High School

My little girl is officially a high school freshman today.  How the hell did that happen?

If I close my eyes right this minute I am back in the moment when David and I walked through a soft drizzle of rain with our 5 year-old for her first day at Kindergarten. 

Now her march to adulthood kicks into high gear.  On the one hand, I’m so thrilled for her – high school is such a time of personal growth and exploration, some bad but mostly good.  On the other, I’m terrified for her, because our world today is so unpredictable, less civil, and more wantonly competitive than at any time I can remember.  My daughter will need to call on all of her social and intellectual IQ to navigate her path to the future; David and I can only help with love, encouragement and, yes, some degree of emotional and financial stability.   At the end of the day, however, her journey will be her own.

But I get ahead of myself, as I often do when it comes to this child whom I love more than anything.

For now, the focus need to be on Algebra, science, English composition, history and electives, so she can come to the task of more demanding work with an open, enthusiastic mind.  In tandem with that, David and I will happily play our parts as cheerleaders at volleyball and basketball games; chauffeurs to dances and hangouts; top cops on first dates with would-be boyfriends; academic subject matter experts where we can be without steering her wrong; and, for me, chef de jour to ensure she’s eating reasonably well so that she can function during the day.

When we look back on these years, I hope we’ll do so with wonder, pride, amusement and a minimum of regret. I also hope the friends she holds in confidence and comradery will remain among her dearest friends for life.  Indeed, this is how it was for me, looking back on my high school career – one of the greatest, most enduring gifts on my trip to today.

Here’s to the Class of 2019 and the lovely young woman I am so honored to call my daughter.

Radio Silent Summer

Hope you’ve all enjoyed the summer months with family, friends and some fair weather.  Although it’s been a while since I’ve been in touch, you and this blog have not been far from my thoughts.  I suppose my brain has been on pause for a bit, trying to puzzle the next stage of life for Mrs. Sedd and her family.  While I haven’t reached any big conclusions with my husband, I think it’s fair to say that we aspire to  “steady state” for some time to come while my daughter continues her march to young adulthood by starting the 9^th grade this Fall.

So, what can I report on that might have a modicum of relevance to your life emotionally if not practically?  Let’s see….

• Hummingbirds will become regular visitors to your yard IF you feed them their favorite brew:  cold sugar water.  My husband has become a huge (maybe even a little obsessed) fan of luring these tiny, tenacious birds to our front yard since visiting his brother’s home on high in the Colorado Rockies.  He peers out at them, records them on his phone, posts to Facebook about them, and searches out other aficionados.  I like them too.  They beat their wings frantically and buzz around like bees when they gather to take a drink, but they are comforting in a weird sort of way, too. 
• We have nothing to fear but fear itself.   Based on an earlier transit this summer, I realized that my Bay Bridge phobia (see my earlier post on that subject, “Bay Bridge Blues”) has become borderline debilitating so I decided to hire the “drive over” Kent Island Express taxi service to take me across.  For $30 a trip, why not enjoy the view of the Chesapeake as opposed to watching my blood pressure soar on my Apple watch to the point of lightheadedness?  Trust me, it was worth it, even if it did signal to my daughter (who was travelling with me to the Delaware shore) that her mother is a little bit of a nut job.   
• Steve Jobs’ Stanford University commencement address is amazing.  I keep meaning to get to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs’ and I’m looking forward to the movie version this Fall (my kind of film) – but I did run across the You Tube video of Jobs’ 2005 speech while reviewing another video for work.  Wow.  In it, he tells 3 simple stories – about the karma of his birth and unconventional education; failure at 30; and death – all pretty profound.  If you haven’t seen it, look for it.  If you didn’t think much of Jobs, reconsider.  If you want some insight into the “putty” that life sometimes molds in miraculous, world changing ways, its worth paying attention to.
• I love good science fiction.  Every now and then I’ll read a book that truly transports me to another world, and when I do, I try to share my enthusiasm with others.  In the past few years, 2 science fiction books have catapulted to the top of my list of favorite books.  I've written about the book Age of Miracles in a previous post; this past month, I added Seveneves by Neal Stephenson to my list.  This book is science fiction at its best:  Earth as we know it has been catastrophically rendered uninhabitable. Against enormous odds, the human race seeks to survive in space.  I don’t dare tell you more.  Enjoy this utterly absorbing saga with big buckets of popcorn.

There are other things I could write about, but maybe I should save them for later, whenever that may be.   Until then, here’s to Fall!

I Heart a Watch

…And so the silence ends from my little corner of Arlington, VA.

Mrs. Sedd has been AWOL for a variety of reasons, some of them having to do with the lack of irritating inspiration for penning my little missives, and some that are personal.  Plus, when you don’t have anything much to say, I say don’t say it.

However, my silence ends now, just as my heart beat per minute is 82.

