Waiting to Exhale

I was driving along the other morning when I heard something on NPR about possible offshore drilling in Virginia. My first reaction was, oh no, not so close to home! I pictured wheezing, oil-coated ducks struggling to make it to shore in Assateague. Then the announcer said that President-Elect Obama was not necessarily against offshore drilling, as long as the drilling met certain conditions. And strangely enough, I felt a sense of relief.

I've been feeling that a lot lately. It feels like, thank God, I can finally relax now. The people coming into power will be pragmatic, nonideological, and like-minded. I can stop worrying for a bit because I know that there will be people leading our government who will make decisions for the right reasons. I won't have to argue with others, or with myself, because the gist of the market-driven, libertarian, corporate-first world view that characterized the current administration has been proven wrong. Or so I tell myself. It's nice to be wearing rose-colored glasses for a while. I know things are incredibly difficult and we face huge, huge challenges as a country. But I'm still feeling hopeful and relieved right now.

I call this feeling Waiting to Exhale, after a crossover chicklit book that Terry McMillan wrote in the 1990s. It's pretty good, if you like that sort of thing. It's about 4 young-ish African American women who are all looking for Mr. Right. Once they find him, they can finally exhale, release their stomach muscles, and relax. At the end of the book, some of them have met this goal and some of them haven't. For me, the point is being able to relax and feel okay where you are. And I'm feeling some measure of relief right now with regard to our political situation. Oh, I know I'll probably be disatisfied and worried at some point soon in the future. But, for now, please let me enjoy my honeymoon bliss.

So, why am I exhaling so gratefully rigbt now? There are several reasons:

The Black Thing:

I'm still amazed by the fact that we're going to have an African American president. Wow... It's been such a long time coming. The day after the election, I felt a probably misplaced sense of solidarity with every black person that I saw. That morning, the black woman who distributes the Post digest every day at the Metro station was singing and laughing out loud. Really. When I got to work I saw an African American director down the hall from me, and I grinned broadly at him before I remembered that we're all supposed to be non-partisan at the agency I work for. It was so emotional. Every time my mother called me for the couple of days after the election, she ended up crying. For me, the whole thing is summarized by a photo that Judith Warner blogged about recently. It's like, wow, we Americans have actually done something historically significant in the course of casting our votes. It's positive and it's important. We've moved forward and we're not going back.

I find myself noticing little things, like the use of Tiger Woods or Magic Johnson in ads for charities, or a particular ad on the back cover of the New Yorker that has a young white man and a fashionable young black woman obviously out on a date. I'm not sure what the ad was for, but it doesn't really matter. Either color isn't the main point, or else it's a positive background element. In any case, it's certainly not controversial. Wow. I think that's a small measure of progress.


The Face of America's Future

But the thing is, Obama isn't just black, to me he's really the face of America. He's black, he's white, he's an immigrant, he's mixed. He's lived in the east, in the west, in the middle. He's one of us and all of us.

Richard Rodriguez writes about the concept of "brown" as a metaphor for in-between states of being, and he argues that this is the future of America. He calls it "the color of our American identity." To me, this is a good thing. Immigrantion, mixing, the so-called melting pot -- these are what make American strong, vibrant, and interesting. It's not just about race, but religion and culture as well. Obama is brown in this sense of melding, mixing, energy, movement, creativity, youth, future.

The reason I didn't vote for Hillary, although I like a lot of things about her (including the pronoun "her), is that to me she symbolized the past, and Obama represented the future. And between John "the Google" McCain and Barack Obama, there was certainly no contest, in my view, in terms of who really stood for America and America's future. I feel like now we're on the right track, and there's all this positive energy for us to draw upon.


Revenge of the Nerds

I'm glad in a kind of ha-ha-gotcha kind of way that a bunch of brainy people will be in power in the U.S. This country is so anti-intellectual, and now we have a president who used to write poetry! Wow...so European...almost like Vaclav Havel. We'll now have a president who reads the newspapers and thinks things over. He uses big words with no shame and can even say "nuclear" correctly. Whew...my blood pressure just dropped by 10 points. Thank God...

Also, there's the greasy grind aspect. For much of my childhood, I was ridiculed for being a "brain". I felt so much pressure to play down my good grades and the fact that I could answer most of the questions that the teacher asked. I felt unattractive because of my so-called intelligence, and as a result I struggled to look just the right way and say just the right thing to prove that I wasn't "too smart." And now all of these brainy Ivy League grads are being appointed to high-up positions. And they're not the types to have gotten gentleman's Cs either. Mothers all over America are exhorting their kids to study hard like Barack Obama did, and kids are listening. Wow...you mean it's okay to be smart? You mean I can be a real American and still like to read a lot? So cool...


Public Image

It's pretty obvious that our image around the world has been in the toilet for the past 8 years. Study after study shows that even people from so-called friendly nations like the UK had an incredibly low opinion of the U.S. I know Americans who lied when they traveled abroad and said they were Australian or Canadian. I would never do that, but I understand the urge to do it. Who wouldn't cringe when faced with things like Guantanamo in the papers, day after day? I can't explain why so many people voted for Bush in 2004, other than to say that either they really agreed with his policies or they just didn't care to think about things too much. Neither of those two choices is very flattering to us as a country.

But now...but now...they like us, they really like us! We've made a good and even an admirable decision by electing Obama, and now things are on the upswing. I'm not sure what the polls say yet, but at least we can hold our heads up and feel like maybe we can lead again. And that doesn't mean leading by acting unilaterally, no siree.


I'm Right, I'm Right, I Know I'm Right

This is kind of obnoxious, I know, but I voted for Gore and I voted for Kerry (the lesser of two evils), and of course I voted for Obama. There was one teeny tiny moment during the Bush years, just after 9/11, when I thought that he seemed positively presidential. That was probably before his "with us or against us" remark. Other than that, he's been a grating presence to me for 8 long years. It was clear to me that his presidency was a snowballing disaster. So, it came as such a relief when it seemed that a whole lot of Americans felt the same way. Wow... See, I was right all along. And to actually hear a president talking about things like the hurting middle class and the need for workers to have realistic salaries...my blood pressure is going down again. Of course it could all be talk, but it's the right kind of talk.

So...I'm taking deep, relaxing breaths, for the moment at least. Sarah Palin may still be lurking in the wings, but let's hope she somehow gets discredited or her supporters wise up over the next few years. In the meantime, I think we're in the best place we can be, given how bad the economic news is. I'm generally not an optimist, so this feeling of satisfaction is even more meaningful to me. Let's hope this honeymoon feeling continues, even after we hit reality. Hopefully even remembering this honeymoon -- looking at the snapshots -- will help us to breathe deeply when things do get challenging in the future.

GirlCrush-o-Rama

When I think about it, I realize that I have a lot of girl crushes. I never thought I was the girl crush type. I've always been blessed with a lot of friends, and I've even had a best friend now and then. But the idea of a girl crush...it was a little too hero worshipy and boarding schoolish, in my view.

Still, I remember my first girl crush. When I was 8 or 9,I was friends with the O'Malleys down the street (not their real name). It's amazing now that I think back on it, but their mother, Carol, was a single mom of 4 kids of various ages. She had moved down from Boston to go to law school. I remember that my dad used to help start her car on snowy mornings. I would run around the neighborhood with her younger daughter, while Carol worked and studied. I don't remember much about the father, except that he had an angry voice and an assumption that all of his kids should accompany him to mass when he came down from Boston.

The one who I had a crush on (on whom I had a crush?) was the older daughter, Ginny. As a teenager, she had her own room in the semi-finished basement. She had long silky brown hair, a variety of hippy embroidered cotton shirts, and a water bed. This was the 70s, after all. She probably wore toe rings too. I was so shy that I could barely speak to her. And of course she barely spoke to me, because I wasn't even on her radar. Once her mom asked me to wake Ginny up, but it was all I could do to call out to her from the doorway then scurry away.

So, my first girl crush was unrequited. But maybe it served the purpose that girl crushes are supposed to serve, which is -- I think -- to provide you with a potential template for living your life. I never had a sister, but I think there's some kind of sisterly thing going on with girl crushes as well. It's someone you feel connected to, someone you could be, someone who paves the way for you and establishes parameters and possibilities. You may never achieve these possibilities, but it's nice to be able to think about them.

When I was a teenager, those possibilities were all about boyfriends. And things didn't change that much over the years either. In junior high, if someone had a boyfriend, you admired her. It gave her status. And you tried to be like her because if you did maybe you could attract boys and gain status too. Yuck, it sounds so insectoid, like queen bees and ant colonies, things like that. But that's clearly how it was, and the most admired girls were the ones who could display themselves like so many showy male birds.

