The Crab Chronicles

Teach Your Kids to Read Maps

I never realized that map reading was important until I took my son over to the local college a couple of years ago and we needed to find a particular building. Right next to the Visitor parking lot there is a large, clear map of the campus and a helpful YOU ARE HERE arrow so we could orient. I stood there studying it for a minute while Michael impatiently said "C'mon, let's GO!"

"Just a minute Dude, I can find the building on this and we'll be there in just a few minutes. It's not a big campus," I said. 

He was restless and nervous. Fidgeting. Actually not looking at the phone, which was rare.

Finally I just started walking in the direction of the building we needed, because he was so ancy and bugging me. I looked at the building I thought was correct and didn't see any signs identifying it. I saw a student walking past. "Excuse me honey but is that Building D?" I asked with a smile. The student looked startled, nodded, and walked quickly away. I'm sure she pulled out her phone and texted [SOME CREEPY OLD WOMAN JUST ASKED ME WHERE A BUILDING WAS! WTF?!]

I was focused on where we needed to go and didn't really think about all of this until a good while later.

What I've concluded, after thinking about it, is pretty simple but profoundly disturbing: we need to teach our kids how to read maps.

They can take their smartphones and probably look at the surface of Mars but they can't follow a map without a computer-generated voice saying "In one hundred yards, turn left."

 

When I was in college and doing a lot of driving I always had maps in the car. If I was going somewhere unfamiliar I used to look at a map and write out all the turns on a piece of paper and tape the paper to the dashboard. That way I didn't have to pull over, look at the map, and then try to remember all the turns. Sometimes I taped it to the steering wheel, in the middle. Easier to glance at.

The other day I was looking through the big built-in bookcase in my family room and I found a nice Atlas of Atlanta, which I recall buying about 2003 and thinking I had really scored a bargain because it was very complete, and the Atlanta metro area is huge and confusing. Now I just Google map where I want to go, and listen for the computer voice to tell me where to turn. Sometimes I argue with the voice. "That's ridiculous, going that way this time of day. The traffic will be horrible," I find myself saying.

[I pondered whether or not to keep the nice Atlas, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it away...]

I remember when I asked my brother for a GPS for the car a few years ago. It was hard to program and not always accurate, and I frankly didn't trust it. I rarely used it.

One day about a year later Michael downloaded Google maps onto my phone. Life changed dramatically. I no longer had to look at anything. I just had to listen.

What scares me about this is simple. What if there's some sort of satellite glitch and the cell phones are inoperable one day, for some technical reason? What if you're going somewhere and your phone simply dies, out of power? How will you know where to go?

Even more scary: what if we raise kids who cannot problem-solve without a computer?!

I remember when I was 16 and got my first driver's license, and ventured out alone in the car for the first time. Scary. I knew routes from the passenger side, where everything was familiar. I didn't know them from the driver's side. I didn't know to watch the lanes so I could get out of my lane before it turned into a "right turn only" lane and forced me to do something I didn't want to do. Re-learning where I needed to go, from the driver's side, was not easy for me.

Map reading was equally frustrating. My brain doesn't do well with spatial relationships.

However, I pushed myself to not give up, to make myself learn how to be competent with maps. I never expected to just press a button and be told a route. That wouldn't been freakishly weird to me. Of course, I was still listening to cassette music tapes at that point, something my kids find laughably primitive.

Michael has a friend who is very very smart, an Honors student in high school. He is finding college to be very challenging. I understand it. In college you aren't spoon-fed the material and given extra-credit opportunities right and left. You have to actually discipline yourself to study. You have to accept the very grown-up reality that life with be what you make it IF you do the hard intellectual work needed. I don't recall any professor at either of the two colleges I attended cutting me any slack for anything. College is make it or break it time. Time to grow up.

There is no mechanical voice telling you what turns to take, in college - or in life. You're presented with choices every day, difficult choices, and you have to step up your game.

You have to learn that sometimes you are going to make the wrong choice, take a wrong turn, and you need to learn how to get yourself re-oriented, and start over. You have to fail, in fact, and learn how to manage that and get over it. There are no trophies for just participating, in life.

We need to teach our kids how to read maps, and then make them get in the car and explore, without using their GPS crutches.

We need to make them sit and learn something from purely being lectured, or reading an actual book.

We need to take away their phones and computers occasionally and say "Here's your task. Learn it. Use your brain and your hands."

I am not a college snob. It's not for everyone. But it's like I've told my kids, whether you go to college or not, you have to accept this about growing up and making your own way in the world: it's about LEARNING. You have to train your brain to always be learning.

I am really thankful that I was a young adult at a time when I really had to learn a lot of things on my own. The first college I attended was academically challenging and I had to learn how to manage my time and study effectively. I couldn't email anyone. I could only call home once a week because calls were expensive and my dad got mad about long long-distance calls. I couldn't Google anything. I had to spend hours in the library, physically poring over the card catalog and pulling books off shelves, and looking through them.

There are a lot of things from the past that need to be abandoned, like the isms [racism, sexist, ageism].

