Mangrove

I was thinking today about this poem I wrote. It was inspired by a visit to Wasini Island when I lived in Kenya. On this small island with no roads and reachable only by small boat, I felt very far away.

Mangrove

If I ever see you again
I think it will be at the end of the world
Where tree limbs plunge inexplicably downward into
sand and saltwater
And you are rooted with the tide,
merging earth and water,
your arms reaching reaching
out to me and beyond
This lonely peninsula.

Checking It Twice

Dear Santa,

One of our teachers presented me with this challenge: Choose one item that is on your holiday wish list (or one item that is not on your list) and reflect on what this item's presence on (or absence from) your list reveals about where you are in your life right now.

I have an answer, but not a comfortable one.

I'm reminded of the time I sat in an important interview for a Rotary Club study abroad scholarship, and one of the questions asked was, "If you could be any animal, which would you be and why?" Inexplicably, "beaver" popped into my head.

Beaver? Really?

Like a character in a comic strip, I tried to push off that thought balloon, but it bobbed there stubbornly.

Beaver became my answer. And I got the scholarship.

Now here I am, trying to be careful what I wish for. Because what I really want this year, Santa, is a new baby.

On the Want/Need Continuum, this wish is as far on the Want end of the spectrum as possible. It's maybe even greedy. Not only do I not need a baby, there are plenty of reasons why I might expect you to put this desire in the "I Hear You, but...Try Again" category.

You know I am a lucky woman with two healthy children, a husband, and a home. Our daughters, six and three, are at pretty self-sufficient ages and with help from family and friends, we manage our busy two-working-parents household.

I come from a large brood and didn't think I would follow in my parents' footsteps and have five children. But I always imagined three. Two would be too few; four would be too many. I never pictured myself in the "2.1 kids" column.

But who am I kidding? Not you, Mr. Claus, who knows when our daughters are naughty and nice. Much of the time, two is more than enough for us. We've got man-on-man defense down, but we're still outwitted at times.

Nevertheless, after some years of overwhelm, we're in a good groove.

So it's hard to explain why I want to upset our tidy apple cart. I just want a baby. I do. I want to not want a baby, but, I don't.

It's not that I'm hoping for a boy, Santa. And I'm not dying to be pregnant again. I'm willing to explore a variety of Stork Options.

Truth is, I think I want a baby so it won't all be over. You know, childhood. Our house currently has no crib and no diapers and no highchair. Our youngest is careening toward kindergarten. Soon, it seems, I'll be the mother of older kids, cooing at and longing to hold the babies of my younger parent peers. I see it already: both daughters will be in high school together and then a few years later, both graduated and gone.

I can't help wanting one more toddler, one more learning-to-talker, one more footy-pajamaed snuggler. I want the soccer games and school shows and chaotic family dinners to span more years than the three between our two. I want another one at home to keep us young.

Ultimately, Santa, maybe that's what I'm really after: my youth. A sense that I am not marching too quickly through life's stages. Career? Check. Enough Time for Myself? Check. Family? I want more of that.

I know what you're thinking, Santa. If I get what I want, my stocking will be full of Sleepless Nights, Diaper Changes, Crying, Drooling, Spit-Up, and more Laundry and Whining.

I'll admit I have to wonder if we have room in our house for another inhabitant and enough money in the bank for daycare and college. Love in our hearts, though, we have to spare.

Santa, over the years I've come to expect your wisdom applied to my wishes. So, whether or not 2010 brings me a bundle of joy or a carton of contentment, I figure something good is coming my way.

Your Friend,

Fer

Believing

In the van on the way home from helping decorate my parents' tree:

"Mom, I think I believe in Santa Claus..."

Great. Here we go again. Our six-year-old Santa Skeptic, thinking too much.

"But I am just not sure Santa is actually the guy who delivers all the presents."

"Okay, so who do you think does?"

"Well, it could just be some regular person. Like, maybe Santa is just a character made up so no one knows who the real person is."

"But how could a regular person deliver ALL those presents? I mean, it has to be someone magical, don't you think?"

"It could be a lot of people, with helicopters or something."

"But Santa has been the same for hundreds of years...and he lives forever. Whoever delivers the presents would probably have to be like that, right?"

"Okay, so maybe Santa is just a character we all believe in and there's really someone else--like maybe even a girl--who doesn't want anyone to know who she is. And she lives forever."

