Free to be ... Snowed in

As a thank-you gift for hosting her family, my old friend Kirsten sent my kids “Free to Be … You and Me” – both the CD (just songs) and the DVD. We watched it together yesterday, which should have been the last day of school before the holiday break but turned out to be a snow day. I think I enjoyed having a snow day as much as my kids did. Craig didn’t go to work yesterday because the roads were too treacherous, and we turned the day off of school into a family day of playing hooky. My six-year-old had a nasty cough, so even playing outside in the newly fallen snow seemed ill-advised. Instead of scurrying about, as we would have on a typical busy Friday just before a holiday, we lounged in our jammies, played board games, listened to Craig tune his guitar, and foraged for food in our near-empty cupboard (sodium-free lentil soup with crumbled Goldfish crackers, anyone?).

As enjoyable as the day was, the highlight for me was watching “Free to Be … You and Me” with my kids. I learned from reading the insert that the show was created in 1974, when I was four years old. My elementary school showed it during assemblies at least once a year between kindergarten and sixth grade. I knew most of it by heart. Craig claims to have never even heard of it [1]and, I could tell, had to restrain himself from mocking me when my eyes welled up during the opening scene. Of course, the production values are cheesy – it is 35 years old, after all – but the image really got to me: live-action, goofy little 70’s kids in their bell bottoms and stripes travel around and around on a merry-go-round, happily oblivious to the limits of their circular path, until they become animated cartoon figures, riding swift horses that leap off of the merry-go-round and race freely across the countryside.

The kids on horses were my favorite part of the show, but my children liked the talking baby puppets the most. They dissolved into giggles every time Mel Brooks’ voice came out of the little bald baby’s mouth. They were particularly amused when he insisted that he was a girl. “I want to be a cocktail waitress when I grow up. See! I’m a girl!” (Can Mel Brooks' voice sound anything other than sarcastic?) They also enjoyed the story of Atalanta, the fleet princess who refuses to marry unless a suitor beats her in a footrace, but meets her match in young John, who agrees that she should not marry until she travels the world, just as she wishes. My daughter seemed to enjoy the princess element of the story, and my son enjoyed the race scene.

Another scene that I found both entertaining and bizarre was the Michael Jackson song about growing up. He looks like he’s about fifteen in the video (which makes him about 50 years old now – this seems impossible to me). He also looks like a nice, normal kid with fashionably disheveled nappy hair and chocolate-brown skin. What happened to this kid to turn him into the bleached, emaciated recluse that he is today?

For that matter, what happened to Atalanta and those silly babies? The messages in the video (girls can be anything they want to be, it’s OK for boys to play with dolls and cry, everyone is equal and worthy of friendship no matter what they look like) are self-evident, but even now, after more than a third of a century, need reinforcement. Sure, there has been progress – a multiracial president-elect, a greater variety of powerful female role models for my daughter to look up to – but there are still powerful stereotypes that limit our potential and, if we’re not careful, our kids’ potential as individuals. Hollywood starlets are still starving themselves, and tough guys still (usually) finish first.

Watching the video with my kids reminded me of all of the resolutions that I had when I was younger, before I had kids, about the egalitarian Utopia that would be my home. I would work in a high-powered career (with, perhaps, a stay-at-home husband) and also be a perfect hands-on mother who raised her perfect children to be proud of their gender-neutral life choices and have lots of multicultural, socio-economically diverse friends. No Barbie dolls or toy guns in my home, thank you very much, and definitely no Disney movies.

This vision, I must report, is a far cry from the reality of my life. I worked in a “high-powered” job for the first two years of my son’s life, but have been pretty much a full-time stay-at-home mom since then. My kids have some degree of diversity among their friends, but it’s not quite what I imagined it would be. My daughter is crazy about both Disney princesses and Barbie dolls, and, while I have managed to stick to the no-toy-guns resolution, my son is quite adept at swordplay with his collection of light sabers.

I wonder how much my failure to stick to my guns is limiting my kids’ perspective, so that they fall back on the predictable choices when they imagine their futures. When somebody asks my son what he wants to be when he grows up, he says “Football player” – a running back for the Steelers, to be exact. Not a teacher or a fashion designer or a chef. A football player. When somebody asks my daughter, she says “I want to be a Mommy.” The first time she said this, I suppressed my dismay and patiently explained that she can be more than a mommy. “You can be a mommy and a doctor or a mommy and an astronaut or a mommy and an artist.” Upon hearing this, she considered for a moment and then “OK, Mommy and Artist.” The second time, her teacher asked her this question in my presence and again, without missing a beat, she answered “Mommy.” I again launched my counteroffensive but she immediately shut me down. She insisted, “No, just a Mommy.”

