My Mother is Everything To Me

As a small child, she is the first woman I admired. I'd sit and watch her put on mascara, or bind her long, dark hair up in a ponytail, wondering if I'd ever be that beautiful. She was a constant and steady fixture of my childhood; I cried the first time she changed her hairstyle. She was bigger than life back then, and still is, a living bar set high in my life.

She is timeless, fiery and willful, deeply compassionate. We are different. We are the same, connected in mind and spirit by invisible threads. All the years of my childhood she soaked me in love, and strengthened my spirit.

She has vision and creativity, an eye for color and design. She walks the walk, and as a teenager I sat up and listened, because her virtue is something tangible. She taught me how to be mysterious.

She is funny, in an accidental sort of way, which makes her very intriguing. She is interested in who I am, and she tries to understand me.

She is brave, and shows me her humanity. She reaches out to me in friendship, and makes our relationship a priority.

She is my mother, and I am so thankful.

(I love you Mom. Happy Birthday.)

Being Jane Goodall

When I was a preteen I had odd plans for myself. At age 11, I was in a phase that included wanting nothing to do with boys. Marriage was a disgusting thought, unless I met Indiana Jones, which might occur in the middle of my adventurous life as Jane Goodall.

One day I felt compelled to put some predictions about my future in writing. I wrote my mom a letter stating I would never wear make-up or get married. Mom still has that note somewhere, stashed in "The Box of Embarrassment" along with pictures I've tried to burn of my teeth, pre-braces.
I decided that during my adult life, I would travel to Africa and study Chimpanzees. No joke. I wanted to live in a hut like Jane Goodall and secretly photograph monkeys. I envisioned myself observing them stealthily, until the monkeys accepted my presence, and let me name them. I would conjure up images of myself hiding in a tree, watching them in the jungle. Nobody knew I planned to be Jane Goodall; it was not something I shared. I had a copy of National Geographic Magazine from 1964 that featured her and her work hidden in my desk drawer. I bought it for a dollar in a junk store, and it was my dusty treasure. I'd sit under a tree of the swamp variety in my backyard with a tiny notepad and pencil, visualizing chimps frolicking in the trees.

Last week while I was looking for a winter coat for Baby Bigfoot in the attic, I tripped over a stack of National Geographic Magazines. Right on top of the pile was the old tattered issue featuring Jane Goodall on its cover. I picked it up, wondering what the heck happened to me. What would that 11 year old think if she saw me now, chasing children instead of monkeys? I know mom is relieved, but, in some ways, I feel unfulfilled. Life has turned out to be a restless search for purpose.

However, the adult me is a different person than that 11 year-old. Going to Africa on, say, a safari vacation would be cool, but I think I'm cured of the living-with-chimps fascination. So why do I sometimes feel like I’m missing something in life? Maybe that adolescent interest represented more than what it was on the surface. I didn’t really want to be Jane Goodall; I wanted to do something BIG, or be someone who contributed to society in a larger way. I think about that often. Watching my children’s faces light up when they see me gives me a sense that a large part of my purpose is being fulfilled, but not how my 11 year-old self expected.

I flip through the moldy magazine today, as I'm peeling a banana for my toddler. Currently I observe kids, rather than chimps, but they're pretty similar. The princess is saying something funny that I want to remember later when I'm writing, so I grab a pen, and scan the room for a piece of paper. Not seeing any, I write on a napkin and stuff it in my pocket. Meanwhile, I observe Baby Bigfoot figure out how to climb on top of the kitchen table. I grab a packet of sugar and scribble a description of his efforts on it, as I run to pull him down to safety. It turns out that I might be a domesticated version of Jane Goodall after all. I decide that life in the jungle of suburbia is better, since I really hate mosquitoes.

"How to make God laugh: Tell him your future plans." -Woody Allen

Board the Ferry? When Buses Float!

"NOOOOOOOO!" I don't wanna get on a boat! I will fall into the deep, deep ocean! NOOOOOOO!"

Ahhhh, the sweet sound of a screaming princess on another peaceful summer day, filled with family fun! Today we are attempting to board the ferry to Fire Island to visit an aunt at her summer home. The princess has thrown herself on the boardwalk, and people step around her to avoid getting tangled in the kicking frenzy. The boat horn sounds as her shoes fly off, and I get desperate. I figure I have two options to get her on the ferry:

1. Pick her up and hurl her on to it, which is what I feel like doing, but is probably child abuse,

or

2. Trick her with a lie that I might regret later.

Reader, I think you know enough about my parenting mishaps by this post to guess correctly that I choose the lie. "My sweet little Princess," I coo in her ear, "we're not actually getting on a BOAT at all." She sniffs and looks up at me, pausing the kicking. "We're just getting on a BUS." She thinks for a moment, then smiling, stands up and takes my hand. We slip on the ferry just in time and meet her siblings and grandma in a seat. My mother shouts over the ferry motor, "How did you get her on the..."

"SHHHHHHH!" I interupt. "It's a BUS, grandma." My mother shakes her head looking over at the princess. "Oh," she says, "that's right, a BUS."

