Birds and Bees

 Yesterday I went to a seminar titled "Empty Nest Syndrome" and learned approximately nothing, but it felt good to sit in a big room with a bunch of goofy parents steeling ourselves for the big good-bye. I don't need anyone telling me that it's all good and right and the way things are supposed to go. I know all that. I haven't fully processed or articulated what it's like to really never have an "empty nest" in the narrowest definition of the term, given my life as a primary caregiver to my beloved Sophie. Life goes on in a sort of eternal present for me and Sophie, even as my sons move forward, and I don't mean this in a bad or heavy kind of way. I will try at some point to write about it, to parse out the peculiarity of maintaining a nest even as my own impulse is to fly away to a new part of life. As they say. I texted a fellow caregiver during the seminar that I was going to drop a bomb on the person leading it by asking whether taking up a new hobby or planning a trip would help the "Never an Empty Nest Syndrome," and my friend texted back, Do it, and I smiled and looked up and let my mind drift to all the years, all the years. I am so damn proud of Oliver, of all he's accomplished and the young man he's become. I'm sad in an existential way that my job raising him is largely over even as I know in my bones that mothering is so deeply embedded, I might as well be one of those orca matriarchs whose sons never leave her. I'm going to tell you a story about something he said the other day in response to us witnessing a terrible motorcycle accident on our drive from Los Angeles to Tucson. Oliver was driving, and I was reading when he yelled out and grabbed me and I looked up to see a guy flipping over and over and a bike in the air and the guy rolling on the road and then we were past and pulled over and I was calling 911 and then Oliver pulled back out on the highway and we were on our way our hearts pumping and both of us exclaiming and repeating over and over what we'd seen and that terrible rush in the body for many minutes before we quieted. You know what's really weird, Mom? Oliver asked, and I said, What? and Oliver said, I noticed that guy a while back on his bike and he had a flag or something on his jacket and I thought he was probably a stupid Trump supporter or gun guy or just an asshole on a bike, but when he went flying through the air,  I saw his shirt go up his back and it was ripped up, his back was all red and I felt bad for him and then I thought that everything in the world is going to be okay because of that, that we feel bad for and care about people, about life. It's about love and that kind of thing.

P.S. Lest you believe my son to have reached some lofty place of magnanimity and compassion, led there by a mother more bodhisattva than human, I'll confess that we decided we wouldn't feel the same way if it'd been Dear Leader who'd been on that motorcycle.

The view from Oliver's penthouse dorm room.

Oliver, Sandy and the Blessed Virgin Mary

The photo above has been circulating pretty widely since terrible Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast last month. Despite horrific fires that followed the hurricane in a heavily Catholic area of Queens, New York, this statue of Mary remained standing midst ruins. My eleven year old son Oliver of the existential angst, who is anxious about the coming Mayan end of time calendar date and who possesses a giant, invisible antennae tuned in to everything that passes through the universe, looked at the photo soberly and said,

O.K. I mean, it's nice, but if Jesus and Mary and God are so strong, why didn't they leave the building standing for the people and let the statue burn?

Honestly, readers, I have my work cut out for me.

While I'm away,

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night, 

please listen to this -- all of it.



or Click HERE.

There's something for everyone -- the creative, the intelligent, the abled and the disabled. It's really something.

Listen to it.

Monday Whatevers

I wrote a post last night that was supposed to go up this morning, but I woke up with a start and realized that it might be a teensy-tinesy bit offensive, so in a sleepy daze I opened my computer and cancelled it. Here's an excerpt of an article titled Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus by Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology at Pitzer College in Claremont, California.


The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message.

You can read this article and get an idea on what my post might have been about. Think family and differences in opinion. Think about discussing religion and politics to someone on the opposite side of the spectrum who is also your relative.

Ouch.


I did find this beautiful painting that I posted at the top, because Jacob wrestling with the angel is one of my favorite stories in the Bible. I've written about it here.

Vision After the Sermon: Jakob Wrestling with the Angel
Paul Gauguin 1888

In other news, I'm still collecting comments for a chance to win a $100 gift card to Dick's Sporting Goods. Don't you want to read or re-read about my efforts to be a good sports mom to my boys? Go HERE.

In yet more news, I have not ONE but TWO IEPs this week. My youngest son has some reading difficulties, and his IEP is actually a piece of cake, but I anticipate some fireworks at Sophie's. Not to mention the yearly bout of butterflies, depression and despair that the IEP generally brings, no matter how many times one has done it.

La Nausee. (that's French for nausea with an accent aigu). I read Sartre's book of the same title while studying French in college. I lay in a tire swing on the front porch of the house I lived in which we had christened The Shanty and parsed out the novel's spare French angst. Here's a picture of my copy which I still have:

Creepy, right? There appear to be dead trees and plants still growing out of the guy's head. I think that's symbolic, and perhaps I had a presentiment twenty-five years ago of my future with the Los Angeles Unified School District. I hated Sartre just about as much as I hate IEPs, even though I did love lying on that paint chippee porch with my best girl friends.

On the plus side, I'm grateful that the Individualized Education Plan actually exists and that my children's needs are accommodated, however haphazardly. When I dropped Sophie off at school this morning, I realized that I actually love her aide. I realized that I needed to write an entire post about Renita. I'm going to do that one of these days.