The World Cup: Not My Kind of Football

I was in the office yesterday, having a particularly absurd professional moment of chaos that eventually turned out just fine, when I walked past a conference room and glanced inside, wondering why all the lights were off but there was sound emanating from the room.

A bunch of dudes (yes, all men, at least at that point) were watching the World Cup. In the office. You know, utilizing company resources and stuff. With no fear of repercussion.

I love the World Cup for that reason alone.

I'm no fan of the sport. I don't know why. I still call it "soccer." I think it's like baseball. You have to grow up with it to love it, and I didn't grow up with soccer--I grew up with baseball. I grew up with the other kind of football, the one that is admittedly badly named. Anyhow, I do not love the sport itself. I have nothing against it--it just doesn't capture my interest. In that way, to me, it's kind of like...golf.

But I love everything else about the World Cup. I love anything that can take people outside of one cultural moment, like meeting/office culture, and bring them into another cultural moment, like sport. I love that people all over the world are watching the same events at the same time. I love that people lose sleep. I love the way I get information about the games through social media.

But most of all, I love the World Cup for the memories.

Exactly 20 years ago, Chicago hosted the World Cup. I was 18 years old and had just finished my freshman year of college. I came home for the summer and began working at Kroch's and Brentano's, a famous old Chicago landmark right in the heart of the loop, back when bookstores were a THING. That flagship store was huge. I have some extremely vivid memories of working there, all while collecting my $5 an hour and standing on my feet for 9 hours straight, realizing that I don't actually like people, or that at least I don't actually like CUSTOMERS. I remember:

the guy named Mike who was my closest "friend" at the store. He was a little older than me, maybe 22, and was already a vet, having served in the first Gulf War (remember that one?) when he was just a teenager. I remember how I could tell, even at my age, how hard it was for him to re-integrate into society after being in the army straight out of high school. He brought the same boring lunch with him every day: flavorless beans and rice. While the rest of us downed our lunches in 5 minutes and spent the rest of our 25 minute break outside smoking or blowing an hour's worth of wages on coffee or just walking around the park, he spent the whole time doing pushups. He woke up at 4:30 every morning, or so he told me. And, every single day, he "coincidentally" met me at my train stop to walk me to work, even though he took a different line. He walked me to the train after work every single day as well. If my boyfriend was meeting me, he would casually walk away as if that had been his plan all along. I was too clueless to realize why he did those things, though it should have been obvious, especially that one time when he

had my back as I got my revenge against the customers who harassed me while buying their porn. Kroch's was a major distributor of newspapers and magazines, and had more periodicals than any other single store in the country (or something like that) at the time. Twenty years ago, before Internet porn, men bought magazines. They bought Playboy and Penthouse and Hustler and Playgirl. They bought the French, Brazilian, and German versions of those magazines, all of which were hidden behind the register so they could not stand in the store itself jerking off to porn. Some of those men would be extremely embarrassed as they stood in my line and asked me for the porn they wanted. Those men got even more uncomfortable as Mike glared at them and muttered things about how they should have had the sense to get in a different line. Others lived for those moments. You see, the international porn magazines had naked women right on the cover! You didn't even need to look inside. So some dude would say, hi honey, can you show me that French Penthouse? And I would have to stand there holding it while he looked at that and at my 18 year old self. UGh. The worst. But then, a wonderful cultural icon named Tonya Harding decided to make the world's first truly infamous "sex tape" by filming herself having sex with a really crappy video camera...and then selling STILL PHOTOS FROM THE CRAPPY VIDEO TO PENTHOUSE. And then people pre-ordered this crap, and awaited its release with bated breath. And then the dudes came into the store in droves, asking for their special orders, and I spent an entire day selling porn to suits who were going to go jack off to blurry pictures of felons in company restrooms. By about 2 pm I had had enough. So when the really cocky, flirty suit WINKED AT ME, I looked him up and down and realized he had no briefcase and no jacket, so therefore nowhere to hide his magazine. And Mike nudged me, giving me a signal, and smoothly hid all of our paper bags from view. And I told the dude we were fresh out of paper bags. Here's your see-through flimsy plastic bag, sir. Now your boss will know what's up.