There are also things we need to make an effort to preserve. In a perfect world, if I had the time, I would like to conduct seminars for high school seniors and teach them basic skills - how to read a map, how to cook a meal, how to make a budget, etc. I'd also challenge them to put their phones in envelopes and not look at them all through the seminar. Part of the problem is they are always distracted by their phones. Communication in person, face to face, is becoming a lost art among our young people.

But it starts with maps. Teach your kids to look at an old-fashioned paper map and find themselves, and find where they want to go, and then send them off on the grand adventure.

Mom and Ingrid Bergman

I had an email from one of my second cousins the other day pointing out how much my mom resembled Ingrid Bergman in the 1950's, when both were young. I have always noticed the comparison but I didn't think anyone else really saw it. Apparently they do.

The obvious difference is that Ingrid was 5'9, and my mom's height is 5'4.

I bet when Ingrid was in Casablanca they had to put Humphrey Bogart on a box for their closeup love scenes because he was only about 5'8.

Of course, there was a big age difference. In late 1933 when Mom was born, Ingrid was already a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, since she was born in 1915.

Anyway, just for fun, I went back and found some photos of Mom from the 50's, and some photos of Ingrid Bergman, although hers are likely a bit earlier than that.

The resemblance isn't so obvious here, tho' they were about the same age here.

below, Mom with Dad when they were engaged -- not sure when this photo of Bergman was made

 

 

 

 

Ingrid Bergman was a terrific actress and I have enjoyed all her movies that I've ever watched. I particularly love Casablanca, and one of my favorite memories is of seeing it when I was a teenager, at the historic and fabulous Tennessee Theatre in Knoxville. (I learned all the words so I could sing "As Time Goes By," because I loved that movie so much.)

Mom was never an international movie star, but she was a well-known singer around Atlanta in her youth, at weddings and at church, and for the USO. She also had several marriage proposals before my dad came along. Unlike Ingrid, Mom married a handsome guy and stayed married to him for 40 years. More importantly, Mom is still going strong at the age of 82 and Ingrid died of cancer at the age of 67, which was such a shame; thankfully Ingrid still lives on in her children and grandchildren and of course we can all still enjoy her many movies.

below, Mom and Dad in Venice, about 1989

One of Mom's favorite movies is a classic from 1969 called Cactus Flower, starring Ingrid Bergman, Walter Matthau, and a very young Goldie Hawn. If you've never seen it, watch it. Classic, and Bergman is awesome, as always.

 

The Incredible Magic of Compassion

One of the privileges of living with an older person is that you learn so much. My mother doesn't sit with a chalkboard and a lesson plan and teach me, like she did with her students years ago, but she teaches me, nonetheless, and her lessons are always important and profound, in ways I don't always recognize until later.

I was thinking today that perhaps the most important thing she started teaching me when I was small, and still teaches me today, is the importance of showing compassion.

In 2005 my mother and I bought this house together. The plan was for her to help me with childcare for my newly adopted daughter, and for us to help her as she grew older. She had lived alone for nine years after Dad died, but the responsibilities of caring for a large house with a pool were starting to feel really burdensome to her. She also wanted to be close to her granddaughter and I'm sure she knew that I was already contemplating another adoption.

Sadly, just a month after we moved into the house, Mom failed to pick up Alesia from school one day and Alesia called me in a panic. I left work and picked her up and we went home to find Mother lying on the laundry room floor with two broken shoulders. She had been on the floor for several hours by then. (Now, when I leave her alone, she wears a medic alert bracelet.)

The first night Mom was in the hospital, I left her sleeping around 9 and came home to be with my daughter, telling Mom I would return the next morning. Mom awoke around midnight and was on a lot of medication and didn't remember where she was. All she knew was that she was scared and in pain. She tried to remember the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm, but she couldn't think of the words. She got more upset as she struggled to remember, and finally just cried. The nurse came in and said "What's wrong?" and Mom told her she was so upset because she couldn't remember the words to the prayers she had said every night of her life. The nurse said "I will say them with you." She stayed there and said the prayers with Mom, and Mom was able to calm down and go back to sleep.

 

That story perfectly illustrates why I have great respect and admiration for nurses...

 

I was thinking this morning about how important compassion is to every human being. I have struggled to raise two children who were often treated with cruelty when they were small and vulnerable, but somehow they also learned compassion, and they are both gentle and compassionate people.

 

Compassion cannot be taught, not in the way one normally teaches someone something. It's not merely a skill. Compassion has to be received in order to be taught.

 

I have so many memories of learning it from my parents and others - not in any formal way, but in a thousand small ways. I can recall Dad telling me stories to distract me when I was sick. I can recall my grandmother patiently sitting with me and teaching me to read, when everyone else had given up and I felt incredibly stupid and ashamed. I can remember when I was sick and feverish and Mom would sit by my bedside and wipe off my face with a cold cloth. I remember both of my parents taking homemade meals to families in our neighborhood who had suffered a tragedy or just returned from the hospital. I remember Mom patiently listening to my teenaged friends sit at our kitchen table and pour out their troubled hearts to her, without judgment, so they left feeling relieved. I remember Dad going far out of his way to help customers, even when he wasn't working - and his customers were often older ladies without family in town. I remember my brother as a young lieutenant teaching his soldiers how to stretch their food budgets so their kids wouldn't be hungry at the end of the month. I remember a classmate helping me walk off the playground, to the school clinic, after I was hurt - and she is now a nurse, not surprisingly.

