8th Grade

 

It’s official:  My daughter is an 8^th grader beginning in September.  Only 5 more years of learning and growing academically, socially and emotionally ahead of her in order to cross the Rubicon of college for the brave new world of young adulthood!

Yikes!!

Do you remember 8^th grade?  I do.

In 8^th grade, I started to feel like I was on the path to something important…maybe, the presidency.  But I had a few little things I had to attend to first, like Earth Science and growing stinky lima beans in the dark and damp of our basement for some experimental reason, just don’t ask me what…and Algebra, because someone in school thought I actually had a brain for math; a notion they would be disabused of once I took Trig in 10^th grade.  My favorite class was American History, taught by the local tennis club champion and history scholar who was so smart and so dreamy.  (I also had his younger brother and fellow tennis champ for 7^th Grade Math, where I learned pre-Algebra using an abacus.  Funny, the things that stick with you.)

Finally, English:  I can’t for the life of me remember the name of my 8th Grade English teacher, only that she was a former nun and a stickler for grammar with a passion for diagramming sentences.  Despite that, I adored the class and the authors we read…Dickens, James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne, chief among them.  My grammar remains better than average thanks to that teacher. 

The summer before the official commencement of my 8^th grade year was a big growth experience too:  My parents allowed me to take the Fire Island ferry with my friends, unchaperoned, for lazy beach days.  Tucked into our bikinis while noting the boys' growth spurts as they dragged surfboards into the water, we slathered our skin with Baby Oil, turned lobster red, and cooly ignored the threat of future melanomas.  I also remember Friday evenings of Beach Club dances in July and August with local bands playing badly – but we didn’t mind.  That’s where we learned to work out our frustrations and budding hormones on the dance floor, flirting with each swivel of our hips.  I especially remember a white cotton shift with halter-style shoulders that I whipped on my sewing machine for beach club dances.  I wore the dress with a colorful necklace or scarf – very short, very sixties, very homemade.  Boy, I loved that dress.

Many of the friends I knew then remain my fondest today, and everyone I knew then contributed to whoever I am today in their own very specific and significant ways.  For that, I thank you – even those of you who made life tough or miserable or just plain ick at the time.  (You know who you are, I’m guessing, even if I don't. Such are the joys of aging!).

I know what lies ahead for my daughter and worry about it too, but this summer my beautiful, remarkable, utterly charming, funny and smart child – and her friends --  will start making the memories they'll noodle on from time to time for the next 70 years.  I will watch them all with wonder, awe, sadness and a wee bit of envy.

Now it begins.

 

You Tube Philanthropy

In some neighborhood of San Francisco or LA, affixed to the underside of a park bench or taped to a telephone pole, there may be an envelope stuffed with a few $20 bills – a secret gift from a real estate entrepreneur with a little too much ego, cash and time on his hands.

This Mystery Millionaire and his Scavenger Hunt for 20-somethings (bills, mostly) has taken the internet and indeed the world by storm.  And I say:  Why?

For one thing, this is not “lotto” money:  No multi-mega-millions  to be won and taxed; only denominations of 20, enough to buy the finder and a friend a glass of wine or 2 at a bar in Santa Monica.

For another thing, this money isn’t targeted to the needy; rather, the reporting about it has focused on more than a few mid-career professionals scouring the city for cash in envelopes.  Please.

But what should this man do with his cash?  Does he want to be discovered taping it to a tree? 

Why not give the money to a food bank, a homeless shelter, a children’s hospice…or a charter school in an impoverished neighborhood?  Wouldn’t that be more rewarding if you had money to throw around or away?

But then:  What would I do if I found an envelope with some cash?

It depends.

When I was 29 years old, I treated my 24 year-old starving grad student sister to a late Sunday afternoon matinee.  (Spoiler alert: We saw “The Right Stuff,” based on Tom Wolff’s book, which remains one of my favorite films to this day).  We stayed to watch the credits and were the last people in the theatre.  Edging our way down the row of seats, I noticed something on the floor that looked like…money.  

About $300 in cash.