Ah, Mike.

But not everyone was like those guys. When I say we had more periodicals than anyone, I mean it. We had newspapers from all over the world, in dozens of languages. We had regular customers who would come in once a week to buy seven days worth of four different Arabic-language papers. Those customers had special shelves dedicated to them. We knew when they were on vacation. We knew their names and their families' names and we knew many of their stories. There were other regulars (regulars, people. regulars in a bookstore) who came in every morning for LeMonde. My little brain was always full of stories about all of these people, walking around with bundles of newsprint, trying to find a way to connect back home in a time just before those connections you could touch with your hands would become irrelevant.

And then, there were the people who came to Chicago for the World Cup.

The jerseys! The colors! The swearing in 27 languages! The women who wore white blazers! The men who wore short shorts! The young men who had no interest in porn because they were buying every single newspaper from Spain just for their country's version of the sports! The children who would have to console their parents over the outcome! The fathers who just assumed I loved football and would earnestly try to overcome the language barrier to talk to me about it, reminding me that the world was filled with people like them and like Mike and like the penthouse guys!

My God.

It was beautiful.

I've had a lot of jobs. I've even kind of made a career for myself. But I will always remember working in a bookstore for $40 a day when I was 18, discussing the news of the world with people from every corner of it, watching them fall to their knees screaming GOOOAAAALLLL, clutching crumpled papers to their chests as they grieved and rejoiced for places I had never seen. When you mention the World Cup to me, that's what I see in my mind. And I am 18 again, and the world is a very, very colorful place.

26 Things My Husband Thought Were a Good Idea at the Time

Next weekend is Gabe's 39th birthday. For the third year in a row, I will be on a business trip at that time. Well, actually, weather and flights permitting, I will be home the night before his birthday, but he will be left with all of the end of school year drama and planning while I miss the last day of school, and the reality is that I will probably arrive home from Dallas with little more than some cheap souvenir for him, and then the next day is Father's day, and MY GOD. There's no time. So. I'm writing this now. When Gabe and I met, we were 27. Lots of birthdays have passed since then. He spent his 35th birthday at the oncologist's office with me, helping me make my chemo game plan the first time around. I've written him birthday letters and even lists about what I like about him via my blogs before, and I could get serious like that again.

Or not.

Everyone knows we have this weird little household going on over here. It's not like I have to search hard for material if I want to talk about something absurd. Most of the time Gabe doesn't mind being fodder for that material. And the reality is that while I could talk about the absurdity, I could also talk about the stupid or hurtful things he's done or the really meaningful things or the really useful things like teaching our son to pee sitting down, and of those choices, this seems the most appropriate. So here goes. Off the top of my head, here are

26 Things My Husband Thought Were a Good Idea at the Time

1. Trying to save a tree branch by propping it up with some twine and scotch tape.



2. Forgoing the oh so unnecessary trips to the body shop and overly investing in duct tape and post it notes to keep his car held together.



3. Speaking of that car, taking a really long time to pick up the babysitter before one of our dates, because on the way over there he somehow managed to pick up a hitchhiker and tried to sell that dude said crappy car. And no, thankfully, the hitchhiker and the babysitter weren't in the car at the same time.

4. Taking Leona's up on their challenge to see if anyone could eat an entire slab of ribs along with an entire order of lasagna. The prize for achieving this? An enormous free ice cream sundae. We don't speak of that night.

5. Answering the door wearing nothing but boxer briefs, or, worse, boxer briefs and a bathrobe, leaving him looking like one of those porn stars from the 70s with the chest hair on display and all.

6. Telling our daughter that beauty is not really important, because after all, what would happen if you fell in a vat of acid and your face got totally messed up? You'd still be the same person.

