Paper Girl

An organizer I once hired in desperation told me that everyone has a collection, and mine happens to be paper.

I confess to being a “piler” too. I have stacks of books and magazines on my dresser, by my bedside, and underneath the table in a basket. I usually only attack these piles when, like Herbert in the Miss Piggle Wiggle story who never picks up his toys, I can’t get to what I need because of all the stuff in the way. My hairbrush might be hidden under layers of paper I’ve amassed — in-progress writings, half-read magazines, blank pads for scribbling lists or brilliant ideas. Just paper, paper, paper.

I treasure it, I realize. My children’s once-in-a-lifetime-snapshots-of-a-moment-in-time crayon drawings. My oh-so-precious journals and notebooks from the past that should probably stay there. Old calendars with gorgeous pictures, inspirational quotes, and a year’s worth of living chronicled in its small squares.

Paper may be passe, but it’s so much more to me.

Yes, I am capable of throwing out and often do, but I know I keep things I shouldn’t. It’s just so hard. Jettisoning all of the Disney World buttons our family got while celebrating my recent birthday feels like I’m dismissing the specialness of the trip. Imprinted with each of our names, they’re little signs made to be saved. Maybe my children want these! I need to remember to ask! So, the buttons sit, waiting patiently on my dresser for the verdict on their fate.

I love and dread walking into a bookstore. Like a dieter in a bakery, I am tempted. Row upon row of sweet delights. Who can resist?

The magazine rack in the grocery store line always beckons, but I usually manage to put the publication back before buying. I’m one of those people you see reading and holding the magazine with one hand while blindly placing items on the belt with the other.

“M’am, can you push your cart up, please?”

“Oh!” I say, looking up and hurriedly stuffing “Allure” back in the wrong rack. What was the name of that Editor’s-Pick lipstick again?

Paper for me means information, inspiration, emotion. If I throw it away, I might lose what lured me in the first place. I think, when I’m old and forced to slow down, to sit and contemplate, I can take solace in sifting through all that paper, all those memories. Maybe then, and only then, will I throw them out.

We yearn to capture experience, to own it, absorb it into our bones. I remember when I was 12 and my cousin Margaret, a poet, took me to visit our aunt in Washington, D.C. After the trip, she wrote a poem titled “Smithsonian Album” that describes much of what we saw and did.

Contained in a slim volume on my bookshelf, the poem is an ode to our time together, presented and preserved on (naturally) paper. Yet only now, decades later, do I see that the poem also touches on — almost casually, like a flip of the hair — that impossible yearning in all of us. The ending:

Save?
What will you save?
The gusty afternoon
a bit of laughter
the pin-prick of aching feet.
And what of “relief”
and Joan Miro
what of Rodin, abstract
the green mall
the water buffalo?

All these picture postcards–
learn to keep them
learn to let them go.

(Reprinted with permission from Margaret Boothe Baddour. Click on title above or here to see full poem.)

The front of a Mother's Day card my daughter made. She has no idea what an accurate depiction of it really is. — The front of a Mother’s Day card that my daughter made — an unwittingly accurate depiction of what my world sounds like.

The F-words

There are a lot of F-words associated with turning 50. First, let’s take the obvious one: F*ck. As in, “F*ck, is this really happening to me?” That thought first flickered in my mind after I turned 49 and started the countdown to the next birthday. Essentially, I had a year to wrap my head around “50.” By the time my birthday came around a couple a weeks ago, I’d been 50 for ages. No big deal.

A second but more important variation of the F-word is the phrase “F*ck it” — the rallying cry of the “50” crowd. It’s basically a license to say you’re going to do what you want to do, regardless of what others think. Yes, there’s a bit of the “When I’m an old woman I shall wear purple” in this. But the truth is, the older you get, the more you become comfortable with being yourself. And if yourself has always wanted to take dance lessons or act in a play or jump out of an airplane, turning 50 is a great excuse to do it.

As it happens, myself decided to go to Disney World. It wasn’t exactly something I’d been dreaming about, but it was something my husband and I had been wanting to check off the family-pilgrimages list for some time, and the timing was right.

Fortunately, I had the “f*ck-it” part down when I told friends what I was doing for my birthday. Many of them looked at me with either incredulity or laughter and quickly followed up with raised-eyebrow comments like, “Who’s idea was that?” or “I can’t think of any place I’d rather go less,” or just a simple, “That sounds awful.”

I have to admit that a part of me completely agreed. Did I really want to spend my 50th birthday tackling crowds and riding roller coasters? But ultimately, I loved the idea of having a memorable trip as a family on my birthday. In fact, “Family” is one of the most important F-words of 50. How could I hit such a milestone and not celebrate with my family?

Furthermore, those two days at Disney embodied another F-word, one that I plan to experience a lot in the future: Fun. It’s impossible to go to Disney World — and the nearby Universal theme park — without having a great time. Not only is it fun to see your own kids having so much fun (my son rode every thrill ride in every theme park, many times over — I think he counted 32 altogether), but you can’t help buying in to the whole schlocky deal. You “ooh” and “aah” at the constantly-changing colors of the lighted Disney castle, you find your competitive mojo during the Toy Story target-shooting ride, you actually choose to go on the Everest Expedition roller coaster three (yes, three) times. There’s a reason, you realize, why people return to Disney again and again: It’s la-la land.

That said, there were a couple of times I took one for the team. At Universal, my daughter really wanted to ride the insane, inversion-filled Hulk roller coaster, insisting she would only go with me. And I really didn’t want to go, preferring to keep my head on my neck. Finally, against my better judgment, I acquiesced, shutting my eyes the entire ride while being jerked left and right, turned upside down and corkscrewed around — hitting, I later learned, 4 G’s. After I got off the ride, and indeed for a few days afterward, I felt like my brain had been split apart and rearranged and the new formation wasn’t quite complete; a few cells were still rattling around in my head, looking for a place to land.

