For the Time Being

I've had poetry on my mind a lot recently. Discovered that my cousin and I share a similar interest in poetry and have enjoyed swapping favorite stanzas with him over Twitter today. That is what took me to W.H. Auden's "For the Time Being: Christmas Oratorio". Patrick and I have tried each year, over the course of our marriage, to set some time aside each holiday season to read "For the Time Being" together, by a fire, with a glass of wine. And T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" (actually, it was you who first introduced me to "April is the cruelest month..."). It has been one of our grounding traditions.

But we haven't done it for a while. Too much to get done over the holiday season. Too much after a full year of pounding our way through the days, weeks, months. Too hard to find time alone. Too much. Too hard. Too little.

All the same reasons I haven't posted here for months! The "bearing it on our shoulders" discussion turned into debilitating pain for me. Pain that brought me to my knees, that has forced me to "pay attention to myself." Pain that has prompted me to put sessions with clinical social worker and massage therapists at the top of the "To Do" list each week. Pain that has miraculously, however, led me back into being.

So, now that I can extend my arm again, I'm reaching out to check on how it's all going with you. I was at a swim meet with Sadie yesterday. After a year of swimming, we are supporting her as she explores the competitive side of swimming. She has done a couple of meets this fall, with me as her ground crew, and it has been a good experience for both of us, I think. She is a strong, beautiful swimmer, who is just starting to realize what her body can do for her. It is very fun to be a part of that discovery.

Seeing her in a swim suit, however, I acknowledge to myself that she and I have made absolutely no headway on the very issue that brought you and I to this blog. She is getting taller, but her weight -- her circumference -- is growing proportionally. And, I say to myself, "Why do I blog? What a waste of time when I can't even help my own daughter. Why do I make our obesity public when I'm not even committed to doing anything about it for her...or me?"

And just about then I strike up a conversation with a "Facebook friend", someone I know casually in the neighborhood and mostly via Facebook. And after a while she says, "I read what you wrote", meaning this blog. And that was it. We could talk about it. About our girls, and why we were giving our Saturday mornings to that damn swim meet, and about our own motivations and barriers for taking care of ourselves, and about the intricate and confusing dance of trying to balance a life, a marriage, a family, a household budget, the self-confidence of all involved, while trying to facilitate an environment of trust and unconditional love. Whew! And, right there on the swim deck, I felt very not alone in all of this that I struggle with every day.

I am so grateful that you have given me this space to talk so candidly. And that from it, other conversations -- personal, painful, growing, supportive conversations -- have blossomed.

So I will continue to contribute and protect this place where we come together -- as mothers, as women who once knew better than anyone else in the world and now have 30 years of time under our belt -- a place where we can come together and just be. For the time being.

And, while I hope I'm not violating Sadie's trust, here's a photo from the meet. Because she's a beautiful, amazing kid, and I'm so grateful that I have been chosen as her ground crew!

Where is Page Hall?

Page Hall is the primarily-freshman dorm at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California.

The college's website states: "Nearly half of Westmont’s first-year students call Page Hall home. If you know alumnae who have lived in this residence hall, you have probably heard their nostalgic enthusiasm for their first-year experience.

"Page’s traditional layout, in which all the rooms open to a long, central hallway, offers many opportunities to meet others and forge new friendships. The hallways are convenient for gathering a late-night pizza party, sharing ideas about a class project, or simply enjoying some casual conversation."

I guess that sets the stage where our conversation began!

Never Losing Your Grip

I have been part of a discussion group this summer called "Healthy Child - Healthy Planet", a series of readings compiled by the Northwest Earth Institute. The readings cover values, rituals, food and health, technology, nature...the whole gambit of pressures that are real in lives as we raise kids and sustain marriages. But the readings on advertising especially struck me.

One selection puts forth that advertising has taken the place of cosmology within Western culture, that consumerism has become the dominant faith in our world. Brian Swimme, the author, states, "At a deeper level, we need to confront the power of the advertiser to promulgate a worldview...based on dissatisfaction and craving."

The reading and following discussion with other parents has given me a new awareness of how much energy I put into avoiding dissatisfaction and craving, of filling the void, the pain, soothing the craving with whatever is at hand. This makes perfect sense from the perspective of a life of being overweight. It makes sense on the many decisions (and I use the term loosely) I've made based upon my desire to purchase -- or be able to purchase -- something. It makes sense in what feels like an undercurrent in my personal history of striving to get somewhere, some thing, some place. And it makes sense as to why my "new dissatisfaction" stems from a life that is dictated by "so much stuff".

So what happens if I let myself just be dissatisfied? What happens if I live with the discomfort for a while, if I don't rush to fill it? What happens if I don't over extend to maintain an image of "normal"?