I remember one horrible girl in my junior high whose name was Tracy McDaniel (Yes, that was her real name, but who cares?). She certainly wasn't my girl crush, but she had status because she flirted with all of the right guys. I remember how she told the girls in my far less adventurous group of friends that she was planning on wearing green to the teen club dance because "green makes you horny" (as if she were an M&M). Not only that, she was planning to wear little braids coming out of her head, like horns. Can you believe that? (The last sentence should be read incredulously, with an African American or southern accent for emphasis.) Anyway, that was the sort of vapid thing that was admired when I was a teenager, and I think it affected who I ended up admiring.

The one girl crush I recall in junior high was a small blond girl named Carrie. I think I had a crush on her because 1)she was short, and I felt too tall, 2) she dressed sort of toughly, and I thought that was exciting, and 3) she had the same first name as Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in Star Wars (yes, I was kind of a geek). As with Ginny, I only admired Carrie from afar. She represented something I wasn't -- being tough, hanging out with boys who smoked. It seemed kind of romantic to me. We really only crossed paths in home ec, where my piece de resistance was burning the cheese because I thought it was butter. Aside from that, I probably didn't make much of an impression on her.

In contrast, when I think of my current girl crushes, what stands out is power and achievement, regardless of their connections with men. The other thing that stands out is style. It's as if I've moved on from bodice buster novels, where the romance is the thing (okay, sex, romance, whatever) to women's books that feature some kind of rags to riches story. I'm thinking Judith Michael books or Judith Krantz. There's always romance, but it's not necessarily the point. It's mainly about power and money. For example, there's one book by Judith Michael (who is actually two people -- a husband and wife team) about a poor young woman who ends up owning a pricey hotel chain. And then there's Scruples, where a young, formerly unattractive woman creates a high-end department store. And I cringe to admit it, but I'm also a fan of Jackie Collins' Lucky Santangelo, who becomes a tough lady mobster. You go, girl! It's stuff like that. They all wear great clothes and end up with supportive men, but the main story is their achievements and business acumen.

So...with that context in mind...here are my girl crushes:

1) My number one girl crush is...Katharine Weymouth, the publisher of the Washington Post. I'm sure Katharine doesn't remember this, but I lived downstairs from her in the Wigglesworth dorm during our freshman year at Harvard. Symbolically, she lived high up on the fourth floor attic, while I lived below her, unnoticed, on the second floor. Katharine looks great, has 3 kids, and is the granddaughter of Katharine Graham. She's also a lawyer, which is something I should have become but didn't. She represents this whole other world -- elite private school, connections with world leaders, high priced law firms. Another great thing about Katharine is that because of her, I'm less than 6 degrees of separation away from the Talking Heads. (Tina Weymouth of the Talking Heads is her aunt.)

So...Wow, here's someone my age who seems so poised and so comfortable with power. Maybe in front of her close friends she's a mess, but to me she seems like the embodiment of cool. I've considered contacting her via Facebook, but once again I'm just too shy. So...she'll just continue to represent the promised land to me, the sort of life that I can dream of but not aspire to. But at least I can learn from her example that it's possible to achieve more than I've done so far.

2) Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the DC Public Schools. Michelle recently came to speak at the government agency where I work. My first impression of her was...wow. Although it was November, she wore a short skirt and high heels without stockings. She looked great. She seemed so comfortable up on the podium, and also kind of scary. I didn't really agree with her views about firing teachers, but I liked her passion for helping the kids in the DC Public Schools. And I like the fact that she sends her kids to DC Public Schools (although I just googled it and learned that she placed her kids in the best of the best among these schools...oh well.). Like Katharine Weymouth, she demonstrates for me that you don't have to shoot yourself in the foot career-wise just because you're a mother. I'm not sure to what extent she's going to meet her goals, but she's certainly going to give it her all. I like that.

3) Michelle Obama. I love her dresses. And I'm such an imbiber of the Obama kool-aid that I had to put her on this list. She projects this clean-cut but sharp image. She totally rounds out the image of the Obamas as the black Kennedys. And she's so poised. I'm so excited that she and her family are coming to the White House. I'm not that interested in what she'll be doing, because I assume she'll focus on her kids first and foremost (totally understandable). But I am interested in how she'll present herself and what she'll wear. I've never really been into the First Lady, since none of the first ladies during my lifetime have been very appealing to me. So, this will be a first...yay!

4) Samantha from Sex and the City I've always considered myself more of a Carrie (I'm angst-ridden) or a Miranda (I've got a kid...in fact, I've got three of them). But Samantha is so honest and out there being herself. I definitely admire that. She doesn't apologize to anyone, and she's not self-conscious. And like all of the women on the show, she dresses with style. But for me, the most admirable thing about Samantha is a single line she says in the Sex and the City movie. She says it to her gorgeous, much-younger beau Smith, whom she followed to LA and lived with for over 5 years: "I love you, but I love me more."

God, what I would give to be able to say that in my life! It's not something I would ever say to my kids, of course, because (see earlier blog), they're the center of my life and my being. But to be able to have that attitude about other aspects of my life...to be able to love myself and take care of myself without getting entangled in all of that Prince Charming bs....hopefully I can move that direction in my future. And I'm saying this independent of my marriage or anything else. I don't want to have to be mad because nobody is taking care of me in that fadeout, happily ever after kind of way. To do that, I need to be able to reflexively take care of myself, and that's hard for a girl who's been raised to please men and all other people. If I could move from Sally Field ("You like me, you really like me!") to Samantha ("I love you but I love me more"), that would really be something.

5) My beautiful diva-ish daughter Sofia. Sofia is just amazing. Even before she was a year old, she knew what she wanted and what she didn't want. And she doesn't have any trouble expressing herself. Of course she's 3-1/2, so she may become more inhibited in the future. But her self-esteem is great. And she's so stylish. She could wear a pull-up on her head (and she does, sometimes) and still look like she should be walking down a runway. She's the girl who, when she was feeling sick to her stomach, rejected the bowl I gave her to throw up in because "Blue isn't my color, Mommy". Anyway, I love her and I think she's great. I learn things from her every day.

So...those are my girl crushes of the day. There are plenty of other Women I Admire,whom I would be happy to list:

My former boss Jacquie (high-achieving, great shoes, warm but poised);

My former boss Barbara (supportive friend, knows who she is and what she wants, left an unhappy marriage and found a happy one, adopted 2 kids at age 50 and above, and lives in a world of wealth that I can't even aspire to);

Hillary Clinton (maintained her dignity when her man did her wrong, brilliant mind even if she did disappoint me on Iraq, a committed and hard worker);

My Aunt Beth (Got her Ph.D. in her 60s, survived various significant health problems with dignity, loves exciting travel).

And there are two more points I want to make.

First, I believe that my daughters, at ages 3-1/2 and 6 months, already have girl crushes. Sofia seems to be obsessed with Disney princesses, while Angelina has her own girl crush...on Sofia. We'll see how that turns out.

Second, when I look back at my first girl crush, I think I was idolizing the wrong O'Mally. Thinking of the mother, Carol, going to law school and raising 4 kids alone...that certainly trumps a hippie teenager with a water bed. But our girl crushes are appropriate for the specific times of our lives, so I shouldn't reject my past crush on Ginny. Carol is now happily remarried and a lawyer, and she still lives in the same town as my parents. I have no idea where Ginny is. I could google her, but that would destroy the romance.

On Scarcity

I've written about wealth, and now I'm going to write about scarcity. When I reflect on the concept of scarcity, it makes me think of words like "penury", "skinflint", "tightwad", and "spendthrift". They're narrow, ungenerous words, and what comes to mind is a world where people are always cutting, cutting, cutting and trying to make do with less. It feels negative and constricting, a dark and narrow place, the way Egypt is described at Passover.

Is this the direction we're moving in? Is this a bad thing? I grew up -- most middle class Americans grew up -- in a world of waste and high expectations. If something broke, we could always get another one. My wishes always turned up under the Christmas tree. My parents read Consumer Reports and made a practice of buying the most sensible quality items. We had a pool membership, piano lessons, out-of-state travel, and summer camp. If we needed a service or a specialist, we simply paid for it. It was one part planned obsolescence, one part entitlement, and one part optimism. Our options and resources seemed endless in an ever-broadening world.

