Girl Power

About a year ago, the girl child auditioned for and was accepted into Project Girl Performance Collective. They're a group of young women who write and perform their own material at all kinds of cool places: The New York International Fringe Festival, Planet Hollywood, the UN, the White House. Yeah, the White House. The one in Washington, DC. Like I said, cool places. Anyway, these girls write about what it's like to be a young woman today, in the US and in any other part of the world. They talk about everything from incest to eating disorders to becoming a child bride. They work in high schools from Harlem to the Jersey shore. The organization gives girls a voice. Some speak for girls in other countries. Some speak for themselves. Some of these girls tell stories that can break your heart. They make you want to wrap your arms around them and never let them go.

My girl child is lucky. She leads a charmed life. I'm not exaggerating. I can't know what her last life was like, but she must've done something right because so far it's been pretty darn easy for her in this one. She's that girl in school you'd love to hate but she's nice to you so you can't. She's pretty, gets good grades, is talented and has an adorable boyfriend who respects her and likes her as much as she likes him. They have a love of the puppiest kind. And oh, she goes to a really amazing high school where she has a bunch of smart, creative friends. She's hasn't been bullied (well, what she considers bullied), had a bad body image, or real problems with her fabulously adoring parents. That's what she calls us. Fabulously adoring parents. No, not really. I think that she sometimes calls us other things, but I won't repeat them here. They are usually reserved for those times when we force her to clean her room or do something equally distasteful. Like I said, she's a lucky kid.

When she was a little girl, in kindergarten, she met her first mean girl. The kind of girl that says she'll sit with you on the bus and then doesn't because she wants to sit with a boy. The kind that makes you cry when you and another friend go over her house to play and they ignore you. When you ask if they're going to be in the school show, the mean girl says yes, but you can't be in it. The girl that makes you feel bad about what you've chosen to wear that day. And this is just kindergarten. When the girl child tells me these things alarm bells go off in my head. I break into a sweat. Here it comes. I run out and buy Odd Girl Out. I go to a local high school to see Rachel Simmons speak. I read Queen Bees and Wannabees. And I tell my 6-year-old that real friends don't make you feel badly about yourself. And you know what? She listened. To her mother. Yeah, I was as surprised as you are.

I had her separated from the mean girl in school so she could make other friends, and the school honored it for two years. Boy, you should have seen the teacher's face when I asked for that one. She had absolutely no idea. The year they put the girl child back with the mean girl, the mean girl tried to turn the other girls against her. So my girl made friends with the boys, and she forgot all about the mean girl. In fifth grade she made a new friend who one day picked a fight. My girl was crushed. She burst into tears at dinner. I told her to try to talk it out, but her friend wouldn't even take a dropped pencil from her hand. My advice? Try to talk to her three times. If it doesn't work out, then move on. Kind of like Yom Kippur. In a random kind of way. I told her that there are always kids that will want to be her friend. And there were. And the mean girls? She just chooses not to recognize them, and they all get along. I told you, she's a lucky kid.

Sometimes, when it comes time for her to write her pieces for PGPC, she has a hard time coming up with ideas. But I don't. "Why don't you write about mean girls?" I suggest. "I can't," she replies. "I don't really know any mean girls." What? Dear Lord, how can you possibly not know any mean girls. I do. I was bullied by mean girls. Wait, I was a mean girl. I was a mean girl and bullied by mean girls. I could write a great piece about that. I even know mean girl women. "OK then," I say, "Why don't you imagine you're someone else, you know, from the other side of things. Like, be the girl who doesn't get the guy." I say that because I know all about that stuff. I could write about that. And about poor body image. And about doing things to fit in. Now I'm getting so excited that I'm starting to sound like Arnold Horshack from Welcome Back Kotter. "Oooohhh! Oooohhh! Oooohhh!" This is about the time she says to me, "Mommy, you know we probably wouldn't have been friends if I had known you then. You were a follower and had zero self-esteem. None of my friends are like that." Part of me feels badly when she says stuff like that, but a bigger part of me starts jumping up and down and shouting at the top of my lungs, "Yay!" I must've done something right.