Her teacher tried to make me feel better by pointing out that I should feel flattered -- my daughter thinks that being a mommy is the best job in the world. I can’t say I disagree. On a snowy day, with a cupboard filled only with canned soup, cuddled up on the sofa with two warm little flannel-jammied bodies, listening to the strum of a live guitar, I can honestly say that I wish for nothing more for myself. But I don’t want my own complacency to dictate my children’s futures. I want them to learn about all the vast possibilities the world holds for them, to jump off our comfortable suburban merry-go-round, knowing that they are always welcome to jump back on, and follow their own paths across the unrestricted terrain.

But I do wonder what motivation they will have to make that leap. If my daughter is a happy princess enjoying a comfortable ride in a luxury coach, she may not care that she's going in circles. She may never wonder what adventures lie beyond the merry-go-round. Of course, I want her, and my son, to be happy and comfortable (what parent wishes for difficult lives for their children?), but if it's too happy and comfortable, how will they learn how to stand up for themselves, or even how to define their true, authentic selves? Even though I know that, as their parent, it will be hard to watch, I hope that they confront some good solid obstacles as they grow up. Not the kind that could seriously mess them up, like, God forbid, getting really sick or being abused, but some not-too-harmful character-building challenges would be nice. Like only getting scholarships to Princeton when they have their hearts set on Harvard. Yes, that would work.

[1] To be fair, I spoke to two other friends who also claim to have never heard of it. In case you are one of the deprived few, here is a brief description from Wikipedia: “Free to Be… You and Me is a record album and illustrated songbook for children, first released in November 1972, and later in 1974 as a television special, featuring songs and stories from celebrities (credited as "Marlo Thomas and Friends"). Using poetry, songs, and sketches, the basic concept was to salute values such as individuality, tolerance, and happiness with one's identity; a major thematic message is that anyone, whether a boy or a girl, can achieve anything one wants.”

Old friends

Based on recent news, it sounds like Illinois politics is like high school politics. Blago is like the captain of the wrestling team, doing whatever it takes to make a lower weight class so he can kick some scrawny kids’ ass, stealing other kids’ papers and cheating on tests so he can keep his GPA above a C- and avoid getting kicked off the team. Obama is the head of student council, respected by peers and teachers for his integrity and wit, uncomfortable with Blago’s hijinks but busy doing his own thing and happy to steer clear of the wrestling team. Every once in awhile they have to get together to plan a pep rally or some such nonsense, but for the most part they travel in different circles.

When I was in high school, I hung out with neither the sports bullies nor the student government geeks. I was one of the parking lot slackers, i.e., the kids who hung out in the parking lot and smoked cigarettes during lunch period and skipped as many classes as possible. My closest friend from high school, Kirsten, just visited with her husband and her three children. It’s surprising how easy it is to fall into some old habits when you’re with old friends. We did a lot of hanging around during high school, watching TV, eating too much, stealing beer, doing all kinds of things that got me into trouble. I think Kirsten probably got in trouble, too, but it didn’t seem like her parents disliked her during our high school years. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was fun to hang out at her house, even when her parents were there. And not because they were the kind of parents who didn’t mind if we drank in their basement (they weren't). They were just easygoing, funny, nice people to be around. I even moved in with her family for a couple of months during a particularly tumultuous period in my own home during senior year. Her parents welcomed me into their home and didn’t ask too many questions. I will always be grateful to them for their kindness during that time.

During earlier, less tumultuous times, maybe sophomore year, when Kirsten and I would hang out at my house, one of our favorite things to do was to make a big bowl of melty Rice Krispie Treats and eat it with a spoon. We didn’t bother with a pan. We weren’t even high during the Rice Krispie Treat phase (that didn’t come until later). We were bored, and it tasted good. My home, for all its flaws, was always well-stocked with junk food.

Needless to say, during her recent visit, my home was better stocked with junk food than it usually is. I went to the grocery store and loaded up on cookies, chips, cheese and crackers, cold cuts and condiments. I don’t often have much junk food in my adult home. These days, it’s Whole Foods all the way. But, you can’t force old friends to eat like rabbits. The culinary tone of the visit was set during their first night in town. We went out to a rib place that we used to frequent, back in the day, called Twin Anchors. I hadn’t remembered that the plates of ribs at this restaurant were Fred Flintstone-sized. I know that, a dozen years ago, they were my first-ever introduction to ribs, and I thought they were delightful. I suppose it’s not a bad thing that my tastes run more towards lighter fare these days. I’m suspect that Kirsten’s tastes do, too, but we had to revisit one of the old haunts. Like I said, old friends, old habits.

