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.

Poem-Soaring

Soaring

Watching as I drive always

For the birds flying high above

Hawks and eagles

With swings broadly spread

Soaring and swooping

Floating on currents of air

Flying free from earth boundaries

As if above the fray

From daily weight

Holding down

While here on the ground

We humans struggle to survive

Weighed down by life’s obstacles

Preventing us from soaring

Rather than moving down the road

In heavy cars

How I wish to fly free

To soar based on instinct alone

No thought

Just air, space and light

freedom

Poem

My Father in a Box

What is left when someone dies?

Memories good and bad,

emotions of loss and sadness,

maybe even anger.

Fear of the future

stuff - possessions rife with memories

surrounding each item

some meaningless,

others important to some.

So when my father expired,

as he did not pass violently or suddenly,

but passed peacefully

inhaling and exhaling his

last breath with calm peace

and the sweet and sour smell of death.

His death was not shocking

nor was the upheaval in the aftermath.

The only shock remained in how little

was left.

A mass of memories

and help given to many others.

Kind words and thoughts

but so little, so few things.

His body went in the casket

and was lowered

into the ground on a cold

winter day while we stood

outside shivering.

And I kept wanting to cover him

with a warm blanket, imagining

him shivering and cold all

while knowing that this was just

his body.

His vibrance and life gone

and all that was left

for me were a few items

placed lovingly in a cardboard box.

Then the box placed neatly

like him, as he was always neat,

in the basement closet

where it will remain,

like his casket in the grave.

This huge presence

who pervaded my life

reduced to a box in the basement.

My father in a box.

Food notes

As my husband knows, I am obsessed with reading labels, particularly when shopping for food. I want to know what I am eating, how it is processed, so I can not buy items laced with salt and high fructose corn syrup, and chemicals I can't even pronounce. One of my personal rules, if I can't pronounce it, I can't eat it.

So, in thinking about food, isn't it odd that although we want to promote buying American with cars or clothes, but almost never with food? We want imported italian tomatoes, pasta, olive oil, swiss chocolate, french fries or toast, but do we really want American cheese - that processed tasteless mess? As American as apple pie?

The reality is that most American food is not good, it is over processed, loaded with salt and sugar, sprayed with chemicals and essentially awful.

Put side by side organic apples or cherries versus commercially process fruits and there is no comparison. But in traveling to europe there is no question that the food tastes better, unprocessed, tastier, easier to digest. So here, I don't even eat certain foods anymore, especially wheat because I can't digest it. Beef because it is so laced with antibiotics and because the cattle is fed other cattle when cows are supposed to be herbivores, our food system is a mess.

We as a culture are so divorced from the sources of our food, we just want it ready to eat and not to think about it too much. It can't last and won't last as our environment collapses around us. I guess Donald Trump will believe in climate change when it is too late.

Yellow Dog

In these days of "blue dog Democrats" people have forgotten the term, yellow dog democrats, but maybe it is time for revival.

My father, who passed away last week, was a true and proud yellow dog. Although he was financially successful, he came from nothing and never turned his back on those who were, like he, trying to achieve the American dream.

Ironically, my father was born in November 1928, the year the term "yellow dog" was born. During that presidential campaign, Al Smith, Governor of NY, ran as the democratic candidate, but was the first Catholic to do so. Senator Tom Heflin of Alabama refused to support the democratic candidate, backing instead, the republican Herbert Hoover - we know how the Hoover presidency worked out. Many in the South disagreed with Heflin's position, which evolved into the popular saying "I'd vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket."

My father was a yellow dog through and through. He despised the Democratic party's lack of organization and cohesion, but at least knew that it truly represented America, not just some narrow slice of America, economically, socially, religiously, ethnically etc .

So now we get to the Blue Dogs and Evan Bayh or we can call him "Bye". My father knew his father Birch Bayh, a yellow dog democrat. My father supported Birch Bayh for president and truly respected him. He also supported Evan, but recognized that these were, perhaps, more politically challenging times.

Thus, when I read on le web yesterday about Evan's plan to quit rather than fight, my immediate thought was wanting to discuss this with my yellow dog father. I knew that although he understood the extreme partisan ship currently in vogue in Washington, leading to governing gridlock, I also knew that my father would be as disappointed as I was that Bayh said "Bye" instead of staying and fighting the good fight. We will not win every skirmish or battle, but the key is to win the war, the war of ideas, of caring for our country and helping our people, rather than dividing and scaring them. Maybe we need to revisit the term Yellow Dog, and what the party was about in 1928, versus where it is now.

Perhaps the parallels will be apropos - the crash in 1929 under Hoover, leading to FDR's election and democratic control of congress for many years - what did the Dems get done? How did they do it? By populism, not protecting the banks and the bankers from their mistakes and fraud.

We need to get beyond the boring, divisive talking heads of CNN and FOX, and find our common ground, and move forward to rescue main street, not wall street. In 1928, yellow dogs were populists. Let's forget about the weak blue dogs and move on. Say bye to Bayh.