I'm inspired by my girl child. Because of her, I've discovered that I want to write. I've discovered that I can write. Maybe I can be a "Project Mom." Oh, the name is changing after the new year to "Girl Be Heard." Maybe I can be in "Mom Be Heard?" Hmmmm. That won't work. No one wants to listen to their mother.




If you're in Brooklyn Heights on December 23, check out PGPC/Girl Be Heard
@ 2:00
Congregation Mt. Sinai
250 Cadman Plaza West 
Brooklyn Heights

Like them on FB to find out what they're up to.

And donate if you can.

http://www.projectgirlperformancecollective.org/donate

A tribute to everyday heroes

When I heard about the Newtown shootings, I had this fantasy of Arnold Schwarzenegger being there to save the day, guns blazing. But the reality was much different. The everyday heroes: teachers, administrators, and counselors, were the ones that were really there, valiantly protecting the children. How does one pay tribute to them? They hid their children in closets and in bathroom stalls, locking the doors and standing guard, holding their childrens' faces and telling them that they loved them. And some of them gave their lives.

I want to tell them that I admire their bravery and their sacrifice. The best way I can do this, I figure, is to pay tribute to some of my own teachers. These were the teachers that made a difference in my life. My reasoning may seem trivial to you. There are no grand gestures listed in the paragraphs below. No one took my terrible life and turned it around, because frankly, my life wasn't terrible. Many of my teachers were good, and taught me things. But years (and years . . .  and years . . . ) later, these are the teachers that stand out in my memory. Although I didn't know it at the time, looking back I can see that I responded the way I did to them because I knew somewhere, deep in my kid-mind, that they were doing their jobs with love.

To my second grade teacher, Mrs. LaBove, for her gentleness and patience, and for letting me stay inside at recess when one of the boys chased me around the playground and tried to kiss me. She was my savior, and she let me make artwork in her classroom, my favorite thing in the world to do, while the other kids played outside.

To my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Tighe, for giving me confidence after a lousy third grade year. Well, lousy for me—I got my first B. And that report I turned in on Mars, the god of war? It was really supposed to be about the planet Mars. And she still gave me an A. She wouldn't let me fail. She eventually became a principal. And now I have the pleasure of being Mrs. Tighe's facebook friend. I think that's cool.

To my sixth grade English teacher, Miss Wolfe. I was in Miss Wolfe's first class. She was right out of college, and we all thought she was the coolest thing. She made us recite "Amidst the mists and coldest frosts . . ." in front of the class. It gave me courage. And if you ask me to do it today, I still can. She went on to be in charge of the gifted and talented program at the intermediate school. My regret is that she retired a few years before my own children entered the program.

And finally, to my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Stumpf. It was the 1970s and Mrs. Stumpf was anything but mod. She was an older woman, and her style ran to suits in pastel colors. She wore her silver hair up in one of those 1960s poufy hairdos. She taught us how to diagram sentences, yet we all loved to go to her class. Crazy, right? Kids these days don't learn how to diagram sentences anymore. I think that maybe they should. But anyway, she had this rubber ball that she would toss out to us kids when she asked us questions. And we thought it was hysterical when she tied Gary's hair back with a ribbon to keep it from flopping in his eyes. She wanted to see his face.

I know now that if Mrs. Stumpf had been our teacher and something terrible had happened at our school, she would have held our faces in her hands and told us that she loved us. Any of those teachers would have. And as for Arnold? He played a kindergarten teacher in the film Kindergarten Cop. I love that movie, and so do my kids. Because the best parts are not when he saves the day, guns blazing, but when he's interacting with the kids. When he's teaching.

Every mother's nightmare

Every mother's nightmare happened today. Oh wait. Just about every person's nightmare happened today. I sat at my desk and I cried. All I could think of was my kids. And those kids. And those kids' families and friends and them rushing to the school to find out it happened to them. It happened to them.

I was supposed to go to the office holiday party, but I could only leave my desk for a little while. My kids were coming into the city later in the evening, and I couldn't wait to see them. And I really couldn't think about having fun. Not today.

I can understand a gun for hunting. I can even understand a revolver if someone really feels they need protection. But an automatic weapon? Nope, sorry. Don't get it. Don't even want to try. Don't understand why a 20 something would need it, unless he's in a war zone. Newtown, CT? Not even close to a war zone.