7. Practicing circus tricks:



8. Deciding to ride his bike to the dentist's office. At night. In February. During a blizzard. It didn't end well.

9. This seems to be a theme, but hanging laundry on the clothes line in the backyard. Without any pants on.

10. Buying me a year's supply of cheap winter gloves, in May, for Mother's Day, because "you can never have too many."

11. This:



12. And this:




13. Again with the boxer briefs (maybe that should be the title of this post?): running outside in his skivvies and robe at 5:30 in the morning, shaking his fist and screaming at the newspaper delivery guy "STOP DRIVING OVER MY LAWN!" like he was 107 years old.

14. Not calling his new girlfriend after they had sex for the first time. So she called him instead and said "this isn't a movie. stop being an asshole." Of course, he later had to remind her that the first few times they slept together, she didn't let him spend the night and just kicked him to the curb afterwards, though she claims no memory of that ever happening.

15. Telling his new girlfriend he would have babies with her...after they had known each other for two weeks.

16. Planning an excellent third date, complete with stops at Dunkin Donuts, an ice cream shop, and a drag show.

17. Hiding the engagement ring in a hot dog, except it was too much pressure, so he balked and had to hide it in his pajama pocket and ask me if I would "marry him anyway."

18. Asking a fisherman for help after we had locked ourselves out because we were having sex outside at midnight, and it was pitch black and again with the boxer briefs, but this time he was also wearing water shoes that he found sitting in the lawn, so he walked right up to the lake, flagged down the lone boat, and said, "You look like a big, strong guy. Maybe you could help me." After which he got back in the house by climbing on this guy's back, then scampering up a 2x4 the guy had braced on the outside wall, until he could bust the screen in with his elbow and do a backflip through the window into the house. And then he had to bribe the guy with a whole case of beer to get him to leave and stop looking through the house for his wife, who at that point was hiding in the closet. OK so that's a longer story than I have room for here.

19. Telling the guy who was in line behind him at Planned Parenthood waiting for his vasectomy that he looked "pretty good for a guy who was about to have an abortion."

20. Shoveling our driveway while wearing the Superman footie pajamas with the cape.

21. Falling asleep playing Candyland.



22. Placing his deodorant on the kitchen counter and a box of triscuits in the shoe tree.

23. Hiding condoms all over the house "just in case," including in houseplants and a crayon box.

24. Giving me this card for my birthday. On the inside it says "don't let the bastard win."



25. Hoarding dark chocolate from Trader Joe's at the neighbors' house so I wouldn't find out how bad his addiction was.

26. Allowing me to publish this.

Happy 39, baby.

Consent Part Four: The Things They Said

I have been wanting to write this for a while, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Actually, there is a much larger piece I would like to write, but I don't have the bandwidth in my mind right now. That piece would be about what we consider to be the "right" kind of victim of sexual abuse, including the "right" kind of response that such a person should exhibit. But I get tired just thinking about that. Also, I have thought about writing about what the perpetrators of various acts have said to me, but I don't think their voices really deserve to be heard. So instead, I'm going to do this: I'm going to give examples of things that were said to me by OTHER PEOPLE, many of them female, some of them adults, some of them police officers and other figures of authority, when I tried to tell about something that happened to me. It is because of these types of responses that I decided I wasn't talking. It's bad enough to experience something you know is wrong; it's worse being told you are lying or crazy or just to SHUT UP about it already. It's bad enough having something happen once, but the reality is that most girls and women and yes some boys and men too have so many of these things happen to them over and over again that it begins to seem like something that is just par for the course, an inevitability, and THAT, my friends is how silence is perpetrated and the rape culture continues.

People said these things to me after I tried to tell about a variety of incidents: molestation as a young girl; what I understand to be sexual assault now (when I was growing up, there was rape or no rape--nothing else short of penetration "counted"), threatened gang rape, stalking, propositions from a teacher, various kinds of sexual harassment (at school, at work, online, on the street) etc. While none of these things happened to me at the hands of any of my chosen partners, some of these things were done by people I considered to be friends or trusted figures of authority. And then, I eventually tried to tell someone. And they said these types of things to me.:

I guess it's a good thing you weren't drunk.

