everyday life

This is what 35 looks like.

I am a bundle of contradictions at 35, of details old and young, of emotions and preferences both conflicting and complimentary. As Whitman says, fine, I contradict myself. What else do you expect, after all, for I contain multitudes.

This is what 35 looks like, today.

At night I use both Neutrogena acne cream for occasional pimples and retinoids for the wrinkles around my eyes that show up when I smile and, in truth, when I don’t.
I listen to Taylor Swift and James Taylor, to Raffi and to year-round Christmas carols.
I wear rubber flip flops and 4 inch Manolos.
I don’t have any gray hair but my breasts definitely aren’t what they used to be.
I like my white wine on ice and my water at room temp.
I carry both an iPhone and a blackberry (blackberry only because work won’t support the iPhone).
I have a lot of friends but truly trust very few people.
I read more than 20 magazines monthly and more than 100 blogs a day.
I can recite both Goodnight Moon and Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar by heart.
There are things I want dearly that I can’t have, and things I have that I prize highly.
I still can’t drive a stickshift.
I am one of the most overly sensitive people I know, and I’m still waiting to figure out the way this can be a strength.
I have had a mammogram but the last time I went to the doctor they had to use the child blood-pressure cuff on me.
I aspire to live a life with more stillness, but I move almost always at a frenetic pace.
I drink copious amounts of white wine but am a big chicken about hard liquor or most cocktails.
I own tens of girl-sized logo tee-shirts and approaching fifty cashmere sweaters.
I delivered two children without medication but I complain ad nauseum about a slightly tweaky knee, wrist, ankle, or other assorted aches and pains.
I have used Suave shampoo and Cetaphil for as long as I can remember, and I am utterly incompetent when it comes to makeup.
I like it super cold when I sleep, but I always need to kick a foot out from under the covers.
I hate talking on the phone but could email and text all day long.
I have an MBA but I have little interest in business.
I get a bin of organic produce every week but a lot of the time I eat cheese sticks and red licorice for dinner.
I am tone deaf so I listen to music mostly for the lyrics.
I am terrible at laundry, refusing to sort darks and whites, but very anal about kitchen counters being clean and dishes being put away.
I have two children, including a first grader, and most of the time I’m still waiting for the actual mother to come home.

the other side

Well, I made it. I’m on the other side. It has been, unsurprisingly, a reflective weekend.

Today I went for a sail with Grace, Whit, Matt, and my parents. We were on our way out of the harbor when I looked around the cockpit, wondering why there were only five people onboard when I was fairly sure there should be six. It honestly took me several minutes to realize that it was because I was not counting myself.

This strikes me as a fairly sad metaphor.

On Friday night Mum, Dad, Matt and I all did the online Myers-Briggs. I have long been a big Myers-Briggs (MBTI) believer and a committed ENFJ (a personality type represented by something like less than 1% of all HBS students, which explains a lot of my experience there). I’m all J (anal, on time, organized, rigid) and all F (feeling vs. thinking, classic heart vs. head). On E (extraverted vs. introverted) and N (intuitive vs. sensing, ie big picture/intuition/instinct vs. details/data/granular) I have always been closer to the middle.

It is emblematic of either enormous confusion or major tectonic plate-shifting that my Myers-Briggs type has actually changed since the last time I took it. On Friday night I came up as an ISFJ. It doesn’t surprise me that I am now officially an I (though still quite borderline). I find myself more and more internally oriented, though the MBTI description of E vs. I is more nuanced than classic introvert vs. extrovert (I won’t bore you all with it now, but suffice it to say many classic “extroverted” personalities are actually MBTI intraverts).

The one that troubles me is that I am apparently now marginally more S than N (still, only 1% over the midpoint, but I used to be quite N). This concerns me because it seems to hint at deep uncertainty and distrust of my own intuition, something I have always felt quite sure about. I need to spend some time thinking what it is that the test (admittedly a short, internet-friendly version) is picking up on. As much as the overall movement from E to I makes sense to me, that from S to N does not.

More thinking required on that particular topic.

What else from the other side of 35? Well, it was really really hot today. I ran 6 miles and my knee hurt less in the last 3 than the first, which I think means either something really good or something really bad (I suspect the latter, sadly). The children are overtired and cranky. Grace reminded me of myself today in a spooky way: on the boat she was reading down below and I kept asking her questions. She finally burst into tears and I looked at her, surprised, and asked what was going on. “Mummy! I just want to read!” she said, exasperated. I get it, kid, I really do.

