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.