 

I witnessed all this and I learned that compassion is a magical thing.

 

Compassion enriches the giver as much as the person who receives it.

 

I have a friend who is a nurse, and I shared with her the story about the nurse praying with Mom in the hospital. Young nursing students nowadays aren't always given enough practice with real human beings. Sometimes they only learn things on mannequins. That's unfortunate. A mannequin cannot show a nurse the importance of soothing a suffering person so they can relax and heal. A mannequin cannot express gratitude. Nurses are in a unique and remarkable profession because they can make such a huge difference in a person's life. 

 

I know people sometimes wonder why I write this blog. It's not for money or fame. I write for a lot of reasons but I was thinking today that one thing I love to do is pass along little insights that I learn. Learning is a lifelong treasure. If we stop learning, we wither and die inside. Learning is the spark that ignites our spirits and gives us reasons to keep getting up every day and trying.

 

Compassion is probably the greatest thing we can learn. It's just a breath away from love. Maybe it actually is a kind of love, the purest kind. Maybe we should think of compassion as true agape (a Greek word meaning "love") -

"Agape is selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love, the highest of the four types of love in the Bible. This Greek word, agápē, and variations of it are frequently found throughout the New Testament. Agape perfectly describes the kind of love Jesus Christ has for his Father and for his followers."

There's a lot being written about how important it is to be grateful nowadays. Gratitude IS important. Whenever anything large or small that is good happens to me, I try to remember to thank God, and to reflect on how fortunate I am to have been raised in a loving home by compassionate people. My resolution today is that when I feel tired or frustrated or angry, I need to remember to reach out with compassion, in whatever way I can. I can love on Lola even when she steals food off the table. I can help Mom put on a sweater even when I just want to watch TV. I can call a friend and let them pour out their heart to me on the phone and just listen. I lead a very quiet life, but there are so many ways I can demonstrate compassion, and I want to get better at it.

It's so important also to show compassion, every time we possibly can. Whether it's in a big way - like spending a day cooking for someone you care about who's going through a rough time, or a small way - as in simply showing affection to your family or pets - compassion enriches us. It's just as important for the giver of compassion as the receiver, because compassion heals us. But it's SO powerful, because our example teaches compassion. Compassion soothes our souls like nothing else. Compassion demonstrates the love of Christ for us and through us, and the repercussions are limitless.

 

If you want to read a wonderful story of compassion, I suggest you read Same Kind of Different As Me. I loved that book so much I bought copies and passed them out to friends and family members. Now it's a movie. Below is a preview. I can't wait to see it.

 

A New Blog for Those Trying to Choose a Career

I am excited to announce that I have started a new blog and I am looking for contributors to help me out with it. The blog is called What Do I Want to Do With My Life? It's designed to help students who are trying to decide what career would be best for them.

When I was in college I began with the notion that I would be an actress. After a couple of years I realized that wasn't a practical choice for me, for a lot of reasons. Then I didn't know what to do. I knew I liked to write, but I really had no idea where to go to get real, practical information about different writing careers, so I could make a good decision. I worked at a bookstore for a while, until my dad offered to send me to paralegal school. I had NO IDEA what a paralegal did, or how a law firm operated. I was clueless.

Here's one of my favorite quotes: If you want to know about the journey, ask someone on the way back.

If you want to know what it's like to be an accountant, ask one what they do all day. Or a nurse. Or a farmer. You get the idea.

If you have been working for at least ten years and would like to contribute, the questions are below. Leave me a comment and I will be in touch.

If you have a teenager or young person living in your house who might get some use from the site, or if you are looking to make a career change, please check back in a few days or a week, or periodically - I hope to build the site gradually. I would love to get feedback from a lot of different folks.

Your Profession:

Years of Experience:

What is the name of the company where you work?

What made you want to pursue your career?

Did you ever take one of those aptitude tests designed to help you choose a career? What did it say you should be?

What did you study in school [college or other type of school] that prepared you for your career?

When you started, was it like you had imagined it would be? Why or why not?

What was your starting job title?

What’s your job title now?

How has your profession changed since you started?

What are some of the tasks you do in a typical day?

Do you travel for work? Is that enjoyable?

Describe the best day you’ve ever had at work, and what made it awesome.

Describe the worst day you’ve ever had at work, and what made it terrible.

If you knew a young person was considering going into your field, what advice would you give them?

If your own child or grandchild said they wanted to go into your field, would you encourage them or discourage them? Why?

UPDATE:

I am slowly adding jobs to the site. Keep checking it! Just added two science careers today.

The PC and Me

A friend of mine posted a link to an article on Facebook this morning and I got very nostalgic seeing it because it brought back so many memories. It wasn't a photo of his kids or a photo from our high school days. Nope, it was The First IBM PC was Released 35 Years Ago Today. It DID change computers forever.I was thinking that most of the humans on earth under age 40 or thereabouts have NO IDEA of the importance of this historical fact.