"Hmmm. I think you're on to something here. And I guess we'll never really know who Santa is, huh?"

Silence. But I can practically hear the wheels turning in the seat behind me.

"I wonder what her name is."

"Well, since we don't know, maybe we could just call her 'Santa.'"

Bark or Bite

By now, New Moon fever has dulled to a faint howl, but the books and movie are still coming up in conversation. I saw the second film in the Twilight series two weeks ago and at least a couple of hours before most of my students due to free tickets to a special screening with friends. The movie was fabulous entertainment, as was the audience, cheering whenever Edward the Vampire or Jacob the Werewolf appeared on screen, shirtless.

So, there was a lot of cheering. And I felt slightly dirty the next day when I discovered that Taylor Lautner, the actor who plays Jacob, is only 17 years old. I could write about the sexism double standards at play here, and I thought about it...

But the real debate is Team Edward versus Team Jacob.

Now, before you log off your computer in disgust because you, like a friend or two on Facebook who have joined the group, "Team Edward or Team Jacob? How about Team Shut the F*** Up?" let me clarify that I am not entertaining the notion of which hottie is hotter. The point to ponder is what a friend's wife called "The Age-Old Conflict in a Woman's Soul."

Early in New Moon, elusive, often emotionally inaccessible Edward leaves heroine Bella, with the parting words, "You're no good for me." What he means literally is: "You're a juicy steak I want to bite into all the time." But that's just vampire speak for "It's not you; it's me," so we can relate as Bella pines for him while the seasons change. Seasons in Forks, Washington, by the way, are marked by either Rain or Snow (symbols, respectively, of tears and frozen hearts?).

I spent the first portion of the book annoyed with Edward and impatient with mopey Bella, but just before we are ready to give up on this sob saga (set to an appropriately emo soundtrack in the film), Bella does the expected: dusts herself off and finds herself a worthy distraction in the form of Jacob. Jacob is a brooding long-haired boy/man living outside town on the reservation. Bella and Jacob become close friends--but just friends. And not for lack of trying on Jacob's part.

I suppose we're supposed to feel the sexual tension between Bella and Jacob, but she pretty consistently dogs him (mastering the last-minute head-turn) to avoid being unfaithful to Edward, who has bailed on her. Nevertheless, this is meant to be a conflict, and Jacob is her bird in the hand. Except, we discover, he is actually a wolf in the woods. Which totally fits, since he plays the puppydog so perfectly. The faithful pooch. Loyal to his pack, to Bella, etc.

So now Edward and Jacob have something besides Bella in common: they're both monsters (albeit, monsters locked in an archetypal rivalry between their "species"). But Jacob is bound to lose the battle for Bella's heart, and he knows it: "I’m so sorry that I can’t be the right kind of monster for you, Bella. I guess I’m just not as great as a bloodsucker, am I?"

Jacob can be petulant and whiny, but he's always there.

Though Bella makes it abundantly clear whom she chooses, the 'Edward or Jacob' conundrum persists nevertheless as allegory: Who's your Jacob? Where's your Edward? Did you marry your Wolf or your Vampire?

We can imagine that Edward symbolizes passion, intrigue, the tortured poet, one's "soulmate." Dangerous love. The kind that might come back to bite you.

Jacob, on the other hand, represents safety. Dependability. He's an adoring friend and he'll stick around, put up with your moods. More the shaggy dog than wild hound.

If I ventured a guess, I'd bet that most of my friends committed to their wolves. Maybe after being once bitten. Or even twice.

But who doesn't want her Wolf and Vampire too? Is it possible? When a friend of mine pressed his wife to reveal if he was her Vamp or Dawg, she cleverly convinced him that her Vampire had become her Wolf. Graceful move, Sister.

The Twilight series, for the record, doesn't help us ground our expectations. After all, for Edward and Bella to work, she needs to join him in the Vampire World, so they'll both be young and immortal, forever. Frozen in time. Implicit is that their youthful passion for each other sustains.

In reality, we're graying and so are our mates. And retaining our youth is not as simple as saying to one's lover, "Bite me."

The danger is having your Wolf in the den and imagining one's Vampire is still out there, at large. The one that got away.

Maybe that's the allure of Twilight for the demographic say, above the age of 18. Edward Cullen is a safe fantasy (and he's not a minor in real life, either).