What were you wearing?

Why were you in that room with them?

Oh, you are so conceited!

(eyes rolling): Stop looking for attention! (I also heard, "you always get all the attention!")

If he didn't physically assault you, there's nothing we can do about it.

You're overreacting.

He was just being friendly.

That's impossible. I've known him since I was little.

It's normal for him to think that way, even if he's an adult.

What did you expect?

Big surprise! I mean, look at you!

Someday you'll wish you got those kind of remarks from men.

You should be grateful.

But isn't that how you see yourself?

You must be used to that kind of thing.

Why don't you cut your hair?

Well, you DO look older.

Well, you DO look younger.

What does Gabe (or insert name of current boyfriend) think about that?

Why didn't you call the police?

You were lucky.

This happened such a long time ago. Aren't you over it yet?

GET OVER IT.

I could go on, but do I really need to do that?

There are two things that are coming to my mind right now. One involves the things that were not said, the things that were not done. When I got called into the Dean's office in high school because I had ditched so many English classes, she was furious and confused. I told her this: Every single time that Mr. X substitutes, I will turn around and walk out the door. I will ditch every single time. And I was practically begging her with my youthful defiance to ask me why, but she didn't. She didn't say a word. She gestured for me to leave her office. And she never again called me back in or threatened to punish me if I ditched.

And then I am thinking of that moment right after the little voice in my head told me I was trapped, that it was hopeless. I was being held by two boys, both so much stronger than me, one behind me and one in front of me, both of them holding one of my arms so I couldn't fight and both of them taking my clothes off and undoing my bra and abusing me with their other hand while other boys did nothing or stood there laughing or started walking over to me while I screamed. When the boy in front moved one of his hands so he could unzip his pants the little voice in my head said "now's your chance" and somehow willed my little fist in my suddenly free hand into a ball for the first time in my life and I punched that boy square in the mouth. And I can hear his words all these years later, and I can see the hate-tinged surprise on his face as I successfully ran away:

"What a fucking bitch."

The Lost Boy

She spent 35 years looking for him.

35 years of growing up, growing older, having children of her own, making the decision and the sacrifice to raise her son’s child when he turned out to be too young, immature, and, yes, maybe even dysfunctional, to do it himself. Thirty five years spent wondering about a baby boy she knew only briefly and then never saw again.

It was 1976. Winter. She was 20 years old, idealistic, anti-establishment, a card-carrying member of the communist party living in a co-op in the Midwest on a beautiful plot of land overlooking a large lake in the midst of a university campus. There were a handful of children living in the co-op, and they all considered the children to be their own, to some extent. That was part of it—the collective mothering, the responsibility and desire to look out for one another. There was only one infant, an adorable boy who at 8 months old had lived among them for maybe 6 months.

One day, she heard crying. She heard it, and expected to hear it stop. The crying only intensified. She went to investigate, running through cavernous hallways with no central heating, to the room the infant boy shared with his 25 year old mother. She wasn’t there. The windows were wide open, letting the cold and even the snow in, and still, she heard crying.

He was there, in the crib, wearing nothing but a wet diaper. Shocked, she grabbed him, changed him, closed the windows, rocked him and covered him in blankets. She fed him a bottle. There was no sign of his mother, not for hours. When she finally returned, she turned on her in a fury and demanded to know how she could leave him like that. He could have gotten sick! He could have died!

And the baby’s mother said: “He needs to learn how to be alone.”

She sat there, stunned, knowing what she must do. Someone came to get him a few weeks later. She didn’t see him again, not for 35 years.

How could she know what she had done that day? How could she know that she had, perhaps, instilled in that boy a sixth sense, an ability to ask for help and to find someone who would be willing and able to care for him? How could she know that he would be raised with unconditional love by other family members until he was taken away, by his mother, at six years old? How could she know that the little boy would find others like her: his mother’s boyfriends, his friends’ parents, legions of people, who would help to raise him over the years?