How could they? They have grown up in a world where they take computers for granted. From the scanning of groceries at the store to looking up a phone number on Google to getting around using a GPS, they take computers for granted. They live in a world that I never imagined when I was 21 years old - which is, ironically, when the first PC was released, 1983.

So just for fun I decided to do a personal timeline of my computer experience.

1976 - I start high school at Farragut High in Knoxville, where there are only 3 or 4 computers in the entire school, and only a few kids who take computer science classes are allowed to touch them. Now there are computers in every school, even in elementary schools, and there are children who take laptops to school and never open a textbook.

1981 - I start classes at the University of Georgia in Athens.My roommate is a business major but she takes a lot of computer science classes. She doesn't own a computer. In order to study Cobal and Fortran she has to go to the computer lab on campus and use their computers. The lab is ALWAYS crowded, so she goes in the middle of the night. I am in awe of the fact that she can even turn on a computer, something I've never done.

My knowledge of computers is from old movies like the classic Katharine Hepburn Spencer Tracy movie Desk Set, in which a computer eliminates the need for human research librarians at a television network. Very prescient, that film, and fun to watch even today.

1985 - I get my first real job, a paralegal at a law firm in Knoxville. Nobody has a computer. A few of the secretaries have huge IBM typewriters with some memory, but that's it. After I've been there a couple of years the partners decide to get all the secretaries computers. They have to go take classes. The 75 year old secretary who has been there for decades protests mightily and they take her computer away after a week because she complains so much and she never really learns how to use it. They make one of the associates go out to a warehouse somewhere and find the exact old IBM typewriter she had used for years and bring it back to her. Fortunately, she primarily works for an attorney who rarely composes a letter more than a few sentences long, and whose cases do not usually involve the typing of long briefs.

I envy the secretaries. I want my own computer.

Shortly after I start, the only other paralegal in the firm pulls me aside and says softly "Don't EVER tell them you can type! Then they will make you type your own work and you'll never get a secretary!" She is dead serious.

1988 - I get another job at another law firm in Knoxville, where I can make my own hours while in graduate school. They don't use computers but some of the secretaries have huge unwieldy computer-like things called CRTs, which are sort of similar to computers. During my 5 years there, the secretaries eventually get computers. I don't, even after I finish graduate school and start working there full-time. Sometime during this period I enroll in and take a class in Wordperfect over at The University of Tennessee. I proudly show my certificate of completion to my boss. He still won't give me a computer.

1990 - I finish my master's thesis, and because I don't have a computer at home or even at work, I have to give it to a professional typist to type for me.

1993 - I get my first paralegal job here in Atlanta, and for the first time in my life I get to use a computer at work. Even with my certificate in Wordperfect I am scared and thrilled to learn how to really use a computer, send an email, etc. They assign a secretary to teach me how to use my computer.

1995? - Around this time the old green letter monitors are replaced by color monitors. Woo hoo! I feel very excited. We don't have internet access but the color monitors are easier on my eyes.

1994? - Around this time my brother buys a used 486 computer and monitor for me, and sets it up. Now I can write from home. I write my first long work, a screenplay. I also spend a lot of time playing Tetris and Frogger. All my poetry, stories, and screenplays are kept on floppy disks. I install Wordperfect on the computer. There is no internet access at my apartment but I don't care.

1997 - After my father dies in mid 1996, my brother and I decide Mother should have a computer at home. She is only 62 and has never worked during her 39 year marriage. We know a Gateway computer will give her a new intellectual challenge, help her to cope. We ask her if she wants a computer. "No!" is the vehement reply. We get it anyway. My brother sets it up and shows her how to use it. She is very tentative with it at first but he calms her down by saying "Mom, relax. You can't break it!"

1998 - My mother and I decide to write a cookbook together, both to preserve recipes and tell stories. I write it using my home computer, using WordPerfect. Elva's Blue Scallop cookbook is a hit with friends and family and my aunt, who manages a nut store in Myrtle Beach, buys copies to sell to her customers, since we feature some of her recipes. (You can sometimes still find copies floating around, like on Amazon.)

1999 - I buy a condo and get a new computer, and for the first time I have internet at home. Wow!

It's around this time that I get another paralegal job, at a much bigger firm where there is internet access. I can look up court information and rules and do legal research on the internet. That's all we're allowed to do but that's okay. The internet still scares me. If I am looking for something I use a search engine called Dogpile.

My computer at home is not high speed. When I want to get on the internet, I unplug my landline phone and plug the phone line into the computer, then wait a few minutes. Downloading an email with pictures takes a while, maybe as long as 10 minutes. I go wash dishes while waiting for emails to finish downloading. Nobody can call me during this time because the phone line is tied up.

Yes, cell phones exist in the 90's but mine stays in my car, plugged into the cigarette lighter.