Actually, junk food was the only bad old habit we revisited in any serious way. We smoked no cigarettes, ingested no illicit substances, didn’t even drink too much beer. We were in bed before 11:00. Having small kids will knock some bad habits out of you, at least temporarily. It’s necessary for survival – your own and theirs. Even though we played it pretty straight, it still felt slightly subversive to have my old friend in my house with my kids. It’s hard to take yourself seriously as a mommy in the presence of someone who has grooved out with you on the brain-colors of “Terrapin Station.” I haven’t kept in close touch with too many of my friends from those days. Part of it is laziness and distance – I went to high school a thousand miles away from here (literally and figuratively) -- but a bigger part of it is that I have changed so much since then. I hardly recognize the self that I remember. It was a dismal period in my life, and it’s taken a long time to get past it. I went to my twentieth reunion last year, and, when I got home, I dissolved into a puddle from all of the memories that it stirred up. I don’t particularly want to go back and revisit high school anymore.

But being around Kirsten is different. We spent some time as grown-ups living just two city blocks away from each other in Chicago, and Craig and her now-husband Carl became close during that time, as well. She has known me as a shy and insecure kid and as a not-so-shy, reasonably happy adult, and she has been my friend through it all. It was surreal to see her mini-me four-year-old daughter and my own daughter play together. They are crazy about each other. Lots of hugs and zero arguments ensued during twelve straight hours of serious toy-sharing. My continuing friendship with Kirsten hints that, even though I was so different than I am now, the core of my self is the same. Even as a miserable, bored, insecure kid, perhaps there was something there worth cherishing.

Blue Christmas

I just saw an article today in the newspaper about a church that will hold a “Blue Christmas” service this week. The minister will wear blue, and all of the members of the congregation are encouraged to wear blue jeans to church. The point, according to the minister, is that you can’t and shouldn’t try to force jollity during the holidays. This time of year is difficult for people who are going through hard times, who recently lost a loved one or a job, are facing a crisis, or who are feeling just generally down in the dumps. Even when things are going well, something about the holiday season brings out the stress -- too many obligations, too much money to spend, face-to-face interactions with friend and relations who are easier to deal with over the phone or not at all.

Personally, I am a little bit out of sorts. I’m still recovering from Thanksgiving with my family and anticipating another grueling weekend with my parents at Christmas. My post-family-visit recoveries invariably involve mysterious physical symptoms. Sometimes I get a pain in my chest, most of the time it’s severe gastrointestinal discomfort (you don’t want to know the details), but this time it’s an intermittent headache that concentrates just behind my left, but sometimes my right, ear. (I’m encouraged that the headache is bilateral; it makes it less likely to be brain tumor. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, in case I haven’t mentioned it before.) I’m feeling broke, but I wish I could give gifts to my friends and to all of the underprivileged families that my church has available to “adopt” for Christmas. Home-baked cookies (especially the break-and-bake kind, which is my specialty) don’t really cut it for families who request clothes and shoes (but they may have to suffice for my friends). I also have a deadline looming for a pain-in-the-ass craft project that I let myself get suckered into managing for my kids’ school, which is ironic since, in addition to not being a baker, I am not crafty. A half-painted child-sized table and chairs sits accusingly in my garage, awaiting decoupage and child-size handprints, to be sold to the highest bidder at the school fundraiser. If I weren’t so broke I would just turn it in as-is and buy the damn thing myself.

Blah blah blah. My complaints and my pottymouth bore even me.

But, that’s not to say there aren’t some devastatingly wonderful moments. When I picked up my kids from school the other day, my four-year-old daughter ran over to me, caressed my cheek, and sighed, “You’re the best mommy in the world.” She is definitely in a mommy-loving phase, and I am loving every minute of it. I want to bottle it so I can take a swig when she is sixteen and telling me she hates me for taking her phone away. My six-year-old made me proud as punch today during his basketball practice, only his second one ever, with his Sisyphean persistence. He lacks some fundamental dribbling skills compared to the other kids, but he didn’t get frustrated or give up. He just kept trying, again and again, to run a zig-zag around the orange cones, each time losing the ball with a little bit less frequency then the last time. I was almost in tears as I looked on among the other proud parents.

Of course, these good moments have nothing to do with the holiday season, per se. They just stand out in stark relief to all the bullshit annoyances. Don’t get me wrong; I love the smell of the pine, the Christmas caroling, the twinkling lights, and the happy anticipation of Christmas morning. The good comes with the bad, but maybe that makes the good seem even better.

