Dog as Baby

How do we all treat our pets - like children. Sometimes substitute children for those who don't have any, or even don't want any. We no longer name our dogs Spot or Ginger, now when I go to the dog park I hear people names, Lynn, Zach, Brooklyn, Dakota.

So, even though I have children, I always talk about my dog as a big, 30-lb, furry, scruffy baby, a love hound. She acts rather like a toddler, always trying to get my attention and love. Annoyed when I pay too much attention to my husband or son. I am definitely not allowed to talk on the telephone or pay attention to other dogs with out a hound intervention.

She is very active, and sometimes quite bored. Going to the park on Sundays, and the farmer's market on Saturdays, and a walk every day is just not enough. I remember the days when my son was little and I was happy to drop him off at day care on Mondays after a long weekend of trying to come up with enough activities to wear him out while still getting done everything I needed to do over the weekend. I was paying for it, but at least he was worn out by the action at day care.

Now, with the dog, she is rather the same. If she is bored and not tired enough, she wakes me up in the middle of the night to go outside in her fenced area, do her business more from boredom than need, get a piece of treat, like a baby who wants an extra bottle because it is restless and can't sleep.

She takes her treat, and happily goes back to the bedroom and goes to sleep, while I struggle to sleep again, and wake up exhausted. The dog is too cute to be mad at, just like a sleeping child, on its back with the legs in the air, content and safe in its bed and in its home, with its family.

It truly is a dog's life.

In sickness and in health

When we get married do we really consider that part of the traditional vows. We hear those words so often in tv shows and movies. But what does it all really mean.

As I watched my father die this year and my parents marital difficulties, they were certainly together in health, but not in sickness. Whatever problems existed before his illness were just magnified 100-fold with each day he was ill.

So now that my husband is ill, not severely, but certainly with a long-term debilitating illness, there is no question in my mind that I will take care of him and do for him everything I did for my father and more. It is easy to love someone when they are vibrant and healthy and they can take care of you. But when someone is ill and needy, not to mention difficult, grouchy, and scared, it is that much harder to love through it all.

Climate Change Doubters

In the dog park on Sunday speaking with someone young and fairly intelligent who admitted to me that he doesn't really believe in global warming. He believes that the earth is getting warmer and humans merely speeding up a natural process.

It got me thinking, what would the earth be like without humans. Would it be heating up if we took us all out of the equation?

Animals would not be knocking down trees, deforesting the earth, destroying the ozone layer with fluorocarbons, laying down black asphalt, polluting the ocean, burning oil to keep warm and drive our cars and so on? How is it possible that we are not affecting the earth in every way.

It is logic, pure and simple logic.

Teenage eating machines

Well, I've heard about it and read about it but I am now finally experiencing the amazing 14 year old teenage male eating (and growing) machine.

It is a truly insane thing to experience and watch, a child growing literally sometimes overnight, be it a shoe-size or other clothes, while eating huge quantities of food, three donuts, five pancakes, ice cream, pasta, bottles of milk, lemonade, gatorade, cookies, candy, macaroni and cheese, fruit, and who knows what else. A child who can literally eat you out of house and home. I see the future and it will include a food bill escalating by about $50 per week this school year.

I remember when he was little, maybe two or three years old, and one evening he wanted Cheerios and milk for dinner. He proceeded to eat three big bowls of Cheerios. So I asked him that all important question, where did it all go? How could it be in his small belly? He responded "well, mommy" (as if I was stupid), "it is in my arms and legs and fingers and toes". If only.

iPad blogging from the car

Yesterday we were driving to Boston for my reunion - 30 years which is impossible to believe. And we were stuck in traffic, crawling on route 84 east for about two hours with no reason in view, no accident, no construction, but endless traffic. So sitting the passenger seat, I was using my husband's ipad to surf, to email, and to blog. It was pretty amazing, the relative speed of it, the clarity of the screen, the intuitive nature of using it, all impressive. I may finally succumb to the iphone when the 4g arrives in two weeks.

On the drive, I began to contemplate my college years, and the speed of modern life, encapsulated in that ipad. Do we use technology to avoid life or enhance it? Probably a little of both.

Poem-MOTHER'S DAY PAST

MOTHER’S DAY PAST

ON MOTHER’S DAY

AREN’T WE SUPPOSED TO HONOR

THE PERSON WHO BIRTHED US

AND RAISED US

WITH UNCONDITIONAL LOVE

KINDNESS AND CARING

SUPPORT AND ENCOURAGEMENT

BUT WHAT DO WE DO

HOW SHOULD WE FEEL

WHEN THAT WAS ALL ABSENT

WHEN THE VOID IS STILL SO LARGE

IT COULD SWALLOW US WHOLE

IN ONE GULP

TO DROWN IN THE WELL

OF SORROW

FOR A CHILDHOOD LOST

WASTED IN NEGATIVITY

AND HOSTILITY

ANGER AND RESENTMENT

BUT INSTEAD WE CAN CHOOSE

TO FIND OTHERS TO PROVIDE

ALL THAT WAS LOST AND MISSED

TO FILL THE HOLE IN THE DONUT

AND BY BEING A BETTER PARENT

THAN WE WERE GIVEN

TO PROVIDE ALL THAT

WE NEVER GOT

AS A WAY TO HEAL

SO ON MOTHER’S DAY

WE HONOR WHO WE ARE

AND WHO WE HAVE BECOME

AND LEAVE BEHIND

THE PAST AS PASSED BY

AND FINISHED.

Evolution of fatherhood

So, I'm in Starbucks the other day, a Saturday, on line and standing for a while listening to two young men behind me on the line.

And I'm thinking how different life is today, expectations of work and life, then when I was a child pre-Title IX, pre-women's rights. When I was in elementary school, young girls were told you could be a teacher, a nurse, and/or a mommy. Doctor, lawyer, Senator, President, were not in the realm of possibility. It began to change thanks to brave tough women who worked hard for Title IX and women's rights. So, by the time I was in 7th Grade (the year Title IX was enacted) the world began to change. By 4th grade, I was even allowed to wear pants to school, but not shorts, no jeans (and this was public school). Back then children went home for lunch because the expectation was the mom's were home waiting for them. There was no breakfast or lunch program. There was no after-school program. Families could afford to live on one salary and live a solid middle-class life.

So, I am in Starbucks thinking about life, watching young families around me, and listening to these two men discuss work/life balance, childcare issues, diapers, toilet training (or as I call it house-breaking) and marveling that they are involved enough with their children's lives to even consider these issues. My father might have thought about discussing education and school in some highly academic way, but was never involved in the specifics. Toward the end of his life, he definitely got it, that the world had changed, and balancing work and real life was difficult.

He watched me as I tried to be a good, involved parent, and work a full-time job and career, and manage a marriage, and how impossible it is. That feeling that we can do it all, but some part of our lives is always unfinished, incomplete, or imperfect. For we women perfectionists, it is a difficult pill to swallow.

Where we have come since 1972 is leaps and bounds, not the slow evolution of Darwinism which takes millions of years. It has moved at modern speed like the development of mainframe computers to laptops and smartphones and ipads in 40 years.

So, although my husband grew up with a stay at home mom, my son did not. And one day I hope he will be talking with a friend (at whatever his version of Starbucks will be in 20 years) about the same issues, and hopefully finding that there is more affordable better childcare than exists now, that paid family exits and is mandatory, and that he has a wonderful partner to share it all with.