2000 - As the world enters the 21st century, everyone is terrified that when 1999 becomes 2000, all over the world the computers will crash, unable to handle the date change. Big companies devote months to studying it - are you Y2K prepared? becomes a catchphrase. My brother and I are at Mother's that night, celebrating not just New Year's Eve, but her birthday. She is worried. About 5 p.m. my brother gets an email from a friend in Australia who says relax, no big deal. We relax.

2001 - I get a job in the law department of a large corporation where everyone uses Word. I have to learn Word. I hate it at first. Then I get used to it. (Now I cannot imagine ever going back to WordPerfect.)

2001 - My mother freaks out because of 911 and tells me I need to get "one of those cell phones you can carry in your purse." I understand her fear. The day of 911 I go home early from work, driving back roads after getting $300 from my bank account in case the bank computers fail. I am glad Mom has taught me to keep a lot of canned goods on hand. Nobody knows if there will be food shortages. Nobody knows what will happen. The world is suddenly a profoundly different, scary place. Mom had lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. She is scared but prepared.

2003 - I go to Russia in January, to sing Handel's Messiah with a choir in Khabarovsk, with the city symphony. It's exciting and a bit scary, so soon after 911. I keep in touch with my mother primarily by sending home emails using the hotel's computer. It costs something like $10 for 30 minutes of use. I am delighted however, because placing a phone call to the US is very hard.

2004 - I take a week long class to learn to use Excel. I don't like it but I can use it.

2004 - I adopt my daughter and we get home in December. All my friends and family members want daily updates. I start this blog and send the link and password to everyone so I don't have to keep writing long emails.

2005 - I move to the house where I currently live, and for the first time I have high speed internet. I am thrilled beyond belief. I also get a digital camera and learn how to take pictures and put them in the computer and edit them using Picasa. It's really helpful because I have to take lots of photos for my daughter's adoption post placement reports.

2006 - I buy a used computer and put it in the guest bedroom so my daughter can use it. She learns the computer faster than she learns English.

2007 - I go to Kazakhstan to adopt my son and borrow a friend's laptop, so I can work on a book, and stay connected with home via the internet. I keep a blog that everyone can check every day, and follow along on my journey.

2009 - My son teaches me how to use Powerpoint because he has to use it for school projects.

2009 - I publish my first book, Adopting Alesia: My Crusade for My Russian Daughter, a book written entirely on my home computer.

2014 - I get my first Apple smartphone, a 4S. Now I have a computer I can carry around in my pocket. Like everyone else, my camera goes into a drawer, and my calculator, and several flashlights. The world has changed drastically, yet again.

2015 - I buy my son a laptop to use for his college work.

 

I have to wonder what my grandchildren will think one day. Will they stumble across this blog and laugh at silly old Memaw, born into a world where the most high tech thing in the house was something called a "hi fi" and she listened to records and had to dial a rotary phone? A world where people were sometimes in the car or a store or restaurant and they could not be reached by phone?! WTH?!

When my grandparents were born their families didn't have have electric lights or automobiles. That was two generations ago. When my mother was born her family didn't have a television and you had to go to the theater to see a movie. When I was born we had a TV but it only got two channels, and bonody touched the camera but Dad.

Now my mother is 82 and still uses her computer every day and even has her own blog.

Now I can carry a tiny computer in my pocket. I still have a desktop PC, unlike a lot of folks, and I use it to make a living as a writer.

My how the world has changed..

Mini Rant-Like Observations

Every once in a while my brain gets clogged up with some snarky bitchy wacky brilliant observations about my world and I feel compelled to share them. Call it therapy.

Dear Hair on My Head: I give up. The humidity is 99% and y'all are going to twist yourselves into some crazy shapes, so much so that I look like a troll doll with a bad perm. Have fun. I don't care any more.

Dear Price-Pfister: I called you weeks ago about my drippy faucet and you promised to send another one, free of charge. Where is it? Are you too busy trying to tell people not to pronounce the "p" in "pfister"?!?

Dear folks who make pants with elastic waistbands: all of us over age 50 thank you. Seriously. THANK YOU. [if I had lived in the time when women had to wear corsets I would've lost my mind, or just stayed home most of the time..]

Dear computer: why is it that when I am in a Word document I have to make the font size 16 in order to read properly, then if I cut and paste that into an email it looks comically/insanely HUGE? I am nearsighted and I like to type without my glasses on. Stop messing with me. Make the paper bigger or something.

Dear people who send out spam labeled SENIOR DATING (which I accidentally opened): why is the only photo in that email of a girl about 20 years old?! Where are the attractive seniors? Or are you aiming for high school seniors?! ACK.

Dear HGTV: I have figured out why you attract so many viewers. It's really simple. Most of the people on your shows have messy, disorganized homes. We look at those homes and feel better about OUR messy, disorganized homes. Then you bring in magical designer people [Property Brothers, Love It Or List It, etc.] who transform those dirty, messy, "dated" homes into castles. I used to fantasize about guys. Now I fantasize about living in a designer home -- except my ideal home has a lot of carpet and a Dyson vacuum cleaner..