My daughter Callie and I read a book this summer, "Blue Willow" by Doris Gates. Written in the 1940's, it is the story of a girl whose father lost his ranch in the Dust Bowl and they, along with her stepmother, now are migrant workers in California's San Joaquin Valley. The only possession Janey has is a Blue Willow plate that belonged to her deceased mother. The plate is her connection with a time that once was and her hope for what someday may be -- a real home. Reading this book during the worst economic crisis since 1929, and during another move for my family, took on all new meaning from when I read it as a child.

At one point, Janey's father, trying to make sense of where they've come from and of what their life is now, tells her, "Courage means never losing your grip." So simple, so straightforward, what you could call "hardboiled", that phrase has been my personal slogan this summer.

When times are rough, confusing, when I doubt my past decisions and question my ability to make the right choice this time, when I can't see beyond the next step, it is time to just slow down, take a deep breath, and hang on. When I'm sad, feel a sense of loss from "what should have been", when I regret, I am trying to just hang on, hang steady, and not rush to numb the pain with something (food, irrational choice, blame, whatever.)

I don't have a great close to this posting. This is a work in progress, this stretching my fingers, taking a deep breath, and readjusting my grip for the next leg of the journey.

Good Luck to Everyone Out There

Did you hear the interview with "international supermodel" Carmen Dell'orefice on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday this morning?

Ms. Dell'orefice, 78, lost her life's savings in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi-scheme last year. She's far from what I would think of as the "women upon whom the current economic crisis is falling", but her discussion of the emotional side of the dealing with her loss is, well, relate-able!

She says: "I've never put my lifestyle and what I need to live on in anyone else's hands. I know that this is my responsibility and my choices....But this [current loss involving what she thought were personal friends]!....My own self-confidence on what judgement didn't I exercise and what did I miss, it really shook my self-esteem for a long-time."

As I shift through the wheat of defining success for our little family with the chaff of the "woulda, shoulda, coulda" of the past decade, I am living daily in the zone of shaky confidence in my judgement. I question the very values upon which my husband and I have made financial and life decisions over these past years. Believe it or not (I remember how long you've known me), I've never thought of myself as a "keeping up with the Joneses" type of mentality. But I now must admit that how my family "looked" from the outside has been deeply important to me, to us.

It felt like our motivation was to create a safe place for our family. But now, with so much stripped away, I realize that for me "safety" was demonstrated in material and consumer values -- things, brands, a certain type of house, certain lifestyle commitments that require special equipment and lots of fees, certain places to belong. It felt like we were just working hard so that our family could get our little piece of the prosperity pie, buy the things that "we needed", and then we'd have a safe place to work on values and character.

Surprise! Values don't wait. Character doesn't wait. Time doesn't wait. And, as people who live in a comfortable, charming, beautiful and cozy corner of an growing, optimistic state in the most-affluent society of the world (and probably the history of the world), I realize that we have a good serving of the prosperity pie every morning that we wake up.

There is nothing else out there to gain. It -- safety, prosperity, success -- is all right here. I'd like to think that we are in process of making new choices and strengthening values around what we have. But, given that it felt like my motivation was appropriate in the past, my confidence for these steps is, well, lacking.

You can listen to Ms. Dell'orefice's interview at www.npr.org.

And, I pass on her closing words, "Good luck to everyone out there and their ongoing lives. It's going to be tough."

Broadening the Conversation

Over the past several months, I’ve been deeply concerned how the economic crisis is falling onto the shoulders of women, the shoulders of women I know. Actually, it's gotten pretty heavy on my own shoulders! The women I know are carrying more responsibility than ever -- for family, for finances, navigating career transitions due to family demands, and new responsibilities for their parents.

I've tried to be very frank about my own family's struggles with friends, because, right now, what good can it do for any of us to be pretending it's all going smoothly. Through some honest and candid discussions, I've realized that many of us don’t feel “safe” in the midst of our new economic reality. We are working really hard to feel “safe” and at the same time feeling uncertain as to whether "safety" is even something that we, who were set into the world in the early 80's, is even something we are supposed to expect from our partners. On top of it all, what really saddens me is seeing so many women that I know, admire, and love who are just so hard on themselves. As if we are standing alone in a room full of successfully safe women.

I truly believe that we are in a sea-change as a culture. In the years since you and I first met in our freshman dormitory (remember Page Hall?), it is as if the American Dream has become a toxic mixture of insatiable consumerism and prosperity-based Christianity. It is a paradigm that has left people lost, bereft, broke, fat, lonely, exhausted, sick.

The other thing that has been going through my mind is, "What is worth fighting for? What should I protecting in my life?" When I boil it down, the thing to fight for in this world for me right now is the shelter and peace of my family.

I want to speak to that in this blog, speak for and with the women we know how are Sort of a “stop the madness”, let’s quit talking about how we are going to balance it all and, instead, start fighting for, protecting, that which is truly precious, letting the rest of the balls fall. Fighting for our families, our sanity, peace, health, love, connections between people we love. Our souls.