She could not know that. She knew nothing of him. She had no idea if he had survived. And then, someone came up with the idea of a reunion for the still-running co-op. That was it--her chance, her excuse, to finally find the lost boy. He was hard to find, off the grid almost, but eventually she had success. An email was sent. Days later, he responded.

He was alive.

He lived less than 200 miles away. He agreed to attend the reunion with his wife and children.

He had a wife and children.

She was, of course, thrilled at the idea of seeing him again, having thought of him so often over the years. But in some sense, seeing him mattered less now that she knew he was out there in the world living out the promise of his life.

He arrived with his family, looking out of place in sensible clothes, with no piercings or tattoos, pushing a stroller and holding his daughter’s hand. She brimmed with illogical pride. She gave a tour, talked to them at dinner, asked a handful of polite questions. And then, as he wandered the grounds with his children, she pulled his wife aside and said this to her:

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to see that he grew up.”

And she couldn’t help but tell his wife the story of that cold room in February, a story that boy had never heard. And his wife smiled knowingly at her, suddenly understanding the chronology of his placement in his grandparents’ home at 9 months old, realizing she was talking to a woman who had saved her husband’s life, in more ways than she might ever know.

She looked for him for 35 years.

Once she found him, she could let him go, as she did that other time, though it broke her heart.

And how could she know, really? How can any of us know the impact of our best and most selfless actions, the ones that make us afraid, make us sad, make us question whether or not we have done the right thing?

She could only know if someone could tell her. She could know if she could see him now, refusing an invitation to go out with the guys because he would rather be home with his family. She could know if she could see him get up from the couch, kiss his wife, and go upstairs to help his son settle down, his son whom many fathers might think was too old to be called sweetie. She could know if she could hear him sing softly to the boy until he fell back to sleep.

She could only know if someone could tell her.

So, I will tell her: Thank you. And me too. I am awfully happy to see that he grew up.





(He's under that pile of kids, somewhere...)

Proposed

So, I got engaged yesterday. To my husband. As some people know, I decided a few months ago that we've been through so much together that we should get married, again, on or around our upcoming ten year anniversary in October. I mean, by the time Gabe and I had known each other 3 years, we had both changed jobs, I graduated from grad school, we bought and sold a house together, got married, and had a kid. It went like this:

Meet at 27, date for 7 months, have conversation about living together wherein I told him that I had no motivation to give up my independence because I loved living alone, unless it was for something more permanent and he said, yeah I thought maybe we could get married. So, move in together at age 28 after dating 8 months. Get officially engaged at age 28 after 10 months of dating in a way that will become an epic and legendary story in your family. Sell your condo 6 months after getting engaged and buy a house in a neighborhood you had never even visited. Change jobs before than even happened. Get married at age 29 because you didn't want to get married in the summer when you both would have been 28 because you thought oh how about October no one gets married in the fall because you are a clueless mess when it comes to anything like WEDDINGS. Get married almost exactly a year and a half to the day after you met, and have a kid less than a year and a half later.

It was meant to be, I suppose, though I'm not sure what that means. I reminded Gabe yesterday about a conversation we had when we had been dating two or three weeks. For some reason, after a Wilco concert, he decided to talk about relationship deal breakers. For the life of me, I can't remember how this conversation started. But I said, well I have had a lot of relationships, including one really long one, and it's different when you enter in a relationship when you're 17 versus 27. You know more about what you want, and you don't want to spend years trying to find it. You figure it out quickly. He kept pestering me about what my dealbreakers were until I finally said, well, for example, I think I want to have kids and so if someone didn't want that at all, I would believe him. He said he didn't want to have kids. I figured it was too early in the relationship to talk about such deep things when we were having fun so I said, we need to talk about something else. On went some random conversation until we had almost reached the car (we were walking along Michigan Avenue this whole time). Out of the blue he said, well, I guess I might change my mind if I met the right person. I said huh? What are you talking about? and he said, I mean, about kids. If I met the right person I would feel differently. Like, I would have kids...with you.