Bur offscreen, and at home, the challenge is not letting our long-term relationships suck the lifeblood out of us.

So here's to keeping it hot in the doghouse.

Woof!

Forty Years, and Four Days, of Family

My parents, according to legend, met during middle school biology lab. My mother's version of the story has my father as her lab partner and trying to take over frog dissection, thinking she would be squeamish and amenable to simply observing the process. Mom was having none of that and, baring her scalpel, vied for vivisection rights. The rest, as they say, is history. They finished middle and high school together, endured four years on opposite coasts during college, and married promptly after my father's graduation in 1969.

And miraculously, while other couples of their generation set new records for American divorce rates, they persevered for decades.

A few years ago our parents (of five offspring and by now eight grandchildren), declared that we would be celebrating their 40th anniversary with them on a trip, somewhere, sometime in 2009, and we should make ourselves available. We're there! we declared.

Plans narrowed to a Mexican Riviera Carnival Cruise out of San Diego during Thanksgiving week. We marked our calendars and watched as the economy shortened our cruise to four days, three nights: round trip to Ensenada and back. But we didn't care; we'd be together, in cabins down the hall from one another, and who knew what capers would transpire.

And that is how it came to be that a Mammom and Bampa and their four kids and their spouses (minus the pair who gave birth to Grandchild #8 just three days before departure), along with six grandchildren plus a mother-in-law and cousin boarded the Carnival Elation for a 40th Anniversary Adventure last week.

Our party of 18 was rarely all together in one place, except the day we conspicuously navigated the streets, shops, fish tacos, and margaritas of Ensenada. In various groupings and combinations we swam, mini-golfed, water-slid, toasted, gambled, spa-ed, buffeted, feasted, napped, exercised, and ate some more. My husband figured out on the second night of dining (rather coincidentally on "Elegant Night" when they serve lobster and prime rib), that no one will stop you--or more importantly, CHARGE YOU--from ordering two entrees. So he did. Steak AND lobster. And then several of my family members followed suit.

My generous parents provided the opportunity for us all to come together and celebrate, in effect, our very existence (and closeness to one another), thanks to them. In foresight, in the moment, and in hindsight, it was an exquisitely unique and special time.

Some other cruise highlights:

Delayed Departure: Our family's strategy was to board the ship as early as allowable, even if it was going nowhere. Our excitement began in various lines at 12:30 PM on Monday, but it wasn't long before we were enjoying reggae music and Mexican Mamas ("$7.50 for the first one and ALMOST one dollar off for a refill!") poolside. I believe the ship was meant to pull out around sunset. But alas, some of our fellow passengers were running late, and "because Ensenada is an easily reachable destination," Carnival announced that we would be extending our truants the courtesy of delaying departure.

Our entourage, along with most other passengers, was gathered on the top deck, anticipating the casting off of lines. My husband and brother-in-law discussed the possibility of mooning our comrades when they finally made it aboard. But we eventually decamped for dinner preparations, and the boat started moving, and then my sister-in-law got seasick.

Club Carnival: I just assumed any childcare on board was costly and questionable. Instead, it was FREE and AWESOME. So awesome, in fact, that 1) Daughter #1 was angry with us when we picked her up "early" at 9:45 one evening, and 2) after their first time, both girls begged to go back. We spent our days with the girls but took them to "Kids' Camp" each night so we could dine with the adults. As a gift to Daughter #1, we left here there until 11:30 on the last night. That's how much we love her.

The Coca Cola Scandal: Giddily relating her first Kids' Camp experience as she and her dad made their way back to our cabin, our First Grader admitted that, "Dad, you're probably going to fire me. In fact, yep, you're definitely going to fire me." The fire, though, was the glint in her eyes as she confessed that when the counselors gave her the choice to have water or Coke with her dinner, she totally went with Coke. "But Mom," she explained later, "It wasn't my fault. They gave me a CHOICE."

"And," she added, "I love Coke."

The Hairy Chest Contest: Taking for granted that this cruise would be a true escape from work and regular routine, it only occurred to me two days prior to our departure (from our own city's port, natch) that it was Fairly Likely that one of my students would be on this cruise. As we converged upon my parents' stateroom on the first afternoon before leaving port and watched our fellow passengers and family members board below, I spotted two former students on the gangway.