Tonight, the boy child suggested that if a person wants to buy an automatic weapon, he should be sold a musket instead. And a powder horn. And a lead ball. And then, he can bear arms the way the framers of the constitution intended. Because I doubt they were thinking about arms that could fire a hundred rounds in the blink of an eye. I don't think they imagined that at all.

New York City Subway Ride

Why is it that walking down into the subway is like walking onto the set of a Fellini movie? Well, not all the time. But sometimes. It's entertaining. There's that tiny little woman riding down the escalator. She must be 4 foot 9, wearing a forest green tweed coat and beige tam, her black purse looped over her elbow. Right behind her is a six foot tall woman with her blond hair in a flip. They look great together. I wonder if they notice. The bubbly black woman with the dyed red pseudo beehive hairdo is wearing cats eye glasses. She tries to hand each of them an AM New York, but neither of them take it. On the platform, there's a grizzled looking guy with wild hair, muttering to himself. He's wearing a hospital gown and has a hospital blanket wrapped around his neck like a scarf. His lit cigarette dangles from his fingers. I make a wide loop around that guy, and of course, I just miss the uptown F train; the doors close just as I get to them. When the next train comes, a troop of girl scouts from Virginia rushes past. I know they're from Virginia because they're carrying signs that say "We're from Virginia." The car smells like ammonia and there are some wet spots on the floor. Down the other end is a tall transvestite in a short skirt saying "Ni hao" to everyone she sees. She's got nice legs. Of course she does. Transvestites always have the best legs. Her friend is wearing a suit. I don't know if he has nice legs.

Now that the weather has gotten colder, I've started taking the subway to work in the morning. Some would call it the ultimate in laziness, but taking two trains two stops isn't necessarily a bad thing. I like riding the subway. I like reading Poetry in Motion. I like the Bryant Park station, with it's golden tree root mosaics and its quotes about nature. Who would've thought to put Mother Goose and Ovid next to each other? It's warm and mostly dry. The accordion player is good. And besides, I won't go into what the subway does smell like, but it ain't bacon. Helps me stay on my diet.

New York City Morning

Did you ever notice that New York City smells like bacon in the morning? I am not imagining this. Bacon.

I know, some of you will disagree with me. You will say that the city smells like other things, many of them unsavory. Perhaps it's because I'm trying to lose a couple of pounds, but all I can smell is the bacon. And sometimes coffee. And sometimes freshly baked bread. That's when I pass by Pret.

I think that Pret must have one of those machines that sends the smell of the baking bread out into the street to grab people as they pass by. You know how in cartoons there's a kind of vapor that wafts over, tickles a character under the nose and then lifts him off the ground and carries him to the tempting food? That's what happened to me this morning. It carried me into Pret. One cream cheese, basil and tomato on a baguette later, I can't say I'm sorry. Well, except for the fact that there was no bacon.

Absent Presence

The girl child and I have no secrets. Really. I know you won’t believe me when I say that. You think I'm being naive. How is it that a 15-year-old girl would tell her mother everything? I can hear you. You're laughing at me, but it's true. She tells me stuff that, sometimes, I really don’t want to know. I've caught myself saying things like, "Are you sure you want to tell this to your mother?" To which she replies, "Why not, it's not so bad. It's not like I'm blah blah blah blah . . ." That's when I kind of mentally hold my ears and sing “la la la” in my head because I'm really sure I don't want to know what the blah blah blah is all about that she could be doing. But I let her talk. I do this because if she begins to censor herself, I’m terrified that she will stop telling me the things that I love to hear. I’m not around that much. I want to know it all.

I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to be present in a life in which I’m typically absent. Balance doesn’t come easily to me. At work, it’s: “That big author is coming in on Thursday afternoon at 4:30 so why don’t you come by and join us for a little toast in celebration of his new book?” So I’m thinking, hell yeah, would love to, but you know I leave at 4:00 but I’d really like to meet this guy and I guess I could take a later bus but that would mean that I won’t get home until about 7:30-8:00 because there will be traffic by then and then the family will wait for me to eat dinner because that’s what they do and the girl child has a vocab test and the boy child has a paper due and I really wanted to take the boy child to his dance class at 7:00 because that’s when we get a little alone time in the car to talk. I have to think fast. But I can’t really say what I’m thinking, can I? No, not really. So, I weigh my options. And then I head home. If I don’t, I will only have a couple of waking hours with my family that day.