Two weeks in, and the deal was basically sealed. Who knew? Later he told me that he REALLY knew he wanted to marry me when we had been dating about two months and we went to Baraboo, WI for his 28th birthday, and as we were sitting watching a particularly glorious sunset on the beach, I said some nerdy shit about orbital motion. Ah, the REAL way to a man's heart.

The thing is though, I'm not sure we really enjoyed the PROCESS the first time around. We were so clueless and so many things happened so fast that we just ended up fighting over stupid things and almost ruining everything. Gabe felt some weird pressure about how to be the right kind of husband, I wasn't sure how to be a wife, and we were dramatic and ridiculous (more him than me--that's just the truth). Our wedding was great, our kids are great, but I think we felt like we were in a whirlwind and so there was the DRAMA.

And then...there was the REAL drama. You know, the cancer. The cancer that CAME BACK.

There was death, looking right at us, lingering in the corner right next to life. And there it was...AGAIN. So many things have happened. And yet somehow, through all of that, the initial drama, the kids, the cancer...it's like we've been on a really, really long date for the past 11 years.

All that stuff people say happens when you've been together a long time? It hasn't happened. It's not like 6 years in, I figured out he could be annoying. I knew that shit immediately. It's not like we stopped going on awesome and epic dates, because our awesome and epic dates look almost the same as they did when we met. We used to bundle up and go on walks to the park to play catch with a football in the snow AS A DATE. The guy took me to a drag queen show on our third date and we went bowling and to high school football games and...yeah. the same. We still have sex every day. That whole part where he starts to ignore you or neglect you? Huh? Are there other people who aren't married to eternal adolescents? OK, well, not in this house. I mean, the guy was all excited and giddy yesterday and he still is, and he is all "I am so excited! I can't believe it! We're getting married." I don't have the heart to tell him we've already BEEN married for more than 9 years. At dinner last night, he told me that with a few exceptions--cancer and some drama he had caused himself by being particularly stupid--this, what we have, is all he ever wanted.

And while everyone knows that I will never say that cancer brings people closer together, in some ways, it has. We don't love each other more because of cancer; we love each other more because we have seen each other at pretty much the absolute worst and here we are, both still around. We have learned to appreciate the huge differences between us. I mean, someone has to be emotional, someone has to cry, someone has to be nurturing, and it sure as hell ain't me, babe. Someone has to be a stubborn, manic badass, right? Can I take that role? Thanks. Also, there is this. And by this I mean THIS. Blogging has enabled me to say things to my sentimental, always complimentary and sappy and cheesy husband that I would never say out loud, not because I don't love him, but because that's how I am and how I have always been. I know he appreciates that, and it's good for me to give that to him without having to change myself. Plus, now I know he's attracted to me even if I'm bald or my breast has been cut off.
And we both roll our eyes at some of the stuff that made us annoyed with each other before, and we roll our eyes at other people's weird drama as well, because at some point down the line, SHIT GOT REAL, and we stopped inventing problems.

So, we're having some real fun with it this time around. I'm going to wear an actual white dress, maybe two of them. He's going to get a tux this time (I've never seen him in one!). We're doing this whole shindig at our house, and we will probably order fried chicken from the grocery store, buy a sheetcake from Costco, and walk down either the hill if it's nice out or the stairs in the house if it's not, together, to the orchestral version of the Buffy the Vampire theme song once again, and we are doing this all on the 30th anniversary of the day I got hit by a car and lost the ability to walk, so it will be ALL US. And our kids.



I picked out a few rings online that looked kind of engagement-like; this is hard, since I hate the diamond industry. So I showed these to Gabe--because he said at the very beginning of this whole thing that we can't get married again because he hadn't proposed to me (again) yet. At some point he apparently picked a ring and ordered it--a white sapphire. He made plans for us to see the Joffrey Ballet on Valentine's Day. I had a sneaking suspicion he might propose to me then (ten years ago, he proposed the week before Valentine's Day because he thought that would be too "typical." See what I mean? We were taking ourselves WAY too seriously). I got him a Valentine's Day card that involved sharks eating people and laid out the card for him at the breakfast table, with the kids' cards too.