Well, I figured, former students are in a different jurisdiction from current students (and then there's international waters to factor in, ha ha!). Out of respect for the fact that these young men were in the less desirable position of having their former vice principal on their vacation, I avoided crossing paths and making direct eye contact.

However, my daughters and I did walk through the pool area as one of our alums was competing in the ship's Hairy Chest Contest. Daughters wanted to stick around. I did not.

Blackjack: Like so many of the things I do, I gamble one-dimensionally. What I mean by this is I know the simple aspects of one game, ignore the complicated stuff like buying insurance, etc., and then make up my own guidelines to keep me safe. I apply the same strategy to my sewing machine, for example. I know how to stitch in a straight line and I can sew stuff. Don't talk to me about button holes.

Guidelines that keep me safe in blackjack include agreeing how much money I will put out initially, and then how much I am willing to lose. At some point I decided I wanted to win enough to pay for the massage my husband kept hinting he'd really appreciate. Following the old "quit while you're ahead" maxim, I walked away from the table on the third night $100 up. And still not totally understanding the finer points of gambling.

Shane: So much to say about Shane. I'll try to keep it brief and stick to the best parts.

On our last night aboard the Carnival Elation, various adults gathered in my parents' cabin for a pre-dinner drink and Together Time. Door propped open, I happened to make eye contact with the resident of the cabin across the hall as he headed unsteadily out of his stateroom, drink in hand.

"Cheers!" I lifted my drink, and he responded in kind, peeking into my parents' "well-appointed" stateroom (certainly in comparison with his interior windowless room).

"Wow," he murmured, "This is a nice room! Where are you guys from?"

"San Diego," we answered, "What about you?"

"Well, have you heard of Riverside?"

We all nodded.

"Yeah, well. Actually, I'm from Hemet." (A town slightly more remote...)

He paused a moment, and then opened up.

"You know how the boat was delayed?" We nodded. "Ha! That was me and my buddy. It was his birthday last week, so we went to Vegas, and then it was my birthday this week, and we scheduled this cruise. We got here and realized we forgot our passports. We had to drive all the way back to Hemet. But we remained in contact with Carnival the whole way, and told them 'Don't worry; we're here! We're parking.'" He shook his head ruefully and took a swig of his drink.

"We were actually still on the freeway, like fifteen miles away."

My brother-in-law mentioned that "someone" had talked about mooning the late arrivals. Shane laughed, loving that he had achieved some shipboard infamy.

"Anyway, I figure we saved the boat four laps outside Ensenada."

We all drank to that. Our ship had spent an entire day "at sea," basically idling outside our one Mexican destination.

Shane, we learned, was a divorced surgical tech and dad living with a divorced roommate and planning to start a Physician's Assistant Program. "Life has been great since my buddy and I moved in together...we have so much fun."

It was only one sentence or so later before we learned that Shane's "buddy" and roommate was his sister's ex-husband.

You can't make this stuff up.

He asked us if we had encountered a group of now-infamous Bachelor Party guys on the cruise. In Speedos? With the Bachelor wearing an obligatory crown everywhere he went? Yep, we'd seen them.

"Well, we saw them in Papas & Beer in Ensenada." (Ed.: But of course!)

"I asked them if any of them had gotten laid."

He took a sip of his drink as we waited in anticipation for the answer.

He shook his head. "They didn't."

It was the perfect non-story to make us all raise our eyebrows and look around uncomfortably.

Proving, folks, that while the drinks ain't cheap on a Carnival Cruise, the childcare and entertainment is.

Here's to my parents, and 40 years of traveling, living, and loving together. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for a wonderful time, then and now.

Feeling Thankful (that Dinner Is Tomorrow)

Our cruise ship returned to San Diego this Thanksgiving Day morning after making a short voyage south to Ensenada (more on this trip later). Because most of our extended family was aboard--and exhausted--and the turkey in my mom's fridge is still defrosting, we plan to pretend tomorrow is our Thanksgiving.

So we emerged from the managed chaos/cattle call cleanly titled "Debarkation" into the sunlight of a familiar port we call home on a day when everyone is cooking or otherwise ensconced in family affairs, with ostensibly nothing to do. Except unpack and watch in horror as our kids, hungover from too much Carnival Cruise Kid Camp Fun, cackle and careen uncontrollably toward today's end, which we hold out hope will be more whimper than bang.