How do I know this, you ask?  I consulted my watch.

No, it’s not just any watch, it’s my bat-phone, batty little fashion-accessory-cum-high-tech-toy.  It’s…yes…drumroll, please…my iWatch.

I heart my iWatch.  Not just because I can call my husband (even if I can’t really hear his reply so well because I haven’t quite figured out the audio control yet).  Not just because I can track my activity level (sometimes inaccurately, but then my watch is quirky that way).  And not just because I keep semi-insulting Siri with a bunch of ridiculous questions ("How do you like living inside a watch?").

Oh, and I also love the fact I can read CNN headlines, scan texts, buy Starbucks and browse office emails all from  my watch!  It’s true that my iPhone can do these things too and in a way that’s much easier on my aging eyes.  But it’s just not as cool as my watch which should, by extension, make me cool too.

Ok, stop laughing now.

That’s what I have to share with you today:  my pathetically pleased, sixty-something self, happily in love with a gadget.  And the best part?  I didn’t even consult an instructional video to figure out how to figure it out.

Go figure. 

 

Post-Feminist America

Two events in the past few weeks have captured my attention – the announcement that Sweet Briar College, a well-regarded southern liberal arts college for women, is closing its doors after the class of 2015 graduates as well as the Broadway closing of “The Heidi Chronicles,” a 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning dramedy starring “Mad Men’s” Elizabeth Moss, about the trials and tribulations of feminism in the 70s and 80s.

For me these twin closings underscore that these are the best of times for women in America – and the worst of times.  Although too few women crack the glass ceiling of their professions, more and more are doing do every day. Good news, yes? And while it’s true we only make 75% of what our male peers make (ahem), it’s also true that more women today earn as much or more than their spouses and are fundamentally important contributors to their families’ wealth.  Bravo, ladies!!

And yet, and yet…

We have a powerful conservative constituency in this country that seems to want to slowly undo gains for women that have been hard won over a period of decades.  But women sometimes don’t help their cause either:  In our workplaces, our social networks, or at the ballot box, we don’t always stand up for our bodies or ourselves, or for what we contribute and the value of that contribution.  Sadly, it seems like some of us secretly don’t think they’re worth it and the risk of “complaining” is too great.  Not good news, as TV personality and Know Your Worth author Mika Brzezinski might say. 

Finally, the hyper-sexualization of American society (and I really do blame the media for this – and no, I’m not a prude) isn’t helping many of our sons or daughters navigate puberty with self-awareness and confidence.  The Rolling Stone/UVA controversy shows how hard it is to handle the difficult task of growing up without caving in to social pressures or old sexual stereotypes.  Surely, the epidemic of rape on college campuses should startle every parent of college age kids – and their student-children -- into action against this grim state of affairs.

Which leads me to Sweet Briar.  There is still an important and relevant place in today’s America for women’s academic institutions.  They build confidence in one’s capabilities without the distractions of testosterone.  They build capacity for female self-acceptance and understanding without a lot of the “mean girl” culture that can exist at larger schools with sororities, etc.  Women’s colleges are a safe place to become the woman you dream of being – and some women need that kind of space and safety to grow in.  Sweet Briar faculty members and deep-pocketed alumni are trying to find ways through the courts to keep the doors open at their beloved institution.  I hope they succeed, but I'm not optimistic. 

All of this has left me wondering about our post-feminist society.  Have American women lost a little bit of the “fire in the belly” for  their continued progress?  Are those of us who remember the feminist movement indifferent or complacent in our later middle age because we fought and won the fight, sort of?  And are we, in turn,  passing along this indifference and complacency to our daughters?

I don't know -- but I feel uncomfortably close to answering "yes" to the above questions.  All that said, the LGTB movement gives me some hope for a future where men and women, regardless of their biology or self-identification, can stand on equal footing in society and in the workplace with a genuine mutuality of interest in success for their families, their communities, their country and each other.

At least I hope so.  A post-feminist girl can dream, can’t she?

A Delicate Balance

I haven't really had much time to share my ramblings with you lately given spring holidays, work demands, and the like.  And candidly, I don't want to waste your time by just writing anything...so when the muse is away, I tend to be gone too.  

But today, I read something a colleague shared with others in my office -- and though I don't usually do this, I was so moved by it that I knew I should share it with friends too. So I hope you will take the time to read New York Times columnist David Brooks' amazing essay, "The Moral Bucket List," by following the link below. If the link doesn't work, please do try to track it down on Google, etc.  You'll be so glad you did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0

 

Parenthood: The Teen Years

I have just finished reading a beautifully written and very provocative essay about raising teenagers (“The Mother of All Problems:  On Raising Teenagers,” by Rachel Cusk) which was published in the New York Times and it made me think about how my family is managing on our daughter’s journey through those difficult years.

