Jiaozi

Checking in

Well, that was a bit of a hiatus, wasn't it?

True to form, I have started several posts and not finished them.

Also, deviating from form, I took a 10-day trip to India! Just like that! My sister was adopting her second child, and my schedule was momentarily flexible, so I seized the opportunity. I really needed a break from routine. Getting away did me a world of good and gave me fresh appreciation for my family and home.

I am still pondering what to do about this blog. It seems like such a burden to keep it up, but I'm pretty sure as soon as I deleted it I'd think of something I want to say. I'm just not sure this format works anymore. The blogging zeitgeist has changed, and, like a lot of people, I'm thinking more in terms of a magazine format -- less personal diary, more sharing of useful information from different viewpoints. I'm just putting it out there for the universe right now. Anyone want to join me? Drop me a line.

That was the year that was

We had a lovely holiday. Once the seasonal performances and parties (school, dance, choir, etc.) were past, we took it easy for the most part and got all caught up on our rest, play, and fancy-food-eating.

Our artificial tree has been slowly shutting down, and more than half of the (allegedly "always on") lights didn't work this year. It didn't seem worth our effort to untangle the lights and replace them, so we got a live tree. It was a pretty tree, and the kids had been after us to get a live tree, but secretly I want to get a new artificial tree next year. They hold ornaments better. Also, less vacuuming. I got LED lights to go on the tree, as our little nod to the planet, and their intense color took some getting used to, but by the end I was sorry to see the tree go. We spent today dismantling the decorations and dusting and vacuuming, and now the living room looks crisp and clean and spacious, so all is good. I like clean. Clean is a good way to start the year.

I want to do something different this year. I don't know what yet, but I'm hoping the universe is listening. I want to do something useful, something that requires a little more creativity than the work I do for pay. Join a group blog, write articles for publication -- we'll see. This blog badly needs a makeover, but it may need more than a cosmetic overhaul, and I just don't know where to go with that. Blogging feels...self-indulgent after a while. Maybe that's why I am having difficulty finding time to blog. After five years -- and I just checked; I started this blog in January 2006 -- what more is there to say about your daily life that is of any importance? I want to try thinking bigger.

But for now, the house is clean, the children are happy and well fed, and that is something. Happy New Year.

 

 

Dear Blog

Dear Blog:

I know. It's been a while. Even the advertisers don't send me reminders anymore.

I'm really sorry! It's not you, it's me.

There's nothing I'd like better than to curl up on the couch with you and listen to Christmas music. Maybe watch a movie -- remember how much you liked Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol? Share a hot toddy.

But you know I have a job to do. There's no holiday break in my line of work. Copy has to be written, children driven to activities, clothes washed. The cats won't stop throwing up or the trees take a break from dropping needles just because it's the most wonderful time of the year.

I promise that after the holidays, things will be different. Maybe we can go away together, just you and me. Spend a little quality time doing the things we want to do.

You know you're always on my mind. But the kids -- I think I hear them calling. They want to bake cookies. Just a few more days, okay? I'll make everything right, I promise.

Sister Carrie

It's November

We had a six-hour window of nice weather that perfectly coincided with trick-or-treating, and now the Waters of November have arrived. I refuse to participate in anything Christmas-related until December. Just warning you.

It's National Adoption Month, and I suppose I should say something profound, but I don't have time for profundity these days. I might write some more letters of complaint, however.

If you are just dying to know what I'm thinking on a day-to-day basis, you can follow me on Twitter.Search| People for Sister Carrie and you can probably figure out which one is me. Glamorous it ain't.

August hiatus, I guess

Well, I didn't really intend to go on August hiatus, but that's the way it has worked out. I've been essentially working two jobs this summer (writing and child management), we took four days' vacation, and my good intentions were sidelined. I should have looked at my pattern of blogging and seen that August = not a big blogging month for me. Maybe I'll be wiser next year.

I do have several posts half-done and simmering on the back burner, so please come back in September and we'll chat some more.

E. B. White: In a class by himself

I have been re-reading E. B. White lately. My copy of Essays of E. B. White went missing a while back, and I finally had to concede defeat and get another copy. This is a little disorienting, because the type in the new edition has been reset (and apparently retyped, judging from the typographical errors), and the pages don't look the same to me. But the content is as sublime as ever.

Reading White is a tonic for writer and reader alike. His writing has never been equaled for charm and clarity. Look at this paragraph from his 1957 essay "A Report in Spring" -- not a word is wasted.

The smelts are running in the brooks. We had a mess for Monday lunch, brought to us by our son, who was fishing at two in the morning. At this season, a smelt brook is the nightclub of the town, and when the tide is a late one, smelting is for the young, who like small hours and late society.