Without the competing attention of our Family Thanksgiving Dinner at Mammom and Bampa's, though, we had the opportunity to stick around for the feast at Christie's Place, a resource center for individuals and families afflicted with and affected by HIV and AIDS, where we have delivered homemade desserts on Thanksgiving for over ten years. We were present for the speeches before dinner was served, therefore, and listened as person after person thanked friends for being lifelines, for being supportive and nonjudgmental, for accepting and keeping them alive. One man in the mainly Spanish-speaking crowd delivered his Thanksgiving blessing in Nahuatl (Aztec).

Our initial contact at Christie's (who has become a dear friend over the years) is the leader and facilitator of a weekly Spanish-speaking support group as well as a university employee busy researching and promoting early HIV/AIDS intervention. She openly celebrated the uniquely diverse demographics of her participants: gay and straight, transgendered and cross-dressing, afflicted and affected, all coming together to help and support one another in good health and habits.

Recognizing some of the faces in the crowd as regulars at Thanksgiving over the years, I recalled a piece I heard on NPR a few weeks ago. People diagnosed with AIDS and HIV are surviving longer than ever expected in the 80s and 90s, but not without effects: research is revealing cognitive deficiencies among long-term survivors, associated with either the disease, or the drugs used to treat it, or both. Meanwhile, AIDS and HIV have moved out of the mainstream of disease activism, and funding wanes.

Raoul and I stood on the front steps as he explained to me that in his lifetime he has been in prison, on drugs, and without hope. At his initial diagnosis, he shared, he thought he would soon be dead. Now he is a caseworker who steers newly diagnosed patients toward resources and support. He gave me his card asked me to let anyone afflicted and afraid know that there were people out there who understand.

Meanwhile, our kids had seconds on turkey and we lingered as folks began packing up leftovers to take home.

Now it's 6 PM and my Facebook Friends are updating on successfully-served birds and pie. And we are winding down, with a tart to bake for a Friday Thanksgiving Feast yet to be had and oh-so-much to be thankful for, not the least of which is our good health and fortune.

Home Alone

I'm at home sick today, and therefore faced with the surreality of being in the house when No One Else Is. So many possibilities! If you're not feeling crappy, that is. One voyeuristic opportunity I realized shortly after the other three human inhabitants blew out the door this morning and silence settled in was that I would have a sneak peek at the secret life of our pets.

Which so far has consisted of them following me around and lying down where I do.

Being away from school, that living, breathing city of 1000+ people, on a day when it's functioning without me always feels strange. I will acknowledge that, as someone who works in an educational setting, I am plenty accustomed to days off. It's days off without my children and anyone else's that seem eerie. When I finally pried myself from my bed and the gripping novel I was reading to take a shower and hit the pharmacy and post office, I marveled at the child-free world I momentarily inhabited. I finally passed a teenager in the cosmetics aisle, and as we made eye contact, I thought, You should be in school, girl.

So should you, Vice Principal, I reminded myself. We probably both called in sick.

We grow accustomed to seeing the usual characters in our daily dramas, as routine and cyclical as soap operas. In the meantime, there are other worlds whose residents we rarely meet. I was several months into my first year of college before I realized it had been a long time since I'd seen a dog or a baby: my world was professors and twenty-somethings. Now it's mainly teenagers and other parents of young children. I rarely escape from campus during the school day to run errands. And I avoid them on weekends with my daughters, save the requisite Costco or Target run.

So I was in the post office today for the first time in I can't remember how long, standing in line with no clerk in sight thinking, I am in the post office, in the middle of the day! Who are these other people? What are their jobs? Are they on lunch break? And then a man, frustrated over the wait, grabbed the box he'd chosen from the shelf and packed but hadn't paid for, and left. I was glad that he opted not to go postal, and also that I was not Vice Principal of the Post Office.

Back home I kept the TV and music off and listened to the weekday sounds of my neighborhood in concert with my snorting, sneezing, sniffling, and coughing. Cars passed, dogs barked, birds chirped. I was home to lend a neighbor the weed whacker and when the Arrowhead deliveryman arrived.

Of course, what I truly desired--and what everyone deserves--was a (healthy) day off of work (or child rearing) alone in my house or out exploring those other foreign mid-week worlds.

Like, I wonder what dramas unfold in spas on Wednesdays?

Maybe someday soon I'll find out.