind), “Kathie, don’t worry; that’s a well-made chair. It could hold an elephant.” Remember, this was said in a room full of about 10 people. Believe me, this elephant will never forget that comment.
We were Christmas shopping this past December. We were at the outlets (life in hell). There was a tweedy boucle duster-length cardigan sweater. I took it off the rack to get a closer look. Nancy passed behind me & said, “That would be great for you. It would hide your fat ass.” Now I’m telling you, she was not joking. She was giving me a fashion tip. I usually let these kinds of Nancy Comments pass; this time I said, “Gosh Nancy, thank a lot.” She just walked away.
So now, here we are. I love Nancy. She’s my friend. This is a friendship I’ve ruminated about for over a decade. Why are we friends? What do we have in common? Am I a glutton (excuse the expression) for punishment? Now she could be dying. This has caused me to ponder our friendship on an even more acute level.
I’ll talk more about Nancy & me in my next post. Will you keep her in your prayers & good thoughts? Thank you so much.
What was I thinking?!
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Okay, here I am! I’ve got so much to say I feel like a pot that’s reached the boiling point & if you don’t take the lid off, I’m going to explode. Sounds like we’re going to get something on us, huh?!
This blog is about how I feel & about my observations about life. We live in a capitalist society where money is king (notice they don’t say, “money is queen”). As American women, we are major targets of the ad agencies. Everything they throw at us by way of the glossy “shelter” & “lifestyle” magazines is supposed to change our lives for the better. (You know the feeling: if I only buy that frizzies-smoother hair product, I’ll knock ‘em dead in that interview & get that six-figure salary; if I buy that Tory Burch flower-print dress, that handsome guy at the city council dinner will fall in love with me & we’ll live happily ever after; etc.)
But each of us is unique. We have our own “way” about us that is truly endearing. But we continue to try to assimilate, to conform, to be what 21st-century culture says a woman is supposed to be. It’s getting out of hand. I don’t think we should Botox our personalities into oblivion!
I’ve noticed that I don’t always “get” the latest trends, the popular TV shows, the mainstream way of thinking. Often, the things that are supposed to be “cool” & the bandwagons I’m supposed to just jump onto without even thinking about it just don’t sit right with me. They don’t feel comfortable; they don’t feel right. In this blog, I’ll talk about things I think are really neat, & things I feel are being force-fed to me (usually by Madison Avenue) & that just don’t feel right to me.
I’m in a unique position because my life is full of contradictions. I’m a woman (a Washington DC native), a mother (of two: one child is a grown woman herself, & one child isn’t a kid anymore, he’s a teenager) & grandmother (of two, a boy & a girl, neither of which is a baby). I’m a wife (my second marriage; I’m getting ready to “celebrate” my 20th wedding anniversary) & daughter (my mother is healthy, active, independent & living about 40 miles from my home). I’ve done the parenting thing both ways: I’ve been a single mother with a child in full-time daycare, & I’m now an at-home mom or SAHM (stay-at-home-mom). I am a sister (I have four siblings, only two of which I choose to speak to at all). I’m from a close-knit Irish-Catholic family that was blown apart by alcoholism, & I do not drink alcohol (I’ve been sober since August 18, 1986 & picked up my 21-year chip this past summer [2007]). I’m Catholic & I consider myself a bleeding-heart liberal (yes, I am pro-choice & pro-peace). I see many of my fellow Catholics as hypocrites & hawks, & it breaks my heart. I love the womanly arts (needlework, gardening, reading, cooking), but I’m dangerously computer-literate (& I prefer Macs).
So I have a lot to say!
I can’t wait to hear what you think about all this stuff, too. So let me hear from you! Welcome to my blog, Not A Pink Girl. Talk to you soon!