It wasn't always like that, of course. It certainly was different for the folks two generations up. There was my maternal grandfather Jerry,who was successful, egotistical, and somewhat mythical. Having grown up in a poor family of 10 kids in Denver, CO, he attended Harvard Law School in the 1930s on scholarship and -- legend had it -- could only afford to eat a single muffin for lunch each day. And he was a slave to that era, even after he became wealthy. Years later, in the spacious Central Park West apartment he had purchased, he still saved string. He took the subway to work long after he could afford taxis, and he refused to buy a washing machine for his summer house.

Then there was my paternal grandmother, who, although she was only a typing teacher, did well enough in the stock market to put several of her grandchildren through college, including me. I remember visiting her in the nursing home when she was in her 80s. "I don't have any money", she would wail, over and over. Her daughter would write out for her, "You have money. You are rich." But over and over again, my grandmother would forget. She would be bereft, lying there, as her deepest fears played themselves out in her mind. It's amazing what a Depression can do to people.

For whatever reason, I've absorbed some of these same fears. When I was in college, I remember riding a New York City bus through Columbus Circle and seeing a bag lady wearing a Harvard sweatshirt. I thought, oh no, that could be me in 30 years. This was in the 1980s, when bag ladies (and men) were popping up all over the place. I remember homeless people sleeping all over the steam grates on my college campus, like so many outlined post-nuclear apocolypse bodies. I think the fear of becoming a bag lady was more of a female issue than a guy thing. Maybe it had to do with a gender-specific lack of confidence, or a lack of imagination even the 1980s about how a woman could support herself even. All I know is that several of my female friends -- all of whom were high-achieving -- shared the same fear.

Despite these unrealistic (I hope) fears, there were some aspects of scarcity that seemed utterly foreign to me. But now I'm thinking that maybe they're not so foreign after all. For example, in 1994 I visited my cousin Laura in St. Petersburg -- that's Russia, not Florida. I slept on the spare bed in the kitchen, and I remember thinking that that was simply how life was in Russia, along with the decrepit apartment lobbies that nobody bothered to keep up. But then, years later, when my fiance and I visited friends in San Francisco, we ended up sleeping in the cramped kitchen of their small apartment, which had originally been a garage. When I expressed amazement that we should all be sitting on a bed in the kitchen, drinking vodka, our friend responded that this was what housing was like in San Francisco.

Around the same time that we made the trip to San Francisco, electricity companies were going broke, rates were shooting up, and Enron was somehow making a profit from it all. I recall listening to a show on NPR about how middle class Brazilians were dealing with the electricity rate hikes by only turning lights on in the rooms they were in at the moment. According to the announcer, you could look up at a tall apartment building in Rio or Sao Paolo and see the lights flicking on and off as people walked from room to room. I certainly didn't connect myself with any of that. At the time I was living in an all-utilities-included place. When my husband didn't turn on enough lights, I would jokingly say, "This isn't Sarajevo, you know." But now...well, you know how it is. It's not Sarajevo, but maybe it's Sao Paolo.

And it's not just electricity, it's gas too. I remember reading about an American philanthropist who went to North Korea in the winter. When he visited one government ministry he noted that one of the high officials was wearing a thick jacket and gloves inside because there was no heat. Not too long after that, I caught myself wearing gloves and a thick sweater at home as I teleworked, just so I could keep the heat below 65. I loved Jimmy Carter and his energy conservation thing, but I did feel like a little bit of the axis of evil -- the cold part -- had entered my house that day. The other day, to keep the heat down and save money, I actually wore a wool cap on my head. I felt like I was channeling Soweto township fashion, but at least I was keeping my gas bill down.

Similarly, I remember being in Serbia not long after the U.S. stopped its bombing campaign. The price of gas had shot up, and people waited in long lines at the state-owned gas stations because they charged a few pennies per liter less than the private stations. I remember being amazed that it would be worth it to them to do that, but as our own gas prices shot up this past summer the joke was on me. I also remember hearing about the inflation in Serbia during the early 1990s, which at the time was the world's worst ever. One friend told me that he worked for hours in the field one day, cutting grass with a scythe, and at the end of the day he received 6 million dinars. He took his pay to a store to buy some toothpaste, but to his chagrin he saw that one tube cost 7 million dinars. That's not something I can specifically relate to, thank God, but it does sort of call to mind our increasingly insane healthcare costs.

It all reminds me of a great David Byrne song called "Dirty Old Town". I always thought the song was about Brazil, because it's on the Rei Momo album. But when you listen to it, you realize he could be talking about New York or any other American city:

Well, there are sixteen people in Danny’s apartment
Sixteen people are living in there
Remember the days of rent control
Grandpa remembers rock and roll

These days won’t last forever
These days won’t last for long
You know, somebody somewhere owes us a favor
That’s how things really get done
In this world of opportunities, it’s a land of possibilities

Now when the ladies come from Kansas
They wear their traditional colors
Today the fabrics are ragged and torn
The clothes on their backs is all that they own
They say, don’t draw attention to yourself
They’ll tear you apart for a couple of bucks
Keep you head down and keep you nose clean
’cause people who’re scared do dangerous things

So, the world and its ways of scarcity can enter our cities and our houses and maybe change our behavior. But how much do tight times affect our character, our way of thinking? In The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver writes about women in Congo who lived in such dire straits that they related to each other in a totally different way than she was used to. She writes, "The Congolese have an extra sense. A social sense, I would call it. It's a way of knowing people at a glance, adding up the possibilities for exchange, and it's as necessary as breathing. Survival is a continuous negotiation, as you have to barter covertly for every service."

I've also experienced these different ways people have of thinking and acting that help them get by or survive in times of scarcity. I remember when I was living in Morocco, I met a woman who was studying biology. "Oh," I responded innocently. "My father works at the National Institutes of Health in the U.S." What was an offhand comment to me was practically a job offer to her. It was a totally different way of thinking. It was the same thing when I was living in a post-conflict area of Croatia and had much more cash than the locals. Looking back, I think I was pretty clueless. I was generous to other people there because I'm a generous person, but also because it caused me no pain to be that way. But I also didn't spare much thought to what people could and couldn't afford. Sometimes I made insensitive gaffes, like not treating people when we shared dinner or coffee. I didn't have to live in tight times, so I often forgot that other people did.

Thinking back, maybe I wasn't so generous, relatively speaking. When my landlady in Vukovar, which was still recovering from its 1991 near-destruction, wanted to increase my rent, I argued with her because I felt it wasn't fair. But I could have easily afforded it, and she definitely needed the money for her uncertain future. It's so easy to be generous when you have more than enough. What's really admirable, though, is being generous when you yourself are living in scarce times.

I remember, for example, when I worked at a movie theater in high school. We had a game to support the Will Rogers Foundation. We put an empty glass at the bottom of a large trash can filled with water, and we inveighed people -- "Drop a quarter in the glass, win a free movie pass! All proceeds go to charity!" Inevitably, it was poorer people, including a large proportion of Hispanics, who would play. You can explain this away by discussing the excitement of a game of chance, or you can say that maybe these people were poor because they gave away too much of their money like this. But I also think it means that they weren't poor in their imagination. They could imagine themselves winning a free movie pass -- or perhaps getting rich. In their minds, at least, they weren't living in the narrow world of scarcity.

And I think that's one key of how to respond to tight times without narrowing our mind as well. If you can give to others, you're empowering yourself and acknowledging that you do have something to spare. In a sense, giving spares us from becoming slaves to our fears of penury, like my grandfather was. Judaism says that the best kind of charity is totally anonymous, when the donor doesn't know the recipient and vice versa. It's the unalloyed act of giving that counts. But if you don't give at all, then your world really becomes narrow. You're focused only on yourself and your own shrinking circle of need. Maybe by giving, we keep our world large and allow space for hope and even faith. Maybe it's one way to keep ourselves out of the dark, narrow world of Egypt. So, while I feel like times are getting tighter and tighter for many people, including me, I'm going to try to keep my mind open and give what I can.

Nobody Walks in L.A.

Today I did something strange -- I walked around the suburbs. Our wonderful Mazda5, christened BunnyJoeTai by Sofia, had an ominous "check engine" light, so I arranged to take it to Luis at the Getty station in Kensington. We live near Kensington, MD, but not close enough that our house is unaffordable. It's located along a congested stretch of Connecticut Avenue, complete with its own train station, an "antique row", an overpriced farmer's market, and a bunch of high-priced and charming Victorian-style houses.

Kensington is an old railroad suburb, just like Garrett Park, where I grew up. It's a place where people could walk,but I've never been tempted to. For one thing, it's not very pedestrian-friendly. Either the cars are moving fast enough to be a threat, or they're moving slowly enough to create all sorts of noxious pollution, especially in the summer.