In fact, maybe that’s the point of the season. One of my good friends has invited me for the past couple of years to an all-women’s candlelight Advent service at her church. It is a beautiful, empowering service that celebrates our distinctive roles as wives, mothers, and friends. The readings at this service are surprisingly non-traditional for an Episcopal service. One of them celebrates the “goddess” in all of us and beseeches this “goddess” to help us celebrate and love our bodies. This seems subversively pagan to a recovering Catholic such as myself, and it makes me want to hug the minister who includes it every year. During the service, we sing only one hymn, and we sing it twice: “O Come O Come Emmanuel.” For a Christmas carol, it’s quite dark. I could be wrong, as I’m not a musician, but I think it’s played in a minor key, like a dirge, and the lyrics are written from the perspective of captive Hebrews who are begging God to send someone to save them from hellish tyranny. Even the chorus, which begins with “Rejoice, Rejoice”, sounds grim. By the end of the fourth verse, I was longing for a little “Joy to the World”.

Speaking of music, a funny thing happened during the service (well, funny to me). Keep in mind, the theme of the service was “Quiet”, as in “Let’s all share a quiet moment and appreciate the true meaning of the season.” There were signs posted around the vestibule saying “Hush, Quiet, It’s Advent.” We all entered the nave in silence, and the lights were dimmed to enhance the ambience. A line from one of the readings entreated God to help us to harness technology and not to be a slave to it. At the precise moment that this line was read, a cell phone, evidently programmed to high volume, rang out “I Can’t Fight this Feeling Anymore” by REO Speedwagon. The phone belonged to an acquaintance sitting directly behind me, who couldn’t find the phone in her purse, dropped it on the stone floor when she finally dug it out, and muttered “Oh my God” several times before she found the off button. The woman who owned the phone is not a close friend, but I know her well enough to suspect that she will continue to regularly replay this moment in her head for some time to come, and it will take her even longer to see the humor in it. I learned from another friend sitting next to her that a kindly older woman sitting directly behind her leaned over, put her hand on her shoulder, and whispered, “It’s OK. Let it drift away.”

It’s probably no accident that Christmas comes during the darkest week of the year (at least in our hemisphere), and has a traditional association with snow. The snow makes everything quiet and still, and it also serves as a blank backdrop, like a Hollywood green screen, onto which we project all of the noisy complications in our lives. Or, perhaps, like that wonderful final line of James Joyce’s “The Dead”, the snow reminds us of how close we are to the “descent of (our) last end”. Maybe we need to embrace the anxious moments inherent in the season, which are inherent in our human experience, to fully perceive the transcendent joy of Christmas.

A Very Muslim Thanksgiving

I just returned from Thanksgiving weekend with my family. They live 500 miles away, which is a perfect distance because it isn’t too far for a quarterly road trip but it is too far away for impromptu drop-ins. Every visit with my parents and siblings is rife with family-dysfunction landmines, no matter how peaceful relations seem to be leading up to the visit. This trip was no different, so I’ll be processing the psychic aftershocks for weeks to come. The origins of these land-mines will be explored in the forthcoming thinly-veiled autobiographical novel, so I won’t delve too deeply here. Suffice it to say that, despite my high hopes, the family peace continues to be almost as tenuous as that between the Sunni and the Shi’a.

One diversion from the traditional sources of family tension was the anticipation of my younger sister’s impending nuptials, which is a joyous occasion, to be sure, but also a new source of tension. My sister is a cool and funky lady. She is an acupuncturist who is into yoga, meditation, art, and music. She’s independent, sensitive, and smart, and she holds very high yet idiosyncratic standards for her friends and potential partners. She once called me distraught because her then-boyfriend (now-fiance) did some kind of trippy visual meditation during a Zen mindfulness meditation group and, consequently, she didn’t know if she could trust him. Coming from a conservative middle-class Catholic background and living in a blue-collar city, she is quite a cocktail, and she has had some problems connecting with guys. The fellow whom she is planning to marry is a bit out of the mainstream himself. He is a Syrian Muslim who sometimes goes to Catholic mass and, as mentioned, attends Buddhist meditation groups. He is great with kids and pets, does Internet design for a living, plans to go back to school for an MBA, and runs marathons. He is a millennial man.

My sister surprised my mom this Thanksgiving by inviting her fiance’s family – three siblings and his mother -- for dinner at the last minute. There was plenty of food, and on such a family-oriented holiday it was perfectly appropriate to share a meal with the future family. Despite some panicky grumbling, my mom did a surprisingly good job of rolling with it. She explained a bit defensively that she hadn’t invited them herself because she didn’t know whether the fiance’s family celebrates Thanksgiving since they are Muslims. Rather than explaining that Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday and that everyone can give thanks without worrying about breaking the rules, I took a breath and congratulated her on being so flexible and welcoming to my sister’s future in-laws.