In those days, I was making about $30K (not much then, and even less now) and my sister was making nothing (she was starving, remember?).  We looked at each other and shook our heads.  We knew we needed to do the right thing.  Or at least we needed to try to do the right thing.

We went to the box office and asked the cashier if anyone had inquired about losing something in the theatre.  Nope.  We waited outside the box office for about 20 minutes.  No one came by asking for their $300. 

I asked my sister if we should give the money to the cashier, but I answered my own question:  No.  Finder’s keepers.  If we gave it to the cashier, she'd just keep it....

I said, “Let’s go out to dinner.”  My sister was hungry (of course).  I was always hungry (of course).  So off we went to a lovely little Italian restaurant on Connecticut Avenue near Woodley Park, with a lovely bottle of modestly-priced Chianti and some very good spaghetti and meatballs.  We spent about $70 (including tip) for the meal and my younger sister took possession of the rest.  I figured it would buy her nearly a month of groceries.

I’m no longer 29, of course, and today I’d probably manage my “find” differently – at least, I’d like to think so.   But if I had the cash to give away?  I hope that I'd try to be a little bit “intentional” about it.

So, for the elusive millionaire whose playful desire to give away money has become the sport de jour? Enjoy your 15 minutes of fame – but know, too, that you might have earned 30 minutes of well-deserved recognition if you’d been just a tiny bit nobler about your You Tube philanthropy.

Then again, we can always hope that some starving grad student finds a little bit of your cash and puts it to good use…say, dinner.

The Lady with the Blue Stripe

As I made my way through the Washington, D.C. rush hour last evening, I got temporarily trapped behind a Metro bus.  I flashed my signal to try to move to the left and around it, but in the usual way things go in our uncivil society these days, there wasn’t a car that would let me in the left lane, probably because it would add 1.25 seconds to their drive time home.

I sat and sat and sat some more as the light changed to red.  Knowing I’d have my only opportunity to maneuver out of traffic prison when the light turned green, I flashed my signal again and poised my foot above the gas pedal for a speedy maneuver into the left lane.

Then I saw her.

She was generously overweight in her khakis, and she leaned to the left on a cane.  She appeared to be in her early fifties, or maybe older.  Still, she moved briskly enough through the cross walk and appeared to be whistling through a half-smile intended for no one but herself.  I was struck by her jauntiness.  And I noticed, too, she had a prominent, light blue stripe in her dyed blonde hair.

Wow.

I thought to myself:  That is a contented woman, comfortable in her own skin and sassy enough to know that a stripe in her hair would add just a little something to her life and the face she presented to the world.  She was the mistress of her own destiny. I was gob smacked by her and the sheer joy and confidence expressed in that blue stripe of hair.

This morning, I read in the New York Times about some hullabaloo regarding twenty-something starlet Shailene Woodley’s disavowal of the word “feminism” because she really “loves” men.  And she’s in good company –Taylor Swift, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, and Lady Gaga, among many other celebrities, apparently feel the same way.

I love my man, too, but I’m also his equal in every way but, perhaps, one:  He’s much better at programming the DVR than I am, for sure. 

We supposedly live in a “post-feminist” society.  As many girls as boys now attend college, maybe more, so they don’t feel the same sense of urgency about their rights as my generation did in the 1960s and 70s.  Plus nearly half of the workforce is comprised of women, even though we make only 3/4^ths of what our male counterparts make, but still…. 

And sure, I know the maturation of the LGBT civil rights movement still confuses some in our society about gender roles and identity.  But a feminist being defined as someone who doesn’t like boys?

Really?

The fact that the word “feminist” is still considered politically fraught and polarizing baffles me.  What’s so scary about Lady Gaga saying she’s a feminist?  She probably made more money last year than the GDP of Greece; I’m guessing she feels pretty empowered most of the time. 

I’m with comedian Amy Poehler on this one:  I don’t get it.

Which leads me back to the woman with the blue stripe in her hair.  She may not call herself a feminist and she may not feel empowered every single day of her life but that blue stripe leads me to believe she wouldn’t be intimated by the word – or dismissive of it.  No sir, she’s far too playful and confident for that sort of patronizing poppycock.