I am physically absent as a parent. On a regular day I leave the house at 5:30 a.m and I don’t get home until almost 6:30 p.m. I try to get to bed before 10:00 so I can do it all over again the next day without falling over. Contact with the kids during the week consists of phone calls in the morning, phone calls when they get home from school, and texts from the bus. I spend my few hours before bedtime watching the TV shows that they like so I can sit with them. I have a love/hate relationship with Abby Lee. Obviously, I don’t get out much. I keep up with their schoolwork and check their grades. When something goes wrong at school, I am the Momminator. Don’t mess with me.

As for the rest of the family, I am absent from my marriage more physically and emotionally than I am with the kids. In a few years they will be off to college and I expect I’ll have more of a chance to reconnect with my husband then. I’m hoping that I’m right. I am absent as a daughter, thinking that another Friday night has gone by without a dinner with Mommy like we used to have before I began commuting, and knowing that I won’t be able to make up for that. Ever. You know, I tell her everything, and she generally tells me what she ate that day. Sometimes, when she tells me she’s not feeling well I want to put my hands over my ears and sing “la la la.” I’m terrified that she will stop telling me the things that I need to hear. I’m not around that much. I want to know it all.

That's How I Roll

Sometimes I wonder if I snore when I fall asleep on the bus. I'll awaken with a start to find my mouth slightly open. Well, sometimes more than slightly. Did I wake myself up because I was snoring? There are mornings I get paranoid and think that no one is taking the seat next to me because I am known to everyone, except to myself of course, as "The Snoring Lady." I wouldn't put it past the others for naming me that. I have been known to occasionally make up names for other commuters, since many of us hang out together for months, even years, without properly introducing ourselves. In my commuter world, "Disheveled Guy" always looks like he's running late and hasn't had a chance to put on his tie or comb his hair. "Kindle Man" busies himself with his reading device every morning. I try to keep the nicknaming to a minimum since that time I ran into "Indian Doctor Guy" at the movie theater, got all excited, and almost called out to him, "Hey, Indian Doctor Guy! What are you doing here?"

I wouldn't worry so much about the snoring thing if I were riding the train instead of the bus. The train is different. The lights are bright, the people are chatty, the guy across the way is typically eating something pungent. No matter what time of day it is, there is inevitably some drunk guy in my car. Even if I could fall asleep, I doubt that anyone would notice if I were snoring.

But the bus? The bus has an unwritten code of conduct. It's kind of like the ten commandments of bus commuting:

Thou shalt not cut the line.
Thou shalt only take up one seat. 
Thou shalt keep thy seat in a fully or almost fully upright position, even though it COULD go back further.
Thou shalt not eat on the bus.
Thou shalt not talk to thy neighbor, except in a whisper.
Thou shalt not talk on thy cell phone, except in a whisper.
Thou shalt stow large luggage under the bus and not by thy feet.
Thou shalt not leave trash on the seat or floor.
Thou shalt exit the bus from front to back, by alternating rows, beginning on the right.
Thou shalt thank the bus driver.

Not everyone follows these rules, but most riders do. On Wednesday, though, some of the commandments get broken. On Wednesday, there is at least one bridge club outing for lunch and a matinee. The calling of husbands for bus stop pick-up alone typically breaks at least two commandments.

The train does not have commandments. It's a freakin' free-for-all. I have been there when people cram onto the platforms and push through the doors, racing for seats, knocking down old ladies and small children and . . . well, maybe I'm exaggerating slightly here, but there is often more than a bit of cramming and racing and pushing. It can be stressful. I don't mean to dis train people. I've been a train person. Some of my best friends are train people. It's just the way I see it. I take the bus. That's how I roll.

After Hurricane Sandy, the trains didn't run for a month. I'd like to say that we all had a kumbaya moment, the train people and the bus people. The lines were long, the parking lots were full, traffic was terrible, and the Commandments flew out the window. Tempers were short. And, like the rest of the aftermath of Sandy, it wasn't pretty. Once the trains were up and running again, most of the train people were happy to go back. And I'll admit that I wasn't sorry to see them go. But I have noticed that a few of them stayed. I guess they don't mind my snoring.