Maternally Challenged

And Why Should You Escape?

So today we are sending out the last of the Christmas cards, some of them with a letter enclosed, and it occurred to me that all four or five of my readers out there might be interested in our Yearly Recap, too. Hell, it took  me a WHOLE DAY to write:

At this house, our motto for Christmas letters is “All the news that fits, we print,” but we still pledge to keep it relatively short. For 2007, this will be no problem because, frankly, there are a few stretches of 2007 you wouldn’t want to hear a lot about. 

The bad news first. Tracy underwent some ECT treatments last winter for a severe depressive episode and we’ll spare you the details because, actually, we don’t remember them. ECT is known for doing a number on one’s memory of recent events, so it’s been a year of surprises: outfits we don’t remember buying, e-mail correspondents we don’t remember having met… On the plus side, it also wiped out the memory of several really bad Disney movies, and it helped Tracy recover. ECT is very effective that way—but then, amputation is effective on gangrene, too, and there are good reasons why neither treatment has ever really caught on. Still, while humans can’t sprout grow new limbs, they can and do grow new brain cells. It was a long haul, but we are pleased to report that things are now back to what passes for normal around here. Work-wise, Tracy has several projects going: you’ll see her in the Civil War Times soon, she’s working on something for the NYU Law Journal which will involve traveling to The Hague to interview an eminent judge who sits on the World Court, the paperback edition of her book came out this summer, and there may be another book idea out there somewhere. Life goes on.

In extraterrestrial news, David’s working on a NASA project that would, if funded by the Powers that Be, map the universe’s distribution of Dark Energy. What is Dark Energy? you ask, to which the brightest minds at NASA would answer: We dunno. All scientists know is that it is a mysterious force which accounts for about 25 percent of the energy in the universe, and it is, like, totally awesome, dude: it sends stars careening around galaxies, it can bend space and time, and it keeps that donkey kid in back of you kicking your seat for the entire duration of a trans-Atlantic flight. The official name for the project is ADEPT (Advanced Dark Energy Physics Telescope), but around here we just call it The Map of Where Is, Is. 

On the kid front: Rebecca is now 11, making her officially a ‘Tween, and so we have been introduced to the Great Big Honkin’ Attitude years. Not that Rebecca has ever lacked an Attitude, but up to now she had not brought it to bear on clothing. All that changed when she and Tracy went shopping for back-to-school clothes this year, and Tracy’s idea of fashion (subdued things with interchangeable components) fell victim to Rebecca’s fashion vision (spangles, sparkles, sequins and drapey things cut on the bias, all in hues unknown to nature).  Compared to this kid, Porter Waggoner would have looked like a funeral director. Well, okay, maybe that’s exaggerating a bit, but still: you see the potential for conflict. Rebecca is also deeply into the Cat Warriors books, and can diagram all the cat clans and interconnections thereof for anybody who displays the faintest interest, as well as for lots of people who don’t. (Our advice: don’t.) She has also caught the Horse Virus from her Aunt Nonny, and as any parent knows, “adolescent girl” + “horse” = “second mortgage,” so thanks a lot, sis. Rebecca takes riding lessons once a week at a nearby stable, where, besides learning how to ride, she is also learning to work with an implement known as a “pitchfork.” Our hope is that not only will she learn some horsemanship but that her expertise may someday transfer to using implements known as a “yard rake,” a “mop” and a “broom.”

Suzanne started first grade this year and has already won two professions of love from little boys in her class, which puts her one up on mommy at the same age. But then, Suzanne has these adorable freckles, which gives her an unfair advantage. She is a bundle of spontaneous bursts of enthusiasm (told for the fourth time to get out of the bathtub one night, she replied, “Okay, Mommy, but first I have to DO THE WET NAKED DANCE YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! BABY!!”—and there went another 10 minutes) and non-stop creative energy. At home, this means piles of paper, markers, paint, clay and other art projects in various stages of completion all over the place. At school, this recently resulted in a phone call from the vice principal informing Tracy that Suzanne and an unnamed male co-conspirator had been thwarted in their plan to tie each other up during recess. Suzanne has been banned from even touching a jump rope until after the first of the year; fortunately, the school supply list does not include "whips" or "chains." Otherwise, she keeps us busy with Inscrutable Questions (“Who invented broccoli?” and “How dark is pink?”are a sample) and creative manglings of common expressions (notably, “Fruit of the Loo,” which Tracy is thinking of marketing in the U.K. as a new brand of toilet paper).

No exotic vacations this year; we spent ours this summer a whole 100 miles from the house, at a mountain cabin in the Shenandoah Valley, where we went to a county fair (lots of fun, and who knew pigs could be so squeaky clean?), spent the day at a water park, did a bit of hiking (which prompted another Inscrutable Question, this from Rebecca: “Why is the Appalachian Trail so steep?”), and learned that a tiny little mountain chalet is way too small for three high-maintenance females and one outnumbered husband/father about two millimeters from the end of his rope. The kids had a blast; Tracy and David survived.

So that’s the year. And now that we think about it, it hasn’t been dull at all. Really: how many people get to map the universe? Or get paid for putting words on paper, for pete’s sake? So, as usual, once we look at the big picture we realize the good vastly outweighs the bad, and that goes triple since the recent pathology report came back marked "benign." (See previous posts.) Compared to 99 percent of the world, we are filthy rich; by any measure, we are incredibly blessed. We hope this finds all of you similarly situated. Merry Christmas.