I think of us at 19 sitting in our dorm rooms trying to make sense of where were going to fit into the world. It was all so “out there”, so much to discover. I wanted so much, wanted to ‘break out’, connect, find a home. We thought that we had such a better handle on the world than our mothers did, than our parents. Over the years, you and I have been through explorations of love, materialism and asceticism, desire, disappointment, pregnancies, parents, siblings, children, success, failure, faith, weight highs and lows (more highs for me!), moving, setting out in new directions because it was “going to be good”. We are now the age that our mothers were when we met. I am fascinated by all that has happened from there to here. I'm so curious as to where “here” leads to.

We came of age in the Reagan era. I think I bought so completely into the Lady Diana, big shoulder, Nordstrom, dress-for-success, IBM, big city, movie celebrity, upwardly mobile, Martha Stewart, executive, do-it-all, buy more, Pottery Barn homes and Baby Gap maternity thing. (You haven’t seemed so vulnerable to all that.) I scoffed at the values of my grandparents and parents who were cheap, bargain, low-aspiration, humble. Scoffed at the “granolas” who preferred Birkenstocks to Ferragamos. Bought the SUV, etc., etc., etc. Now I look at how our generation has wasted two decades in which we could have made a difference. Now I look at our children: What world are they headed into? How do we prepare them? What world do we try and shape for them? What is worth fighting for for them?

So, are you interested in expanding our conversation beyond obesity? I’m not sure if all the above is just a distraction from “the real issue” of healthy weight for my children, or a way to get to the real issues that manifest themselves in extra weight. But I'm interested in exploring it.

What about you? Are you willing to join me in "Page Hall" once again to continue the discussion on how we fit into the world?

A Pause Explained and a New Jumping Off Point

It's been months since I've posted, and mostly it's because I went through a miserable patch of pain that had me limiting every single activity except sitting on the couch and watching tv. This condition I had, known as Frozen Shoulder or Adhesive Capsulitis, was caused by poor ergonomic setup during computer use, so I avoided the computer whenever possible.

The good news is I came out of it like a bat out of hell. Once the pain was gone and my energy and stamina were back, even though I'm significantly limited in my shoulder mobility, I wanted to do everything and be everywhere at once. This also limited my computer time.

Another post-limiting development is that I am beginning to back away from concerns about my own child's obesity. I still wish I had intervened earlier and knew then what I know now, but there's only so much I can say about that. My child is not at a "normal" weight now, but he just looks like a 12 year-old linebacker with a deep voice and a soft moustache you can see in some lights. He is big. He is muscular. His belly is kind of big too but he is mighty. We went kayaking last weekend (see boy in striped shorts in picture to the left), even though my shoulder doesn't work (see: Bat Out of Hell energy) and he kayaked circles around me. This is because of the intense swim workouts as well as his body's natural tendency to be big and muscular.

He says there's nothing he can do about his weight. I don't agree. But at this point it's up to him. I do encourage him away from certain food choices and toward others, and he actually appreciates this. But he likes to eat--particularly simple carbs, he's a big guy, and I think, hope and pray he'll be okay. I know the odds are against his not being overweight as an adult. I wonder if the genetic cards were already stacked against him. I look forward to more research coming out about that. I also hope that as he matures he becomes more interested in his own health. Being such a good swimmer has been great for his self respect. So even though he's not at the "right" weight, I think he's a lot better off than he was this time last year, when he was just getting ready for camp.

Jan, too, is thinking less about childhood obesity. She's thinking about large, far-reaching issues and I look forward to discussing them here. I am going to let her articulate the reason for the blog title change because she explained it to me in an email so brilliantly.

Just can't have it on the table!

When will I learn?? After my going on and on about Eric Clapton and not having certain things around, I made an interesting choice the other day. I was having some mom-friends and their kids over Friday afternoon. I was at the grocery store picking up supplies with my youngest daughter. In the "frozen novelties" section, I picked up the box of Dryer's Frozen Fruit Bars. My daughter said, "Mom, no one likes those." And rather than realizing that when it was hot and we were out of the "novelties" section and in our backyard, that these would be great, I said "What about these?" Naturally, she eagerly agreed to the generic Fudge Bars and Orangecicles that I suggested...

Cut to the following day: I am cleaning out the freezer and realize that the box of Dryer's Frozen Fruit Bars that my [amazing body] friend brought was completely unopened. The kids had preferred the Fudge Bars and Orangecicles (and, face it, who wouldn't!) I thought to myself, "How can I get these kids to prefer the better choice?" And it hit me like a lightening bolt: Limit the choices. Duh!

Just a small example of how the behaviors take a while to sink in....

A lot has happened since the last entry. I've been involved in a discussion group with some other mothers called "Menu for the Future" (the curriculum has been developed by the Northwest Earth Institute). I learned a lot, was moved from overwhelmed to inspired (in spite of the "novelties" choice!), and ended up with this realization that it all comes down to "paying attention". Much has come up that I would like to share, that is not all related to childhood weight issues, but is related to how we are living in this world. Not sure if you are interested in opening up this discussion further. Looking forward to connecting with you again, though!