Dear Mother Nature: I know my front lawn is pathetic. Ever since the water people dug up half of it to fix a broken water main there are a million rocks out there. I don't have the money to sue the SOBs or to buy expensive sod. BUT... now we've had so much rain it looks like a mushroom farm out there. Couldn't you at least send some trolls or fairies or something to live among the mushrooms and entertain me and Lola?!

Another Dear Mother Nature: why did you kill all my tomato plants but leave the eggplant plant?! I'm allergic to eggplant. Months ago, I sent my son to buy a cucumber plant and he came back with an eggplant plant. It thrives, as if to mock me.

Dear Words With Friends: MOOCHY should totally be a word. It's true of so many people. Work on fixing that please.

Dear Lola: I love you very much, but you snore like a dying freight train plagued by intermittent explosions from both ends. If I wanted to listen to that all night I would've gotten married. If you will sleep in the family room every night, there's a Milkbone in it for you. [Shut up. I know Lola reads my blog]

Dear people who made the film Florence Foster Jenkins: you are very cruel. You put High Grant [still eye candy!] in a film with Meryl Streep - which SHOULD be a divine match - and THEN you have Meryl sing off-key -- very very off-key - to the point it's quite painful to hear. (I studied voice for 5 years and sang professionally when I was young, so it's particularly painful to me.) Were you smoking crack when you came up with this?!? I will not be seeing this film in the theater. However, I might watch it at home on DVD because here at home I can operate the MUTE button very skillfully...

 

Facebook deserves its' own set of mini-rants. I will confess I do spend probably way too much time on there when I am not working...

Dear folks who post untrue and inflammatory memes on Facebook: quit it or I will take you out of my newsfeed.

Dear God/Universe/Buddha/whoever: everyone is posting their cute photos of their kids going back to school. Thanks. I feel very OLD.

Dear heavenly father or whoever: thank you so much for the photo of an old classmate of mine who, despite the advanced age of 54, looks incredibly attractive. It gives me hope that if I ever win the lottery I can find a husband my own age who is still a hottie. They are out there!

What Makes A Real Parent?

I have watched very little of the Olympics but I did flip the channel the other day and watch some of the women's gymnastics competition. I was blown away by the incredible athleticism and artistry of tiny [4'9] Simone Biles. She is amazing!

"Not only is she the first female gymnast since 1974 to win four consecutive all-around titles at the U.S. national championships, but she’s also the first woman ever to be the all-around world champion three years in a row. Not to mention that she's won fourteen total world championships medals—the most ever won by an American woman." [NBC]

Simone had a rough start in life, however. "Simone Biles was born on March 14th, 1997 in Columbus, Ohio. By the time she was three, it was clear that her biological mother, who struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, was unable to take care of Biles and her younger sister Adria. Her maternal grandfather, Ron, and his second wife, Nellie, stepped in and brought the pair to Spring, Texas, a suburb of Houston—and sixteen years later, they’re simply “mom and dad” to their adopted daughters." [NBC]

So I was startled and upset when I saw blogger Carrie Goldman's post yesterday, NBC Olympic Commentator Tweets That Parents of Simone Biles Are NOT Her Parents Because She's Adopted. Trautwig said "They may be mom and dad but they are NOT her parents."

What an incredibly insensitive jerk. Trautwig needs to be slapped. Carrie said "Despite Simone's very clear decision to call Ron and Nellie her parents -- because they ARE, because that is what adoption means -- sports commentator Al Trautwig repeatedly has referred on air to Ron and Nellie as "Simone's grandparents."

Another blogger, Leah Campbell over at Mom.me, went so far as to say Trautwig should be fired. I agree with her. Even though NBC made Trautwig apologize, it sounded insincere and forced to those of us who were deeply offended by his comment. Leah: "Let there be no doubt Trautwig’s apology came about because his higher ups forced it upon him—not because he actually thinks he said anything wrong."

Trautwig re-defines jerk. Leah: "Why this man thinks it’s his place to define anyone else’s parental relationship is beyond me. My guess is that his ego got in the way here, and when he got called out on his misuse of words, rather than back up and apologize for something that probably easily could have been swept under the rug and forgotten—he doubled down. Because apparently, this is not a man who likes to be told he’s wrong. Just ask the Twitter user who called Trautwig out on a misspelled tweet in 2013—Trautwig actually tracked the guy down and called his parents in the middle of the night, then engaged in a bizarre Twitter war of Trump-esque proportions."

One thing Carrie and Leah didn't quite address in their well-written blogs was what it truly feels like, as an adoptive parent, when someone says something about our children's "real" parents. My daughter was only home a short time when an elderly relative of mine said to me, right in front of her "Where is her real Mom?!" Now, this relative was suffering from dementia and meant nothing insulting by her remark. Nonetheless, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I literally couldn't speak. My mother stepped in and said "Alesia's birthmom is in Russia. She is an alcoholic and couldn't parent her."