Still, when I was told by Luis at the Getty that we should come back in 2 hours, I felt energized. I used to walk everywhere, but now that I'm a slave to carseats and small legs and tummies, it always seems easier to drive. Besides, what with work and the strict hours of our daycare provider, I never have any time.

But one of the things I've always loved to do is to explore markets, both foreign and domestic. I've gotten lost in Palestinian areas near Tel Aviv, been followed by pushy men and boys in Morocco, successfully found my way around polluted downtown Lima, and had a great time in an overcrowded marketplace at twilight in Cairo. I've explored plenty of Balkan cities and towns on foot as well, including Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Zagreb. When I worked in Split, Croatia, I took beautiful walks up the hill called Marjan, where an unlikely Sephardic Jewish cemetery is located.

Two of the walks that I particularly remember were both in the US. One time when I was in high school, I ended up exploring an area right near Kensington called KenGar. Probably I just felt like getting some exercise. At the time, Garrett Park and Kensington were both basically white middle class. (Now they're both unaffordable to me, but that's another story.)

But when I got to KenGar, which is basically in between the two towns but also tucked away along the train tracks, I saw that everyone was black. People were staring at me, and a few people asked me nicely if I was lost. It was as if white people never passed through there, although it was so close to two mainly white towns. And I realized that there was really no reason to go there, because none of the roads into the area led anywhere else. I ended up telling the people that I was looking for High's (now sadly out of business...it's become a 7/11). And I actually haven't been to KenGar since then, although I've frequently noticed the sign for their Baptist Church. It seemed so strange to have this African American pocket near where we lived, although we never seemed to see any of the people who lived there.

The second memorable walk happened in Boca Raton, Florida, soon after I returned from a college semester in Morocco. I had walked a lot in Morocco, but usually during these walks I was bothered by what we called drageurs -- men and boys who thought it was their birthright to harass women in public, particularly western women. As I walked through the souk, where I was staying with a family, I remember young men calling out to me, "Beautiful foreigner!" "Hey, I know a good hotel!" "American? American?" Or sometimes they would just hiss at me.

One time, one of the male students from our program snuck up behind me and began hissing in the same way, and I practically punched him in the nose. One tries to be culturally sensitive, but it was so damn annoying, especially if I was in a bad mood. I remember that one time I was in a particularly bad state, and when a drageur called out to me I responded, "F--k you!" "Ahh....f--k you!" he responded with a smile. Another time, when my female classmates and I were followed on a beach in Agadir, I insisted to the drageur that we were Japanese. That annoyed him to no end, to my amusement.

I enjoyed my time in Morocco, but by the time I got back to the U.S. I was pretty well fed up with men who seemed to think I had no right to occupy the public sphere. During the Christmas holiday, my then-boyfriend and I drove down to Boca Raton. The memorable walk occurred when I walked down the beach by myself, wearing nothing but a bikini, and nobody bothered me. It was so liberating. I thought, wow, I can be here. It's okay. There's the sun, the waves, the sand, and I can just enjoy it by myself. Later I realized that the fact that I could walk down the beach with nobody bothering me demonstrated the relative position of power women occupy in the US -- after much struggle -- compared to in Morocco and probably in the Arab world overall. At the time, however, I just felt free, happy, and empowered.

So, I love going for walks and exploring places on foot. The only people I've noticed walking in Kensington seemed to be those without cars, but I didn't want to let that stop me. I put my daughter Angelina in her stroller, instructed my son Philip to stay close to me, and set off along busy Connecticut Avenue. And it was good. I noticed things I hadn't seen before, like how the Kensington Fire House was constructed in 1947. It says so in concrete on the building itself.

As we crossed the train tracks, I pointed out to Philip how one set of tracks goes towards Washington, DC and the other ends in West Virginia. We walked by a now-closed Wachovia Bank and then passed Continental Pizza, a storefront restaurant that's been around so long that it doesn't even have a customer bathroom because it was constructed before they were required in restaurants. They serve hard-core, amazing pizza and do a robust business. Next to the pizza place was a Salvadorean bakery with signs that indicated it could provide cakes for your quinceanera. If anyone has any tips about what to buy in a Salvadorean bakery, please let me know. I've never been particularly appetized by what I've found there. After the bakery came a real old-style barber shop, with men and boys waiting to be clipped and shaved. (It was all white -- why do I notice these things?) Anyway, it was good to see these independent businesses, because throughout the DC suburbs you usually see the same stores over and over.

As we walked on, I pointed out to Philip two landmarks from my past. One was a building where I remembered going to the bank with my mother when we first moved to the area, in 1969. The other was a Shell station that had also been around at the time. The Shell station was also the place where the DC sniper killed one of his victims in 2003. I didn't tell Philip that, of course. It all seems so unlikely now, and there's not even a memorial to mark the spot.

Finally we came to the main goal of our trip -- a monstrous, renovated Safeway in the center of Kensington. The renovation of the Safeway had sparked some controversy, because opponents were concerned that it would split the town in two. I'm not sure how they resolved it, but the Safeway is still there. At first I felt weird just walking in off the street, but I began to notice people here and there putting their grocery bags into backpacks. Maybe it wasn't so strange to be walking in the suburbs. Hey, walking saves money and it's good for the environment.

I remember when I lived in Somerville, Massachusetts after college (we called it Slumerville), and I would buy food at the Stop-n-Shop after work. The walk home was over a mile up dark, often icy streets, and I often daydreamed about running into acquaintances who happened to have cars. Even after I came to DC, I walked to the local grocery store and Saturday farmer's market in Adams Morgan. I eventually purchased what I always thought of as an old lady folding grocery cart, the kind my grandmother used to take along Columbus Avenue on the Upper West side. It's so funny to think back on this stuff, because nowdriving to the grocery store feels like the only possibility. But maybe I'll look back on this part of my life -- with the minivan, the carseats, the tightly scheduled days -- as the anomaly, although it seems to be all-encompassing now.

Anyway, we had a good time in Safeway. Philip tried to talk me into buying two magnets that make noise when you put them together, a nerf basketball, and something from the gum machines out front. I managed to make my no stick on the first two (Magnets? God forbid! Hazard, hazard!), but I gave in and let him have 2 quarters to purchase a football-related sticker from one of the gum machines.

And it's like this every time we go to the grocery store -- "Mommy, buy me this! Mommy, I need this!" Honestly, those companies that market to kids are just too good. Whoever came up with the idea to brand everything from toothpaste to yogurt to cereal with Dora, Diego and the like certainly deserves their bonus, because my kids are always drawn in. I actually find it sort of fun to argue with Philip and Sofia about why we can't buy these things. I try to teach them how it's all about some evil corporation wanting to manipulate them. However, I'm sure it will all backfire on me someday. I can just see Sofia becoming corporate counsel for the Disney princesses, or Philip figuring out profit margins for surgary Superfriends cereal. The kids are just like sponges, and Sofia -- at age 3-1/2 -- is equally excited about "Iraq" Obama, the Redskins, and Cinderella.

I've fully accepted that if anyone is going to be indoctrinating my kids, it's going to be me. Hence my decision to have them go to Sunday school to learn about their Jewish heritage...even if it wasn't something that I experienced when I was a kid. I want to forcibly immerse them in Free to Be You and Me and box them around the ears with ideas of compassion and lovingkindness. Luckily, the interfaith congregation where I take them is dominated by moderate left-of-center 1970s-influenced parents (like me?), so I feel like even if they have Pavlovian responses to Dora and Power Rangers, at least they'll know something about the values I want them to adopt.

And I guess walking and exploring on foot are closely linked to these values. I don't want them to be the kind of kids who are isolated in comfortable, air conditioned cars all the time, riding high above the crowded streets. I don't want them to be reluctant to go outside when it's raining. I don't want them to look down on using public transportation. I want them to be connected to their community and the people in it. I want them to enjoy the journey, not just the destination. I want them to notice small things and perceive larger patterns based on their observations of the peopled world. I think walking be empowering, because you're establishing a goal and getting there on your own steam and volition. I want my kids to feel this power, and to have a curiosity about the world that overrides much of the fear they'll probably also have.

So, in the interest of further indoctrinating Philip, I suggested to him that we walk to a nearby bookstore after we were done with Safeway. He was excited about that (yay!), and I ended up buying him a book on "Magic Escapes", which included detailed instructions about how to do tricks like freeing yourself from iron chains. I have no problem buying him books...the more, the better if it helps him read. Later that afternoon, Philip entertained us with his new "magic" tricks, one of which involved hiding a large red block up his sleeve. Unfortunately, when he tried to make the block magically reappear, it got stuck in his sleeve and he couldn't get it out. But it was all fun, and I was so energized by the day.