Everyone else opened everything, and I thought I was getting nothing. We were eating cereal, all of us in our bathrobes. Gabe whispered to Lenny and she went running downstairs to the basement. She came back with a big pink construction paper envelope. Inside was the construction paper card Gabe made me, next to a construction paper package. I opened it, and there was a ring inside. Gabe was down on one knee and he was crying. He looked like he wanted to say something and didn't know how. And then he said "Kate, you're the most amazing woman I've ever met. Will you marry me?" The kids sat there looking both excited and dumbfounded at the same time. I laughed and said yes. And then I read the card. It was signed

"Love, Gabe. Your once, current, and future husband."

We will see some of you on October 11. Be ready.

#Parenting

Ah, the Internet. The place where you can read all sorts of advice. The place that makes you feel like you are doing everything WRONG. The huge space that enables everyone to compare themselves to everyone else, where you don't own anything, where other people can always judge you without knowing a damn thing about you.

The place where people talk about how to be mothers.

Every time I read something about this, I develop feelings. Feelings of surprise, confusion, isolation, and determination--but never envy nor guilt. I realize I am a different kind of parent than many parents, that my life has shaped itself differently, especially in the last three and a half years, whether I like it or not. And while I might feel somehow APART from other mothers and parents, I don't feel guilty, not about any of it.

That alone makes me weird. Women seem almost hard-wired into guilt, in a way that men are not. In all honesty, I don't have time for that.

I'm not sure I am the right kind of parent. I am impatient. I spend a lot of time alone. I never used baby talk ever for a moment in my life. I always figured that my babies were just tiny versions of adults. I've taught my kids blackjack and how to shake their booties. I swear in front of them. I take to bed when I have chemo, shut the door, swat them away. I spend time writing. My husband and I invariably exhibit too much PDA in our house. I don't do hair, or crafts. I'm not sure how women are supposed to behave. I don't like sharing my kitchen with anyone. I read the newspaper even when they are yelling for me. I'm not particularly nurturing, though I am an expert in the art of distracting others away from their fears and troubles. I have an obscure, nerdy job and my entire career has laid outside of the trajectory of where anyone thought I would go. I'm no room mother, no corporate bigshot, no drama queen. The closest thing I've ever read to describing a parent who reminds me of myself is in Tina Fey's Bossypants, wherein she describes her father after he discovered her slashed face in the alley. He threw her into the car to get to the hospital, put his hand on her and said: "Don't speak."

Holy shit...that's ME.

What does it mean to be a GOOD parent? How can you tell? When do you know you are failing? If you collapse on the couch after dinner or tell your kids and husband they are on their own for basically the entire month of March because, you know, THE BASKETBALL, are you going to parent purgatory?

See, I always figured that wasn't the case. Maybe my biggest failing as a parent is that I'm a storyteller, and I assume my kids will be storytellers too. So if my husband becomes a basketball widower every spring, rather than focus on the near term reality of me yelling at my son "get that curly head out of the way of my TV!" I focus on this: The fact that someday, my kids will be talking to each other or someone else, and they will tell a story about me lying on the couch and screaming at the television for an entire month and they will say something along the lines of "remember that? what a trip!" They will remember what the couch looked like, with its thousand blankets and rips in the upholstery. They will remember bringing me a La Croix. They will remember the games they played with each other and they will remember learning how to keep stats and they will remember their father feeding them spaghetti three times a week.

They will remember us, this little family unit.

My daughter will always remember the one time a year I volunteered at her school, to teach poetry, to get the kids to write poems. It will be around her birthday, and I will bring cupcakes and I will do this as long as it is allowed. I won't be the one serving snacks at functions or offering myself up for bus duty. I will be the one who will take that day off of work to talk to little kids about IMAGERY.