The Unintentional Criminal

This week I nearly hijacked an airplane, which officially puts me one up over the time I tried to rob a cemetery. If and when they ever come to arrest me, I will plead Felony Dumbness (although I think the statute of limitations has run on the cemetery thing).

What happened was this: we were coming back from Wisconsin, on a Northwest Airline flight that left Milwaukee at 2:15 a.m. Okay, it was actually 7:30 a.m., but it felt like 2:15 a.m. When the announcement came on to disconnect all electronic devices, I disconnected my Ipod (I don't know if an Ipod counts as an electronic device, but I wanted to be a Compliant Passenger), put it in the front pocket of my blouse and wrapped the cord around my neck so I could easily plug back in once we were aloft. Time passed. We took off, the seatbelt light went off, and an urgent need to pee asserted itself. I extricated myself from my Passenger Holding Device (comedian Lewis Black is right--in coach, they should can the pretense of seating and just give you a wooden rod; then you can stick it up your ass and sit anywhere you like) and slowly made my way down the aisle of the plane toward the lavatory. In my sleep-deprived state, I was working on the fixed idea that All Lavatories Were In The Back. I walked right past the lav and did not notice. The next thing I saw was a woman flight attendant coming up the aisle toward me with a cart of Passenger Kibble or whatever it is they call "refreshments" on airplanes these days. I continued my forward lurch. She looked at me and did a double take. What she saw was a passenger way in the back of the plane where said passenger has no business being, looking disheveled and rather stoned, with wires wrapped around her neck leading to some kind of small device concealed in the pocket of her shirt.

She began backing up. Thas' nice, I thought dreamily, thinking she was going to let me pass her so I could get to the lav. (I've known stewardesses who won't yield an inch to desperate passengers suffering a severe case of the runs; the kibble must be served, goddamit.) This flight attendant, however, kept backing up. At this point, her eyes were really, really big. We're talking approximately the size of salad plates. Something vaguely rang a bell; I had seen that look before. It began to penetrate my fogged-in brain that something here was not quite right. At that crucial moment, a male flight attendant appeared behind the woman with the cart and announced in an extremely loud voice, "THERE ARE NO LAVATORIES BACK HERE."

"Oh," I said, in my most intelligent "I knew that" tone of voice. It wasn't until I saw myself in the lavatory mirror that I realized what the flight attendant must have been thinking. By that time I think they had probably already started the chest compressions on her.

Some people embark on a life of crime; others have a life of crime thrust upon them. My previous experience with law-breaking happened some years ago, when I was a carefree single gal, traveling with my friend Ann in Paris. We decided to go to the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise, where, among others, Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison and Frederick Chopin are buried. Ann was the map-reader; I, with my minuscule French, was the all-purpose translator. Somehow we got off one subway stop past the cemetery, and entered via the back way. For some reason, I had the fixed idea (are we beginning to see a pattern here?) that the cemetery charged admission, being a major tourist attraction and all. Ann didn't seem to think so, and I had to grant that I had never been to a cemetery which required paid admission, but hey, this was France. They do things different there.

So we wandered through the cemetery, me with the uneasy feeling that at any moment a gendarme was going to step out from behind a tombstone and say sternly, in French, "Yo! Numbskulls! Get your ass over here." Finally, we spotted a big administrative-looking building. "Here we go," I said to Ann, and marched in. Inside was a small lobby and a barred window--like the kind banks have in 1950s Westerns--and, behind the barred window, a lady sitting on a stool. Above the barred window was a single word: caisse.

Now, here's the thing: caisse is roughly translated as "cashbox" or "cash register." But, still working on my fixed idea, I immediately made the brilliant deduction that it meant "tickets." So I marched up to the window, presented myself and said in my best college French, "Pardonnez-moi, madame, mais j'ai besoin de la caisse"--which can be literally translated as "I need the cashbox" or, if you want a rougher translation, as "Hand over the money and nobody'll get hurt." This was my first encounter with the Eyes-The-Size-of-Salad-Plates phenomenon, and I was thoroughly baffled. Was it my grammar? My accent? At this point I began to repeat my request more slowly, but my attempts were thwarted by Ann, who being light years ahead of me, was suddenly pulling on my arm and yelling, "No, Tracy! No!"

In the end, Ann managed to turn me aside from my doggedly inadvertent attempt to rob the joint and we did not get arrested. The lady behind the barred window recovered her composure very quickly, with a Gallic shrug that said eloquently, "Goddamned fucking stupid American tourists," and we went on with our expedition. I believe that was the same day I discovered that those coin-operated street lavatories they had in Paris at the time (do they still have them?) had a door that operated via some electronic signal triggered by a person's weight on the floor, so that when--just to take a hypothetical example--a person is sitting on the john with her pants around her ankles and lifts her foot to take a look at a sandal strap that is getting ready to break--eeerrrrrrruuummmmmm--the electronic door slowly slides open, giving the person on the john a view of all Paris and all of Paris a view of the person on the john. But that's another story.

And people wonder why I don't get out more.

I did get out last night, however, to a book signing at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., where about 50 people showed up--including a significant number of people who I did not know and who were not related to me--to hear me talk about my new book, The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children and Struggling with Depression. It was a terrific turnout, considering the fact that this is the month that anyone who can gets out of Washington and dogs can sleep undisturbed in the middle of K Street. Many thanks to the P&P folks and to all the non-relatives who bought books.