I think I'm just an urban person by default, having grown up with New York City as my promised land. Anything that brings me into contact with bustling commerce and other people puts me in a good frame of mind. My kids, growing up in the same area as I did but in very different times, may have a different experience than me. Hopefully -- despite all of the isolating factors of our age -- they'll still be able to share some my enjoyment with community and commerce. I'm certainly going to try my damndest to make it happen.

I channel Robert Lowell

As I finished up that last post, editing the line "Newport's shipping magnates are long gone", I suddenly felt a chill. Thanks to a poetry survey class that I took in college, I'm actually not totally illiterate, culturally speaking. I always loved the poem, "Skunk Hour", by Robert Lowell, and something about my last posting reminded me of it.

So, here it is....Take a moment to enjoy it on this dim, late fall afternoon. You can even read it out loud if you're feeling up to it:

Skunk Hour

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill --
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl,
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
'Love, O careless Love . . . .' I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell,
nobody's here --

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air --
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

-- Robert Lowell

Let's talk about wealth

I have a dysfunctional relationship with money and spending. For some reason, I can't get my arms around my financial situation. I can't seem to take a clear-eyed, dispassionate look at my finances and then make logical, rational choices. I've never really been able to make or follow a budget. Instead, I've always aimed to make just enough so I don't have to worry about what I spend. In other words, I've sought to have a margin of error that allows me to say "whatever" and live on in hazy and willful ignorance.

This sort of attitude is fine if you're a childless renter in good economic times. However, that certainly doesn't describe my situation. To put things into perspective, I'm paying more in daycare costs now than I made during my entire first year out of college. Holy moly! Let me repeat that: I'm paying more in daycare costs now than I made during my entire first year out of college. And my income hasn't gone up all that much, so daycare costs -- and utilities and house stuff and medical bills and classes for the kids -- really do take a huge bite. So, as I say to my kids...no more funning around. Let's get serious here. Let's talk about wealth, the lack thereof, and my mental struggles with it.

There is a quote I came across recently. It's from David Copperfield, which I admit I've never read. It says,

"And think most of all of Mr. Micawber and his advice to David: 'Annual
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result
happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty
pounds ought and six, result misery.' Following that advice will
protect you from the worst of economic upheavals."

In other words, spending less than you make leads to happiness, and spending more than you make creates anxiety. Logically,I know this is right, but I've always thought about things the other way round. It's not so much that I try to spend more than I make, but I certainly don't equate saving money with happiness or other good feelings. Unfortunately for me, it's spending money that makes me feel this way.

Dickens is talking about wealth and how it makes us feel. For me, it's first and foremost about security. There should be a word for it -- security and happiness that comes from feeling wealthy. I'm sure the Germans do have a word for it, similar to Farfegnugen. That makes sense so far, but what makes me feel wealthy -- and therefore secure and happy -- is all messed up. There are several ways I end up experiencing this happiness that comes from feeling wealthy, and unfortunately none of them is particularly healthy, financially speaking.

First of all, I associate wealth and security with images of richness and stability. I remember as a teenager walking up 5th Avenue in New York with my mother, looking in the display windows of Tiffany's and other jewelry stores. I felt a sense of solidity, as if these big, thick buildings, with their gleaming displays would always be there. I remember going to amazing restaurants with my parents and afterwards stepping out into the day, feeling sated and protected, as if I was surrounded by a magical glow.

I remember visiting a college friend of my father's who had become a professor at Brown University. He had a large, well-ordered house with shiny wood floors and Harvard chairs in the study. He took us to a restaurant in Newport, where 19th-century shipping magnates had build huge, fortress-like mansions along the coast. The sun was low on the horizon as we pulled up to the restaurant, and my brother and I were allowed to run around on the well-manicured lawn. I felt a sense of security from the setting and from the fact that we were able to be part of it by going to the restaurant. I think back to that restaurant now and the quality of the light, and I think that it's something that I would like to have in my life. It's certainly something I would like to give my kids. But there's fat chance of that, since for us an evening out is Baja Fresh with a splurge at Starbucks if we're feeling flush.

I have many more images of the kind of solidity that makes me feel wealthy and secure, however temporarily. There's even a smell I associate with it -- a whiff of gin and tonics in the open air. The images include big sprawling houses on Point O'Woods and Nantucket. Volvo station wagons and Subaru Outbacks with LL Bean trim. Golden retrievers. A complex glass of wine in a calm, reflective place.

Perhaps I've seen one too many Ralph Lauren ads, because It seems that many of my images of wealth are kind of preppy. Or maybe it's just a remnant of coming of age in the 80s. In any case, that wealth wasn't real for me then, and it certainly isn't real now. Nobody ever bought me any jewelry from 5th Avenue. The youngest daughter of my father's college friend had Down's Syndrome. The shipping magnates of Newport are long gone, and for all I know their descendants may be facing foreclosure on their tract housing in scruffy New England suburbs. In reality, most of the time I recall smelling gin and tonics in the open air, I was working as a college bartender (or bahtendah, as we liked to say with a Boston accent).

Still, thinking of these things even now gives me comfort. It's pretty crazy, but there it is. So I experience this feeling of wealth, which has nothing to do with real money. And it doesn't get me any closer to any kind of security, financial or otherwise.

Wealth means something else to me as well. It's connected with shopping and the acquisition of stuff. I grew up in suburban America, shopping for sport. Like many kids, I hung out at malls, surrounded by material goods. Now that I think of it, it was pretty spiritually bankrupt, but of course I wasn't aware of that as a teenager. Obtaining certain items -- generally clothing and cosmetics -- made me feel secure and complete. I remember putting a certain Gunne Sax dress on layaway. I remember getting high heeled clogs when I was in junior high. These things were my armor. If I wore the right things to my nouveau riche public school, I would be protected. Maybe I wouldn't be popular, but I certainly wouldn't be a loser with a capital L on my forehead. At a certain point, my parents gave me a clothing allowance. I supplemented it with part-time McJobs. I knew that if I could find just the right outfit or pants or shoes, everything would be okay.

And, guess what? It's still like that for me today. I tell myself, I have to look professional and just right for work to build my image within the limitations of our office casual dress code. I think to myself, I just need to get the right pair of high black boots to wear with skirts, the right pair of low black boots to wear with pants. Or I need yet another black jacket or black shirt....and I will be protected and ready to go. (Yes, for me black is the new black. I should probably go shopping for some brighter colors sometime or else I'll start looking like somebody's Old World grandmother.) Again, these clothes make me feel secure and calm, like I've checked all of the boxes and am simply okay. I can now start from zero.

That's all good, but although my purchases make me feel wealthy, I'm in fact decreasing my actual wealth. It would make so much more sense just to be happy with the clothes I have....but they're never enough.

And finally, the third bass-akwards thing that makes me feel wealthy is finding bargains. Never mind, as Ben Franklin said, that it's not a bargain if you don't need it. Never mind that the spending depletes my resources. Engaging in the process of getting a good deal makes me feel like I'm being proactive about increasing my wealth.

Yesterday, for example, I bought a bunch of stuff at a thrift shop sale. It was great stuff. The price was right. I felt good. But it certainly didn't make me any richer. Nonetheless, I came away with the happiness that comes from feeling wealthy. I felt as if a hole had been filled.

And maybe that's what it all comes down to. For me, feeling wealthy is about filling up what feels empty. And it's more important to me to fill whatever emotional emptiness is inside me than to fill up the empty coffers of my bank account. It's something I'm going to have to get past, because this is the real world, man. Money doesn't grow on trees, and these are hard times. As the main earner, I have kids depending on me.

I just need to get it through my head that "saving" = "wealth". Or maybe it's that "not spending" = "wealth". Or perhaps I should think more broadly. Maybe I need to find other, healthier ways to fill the emptiness that I feel. Taking a deep breath, appreciating nature, listening to and watching my kids, enjoying a good book. It won't be natural or easy, but I've got to try. Once I learn to use my inner resources to create this feeling of wealth, maybe I"ll be able to focus on creating financial wealth as well. Then one of these months I may be able to I can keep my spending down to nineteen nineteen six rather than twenty ought and six.

A.M. Chaos

I really don't know how I do it. Somehow, some way, I manage to get 3 young lively kids and myself off to our respective destinations every day, with teeth brushed, faces wiped, stomachs full, and clothes and diapers clean. Each morning when I get to work, I want to either collapse with exhaustion or release my breath in a long, slow, grateful exhale. Wow...here I am. I don't know how I managed to do it again. And all around me, people younger and older than me, people with dogs but no kids, people who spend their nights out on the town, arrive at work fresh, unrumpled, and set to face the day.