I’m not brave enough to put a blue stripe in my hair, but I’m old enough and smart enough to appreciate one when I see it.  Just as I appreciate the real meaning of the word “feminist” every day I go to work and every time I come home to the man I love.

 

Moving On

Some very important people in my life are moving on and moving away and it has me feeling stir crazy.

For someone who has always embraced her little touch of ADD with enthusiasm because new people, issues, and things are the best stimulus of all (mostly), I’m finding that the older I get the harder it is to “lean in” to the stimulus of change.  Change is exciting, of course, but it’s also…uncomfortable. And uncomfortable makes me, well, pretty uncomfortable.

So my retired work spouse and his real spouse are headed to Massachusetts to settle into a new phase in their lives. They both seem to have started to really, truly look forward to this new era too.  They’re writing a book together, so their brains are busy…they’re eliminating unneeded detritus of their previous life by having an estate sale, so they’re pocketing some cash too.  All in all, sounds pretty good, right?  I’m happy for them.

It’s making me squirmy as hell.

And then my wonderful next door neighbors are moving 1.5 miles away to a much larger house so that they and their 2 terrific girls can have space to grow up and need…their own space.  I get it, I envy it, and I’m a little pissed off that they are doing it.  Why?  It means their kids won’t be walking barefoot on the worn cobble stone "short cut" between our two houses anymore.  It means we won’t be doing impromptu group dinners or evening outdoor movie nights with lots of popcorn for the girls and wine for the grown-ups.  Man, I’m going to miss those nights.

Then there’s our neighbor son the other side of us. Their house is big and beautiful and a rental.  We really don’t know them very well; candidly, I remember the husband’s name but never his wife’s and that’s better than my husband, who only knows them as “hello, how are you?”  Anyway, they’ve just bought a new home so they’re leaving too at the end of this month.

I’m starting to take it personally.

As for me, I’d like to be ready to move on – but to where?  We can’t afford a larger house in our neighborhood, and if we could, we’d have to be prepared to sink a lot of money and sweat equity into a renovation.  Sorry, but I’m too old for that; just ask my 401k manager.  Plus, my daughter still has 5 more years to go before college beckons, so we can’t really leave the area.  And if we could leave the area, my husband and I aren’t totally on the same page (yet) about where to settle down and how:  A house?  A condo?  A houseboat?  A cave?

Whenever I get this way, I realize that I need to do something “homeowner-y,” like buy a new piece of furniture, or paint a room, or have a lawn service company remove all the weeds and poison ivy in our yard.

Better squirmy than itchy, I guess.  Time to call the gardener.

 

Drowning in the Car Pool

My day began in a leisurely manner for a Tuesday:  20 minutes on the treadmill, some juicing for breakfast, getting my daughter fed and me showered, all by 8:00am.  Just as I was about to send myself off to the doctor, at approximately 8:05, the day started to fall apart.

The panicky text came across my phone screen and my daughter’s – I had forgotten that I was supposed to drive the morning car pool pick-up and my partner had other things to do so she couldn’t cover my screw-up.  However, I was pretty sure that my days for this week were Wednesday, Thursday and Friday based on the Sunday evening group email I usually send to participating parents, including my morning partner.  Muttering some particularly choice words (bad mommy, bad) I sprang into action.   

It was now 8:10am and I usually leave the house at 7:35 am to begin my car pool rounds which take me some miles in a direction opposite that of the school.  I was about, oh, 40-45 minutes behind schedule to pick up anyone.

Did I mention that all my carpool kids had an 8.30am end of year sports team celebratory breakfast to attend today – or that I had a 9:00 am doctors’ appointment – and that we would all be late?

While waiting for a light to change at 8:16am, I found my Sunday evening Group Email -- bad texting mommy, bad -- which was as I remembered it.  I forwarded it on to my partner with the following message:   ““You were supposed to pick up today.  I am on my way to your house now.”  The light turned green and I powered onward. 

At about the same time, my morning partner sent me a screen shot of my atrociously typed scheduling message sent to her at 8:39 PM Sunday night, where I wrote “Tuesday” instead of “Wednesday” --  before sending out the infamous Group Email with Wednesday in my schedule correctly noted.  My car pool co-pilot received this email along with the other 2 participating parents.