The subhead of Ms. Cusk’s article is “Children are characters in the family story we tell – until, one day, they start telling it themselves” and that subhead is remarkably telling and insightful.  Our daughter’s journey to independence is underway and she’s keenly interested in starting to develop her own narrative and mythology.   It begins with the experiences, dreams and feelings (including those about my husband and me) she shares with her closest friends and I can only imagine how colorful and ripe they are. I know that before long they will bloom and become her own exciting, personal "story" and expression of how she thinks about her world and the place she desires in it -- for good and, occasionally, for ill.

The ways I know she’s truly a teenager?

1.      She keeps things close to the vest with her father and me – I frequently have to pry information out of her, but it comes at a cost (grumpiness for hours).  David, who has a gentler way with her, uses his lawyerly skill (more Atticus Finch than Johnnie Cochran) to greater effect and learns a heckuva lot more than I do.

2.      She spends a lot of her time behind closed doors.  When I knock to enter, I am sometimes not invited in. 

3.      She expects me to do everything (wash clothes, make meals, serve her, pick up after her, clean, etc.) and then complains about it (boring recipes, dirty clothes and nothing to wear, etc.).

4.      There’s usually girl drama in her life of one kind or another.  It takes a lot of emotional energy to whip up the content for endless hours of talk with girlfriends.

5.      Boys like my daughter in their very passive-aggressive, 14-year old way.  We’ve had our trees tee-peed, our door bell rung with “no one” at the door…you get the picture.   The cat and mouse of boy-girl stuff is beginning.

6.      My girl is dying to get the party started – because it looks like fun, with cute guys and girls dancing, scheming, and dancing when they aren’t kissing or singing in a rock band.  I blame Teen Nick and Disney Channel for this.

7.      Hello, Miss Independent: She wants it, and I am willing to consider it. One day.  It’s a big world out there, and my helicopter mom instincts scream “danger ahead.” My bad.

8.      Who is sullen, moody, and argumentative?  Enough said.  I’ve learned to live with the necessary evils of puberty, pimples and all they engender emotionally.

9.      When I pick her up from a friend’s house or school, she wants me to stay in the car, Mom!  I embarrass her.  And that embarrasses me.

But then, there are those divine, loving cues that remind me there’s still a little girl inside the teenager – notice it’s a shorter list:

1.      Curling up in her father’s lap in the family room easy chair on a Sunday morning.

2.      Thanking me for making her breakfast or dinner.

3.      Hugging me when I wake her on a weekday morning, grumpy about having to go to school but grateful for the reassuring affection.

4.      Those quiet moments, alone in her room, when I can look through the opening in her doorway and see her sitting on her bed, playing with the hair on her American Girl doll, lost in her thoughts.

My daughter is only 14 and the toughest years lie ahead.  At some point the growing pains may become hard to bear and even terrifying on occasion.  And while my experience of my daughter’s transit to adulthood doesn’t map completely to the one so vividly portrayed in Ms. Cusk’s thoughtful essay, I think it’s fair to say that we both find the experience of navigating the shoals of our daughters’ later adolescence to be challenging, unsettling but thrilling at the same time.

I'm just so glad that I get to experience the journey with her.

 

 

 

Fifty Shades of Cinderella...and Cookie

I thought I'd offer up some musings that probably reveal a lot about my Baby Boomer demo:  I passed up the opportunity to (belatedly) see Fifty Shades of Gray to attend an opening day showing of Cinderella.  That’s right.  Sixty-two and a Disney Princess Forever.

While it’s true I was bored anytime Cate Blanchett’s wicked stepmother wasn’t on-screen – which was far too often – I still got a kick out of a beloved tale told with some style.  Visually, the movie was stunning:  Vivid blues and golds, silvers and pinks and for Stepmom, chartreuse.  Helena Bonham Carter, a true English eccentric and always a fun actress to watch, was a kick as the Fairy Godmother.  The young actress who played Cinderella was utterly charming – blonde (of course), beautiful (natch) but very winning (not too sweet, not too sour).  Only the Prince was a disappointment, but that’s not an uncommon occurrence when it comes to princes, so it didn’t bother me.  I generally loved it.

At some point, I’ll see Fifty Shades (probably on DVR with my husband, so we can giggle together) but I can wait.  I slogged through the books and have a pretty good idea of how things go down in the Red Room (smile).

But then there’s Empire and crazy, angry, utterly lovable in her own unscrupulous way Cookie Lyon, and her ex-husband, the sexy, surly, seriously bad Lucious Lyon, Rap Mogul Extraordinaire played by Terrence Howard.  The 2-hour finale was as bonkers and over the top as I’d hoped for, down to Terrence Howard’s final line as he stares at the camera through the bars of his jail cell:  “Game time, bitches!”

I guess you can tell that I haven’t been doing much reading lately.

On that note, I’ve gotta go, bitches.  Game time at the office.