It reminds me of the two donkeys Stephen King wrote about in The Dead Zone. King described a town donkey and a prospector's donkey who are tied up next to each other outside a bar. The town donkey looks at the prospector's donkey's huge load of picks, axes, and other mining equipment, and says to him, "Wow, that's quite a load you've got there." The prospector's donkey answers, "What load"

That's how I feel sometimes, like a heavily loaded workhorse, day in and day out.  For me, each morning is a juggle of skillful negotiation, logistical mastery, compassion on tap, and well-managed chaos.  

Sofia, do you want to wear your red shoes?  No?  Your purple ones? How about your blue ones?   Okay, no socks, freeze your feet if you want to.  Philip, what do you want for breakfast?  Cheerios with raisin bran in the same bowl but not all mixed together?  Okay. Sofia, you want little frozen berries but not big ones? No problem.  Philip, yogurt with a "ton" of honey?   Okay.  Angelina, wait 2 minutes and then we'll nurse.  

Must unload a few dishes from the dishwasher, but it's hard while I'm holding Angelina at the same time. Philip, go get your pants from the tv room.  Philip, please get your pants from the tv room.  Philip, will you please get your pants?  Philip, get your pants!  Oh forget it, I'll get them.  

Must make Philip's lunch.  No, you can't buy pizza today!  I need to take the doctor's bill with me to argue with the insurance company.  Oh no, I have a stain on my jacket.  I'll carry Angelina upstairs so I can see if I have anything else that matches, is seasonally appropriate, and doesn't need ironing.  Then I'll nurse her after that.  No, Sofia, you can't come upstairs with us.  You need to eat your breakfast, we're late.  No, Sofia!  Oh, okay, come upstairs.  

I need to put Philip's homework in his backpack.  And he has soccer after school.  Must call my neighbor and make sure she'll pick him up.  Oh God, I need to make my lunch too.  We need to save money.  And Zoki the cat needs food and water.   Which kid can feed him without making a mess?  Angelina, I need to remember pull-ups for your daycare.  Oh, we're low on milk...must remember to put it on the list.  

No, Philip, you can't eat your Halloween candy for breakfast!   Oh no, Zoki the cat is eating Philip's yogurt!  Zoki, go to the basement!  Sofia, stop climbing on the couch!  Yes, Philip, you can have a playdate with Chase, but his mom needs to call us.  No, Sofia, you can't have a sleepover with Ellie, you need to wait until you're older.

Angelina, please keep nursing and stop paying attention to all of the noise your brother and sister are making.   Oh God, I need to get the alarm system fixed.  Angelina has a poopy diaper...I don't think I can send her to daycare and "pretend" I didn't know, so must change her quickly and keep her from rolling off the couch.  The garbage is full...must find room for a few more dirty diapers.  Pelvic floor, squeeze (my tribute to Kate Reddy)!  

Need to find husband a new doctor who takes our insurance and uses Quest Labs.  Put dirty dishes in sink...God forbid, hopefully it won't attract bugs.  Guys, get your socks on!  Get your jackets on!  Put them on, you'll be cold later. Okay, okay, I'll carry your jackets.  

I'm so sad to leave my kids...what if there's a terrorist attack on the Metro?  No, wait, I shouldn't worry about that because then the terrorists will have won. Oh no, where are my socks?  Where are my shoes?  Is Angelina okay in her baby gym while I get my shoes on?  What do I have to do at work today?   Philip, Sofia, out the door! No, you can't bring all of your necklaces to daycare! Stop fighting, guys!

What time is it?  How late are we?  Wie spat ist es?  I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!  Argh....

And it's pretty much this chaotic every morning. My feeling upon arrival at work also reminds me of the Shehechiyanu, a Jewish prayer that thanks God for bringing you to this moment: "Blessed are you, Lord our God, who has kept us alive and sustained us and enabled us to reach this moment." In other words, wow, thank God, I'm here again in the quiet of my office and I have a moment to breathe...until the stresses of work start up.

I remember in college I heard a speaker named Carol Gilligan, a renowned psychologist who studied ethical decisionmaking, among other things. She sat with us in the Winthrop House Common Room and asked us a simple question, "What's the opposite of losing?" "Winning," we all answered without hesitation. Then she asked it again: "What's the opposite of losing?" We struggled to find another answer, wondering what we had gotten wrong. Losing, winning -- what else was there? Then one guy finally said, "Finding." That was Dr. Gilligan's point -- that there are different ways of viewing the world, and you might not even realize it. She also asked us about the 2 different ways we could view the proverb, "A rolling stone gathers no moss." The answer was that the moss could be viewed as something bad, so it was good to be a rolling stone, or it could be viewed as something good that the rolling stone was missing out on. I think about that now, in my very busy life. My kids are definitely the good kind of moss, even with the daily struggles and longer-term burdens.

In her book Her Mother's Daughter, Marilyn French describes the life of a female midge, whose offspring somehow eat her from the inside out, or maybe they grow and grow and grow until they burst out of her. I feel that way sometimes. I look at the circles under my eyes, my unbrushed hair, the clothes I don't have time to mend, my unpolished shoes, my wavering bank account, and I wonder if I'll just be an empty shell after I've raised my kids.

But the thing is, I want to give them all of me. I want to struggle with my son over his homework every night because I know it will help him for the future. I want to fund my kids' educational and athletic activities to make them happy, healthy, and learned. I want to read to them every night, as my eyelids droop and I stumble over words. I want to search thrift shops to find clothes that they like and that make them look well-cared for. I want to laugh with them and love them and help them feel cherished and secure. I'm never bored with them, and I would give them my blood to drink if I had to.

Maybe this commitment and certitude are evolutionary. I don't know. It's just there. I feel so well-used. I may be exhausted and nervous at times, but I also have so much positive energy. I'm doing the right thing in my life, even if I don't go out on the town drinking mojitos or resolving international crises (or resolving international crises while drinking mojitos). I guess the bottom line is that the kids are what give my life meaning and shape right now and for the forseeable future. I need to enjoy the ride I'm on, even if it's a roller coaster at times. I need to hang on tight, open my eyes, and shriek with glee from time to time. I love my load and my lot in life, and I'm glad I'm here at this moment.

Three things I noticed in the past 24 hours:

1) In the footage from the post-election celebrations last night, I saw a young black man leaned out the window of a car around 13th and U streets, shouting for joy and waving a large American flag. It stood out for me, because it reminded me of the many times I'd seen the same thing....in Croatia, where it's customary to fly a huge flag out your car window before a wedding. There, the flag made me think of nationalism in the negative sense. Here, I was pleased and amazed. It's something you don't often see here, at least until now.

I had a memorable taxi ride once up Georgia Avenue, from the 9:30 Club to our old apartment in Twin Towers (this was pre-kids, of course). The black taxi driver spoke to me about his experiences after Vietnam, when he was treated in a racist fashion by the DC Police. He said that it made him so mad -- especially after his service to his country -- that he wanted to take his weapon and start shooting. I had heard revealing stories like that from cab drivers before, but never in the U.S. In fact, that was the only time I'd ever heard anything like that in a cab in America. The guy in the car last night called to mind the taxi driver, and all that he had been through. I hope the taxi driver was also out there yesterday, cheering from the heart.

2) In the same footage from 13th and U, I saw a DC Metrobus was slowly making its way through the celebrating crowds. As the bus moved past the camera, some of the people on it began cheering and waving. I thought, wow. These people are probably working poor, either heading home after doing their work or heading to work late for the night shift. But they feel hopeful and excited, and most importantly they feel included enough in the election and its aftermath to cheer out the window of a bus.

3) Earlier that evening, Philip said to me, "Mommy, can the President be a girl, or does he have to be a boy?" I felt like I had been waiting for that question all my life. I said, "The President can be a woman or a man. In fact, there was a woman who ran for President, but she didn't get elected." Yay, Hillary! I'm so happy I'm able to say something like that. And I look forward to saying it to my daughters someday as well. (I said something about Sarah Palin too, but it wasn't as complimentary. But much as she makes me shudder, she's actually something of a role model for working women with kids in that she makes me feel less like a freak for being a full-time working mother of 3.)

So....I'm still cheering and crying for joy and feeling amazed. I'm doing it internally now, but it's still there. Wow....I'm so proud of us. Today on my lunch break I'm going to steal some time to visit the Lincoln Memorial, to enjoy the time.