A few years later I took cupcakes to my son's school in honor of his Gotcha Day in April. His birthday is in July so he never got to have cupcakes at school like the other kids whose birthdays were during the school year. So we made a bunch of cupcakes and I took them in for Gotcha Day. One little boy said "It's not Michael's birthday?" I said "No, this is a celebration of the day I adopted him." The child then said "Where's his real mom?" I took a big breath and said "I AM HIS REAL MOM. The woman who gave birth to him is back in Kazakhstan." I didn't yell, but I was probably louder than I should have been. The boy looked startled and confused. I just quickly finished handing out the cupcakes and walked away to compose myself for a few minutes. I wanted to cry, scream, and throw things but I didn't.

To Al Trautwig and NBC officials and any others who think adoptive parents are being overly sensitive about this: you cannot imagine how painful it feels to be told you are not your child's REAL mom or dad. It HURTS. The pain is gut-wrenching. Everything implied by the word "real" makes me feel something like this - Because I am not real, I am second-best and my family is fake because we are not connected by blood. We don't count, adoptive parents. We're invalid.

If you are NOT an adoptive parent, try to imagine for a moment what it would feel like to be told your child is not yours. Try to imagine that pain.

I have worked very hard for years to establish myself as a loving parent - very different from my kids' early experiences.

When I got to bring Michael to my hotel room to hang out with me one day in Kazakhstan we spent some time in the hotel's gym, where he got to play badminton. We also played with a beach ball in the room. [It was cold and snowy outside.]

He cut his finger. I had some Neosporin and bandaids in my suitcase and I carefully washed and bandaged his hand. He looked at me with surprise at first, then he sat there and smiled. I did something his birthmom had likely never done. I was concerned about his booboo and I fixed it. I told him I cared about him. It may sound simplistic but when I finished bandaging him and looked into his beautiful eyes, I knew he was thinking This lady loves me and has concern for me. That was a new experience for him, from a mama-type person. (I know the caretakers at the orphanage were fond of him - they were instrumental in him getting adopted. They weren't mama, however. They got paid to look after him.)

With a child is adopted as a baby or toddler, the adoptive parent is all they remember. They have no reference for a biological parent. My kids remember their biological moms, however. Alesia was put in the orphanage at age 6, and Michael at age 8. My challenge early on was to establish that I was different, that I would care for them.

Biological parents typically just get pregnant and have the child and proceed accordingly. Sometimes they struggle with infertility, but most people just decide to have a child and have one, or more.

In contrast, most adoptive parents I know go through sheer hell trying to get their kids, whether it's a foreign or domestic adoption. I had to scramble to find the money to adopt, buy a house, deal with naysayers both times - it was a long hard road, both times. I have a friend who did a private domestic infant adoption some years ago and had 3 birthmoms change their mind - she was heartbroken 3 times before finally adopting her baby boy. I have a friend who spent more than 5 years, thousands of dollars, and went through 3 different agencies trying to adopt two little girls from Russia. She finally got her girls home and is an excellent mom, but it was a really rough journey. We all were determined to be mothers, and willing to do whatever it took.

Why is it that ignorant jerks think only biology makes a parent "real"?

We adoptive parents are the ones who get up in the night with our kids, take them to piano lessons and sports practices, bandage booboos, help with homework, take them to the doctor, take them on vacation, buy birthday presents, try to get them to eat right, etc. Sound familiar? It's called parenting.

When I had both kids at home, I never got up in the morning thinking "I'm going to tend to my ADOPTIVE kids today." I never thought about my kids as different unless some ignorant person pointed it out in a painfully insulting way. My kids are MY KIDS. Period.

My kids grew up with a mama and a granny. No dad, but a loving uncle. They were told they were loved every single day. That's far more than they would've gotten had they stayed in the orphanage.

If you are not an adoptive parent, please don't EVER EVER EVER say to someone "Where's his/her REAL mom/dad?" Even if it's a blonde blue-eyed adult with an African American child. There's no need to be rude. Get used to the idea there are going to be kids who are a different race from their parents. One of my neighbors who is white has an Asian adopted daughter. My next door neighbor is white, and he looks nothing like his biological daughters who have an African American mom. My friend Paul, who is black, is a terrific father to his two stepdaughters who are white. There are going to be kids like mine who have a different accent from their mama. There are going to be kids with much older parents, or two mommies or two daddies and THAT'S OKAY.

Families are defined in all kinds of ways, and there is NOTHING wrong with that.

In my opinion the only fair way to define a parent has nothing to do with genetics, but it has everything to do with love and caring. The national news last night - I watched NBC and ABC - was all over the fact that some of the Olympic athletes are using a technique called "cupping" to improve their performance. They totally ignored the Trautwig story, which is far more important, IMHO. Let's shine a light on jerks like Trautwig, call them out, show the world what prejudice looks like.

Simone Biles is a beautiful, shining example of the achievements possible for our kids who are raised in non-traditional families. She was raised with love and has a wonderful relationship with the folks she calls Mom and Dad. Let's concentrate on the miracles that LOVE can accomplish, and quit trying to define "real."

 

Brazil Olympics Disaster

Someone asked me the other day if I was watching the Olympics coverage. I'm not. It got me to thinking, why not? When I was a kid I always watched the Olympics. Summer games, winter games - I was glued to the TV. Of course back then we only had three channels, so very little choice in what to watch.