This leads me to another turning-50 F-word: Fuzzy. After two days in Orlando, it was how I was feeling. Unfortunately, my mind has gotten a little fuzzier as I’ve gotten older, and I find myself forgetting incidental things like my good friends’ names and restaurants I’ve recently visited. But, I’m attributing that to the multi-tasking brain we women are so good at nurturing, so I’m going to forget about it (which will be easy.)

Speaking of good friends, I would not be exaggerating to say “Friendship” is the ultimate F-word of 50. My friends provide me with comfort, laughter, commiseration and wisdom. They are the ones I’ve celebrated with as many of us hit five decades together this year, and they’re who I hope to be hanging out with for years to come. My friends help me realize how rich life at 50 really is.

And, they all are associated with the final, impossible-to-ignore F-word: the overused “Fabulous.” It’s hard to quibble with this one, as celebrating oneself as fabulous is certainly in order on any birthday. But there’s an underlying ring of desperation here, as in, “Even though you’re now officially old, you’re also fabulous! Really, you are!” No one says “You’re 20 and fabulous!”

But the flip side is that you can look at yourself amid all the “50 is the new [fill in blank]” comments everyone makes these days and say, “You know, I don’t look that bad and I feel pretty good. And mostly, I’m happy with myself. I’m still learning, trying to be a better parent, a better wife, a better friend — to myself and others. All, in all, I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.”

So, I say, bring on the fabulousness. Bring on the fun. Bring it all on — and while you’re at it, maybe add a few highlights to cover the gray.

Or maybe not. F*ck it.

The Hulk roller coaster at Universal - with 7 inversions. Yes, I rode this. — The Hulk roller coaster at Universal – with 7 inversions. I rode this, eyes closed.

Driving Forces

Sometimes In the middle of the night when I’m awake and alone with my thoughts, or sometimes in the middle of the day when I’m driving and surrounded by chip bags, backpacks, and sweaty kids, I think, motherhood is a bit of a stretch for me.

Wait, maybe I should say, motherhood in today’s world is a bit of a stretch, especially with three children. Of course I love them, but occasionally the thought creeps in that it would have been so easy to parent just one child. Now that I have three–twins, age 10, and a son, almost 13–I’m constantly amazed at the amount of energy, generosity and altruism required for parenting. I think about my own mother, who had four kids, drove carpool, cooked dinner every night, even sewed clothes for me and my sister. She and my dad took us on trips, including the requisite pilgrimage to Disney World. We stayed at the exotic Polynesian hotel, went to the Mad Tea Party, and dined to the vocal stylings of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé (live!). It was about perfect.

I took it for granted, all that my parents did for us, which I guess is the job of kids. Children are too busy growing up, living the movie, to catch on to the fact that their parents are helping to write and direct it.

I think about my homemaker-happy mother, whose day before the kids got home included bridge and tennis and garden club–and grocery shopping. She lived (and still does) a happy life, with little talk of stressing out, leaning in, and getting away. Yes, life was simpler. Those were the days of kids having fewer organized activities after school–I remember walking to the local drugstore many weekday afternoons with my best friend Allison and ordering ice cream sundaes at the counter (and putting on the pounds to show it!). I don’t recall if my mother even knew what we were doing. I just knew to be home by dinnertime.

Today, I talk to my mother from my command center behind the steering wheel. We catch up while I, like the operator of the local train, make various stops along the way. These are the snatched moments where I find out about her or Dad’s latest checkups (they are insanely healthy for the 70’s and 80s), who they dined with at the club last Saturday night, whose funeral they attended the other day. Then always, it’s “I gotta go, Mom. I’m at [insert destination] now.”

Once I pick up the kids from school, I’m off to a gymnastics class, a baseball practice, a dance lesson. Forget the stay-at-home mom–that would be fantastic. No, I’m a “stay-in-the-car” mom, and covet the rare day where I manage to avoid my car entirely (especially since it’s so damn dirty, with pretzels and Power Bars and god knows what ground into the synthetic carpet and seat crevices.)

I’m not a great dinner planner, (ugh, the routine) the way my mother was, and I often get home from these carpool laps around the track to open the fridge and simply stare. Then I turn to the cabinet and reach for the box of pasta. I silently give thanks that my husband will eat just about anything and at the same time curse him for needing to eat at all. Every fall, I vow to “figure out the dinner thing” just like I vow to “figure out the homework thing” and “the driving thing.”

The thing is, this is what parenting is, largely. It’s being there for your children’s lives, being there when they need you. We give our kids so much, it seems, this generation of parents. We sign them up, plug them in, buy them off. I’m just as guilty as anyone, yet I occasionally try to fight these tendencies. Hell, we haven’t even taken our kids to Disney World. But, as I’ve seen with friends whose kids are older, it does eventually taper off, and one day it’s over, this part of parenting.

I feel I’m just getting a glimpse of what life will be like once my role in the movie is reduced to, say, Executive Producer. My kids are starting to become more independent, making their own breakfast in the morning, running to the corner market, walking the dog, and doing chores (sort of). Now, as opposed to standing over them and tying their shoelaces, I’m glancing sideways and driving them to the shoe store. I’m supervising when needed, and of course, nagging often.

Oh, I know those teenage years are coming and things will keep shifting–too quickly–and suddenly, I will yearn for these “easy” years when they don’t mind hanging out with their parents (or have no choice). We’ll all get our independence soon enough.

But for now, Disney World is starting to look pretty good. Maybe we’ll even get there before they’re all in college.

It's may not be Disney World but they seemed to like it. — A non-Disney light show.