Now the princess is enjoying the ride; warm salt air is blasting the kids' hair. Baby brother is rocking and singing a one-word song about his father. Big brother is looking out the window, calculating on his little boy fingers how many "triple whips" he and grandma need to do to cross the bay from here. The princess is spotting mermaid tails in the water. She stops one of the deck hands as he passes through the cabin. He's a teen who babysits for us occasionally, and lives to tell about it. He recognizes the princess and gives her a high five. She exclaims in a thrilled tone, "Joey! This bus is riding super fast!" He looks confused at first, then laughs. He shouts over the motor, "It's a ...," but I cut him off, grabbing his arm and shouting "BUS!"

Meet Little Loren

As a little girl, I am afraid of the dark. I'm one of those kids who doesn't like to go to bed at night, to my parents' dismay. As soon as the nightlight goes on I cry for mommy, only stopping to listen intently to my parents verbal struggle over what to do about me. If the verdict is to ignore me, then I resume crying, louder. I do this because I'm sure monsters live in my pillow. They have shaggy orange fur, (it's the '70's). I can't let my arm or foot dangle over the side of the bed, even on the hottest summer nights, because an "ugly breen witch" waits to grab me from beneath it! An open window is a bad idea, a gargoyle could climb through it and take me to his cave where his blue brothers will roast me. I dare not look at the open closet door; the ghost hiding in my hanging clothes might see that I am still awake.

On the whole, night time is bad and scary for little Loren. Besides, I'm not tired. Sometimes, after a nightmare, I stay frozen in my bed, the covers up to my eyes, until I can muster enough courage up to run into my parents' room and climb into bed with them. After a few minutes there, I'm ready to face the horrors of my own bedroom again. Sleeping next to dad is not comfortable. His big body cooks me, and his snore is louder that any imagined creature that might visit me in the darkness just beyond my own bed covers. Like a soldier running through open gunfire, I scamper back to my own bed and jump under the covers. As I start to feel sleepy, I ask my little self: How could mom sleep next to such a loud, sweaty person?

Fences

The neighborhood where I play as a child is a typical Long Island suburb. Houses change colors like mood rings; the neighbor's car alarm is our equivalent of Big Ben. My father works an extra job pumping gas so we can move into the smallest cape on the block. My mother likes the school district.

I’m four years old when we pull into the driveway for the first time. I’m wearing my puffy orange coat with the synthetic fur hood. There is no fence separating the backyard from the front, which will soon change. Our steps echo in the empty house. Mom says every room smells like a dog. The attic space becomes our bedrooms. Mine is painted "happy, stay in your own bed at night" yellow. The kitchen has a "vintage" red refrigerator with a big gash in the front, and neighbors tell tales of an old lady who died standing at the stove, stirring a pot of soup. The neighborhood kids add some extra flair to the story. "It was a secret witch's brew," they whisper through holes in the fence. I don't like the house; I crinkle my nose and set my feet in the dirt near the stoop, refusing to go through the door. I want to go back to our apartment.

Mr. Carlo is the old man across the street. His garden is barricaded with chicken wire, off limits to the children of the neighborhood, but every so often our kickball ends up tangled in his tomato plants. Then there is hell to pay. On one such occasion, he takes a few of us into the basement of his yellow stucco house. On a high shelf is a garden snake suspended in a bag of liquid.

"Dis is whata happen to chil'ren who a go in a garden," he snickers, his bony finger waving angrily in the direction of the bag.

We run.

One day, mom has enough of Mr. Carlo. With the neighborhood kids standing beside me, I watch in horror as she storms through his gate, past his beloved garden, to knock crisply on the door. This is the same day he tells us it is okay to eat the mushrooms that grow on his lawn. We stand silent, imagining the confrontation taking place beyond his fence. Moments later, she comes through his gate, snapping it closed with vigor, and marching past us like Rosie the Riveter. Mr. Carlo never yells at us again.

Save the Homemakers!

Homemakers are an endangered species. The Obituary section of the newspaper lists dozens of them daily. "She was a loving mother and a homemaker." I find myself stopping to stare at this sentence as I peruse the Sunday morning paper. Lately, you don't often hear modern-day women announcing their status as homemakers. Many times, the media presents the stay-at-home mom in a negative light. Why is the idea of serving one's family to the point of putting one's individual goals second so unpopular?


Actually, I've discovered an interesting secret. Many women that I meet yearn to be homemakers, primarily. It seems as if the modern woman is expected to juggle it all, and that drains energy from her role as a mother. Did the homemakers of the past resent being cast in this role? I recall a conversation with my grandmother who left her career as a seamstress for Macy's to be a stay-at-home mother in the early 1950's. She laughed at the question. "Are you kidding?" This is a woman who ironed her husband's white tee shirts. That's not oppression; to me, it's real love.

My mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, these are my Super Hero Homemakers. Nothing is more important to me than my role as a wife and mother. We need to reinstate the importance of this role, and find ways to prioritize it while still retaining a fair sense of self. Devoted homemakers produce happy, stable families. So I hope it is written one day in the very distant future about me: She was, primarily, a homemaker, and that made all the difference.

-(Above) My beautiful grandma, Vincenza LaCapria, 1940's