It doesn't matter if you stay at home, work outside of the home, if you are a single parent or married or if you are a man or a woman or a neighbor or grandparent or whoever you are raising that child or those children. It doesn't matter what you are good at or where you fail. It matters that you show up, but even that doesn't matter every single time. I have decided that the following is true, and it's the Internet, so therefore, who can question my authority?

The best thing you can be for your kids, the most important thing you have to offer, is this:

Be interesting. Be memorable. Be a person outside of them, so that they can see how it's done. There are a lot of different ways to do this. You have to love them--that is definitely a requirement. You have to feed and clothe them and help them find their way. You can be so many things, but remember this:

Someday you will be a story, and that's all you will be. Make it a good one.

Categories of Life

I was doing a random, nerdy search online today. I discovered this, became fascinated, and wrote a little something about it. This is completely off the cuff, by the way. What do you think is missing from this list of themes? What would you include? Inquiring minds want to know.

Prose Poem
By Katy Jacob

Poetry Themes as Identified on Poets.org:

Aging, animals, anniversaries, parenting, birthdays, breakups, childhood, Chaunukah, autumn, body, Christmas, revolution, daughters, Halloween, enemies, farewell, fathers, friendship, funerals, weather, graduation, summer, aliens, space, home, clothing, illness, love, shoes, mother, school, nature, underworld, lust, sons, sports, grief, war, weddings, winter, work, New Year’s, teaching, writing, scary, movies, romance, heartache, politics, pockets, spring, libraries, flowers, gardens, Thanksgiving, carpe diem, dreams, drinking, reading, birds, turmoil, gratitude, for teens, sharks, vampires, landscapes, night, maidens, lanes, music, eating, fruit, divorce, pets, dogs, cats, tragedy, high school, patience, life, horses, fish, old age, loneliness, ambition, memories, instruments, snow, innocence, New York, vacations, buildings, monkeys, storms, mourning, language, whales, survival, boats, America, history, theft, beginnings, daffodils, roses, jazz, cities, flight, travel, regret, masks, faces, rebellion, lunch, breakfast, dinner, creation, listening, Apocalypse, hands, feet, blood, thought, bedrooms, kitchens, wind, gender, miracles, beauty, objects, breath, voice, Nativity, skin, self, identity, maps, mountains, rivers, oceans, ancestry, future, heroes, infidelity, vanity, luck, anger, time, cooking, sun, earth, moon, loss, desire, past, plants, dance, afterlife, moving, deer, Freud, trees, Snow White, Jews, Love Today, hair, brothers, happiness, drugs, suburbia, beach, ghosts, pacifism, myth, science, dead fathers, LGBTQ, silence, For Mom

These themes just beg for themes of their own:

Things That Seem Obvious:

It is interesting how weather places itself right in between funerals and graduations.
Mourning and storms are not so different after all.
High school is, indeed, a tragedy on some level.
Old age involves loneliness and fish.
America was built on a history of theft.
Rebellion is not so far apart from eating lunch.
Heroes are not always faithful.
Pacifism is a myth.
Mothers might find themselves caught between shoes and school, with no one taking either seriously enough.

Things That Are Worth Questioning

Are daughters bound to be tied up with revolution and sons with war?
Does Freud deserve his own category?
Are there no other important holidays?
Why are some animals more equal than others?
There are really only 42 poems about lust?
Is this all there is? What about color, envy, clouds, healing, hunger, cars, stoicism, laughter, trees, games, furniture, technology, annihilation, exhilaration, adulthood, medicine, warm, cold, absence, presence, seasons, sleep, oppression, freedom, and the birth and death that sit on the other sides of life?

Things That are Important to Consider

People write poems about pockets and turmoil in equal measure.
There are enough poems in someone’s database to warrant numerous categories.
Loss and desire might just be part of the past, or at least its close cousins.
New York sits next to innocence, which calls the whole pattern into question.
In the end, we might all just wish to move away from it all, by dancing into the afterlife, embedded in silence, asking For our Mothers.