Race Relations

I wanted to write about race, but I'm not sure how to begin. I feel intimidated by the very topic, but it's all around us all the time. The District of Columbia, where I work, is majority black. Wheaton, MD, where I live, is very mixed and sometimes feels majority Latino. Our neighbors on both sides of us came over from El Salvador over 20 years ago. Our neighborhood school is 37% white, 30% Latino, and 33% "other". The center of Wheaton is filled with small restaurants of a multitude of nationalities, including Korean, Salvadoran, Mexican, Vietnamese, and good old American IHOP. Going to a store in the area means seeing faces of all colors and backgrounds, and you're almost as likely to hear Spanish spoken as you are to hear English.

Every day, everywhere I go, I interact with people from different races. So why do I feel so conflicted about writing about it? And I'm really thinking about black-white relations here. Part of it is the whole liberal guilt thing...the idea that I'm racist but I'm just not acknowledging it, even to myself. Maybe we're all guilty of doing racist things or thinking racist thoughts. My mother and I joke about hitting the lock button in the car when we see who we perceive to be a threatening looking person -- often black, sometimes Latino and sometimes just some white homeless guy. No matter who it is, I feel guilty. But I also don't want to feel like an idiot either if something happens, however unlikely that may be. I remember one time a guy came too close to me in London, and I jerked away instinctively, thinking he might want to mug me. I actually felt vindicated when I saw that he was white. You see, I told an imaginary panel of judges, I'm not racist. I protect myself against potential muggers in a non-discriminatory manner.

I was raised to believe that multicultural is good -- Free to Be You and Me, and all that. The characters in Sesame Street were (and still are) designed to achieve an unspoken racial balance, as were the books we read in school. I think the first time I realized there were different races was in elementary school, when I was around 6 or 7. I overheard someone saying that it was good that our school had 2 black teachers, but maybe we needed more to meet the government requirements.

When I was around 10, I saw the whole "Roots" miniseries. I remember sitting in our basement with our babysitter, watching our old black-and-white tv. I don't remember necessarily being shocked by any given scene, but somehow it all remained with me. Twenty years later, when I was working for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees' Washington office, I asked our Ethiopian assistant to take down a poster of an African refugee working in a field because it looked like she had scars on her back. And then I saw "Roots" again when I was in 8th grade, because our geography teacher required it. I remember dreading the episode when Kunte Kinte's gets his foot chopped off, and cringing in the audience when it finally happened. I also remember that in the book (which I read when I was 12), Kunte Kinte is given a choice between having his foot chopped off and being castrated, and he chooses the former because -- and I remember the exact wording -- "To be a man, you must have sons."

It's easy when you're a kid to somehow shield yourself from what you're seeing. Now, as an adult, I don't think I could watch "Roots" again, just like I don't think I could read all of those World War II Holocaust books I read as a kid. Such horrible, horrible stuff, and it's part of our country's shared history, even if all of our ancestors weren't in the U.S. then. You can talk about why -- racism, evil corporations needing cheap labor in the fields, etc. -- but the bottom line is unthinkable stuff like lynchings and selling someone's kids out from under them. What kind of a long-term impact do things like that over the course of centuries have on a country and a people? It's got to still be affecting us all today. It's odd, because I think we perceive ourselves to be the one country in the world that's free of historical mishegoss, but the legacy of slavery and harsh race relations is clearly ours.

So...I'm just amazed when I see my son and his classmates, and I realize that either they haven't absorbed this stuff yet or they're somehow in a better place with it than their parents and grandparents. My mom, for example, was raised well-off and very liberal on New York's Central Park West. She went to a costly "ethical culture" school with similarly inclined whites and a very few black kids from highly educated and well placed families. One of the white kids -- Mickey Schwerner -- ended up going to Mississippi during the Civil Rights era and was killed in an incident portrayed in "Mississippi Burning". My mother also tells how my grandmother made a complaint about a white bus driver who acted in a racist fashion towards some black customers, and she pressed her case even when it was revealed that the bus driver was Jewish like her. But despite all of this, when my mother dated a black guy in college in the late 1950s, her parents came down dead hard against it. "Think about how it would be for your children", they said to her. The relationship eventually ended, for whatever reason, but I think my grandparents' reaction was telling of their own perhaps unexamined attitudes and of the times. In the 1950s, there was probably little space in America for children of interracial marriages.

Fast forward to the 1970s and 80s, when I was in school. It was post-Civil Rights era. Most of my fellow students were white, save for a few black kids. My friends were mainly white and Asian American. I was in the comfortable position of being in the unexamined majority in my school and my community. To me, racial issues were removed from my life, and the answer to them was simple -- treat everyone equally and just get along. I wrote stories about slave times, based on what I had seen on tv. I knew about and had heard of instances of racism, but it didn't really touch upon my life, or so I believed. My view was that the North (ie, where we lived) was good, and the South (ie, the Confederacy, home to racist southern-accented sheriffs) had been bad and was probably still ignorant and racist in some places. It was pretty simple, and we could be pleased that we were on the good side.

But now that I think of it, maybe that wasn't the experience of everyone at our school. I remember when one girl in my group of high school friends, who was a talented dancer, wasn't offered any of the major parts in our school musical. She attributed it to her being black. I think the school told her that she wasn't a good fit for any of the parts. Was it really racism? Looking back, I think that racism played a part in those decisions, and that the decision to exclude her was wrong. The bottom line was that unfortunately Dawn was an outsider at our school because she was black. And I don't remember saying anything to her about it or protesting in any way. Teenagers are self-centered, but it's also possible that we just couldn't conceive of advocating for Dawn in that way. Instead, we were blissfully comfortable with our position and self-satisfied with our egalitarian values.

I also remember being a teenager and riding in a car with a group of white kids, some of whom were joking about a game called "Hit the n----r". I know I felt superior to the people who were making such awful comments, but I don't remember speaking up to protest. I also remember a close friend of mine in high school saying to me, "There are black people and there are n-----s." Once again, I didn't respond. I knew what she was saying was bad, but I didn't say or do anything. I felt good about what I believed was my lack of racism, but -- looking back -- it's clear my actions didn't match my views.

So, given that background, I've observed my son's development and interactions with interest. And it's been fascinating. First of all, he's as likely to be in the racial and ethnic minority as he is to be in the majority. Not that he notices it, but from daycare on he's been in settings where white kids were at most 50% of the group. For a long time, Philip didn't even notice it. He had friends of all colors and backgrounds, and it didn't phase him to communicate with an assistant teacher who spoke mainly Spanish.

Then last February he brought home an assignment from his pre-K on the Martin Luther King holiday. He had to cut out and color a booklet on King's life. Philip was always very concerned about using the right color in his work, so he instructed me to find a color brown that was "the color of my friend Joed's skin". Not black skin, and not African-American skin -- just skin the same color as that of his friend from Ghana. It was simply descriptive, rather than assigning any kind of meaning to the skin color.

I was happy with this, of course, and I hoped that this way of viewing the world would continue. This year Philip started kindergarten at the above-mentioned multiethnic school. Every day I ask him who he sat next to at lunch. When he deigns to answer me, he tells me names like Ali (Arab or Latino?), Luka (half-Taiwanese, half-Croatian), and Anthony (white). Of course, I'm the one who puts racial labels on these kids, not him. Another time, I asked him about an old friend he had seen at the doctor's office. He wasn't sure who she was, and he asked me, "What color is her skin?" Aha, I thought, he's seeing race at last. When I said her skin was white, he looked confused. "White?", he asked, as if I'd said something crazy. "Like your skin," I said. "What color is your skin?" "Peach", he responded, with all the assurance of a kid who has searched the Crayola box for just the right color.

We've been talking a lot about the election, and Philip is very interested in who his friends are supporting. He came home one day to tell me that his friends Chase and Navaeh liked John McCain. My reaction was -- hmm, that's strange. They're both black, so their families can't be voting for McCain. Then, the other day as we were walking by our neighbors' house, Philip asked who they were voting for. I told him I thought they were voting for Obama, because one of the neighbors had commented favorably on Philip's Obama pin the previous week. "No, mommy," he said. "I think they're voting for McCain." When I asked him why, he said it was because they had something that was the same as McCain's. At first he wouldn't tell me what it was, but when I asked directly he said it was because they had the same color skin as McCain. I asked him, well, what about Navaeh and Chase, and he said that it was okay for them to support McCain because they knew a special McCain song. I couldn't figure that one out, but it seems that he may be thinking more about skin color.