The battle was joined:   We were both right and wrong.  My partner accused me of not accepting responsibility and hurting her feelings because of the “tone” of my 8:16 email; I apologized for the mistyped text of Sunday evening, but noted that the (correct) Group Email was the commitment “of record” for all parental participants, including her.

After some back and forth about our mutual disappointment in each other during the course of the year (she's been unreliable and too sensitive/I've been reliable but insensitive) and the sloppiness of our Sunday evening "process" for negotiating and communicating the week ahead, we both agreed our car pool partnership is finito at semester's end. 

So the upshot of all this drama was:  The kids were late for their breakfast.  I was late to the allergist.  My blood pressure reading at the doctor was scary high.  I was even later to work than I thought I would be.  Two witless and weary moms behaved badly via text message.   And yes, I didn't accept sole responsibilty for an error that clearly began with me.  Obviously, tI'm not proud of that fact, even though I did concoct some interesting "turns of phrase" in my messaging skirmish this morning....

And imagine:  It’s only Tuesday.

Hillary's Head

Hillary Clinton bumped her head

A little clot, her doctors said

So she wore strong glasses

Let others catch a few passes

And rested her way back to health.

*****

But what do we hear?  Some brain damage, they fear?

Says the man with Rovian glee

The early front runner

Has a brain that’s a bummer

But things are ok, Karl says, believe me

****

We GOP a Bush in the wings,

A Christie who’s King

And a Cruz with a Tea Party flair

They may sing a sad song of a country gone wrong…but wait:

They can fix it, I swear!

**** 

But Hillary laughs

As Bill banters back

“They’re desperate to win, don’t cha  see.”

And Hillary in Waiting

Has no time for bating

There are other to-dos in her way

****
There’s a speech in an hour

A book about power

And a grandchild on the way...hip hooray.

Oval Office drapes?

She'll  take hers  in "grape"

But will wait before ordering...

Just in case.

Concierge Medicine

My pulmonologist’s medical practice joined a national provider of concierge medicine two years ago, and I decided to spend the money to become a card-carrying “member.”  Although the $500 price tag to join was steep, I was assured that I would receive priority treatment when I was ill (which happens sometimes 2-3 times a year and can be serious).  And I could always reach my doctor or his primary physician assistants via secure email for rapid and real time responses to my health concerns.  As a member, I also would have access to a number of other “wellness” specialists, including a nutritionist and an exercise coach (not a trainer, a coach) – plus, I would receive a “health and wellness” newsletter each month filled with helpful “tips” on how to keep my aging body from falling apart.

The first year, I had my usual 2 or 3 respiratory infections and when I called for a consult with my doctor, I was seen the same day – just what the doctor ordered and the membership promised.  So I was ok with the fact that I didn’t really consult with the nutritionist, etc., etc.

This year, I’ve managed to avoid respiratory infections but I have had a devil of a time with asthma during this rugged spring allergy season.   The pollen count is always high in D.C. but this year it’s been stratospheric – so I decided I should probably see an allergist and then visit with my pulmonologist to ensure I was doing everything possible to manage the asthma more effectively.

I’ve been trying for two weeks to get a referral for an allergist.  Two weeks.  I started with communication via my “secure concierge email” – no response.  I emailed several times.  Nada.

I then tried to call 3 days in a row – several times -- using the “concierge hotline.”  No one answered.  No one.

Then I tried calling the general office number for those who aren’t concierge patients and finally got a live person who would actually talk to me.  Of course, when she looked up my medical record for the requested referral, the information was so incomplete she had to call me right back. Which she did – 2 hours later.

And now I’ve called the allergist’s office which was identified as a dermatology practice by whoever recorded the out of office phone message.  Undaunted by this less than reassuring turn in my search for an allergist, I’ve left a message anyway for the doctor to whom I was referred.  Somehow, I suspect she really is a dermatologist.

Sigh.  All of this makes me reflect on folks out there who think President Obama is destroying our health care system.  If you truly believe that, I’ve got an elitist concierge medicine membership to give you – for free.  Welcome to the true future of medicine.