We had a lovely dinner. The fiance’s family was warm and gracious and seemed to enjoy the food and the company. There were a few variations to our typical Thanksgiving dinner. The fiance’s mother and younger sister wore hijabs and remained behind for a few minutes to perform private prayers before joining the rest of us at the dinner table. The grace that my dad mumbled when we were all sitting together was a little more stilted and generic than usual. The Muslim guests abstained from drinking the wine that my father poured generously for my family (except for my mom, who is in AA). Otherwise, though, the experience of sharing a holiday with a Muslim family seemed more mundane that I would have expected. We played pool, watched football, and worked on puzzles with the kids. We all groaned about being too full of pie and complained about the weather and the economy.

In one of those funny little cosmic coincidences, my husband and I turned on "The Simpsons" for the first time in a long, long time when we got home from our trip, and the show was about Bart’s new Muslim friend, Bashir. Marge and Homer invite Bashir’s family to dinner, but Homer’s motives are less than friendly – he grills Bashir’s parents about their connections with terrorists and offends them so much that they leave in the middle of dinner. In his effort to make amends, Homer breaks into their home and goes all Jack Bauer on them, hacking into their computer and searching through their mail. This was funny, because prior to our Thanksgiving meal together I could imagine my parents behaving similarly, if slightly less excessively. They are both pretty freaked out about my sister’s marriage.

I haven’t spoken to her about it, but I’m sure my sister recognizes my parents’ apprehension. I found a book that she bought for them called “The Muslim Next Door,” which I picked up and started to read. It is a memoir, written by a young Muslim woman who grew up in Suburbia USA, which demystifies some of the questions and misperceptions about Islam, particularly as it relates to life in the Western world. One thing that I thought was interesting in the book is the way that the author explains that Islam is a religion of orthopraxy, or one that emphasizes behavior and conduct, as opposed to orthodoxy, which emphasizes faith and belief in the way that most versions of Christianity do. Basically, Muslims must wear their religion on their sleeves. Just saying that they believe in the Koran, or even believing that they believe in the Koran, doesn’t count. They can’t skip Ramadan or refuse to wear a hijab and then go to confession to wash away their sins. Islam is not just an individual belief, but it permeates family relationships, the educational system, and the legal system in the countries where it represents the majority. This outward demonstration of belief challenges the deny-and-repress, don’t-ask-don’t-tell religious attitude that permeates most of our day-to-day relationships in this country.

This can be awkward and inconvenient, and it can challenge our personal beliefs. Waiting for my sister’s future mother- and sister-in-law to say their private prayers while we all stood around the Thanksgiving table was a little uncomfortable. The kids were hungry and cranky, and the grownups didn’t really know what to say to each other. The publicly private display of piety made us all feel like heathens, which probably accounts for my dad’s mumbled version of grace. My sister and her fiancé visited us for a weekend at the beginning of Ramadan this past summer, and her fiancé was too tired from fasting during the day to do much more than sleep on the beach. He also needed special food for his pre-sunrise and post-sunset meals, and it felt weird to have him sit at meals with us but not eat. This was all kind of a hassle, and it made us non-Muslims feel a little bit like jerks for not fasting with him.

When it comes down to it, though, I think, or hope, that even my parents recognize that our lives will all be enriched by stretching the family boundaries to include different global perspectives. Every family merger challenges the status quo, no matter how similar the families seem to be on the outside. A family's fate becomes tied to that of relative strangers by a sacred bond between members of the two clans. My brother’s wife’s family has a similar religious background and values to those of my parents. They live in Mexico City and don’t speak English very well, though, which initially caused my parents a great deal of consternation. My parents are still puzzled and irritated by the language barrier (Sample conversation between my mom and my brother about his two-year-old bilingual son: Mom -- "It's cute how Derek makes up his own words for things." Big brother -- "He's not making them up, Mom; he's speaking Spanish."). But they enjoy having family in Mexico, which is a great place to visit. As far as my own challenge to the status quo, my husband's family is highly functional. All of the healthy, joyful communication among these in-laws probably made my parents very uncomfortable at first, but I think they have found a way to live with it.

It's a slow evolutionary process. While every addition to the family brings about its own new sources of tension, it seems to dilute the old sources of tension and send them a little bit further into the background. The family disputes that used to be more akin to atom bombs have now become mere land mines. Hopefully, over time, these land mines will become just shimmering fireworks as the creative destruction of my parents’ family unit approaches its peaceful conclusion.