When I want mental refreshment, I turn to White's essays. Though he is better known today as an author of children's books, he wrote scores of essays and casual pieces for The New Yorker and Harper's. Sometimes he wrote about life in New York, sometimes about his childhood or trips to Florida, but most often he wrote about daily life on his little saltwater farm in Maine. He had a micro-farm, I suppose, before the word even existed -- just a few geese and chickens and pigs, enough production to feed his family with some left over to trade with other farmers.

White was a curmudgeon, but the gentlest of curmudgeons. He loved the simple life and railed against such modern "improvements" as tarred roads, outboard motors, and electric stoves, But he was not completely old-fashioned; he also decried warmongering and racism. In "On a Florida Key" in 1941, he expressed his discomfort with the segregated movie theaters of the South:

I saw a patriotic newsreel there the other day which ended with a picture of the American flag blowing in the breeze, and the words: one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Everyone clapped, but I decided I could not clap for liberty and justice (for all) while I was in a theater from which Negroes had been barred. And I felt there were too many people in the world who think liberty and justice for all means liberty and justice for themselves and their friends.

An observation, alas, that is still true today.

Every summer, when the weather turns hot, I have a yearning to re-read White's essay "Once More to the Lake," a memento mori disguised as a nostalgic vacation story about returning with his young son to the lake where he went on holiday as a child. Reading his prose, as clear as lake water, I can smell the musty odor of an old lake cabin and hear the dragonflies buzzing over the reeds.

Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and the life along the shore was the design, the cottages with their innocent and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky, the little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp....

White wrote about topics great -- war, the arms race, pollution, racism -- and small -- the joys of finding a new clutch of goose eggs, the delicate step of a mother raccoon making her way from tree to earth -- with clarity and compassion, but I think I like his small, everyday stories best. His aims as a writer were simple:

As a writing man, or secretary, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly and unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.

The safekeeping of items of enchantment -- that is reason enough to engage in the work of writing, isn't it? It's good to be reminded of that.

Good intentions

I meant to post this week. And last. I have a post about 60% finished. Just no time to get that final 40% out there.

It's my annual summer slump. I always think I'll have more time to write in the summer, and I actually have less. I am in the car a minimum of 9 hours a week, and I work from home. It's all spent driving kids places -- ballet class, soccer, kung fu, soccer, doctors and dentists. This is really frustrating because I can't do anything else while I'm driving. I don't mind waiting for kids to finish their class because I can haul my laptop or crocheting with me and make use of the time, but driving time isn't good for anything but listening to music. Which I'd rather do sitting in a chaise longue on the deck with a cold drink -- though that's not likely to happen. The things we do for our kids....

Anyway. Post in work.

Lost

Sorry. BlogHer is reminding me that I haven't posted in two weeks. I'm in a bit of a blogging slump (that has lasted for, oh, the past year).

It's not that I don't have things to say, it's just that I don't have time to focus and get them written properly. I'm working, still doing all the household stuff, driving kids to end-of-year activities, and dealing with middle-age brain muddle. I want to find my Blogging 2.0, but I'm stumped as to what direction to take.

Plus the finale of Lost undid me. I cried and cried. It was cathartic. And when all the smoke had cleared, I found that the character I identified with most was Ben. I know. It's alarming. There's a message here. I'm just not sure what it is.

Whose life story is it anyway?

I am still mulling over questions of privacy and blogging and children. (Long past the point where everyone else has lost interest, I suppose.)

Most of us would agree that it's a good idea to protect our children's identity and privacy and to write about them with empathy and discretion. I am satisfied that issues of security, privacy, and compassion do not necessarily have to stand in the way of telling our family stories.

But I have this nagging feeling that there's another question to resolve. And that is, as I've mentioned before, the question of whose story it is to tell. Who gets to control the narrative? I suspect this will be an increasingly important question as the years pass and our children get older.

Maybe I think about this because I have two teenagers who are in the process of defining themselves. Every day I come face to face with their existence as beings separate from me. It's jarring at times.

When your child is a baby, it's hard to imagine that the day will come when she is not part of you nor you part of her. (I suppose this feeling is even more intense for a mother who carried and birthed a child -- how can a person whom you actually made yourself ever be separate from you?) When you are immersed in the warm glow of baby love, it's easy to feel that you are joined at the hip and soul. Your baby comes to you for comfort, protection, and entertainment. You are her world.

The first inkling you get that you are separate persons is when your child becomes a toddler and begins to exert her will in opposition to yours -- but even then, children tend to circle back to their parents for reassurance. Reassurance in turn gives them the confidence to keep exploring. The circles get bigger, but they still come back. For a while.

When my children were young, I didn't distinguish much between my story and their story and the family's story. They were all of a piece. I tried to tell all our stories with empathy and discretion, but there was no question of asking my children's permission.

