Chicago Moms Blog

Running in Place, and Getting There Fast

My favorite magazines at the checkout are full of advice these days on 'how to do more with less.' It's big recession fodder, I guess.

How to stretch hamburger with the creative use of ketchup! How to make my own fabric softener! How to get a health-club quality workout while unpacking the groceries!

And I've tried them all. 

Some are great; some are really stupid. But all have something in common - more ways to pile more work into the same amount of hours.

Until we explode.

My God Loves Me, Too (Wo wo wo...)

I don't often consider my religious status. Maybe it's better to say "ecclesiastic status". Specifically? My relationship with a church.

I hang out with a bunch of evangelistic Christians, and usually dodge and weave the question when raised in regular conversation.

But I realized the other day that I had to stop pretending to myself. I've been on a break with my religion for more than a dozen years. When does it stop being 'pause' and officially become 'off'?

Some weeks back, Paul McCartney was singing this old tune called "My Love" while we were shopping for produce. Because I'm a little hearing-impaired, I sometimes make up lyrics to fill in what I can't hear. Don't ask what I do to "Blinded by the Light" because you'd lock up the kiddies and have me committed.

In any event, back at the grocery store I was singing "My Lord does it cool..."

Big (he who Jay and/or Silent Bob would call my 'hetero life mate') stopped the cart. "My what?"

"My Lord?"

"Think again," he suggested.

"My God?"

"You're going the wrong way. You were at least in the alphabetical neighborhood with 'Lord'."

"But He does."

What She Said (Divorce Needs No Praise)

Artist and writer Sandra Tsing Loh is getting divorced.

She wrote about it in a recent article that cheesed me off.

My head snapped back as she breezed over her extra-marital affair and her decision not to give up her lover in favor of working at rebuilding her relationship with her husband. Loh quickly eschewed the scarlet "A" for a fatalistic analysis of marriage as a failed experiment. With tongue in cheek and wit sharp, she gathered pseudo-psychology and anecdotes to underpin the essential thesis: "It's not my fault." Her other married friends are un-sexed, un-fulfilled, unhappy. Her only friend with joy is single. Ergo it was the institution of marriage that failed, not her.

Loh made her case with 4 pages of well-turned words. She's a writer, used to taking her thoughts and airing them on the universe's clothing line. Making her sentences resonate with echoes of Shakespeare and iambic pentameter:

To work, to parent, to housekeep, to be the ones who schedule “date night,” only to be reprimanded in the home by male kitchen bitches, and then, in the bedroom, to be ignored—it’s a bum deal.

Brushes With Fame

You might have read the story by now.

Two high school seniors flying home from a college tour. They were in coach, and the 3rd guy in their row - and older man - strikes up a conversation with them. It turned out to be Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The three made such an impression on each other that Justice missed work recently to give the commencement speech at the boys' high school. That is an awesome story of a brush with fame.

I've heard some others over my life. It's amazing how an ordinary day can turn into the story you end up telling for years.

Once upon a time, I was a temp. One random morning, I was sent to an [Insert Designer Name] Store on Michigan Avenue and told by my boss at the agency to be good, for God's sake. (For a whopping $7 an hour, I think.)

Directions To Go, But Never Back

I joined FaceBook. It's free, it's a fun time-suck, and it's got flair - so, what's not to like?

Before I knew it, I'd reconnected with people from every walk of my life - from elementary school to my current neighbor. It's awesome, really.  People I cared about are doing all right in the world. They have lives, spouses, houses, and toy train collections. It's fascinating to see the tangents lives can take.

I now know that my son's karate teacher has dated some real losers, that the couple "most likely to get married" in my high school class did - and then divorced, and that a guy I once kissed now only kisses...boys.

"TMI, Mom!" my son says, peaking over my shoulder but not really able to understand what's on the screen.

"Too Much Information?" I ask, laughing.

"Yeah! You know, you can't take it back!"

Why Does God Hate Hamburgers?