Oh, and Aidan, your post touched me deeply, more than you know. Thank you so much for your kind words. I wish I saw myself the way you seem to; even as I read your generous descriptions I hear the voice in my head: well that isn’t true, of course not! I’m very grateful that our paths crossed out here in the wilderness and I simply cannot wait to read Blackberry Girl!!

Saturday August 15

Trip to the annual Marion Library used book sale was successful. Grace had a huge tantrum over only being able to pick out two books (last night I bought about 40 for them at the night before event, which Dad and I went to early and waited outside of for pole position). She overcame that tantrum and they were briefly angelic while waiting for Mum to emerge from the sale.
Grace, perhaps inspired by the sale, did the thing I’ve been waiting for forever: took to the couch with a book and read to herself. Oh, I have arrived at the promised land: I walked in to see what she was doing and she looked up only long enough to shoo me away with “I am reading, Mummy.”
Birthday champs from Bouff, complete with orange ribbon. Thank you!!!
The unmitigated delight of a boy given sudden and unfettered access to a huge crate of various water guns (contraband at home).
Grace and Eloise skipping home wearing our hats.

Farewell to nursery school

Grace on her – and my! – first day at CES, September 2004.

Today was the last day that I dropped off and picked up a child at CES. Grace started at the age of one (she turned two the next month) in the fall of 2004 and I’ve had a child in either school or summer camp there continuously for five years. Wow! Whit was born when Grace was in the red room, which the lovely receptionist remembered today as I said goodbye, tears pouring down my face (oh I am a sentimental, mushy soul!).

CES has been a magic place for my children. Grace was there for three years and Whit for two. I participated in the community as well, serving on the board for two years, one on the executive committee, and chairing the search committee for a new director during a third year.

The school combines an incredibly thoughtful, almost academic approach to early childhood education (most of the teachers have graduate degrees and many years of service) with an infectious atmosphere of joyful play. There was not a single day that either of my children didn’t bound into the building, thoroughly excited about what lay ahead.

I’ve had a child in five of the school’s six classrooms and there hasn’t been a weak teaching team in the bunch. I think a first school experience is all about teaching a child that school, and learning, are fun and something to pursue with gusto. There is no question that CES instilled this belief in both Grace and Whit and for that I am deeply thankful.

Each year I felt as though all three classroom teachers truly knew and loved my child. The parent-teacher conferences were mostly very articulate, with detailed feedback and wonderful, rich stories of how Grace or Whit participated in their various activities. The concerns about Whit’s speech and all of the question marks that raised were handled delicately and supportively; I always felt as though the school was entirely behind us as I evaluated him. As an aside, it seems amazing that I worried that he was not talking enough. He. Will. Not. Stop. Talking.

The school has wonderful traditions; each child has a pattern, each year, and within weeks even the 2 year olds know their own and all of their classmates’ patterns. This clear pre-reading practice is handled with a gossamer lightness, and the children think it is special and fun. They have an identity and a place in their classroom, marked by their pattern. The pattern accompanies all of their various names (on the job board, on the cubbies, etc) as well as covers a small square pillow that they take home at the end of the year. Both Grace and Whit still use and cherish their CES pillows. I think I will recognized all five of their patterns for the rest of my life. There is a weekly informal assembly, and many school songs that I learned in 2004 and will likely recall the words to forever. I can’t count how many assemblies ended up with me in tears.

I am wistful today not only because it represents the end of a phase of my children’s childhood, but also for the very real loss of a community and school that meant a lot to me. CES is a truly wonderful place and I feel immensely fortunate that my children had their first school experience there. There is truth behind the adage that the community recites, with raised eyebrows, for the first time at the new parent welcoming event in September and then, frequently, throughout the year: no school ever lives up to CES. That is a reality both happy and sad.
Whit on his (also my) last day at CES, August 2009

Redheads

Well, I have seen this referred to anecdotally, but now there is data and the official imprimatur of a New York Times story.

Redheads require about 20% more general anesthesia to knock them out. I have always viewed this as all the evidence we need that my kind (which includes my sister, my mother, and some of my dearest friends – two minority groups wildly overrepresented in my close friends are redheads and lefties) are just a little more feisty than the rest of the world.

Currently 4% of the world’s people carry the gene for red hair, which was only discovered in the 1990s (what??? not a priority, people of science? how can this be?). I’ve heard about this frankly terrifying claim that redheads will be extinct by 2100, but I cannot reconcile the tenacious, hard-to-knock-out (is it any surprise that I sometimes need elephant tranquilizer style drugs to help me sleep?) reality of redheads I know with genetic extinction. No sirree.

And MMG, about to turn one, I have great hopes that you will carry the flag into the next generation … no pressure, babe, but the Sun In is coming out for Grace if your hair doesn’t bloom into redness!