So...Given all of this, I guess I feel positive about the way we're all mixing in the U.S. right now. Not that relations among people of different races are necessarily good or problem-free, but -- to put it in the passive voice language of my government agency -- progress has definitely been made. I love to see my kids playing with a rainbow of peers without seeing race...yet. We'll see how things develop as they become tweens and then...gulp...teens. As for me, I want to say it's more about class (something I'll blog about another time) than about race, but once again I may be too self-satisfied with my views. I may get a frisson of pleasure when I'm the only white person on a bus or in a meeting (my small work team at work is all black except for me), but what does it really mean? I guess the thing is that we're not going to get rid of racial tensions, but maybe we can flood them out with familiarity. If we're repeatedly put in various situations where we're surrounded by people of other ethnicities, won't we at some point lose most of the discomfort we might have had with "the other"? And then maybe we won't exactly be in a post-racial society, but we'll be able to move forward and leave some negative things behind.

This election cycle has been all about that. As I get more and more clutched and anxious as November 4 approaches, I'm glad we can at least cling to that. Regardless of how the election goes (and believe me, I so want one particular person to win), we can already be proud of ourselves as a country that we've taken one teeny tiny step forward. Or let's be more positive -- perhaps it's a giant step. In any case, I know we'll keep on moving forward.

Risky Business

I grew up in an age of expansive optimism. It was the 1970s, and everyone expected to be better off than their parents. Everything was growing...I remember long afternoons running around the neighborhood, drinking kool-aid, chewing Big Buddy bubble gum, watching the Brady Bunch, and then having my mom cook me "sandwich steak" for dinner. We made pinatas and sugar cube pyramids in school to learn about other cultures. We all knew that America was the answer to the world's problems. It was the moral at the end of the story. And every generation would keep getting taller and living better. Sure, there might be an oil shock or two, but we knew we were the happy ending. We were the fade out at the end of the movie, the road that sleepy cowboys rode off into the sunset.

At the same time, I grew up haunted. I gravitated towards stories of war, in particular the stories of children who had survived -- or didn't survive -- World War II. I read When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Mischling Second Degree, My Hiroshima, I am Rosemarie, The House of 60 Fathers, and of course The Diary of Anne Frank. When I was 12, I remember reading a story about a boy who survived a concentration camp, and how he wandered around lost after the war. I remember reading a book about an Armenian girl who somehow managed to survive the massacres. I played "refugee" with my Barbie dolls. Poor Hawaiian Barbie had to flee her home with only her long pink dress and high heels. I was also haunted by "Roots" and slavery (which I can blog about another time), but somehow it was the specter of war and total dislocation that really drew me in.

And I wonder why. It may have started when my 3rd-grade teacher assigned me to do a report on any event that had happened on September 1, and I chose September 1, 1939 (you know that was when Hitler invaded Poland, right?). That got me interested in World War II. But obviously it's also because I'm Jewish. It's not that any of my known relatives perished in the Holocaust, or that I even had much contact with Jews who weren't relatives when I was growing up. But I do remember my friend Miriam talking about Hitler when we were about 10, and having her say "You know, if he was alive today he would kill us." I remember sort of blocking out my response to that. Of course he wouldn't kill us, I thought, or at least he wouldn't succeed. Because we were American, with all of the security that the nationality entailed. So, I pushed those thoughts away. But the idea that life as we knew it could be totally upended overnight has remained with me to this day. The waters may seem calm, but beware the undertow, or the undertoad, as John Irving wrote. God forbid.

Because why should something be impossible just because it has never happened? I also grew up in the nuclear age, living near what could have been (God forbid again) ground zero. I remember that the first Wednesday of the month at 11:30 am, the county always tested the emergency siren. It was located near my nursery school and my elementary school. I recall one girl peed in her pants when the siren went off because the sound scared her so much. It always reminded me of a documentary I had seen as a child on the Battle of Britain, in which black and white footage showed Brits crowding into deep subway stations and fire engines trying to quell greedy flames as air raid sirens went off all around them.

It never occurred to me as a child to tell myself that it could never happen here, so I went and asked my mom which New York subway station we could go to if someone started bombing. She said the 34th Street station near Macy's was pretty deep. Never mind that we lived in the DC area -- New York was closer to my heart. That was in the days when I would ask my father about my worries, and he would jokingly say, "What if? What if? What if an airplane crashed into this building right now?" Something like that would never happen...until it did. After 9/11 one mother told me that her son said, "I feel like the fabric of space-time has been warped", and I could see what he meant. But part of me also felt like, why not? Why shouldn't it happen here? Once something happens, it's totally possible in retrospect.

So, how do you evaluate risk? This is a particularly timely question right now. I am imbued with the spirit of American optimism -- "If you build it, they will come." "A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama." At the same time, sh*t happens, and as the Jews say, "Why does this sh*t keep happening to us?". I want to believe that the stock market will always go up, along with my income, but why should it? I want to believe that I will never be a bag lady. I want to believe that I will never be a refugee. I feel a sense of entitlement, but so have a hell of a lot of other people throughout history, and in the end it's just a word. Just ask my refugee friends from ex-Yugoslavia who lived good lives before the wars there, or pensioners in eastern Europe -- and hey, here as well -- who thought their lives and their plans were rock-solid.

I suppose there are no guarantees, even in so-called good times. And good times for me and for my nation are undoubtedly hellish for some other people around the world. I guess the thing to do is to press on, and try to gather enough information to make wise choices. I think about the Jews in Berlin who left as Hitler came to power, as well as my ancestors who fled the Russian Empire before the turn of the last century. Was their survival due to their intelligence, their connections, their dumb luck, or a combination of it all? Who knows... My religious Christian friend Tonya says what's meant to happen will happen, but that's a hard concept to struggle with. And in the end all you can do is keep moving forward in the face of these fears and try to take action based on some hope or spirit inside you. In the words of Barbara Kingsolver:

Every one of us is called upon, probably many times, to start a new life. A frightening diagnosis, a marriage, a move, a loss of a limb or a job or a loved one...it's impossible to think at first how all this will be possible. Eventually, what moves it all forward is the subterranean ebb and flow of being alive among the living...We hold tight to the old passions of endurance that buckle and creak beneath us, dovetailed, tight as a good wooden boat to carry us onward. And onward full tilt we go, pitched and wrecked and absurdly resolute, driven in spite of everything to make good on a new shore.

So, blast the undertoad and all of these fears. Focus on moving through life thoughtfully and joyously. Prayer can help too, if that's what floats your boat. God willing and the creeks don't rise (another quote from Barbara Kingsolver), inshallah, and all that. Life is simply risky, whether you're American or anyone else. But, as they say, it's better than the alternative. If we can get beyond our fears, if we can act in spite of them rather than in reaction to them, then maybe it will be enough.

Why I Write

Halloween week seems as good a time as any to start this blog. I'm up and blogging because I have some faith that I can produce something interesting, or at least something of interest to some people. My life as it is now -- and perhaps as it may be in the future, if I make some changes that have long been in the works -- is chock-a-block full with details, decisions, and responsibilities that I somehow manage to keep juggling. In fact, I'm afraid that if I stop things may come crashing down, so onward I go.

I'm a classic case of a Woman Who Does Too Much, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because I have so much to do, so I'm glad that I seem to be able to do it. But it's also troublesome, because I may be doing all of these things to block out the reality of being alone. If I put everything down for a minute and just listen, what will I hear? Will my fears and anxieties come rushing in? Fears of sickness, of sadness, of foolishness and uncertainty. All of the beasts of misfortune described in Babar the King -- Misfortune, Anger, Indolence, Stupidity, Ignorance, Cowardice, Laziness, and Fear -- coming to visit and perhaps stay.

I need to have faith that I can work through this dread, and writing is one way to do it. There's something magical and transformative about it. One thing I recall from my "Religion and Culture of Islam" class in college is God's first words to Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel -- "Read". As if words, written or spoken, contained some kind of intangible power to change lives and beliefs. So, that's what I feel like I'm doing -- on a much smaller scale and in a nonreligious fashion, of course. Writing to keep the fears away, but also writing to articulate them and work through them. It somehow transforms the defensive crouch of my emotions into a clearer and more positive stance. And if writing can't put my fears to rest, at least I can use it to draw upon positive elements and blessings in my life.

And those positive elements are too many to list now, as at this very moment I'm juggling late night pre-Halloween baking, an annoyed husband, the need for sleep, and a disorganized house. I'll just list Babar the King's graceful winged elephants of hope instead -- Goodness, Intelligence, Love, Happiness, Hope, Patience, Work, Learning, Joy, Patience, Perseverance, and Courage.

On this 80th anniversary of Black Thursday, may everyone at least feel some freedom from fear.

Eve