I remember when my son was about 4 and I was trying to explain about why I observed Lent the way I do. He was outraged that it meant he couldn't have hamburgers on Fridays. We were at church one morning, and he marched up to the rector with a determined glint in his eye; "Look, why does God hate hamburgers?!" My son demanded.

Biting back a laugh, the pastor got down to my son's level and explained about good that hamburger was going to taste on Saturday. My son wasn't buying it.

It so happened that one thing or another came up, and I didn't make hamburgers until the middle of the following week. My son fell on his like a starving velociraptor. My husband chuckled; "Good?"

"Best hamburger, ever!" he declared.

"See, the pastor was right," I said triumphantly.

"Oh NO he wasn't!!" my son argued. "That was DUMB!"

Listening for Huxley, Saving a School

Sometimes I get so incredibly pissed at the world. Especially when something happens to a child. Recession hits us grown-ups and we turn to each other and we deal with it.

But the kids take the hits, too. They take the hits with no power to fix it.

My friend Cathy has a son, Huxley. Cutest kid. But he was barely walking when we noticed that he was the kind of smart that doesn't fit on a chart. As a toddler he kept Cathy and her husband running constantly to answer his questions and keep him stimulated throughout the day.

Other kids like to rock out on saucepans with wooden spoons. Huxley found a screwdriver and took them apart. Then attempted to create a kiln in the backyard so he could melt them into a new alloy.

When he was old enough to start school, it opened a whole new can of worms.

Looked in the Mirror, Didn't like who he thought I was in the Reflection

In the shadow of the Sears Tower, I was managing global projects with 8-figure budgets. My old college girlfriend was raising her 4 boys out in rural Illinois. Our emails back and forth were a mixture of reminiscing, kid talk, news about friends, and bitching about our lots in life. She had 2 sons who peed everywhere but in the bowl. I had 3 employees in rehab. Both of us spent too much time cleaning up for others.

She would tell me I was lucky, about the way people spoke to her as though she were slow, and I would shake my head in confusion. I was naive. I'd think; Does it really matter - if she's a full-time mom and I'm not?

Then I did it - quit my job. Quit my career, in fact. Stepped off the wheel and began cooking from scratch and folding laundry during long afternoons.

First, the demographic of people reading my blog changed. People who'd been commenting and exchanging emails with me for years disappeared. I found my posts about my struggles with homeschool curriculum quoted in sites I'd never seen before.

Then, my real-life friends began altering their attitude. Not everyone. But many. And in more ways than I expected.

But still, I didn't sink in.

Until last week.

Dear Chicken Little Newsmedia: Screw. You.

A recent headline shouted:  Consumer Spending Up - But It Won't Last!

A neighbor remarked that if he was a reporter, he'd would also be shouting the sky is falling. Because for them? It is.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth...

Let's get real.

No, I mean it.

Let's. Get. Real.

I am an American, a woman, a wife, a mother, a writer, a teacher. I have lived both pampered and impoverished. Shared the company of great and simple minds. I have walked in the footsteps of conquering Romans,  Vikings, Redcoats, and Cypriots. I have contemplated my own mortality, stretched my mind to the breaking point, looked a man in the eye as I took his living from him.

I expect many things from this life. And none of them easy. No one promised me easy; and nothing easy is worth getting in any event.

WHO ARE THEY TALKING TO?

How To Save Your Marriage

Because my partner/husband/dog walker suffered a devastating episode of Depression some years ago - almost tanking our marriage. I wrote about it, madly, at the time. So it's not too surprising that I get a lot of hits on my blog from search strings like "how does relationship survive?" and "I don't want a divorce."

It breaks my heart, sometimes. I know the economy is driving up depressions and pressures on relationships. I want to crawl through the wires and just hold them tight. Whoever 'them' is, wherever 'them' may be. I'm listening, and I'm pulling for you.

The best I can do is offer the wisdom that worked for us. When one of us was utterly incapacitated in so many ways (him) and the other one of us was doing the work of two people (me), we were lucky enough to have bright, kind, generous people (including a divorce lawyer) who took the time to help us make it.

This is what worked for us. And, still does.