I've never been a fan of hockey but I remember vividly how I felt watching the 1980 hockey game where team USA won, called The Miracle on Ice. I was very proud of our team and proud to be an American. That was the last hockey game I ever watched. It might have something to do with the fact I graduated from high school that year and started college, and life got really busy then - and has stayed busy. Or not. Being a Southerner, hockey just isn't big here. Even our own Atlanta Thrashers eventually gave up and went to Canada, eh.

However, I'm not here to write about hockey.

So far, the Rio Olympics seem to be disastrous.

That makes me angry and sad.

For months we've been seeing news coverage about the zika virus. Back in June, Time magazine wrote Zika Has People Freaked Out About the Olympics But Experts Aren's Worried. Some athletes decided not to go to the Olympics due to health worries.

I was horrified yesterday to see the video of Scary injury: French gymnast Samir Ait Said snaps his leg on vault on Facebook. Hasn't France had enough issues lately?! Sacre bleu!

What horrifies me most, since swimming is the only competitive sport I've ever attempted [4 years on the neighborhood team anyway] is that some athletes are going to be swimming in RAW SEWAGE. What Happens When There's Sewage in the Water?

That article was from back in March. The issue hasn't gotten better.

According to a British article: Rio 2016: Athletes warned to keep mouths closed when swimming in faeces-infested water "Researchers found that many of the beaches in Rio de Janeiro have been long contaminated with raw sewage, household garbage, and even dead bodies, creating hazardous swimming conditions for the 500,000 people expected to descend on the city in August.

“Foreign athletes will literally be swimming in human crap, and they risk getting sick from all those microorganisms,” Rio paediatrician Dr Daniel Becker told the New York Times. “It’s sad but also worrisome.”

UGH.

How desperate are you to win a medal? Desperate enough to swim in poopy water?!? Bumping dead bodies out of the way? Keeping water out of your mouth while swimming in a race isn't really possible. Lots of splashing goes on. I know this from experience.

My family had a speedboat when I was growing up and I remember my disgust sometimes at the dirty water in Lake Loudoun near Knoxville. However, that was was pristine in comparison to Rio.

I do not understand WHY the Olympics people didn't inspect the water and make the Brazilians clean it up! WTH?! They should move to safe, clean waters, and penalize Brazil for this. It's absolutely disgusting and - far worse - a huge health risk. Dang y'all, get it together.

I do not want to watch our athletes, or any athletes, swim in raw sewage. This is ridiculous.

 

above, at the lake with my dad and cousins, abt. 1977

Catching Up

Oh my, so much going on in my life, but most of it is highly personal and therefore un-bloggable. Is that a word? The squiggly red line underneath it indicates no, but then there are so many new words that I had never heard of until just recently, like "selfie." I also used to think "content" [the noun form] was a fairly obscure word, but now, as a writer, "content" is the word used the most to describe what I do. Writers today don't just write, they "create content."

I have been working feverishly for a couple of weeks, helping a friend of a friend with her PhD dissertation. Tons of typing. The fingers of my right hand have actually gotten sore, and the other day I had eyestrain. I turned down the brightness of my computer screen and stopped typing for half a day to recover.

Let's see, what else is going on in my world?

It's not too hot but the humidity is horrible. It rains about every afternoon, a nice thunderstorm to cool things down from the low 90's, but then I walk outside with Lola and it feels like stepping into a shower where the water just got turned off. My hair just looks like a bunch of damp curls, like a giant mussed it all up. Good thing I am 54 now and I really don't care any more. Short hair is my friend..

My gardens have petered out. I learned, to my dismay, that eggplant is not my friend, digestively. I have a wonderful, huge eggplant that's thriving in my otherwise ruined garden. The other night I peeled one and sliced it, then made fried eggplant using Italian seasoning flavored breadcrumbs. Dipped the slices in egg, then fried them in olive oil, which is the only oil I use. Delicious. I pigged out. Regretted it the next day.

When I am not creating content, I content myself with reading..

I recently finished reading the highly lauded book The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer for fiction not long ago. When I started reading it I just couldn't get into it. Hated the very long descriptions of everything. Hated how slow it was. Stopped reading it, in fact, and just put it on the shelf in my room. I read a couple of other books, including Flight Patterns by Karen White. Terrific book.

Eventually I ran out of reading material, and I reluctantly turned back to The Goldfinch. One of my cousins who reads a lot told me she loved it. So I finished it. Holding the darn thing was hard - it's over 700 pages and even the trade paperback version is really heavy. Too bad I hate reading on a Kindle. Anyway, I didn't like the main character and I was sort of appalled by his life, but I can't deny it's well-written. My cousin told me her book club was evenly divided between folks who loved the book and folks who hated it.

There's not much more to report, not that I can discuss publicly. I am going to take a break from blogging about my children. They are grown now and entitled to their privacy.

I saw a trailer for a new movie that looks really interesting, and it's Meg Ryan's directorial debut, Ithaca. IMDB has it listed as a 2015 release but according to this interview with Meg Ryan it got pushed back to this September. It's based on the Saroyan book The Human Comedy. Looks like a good one.