As they get older, I hold back more. It is almost unconscious. You may notice that the amount I say about each family member is inversely proportional to their ages. I do not write less about Big A or Abbey for lack of interest, but because their stories are not mine to tell. I don't write as much about Bess as I do about Ella, not only because Bess is old enough to be embarrassed by oversharing, but because I don't necessarily know what is happening inside her head or heart. Nor is it really my business. She is a rather private person. I have to respect that.

May, on the other hand, is more of a sharer, but she is also a gifted writer, and she is already beginning to tell her own story in her own words. (Sometimes she lets me pass those words on to you.) And that is as it should be.

When a child reaches a certain age, empathy and discretion are not enough. She has to tell her own story, and no one can tell it for her, because no one, not even her parents, knows what she is thinking and feeling. No one else can assign meaning to the events in her life.

I can write about my perspective as an adoptive mother. Naturally, my children's lives are an important part of that story. But drawing the line between their stories and mine is exquisitely difficult. It's like microsurgery. It takes a clear head and a steady hand. Wish me luck.

Privacy policy

Though I write about my children, I have taken steps to protect their privacy. I use false names for them on my blog (though I have used their real names in print, and probably would do so again). I try not to use their names in social media. I intentionally leave out certain details of their lives -- dates, time periods, locations, names. I have told bits and pieces of their stories, but out of order, making it difficult to piece together. I don't use my full name on the blog, and I try not to link my professional and social profiles to my blog profile, though it would be nice to use it as a writing credit (because a blog with 30 readers would be a great launching pad for a book, right?).

I suppose a really determined person could study these bits of information and fill in the details, but that would be pretty stalker-y, and I don't think I attract that kind of interest.

Initially, my motivation for leaving out details was to keep our family from being exploited. It sounds paranoid, but I was afraid that someone might contact us and claim to have information about a birthfamily, for example. I wanted to leave enough unknown that they would have to provide me with the information and not parrot back what I'd already said. I think the likelihood of that sort of thing happening in the future is increasing.

More recently, my goal has been never to provide enough information for my children's acquaintances to be able to Google them and find out things they shouldn't know. As Michele pointed out in a comment on my previous post, kids could potentially use that kind of information to embarrass or even bully one another. Once you post too much information, you can never take it back.

Of course, "too much information" is in the eye of the beholder. Writer Anne Lamott, whom I usually love, has put in writing some extremely personal things about herself and her son, Sam. She says, "Audiences only know the stuff I've chosen to share with them," but considering what she has put out there -- she has written about his birth, infancy, and childhood; his teen sullenness, drug use, and stint in rehab; his reunion with his absent father; and his becoming a teen parent -- you have to wonder what she could possibly have left out. (For Sam's sake, it's best not to think too hard about it.)

To try to clarify how much is too much, I went to the source: my daughters. Their thoughts are reflective of their current social development. Bess and May wanted to be "interviewed" together. The discussion went something like this:

Me: Do you think it's okay for parents to blog about their kids?

May: What does that mean? Like on Facebook?

Me: No, I mean on a blog. On the Internet. You've seen my blog.

May: Sure, as long as it's not embarrassing.

Bess: As long as they get permission. I don't want too embarrassing stuff out there.

Me: What about adoption stuff?

Bess: I'm fine with that.

Me: What if it was a really personal thing? Like, I've seen people say, "My child was found in a box on someone's doorstep." Is that too personal?

Bess: No, I'm fine with that.

May: Me too.

Me: Do you think parents should use fake names for their kids?

May: If the child wants you to.

Bess: Yeah, fake names are good.

Me: What about in something like a book?

Bess: You should use real names in a book. You have to tell the truth. But ask your kids if it's okay to say something.

Me: So what are some things you wouldn't want me to talk about on my blog?

May: Nothing too personal, like your social life.

Bess: My rule is it's okay as long as if one of my friends reads it I won't be embarrassed about it.

Me: So I shouldn't say if you like some guy, right?

The girls nodded their heads vigorously.

You can see that their chief concern is social embarrassment. Details of their childhood and origin are okay, if told with dignity. Anything that could possibly be construed as embarrassing -- and, having once been a teenage girl, I would imagine that encompasses a great deal -- is out.

I talked to Ella separately.

Me: Do you think it's okay for me to write about you on the Internet?

Ella: Sure.

Me: What about in a book? Could I use your real name?

Ella: Yeah! Would I be famous then? I want to be famous.

Um, okay. The truth is, my kids are publicity hounds. They have had their pictures in the newspaper before, and they take a keen interest in their own press coverage. I've shown them my magazine and newspaper articles, and they're mostly interested in the pictures. They do read my blog, or they could read my blog, if they wanted to; they think it's boring. Perhaps that's another way I protect their privacy -- by being so boring no one under the age of 35 will be interested in anything I have to say.

As long as I use the guideline WWMTSD -- What Would My Teenage Self Do -- I think I'll be okay. For now. But someday that will not be enough.