It's always the quiet ones.
Lilah, for those not familiar with her, is a kind of goofy, very affectionate basset hound we found a year and a half ago on Craig's List. Her former owner told us she loves babies (mmm, not so much), was training to be a therapy dog (if she could spend all day having people pet her she'd think she'd died and gone to heaven), and was raised on a diet of raw chicken every third day (we quickly remedied that). She did not tell us that Lilah is an escape artist.
Not that we didn't find out well in advance of today's criminal activity.
After she had lived with us for a few months in Long Beach, Lilah puzzled us greatly by visiting our neighbors while we were out at the Santa Ana Science Center for the day. Apparently cell phones don't work in the Santa Ana Science Center, because it wasn't until we were on our way home that I picked up the message from the neighbors. Lilah was in their yard, they informed us. Audrey, they continued reassuringly, was still in ours.
How could we have left the gate unlocked? we wondered. And why hadn't Audrey escaped as well? (She was not, at the time, twice Lilah's size, and may even have been a bit smaller.)
We arrived home to a locked gate, a pleased Lilah, and a bummed Audrey. Sucks to be her.
Hmm, we thought. A mystery. Surely Lilah couldn't fit her bulldog-ish shoulders through the small gaps in our gate. On the other hand, we couldn't quite figure out who had locked it after her, since locking the gate required a key. Perhaps our landlord had stopped by unannounced, as was his wont, and left his feral children in our yard to play? It wouldn't be the first time, although it would be the first time they had visited without managing to unroll gardening tape all over the yard, scatter dog kibble up and down the walk, tie ropes in strange places with unfathomable knots, and generally leave their mark for us to clean up.
Much as we resisted the idea that our gate couldn't keep in a bow-legged basset hound, we had to concede defeat the following weekend when she made it to the next block before someone took her in and called us.
I still marvel when I remember the tiny spot where the curved ornament of the gate could maybe -- just possibly -- admit a limber basset hound. And then I caught her preparing to do it again, and we had to put up chicken wire, which didn't look great but saved us further forays about the neighborhood to fetch her.
It's much easier to escape our yard here in Asheville.
The fence people are supposed to show up any day to actually enclose it, but until then we have craftily rigged up a lawnchair propped sideways across the stairs to allow the girls some fresh air on the deck (but not, alas, toilet access, which still requires my supervision). The fence, by the way, was supposed to be one of our top priorities when we moved in. But we were delayed by Hubby's brief but enthusiastic flirtation with an electric fence (still in place after he sliced through it with the lawnmower, turning it into an unreturnable and very expensive boundary-marker) and the local tradition among fencing companies of not returning calls requesting an estimate.
Prior to the lawn chair barrier (which, I hasten to point out, works just fine on Audrey), we used an even more ingenious combination of the Weber kettle and an aluminum garbage can filled with about 25 pounds of charcoal. This arrangement required me to balance a 20-pound baby in one arm while dragging a 25-pound trash can across the deck every time I let the girls into the yard, so I wasn't entirely pleased with our solution to the fence problem, however temporary.
And then Lilah got out anyhow.
That first call came from an accounting business that backs up to the houses across the street from us. Apparently Lilah wandered through some yards and showed up at their back door. From what I could piece together, she was welcomed with open arms.
"She's been lying in our boss's office in front of the T.V. getting her belly scratched," the sweet blonde woman who brought her out informed me.
I decided there was no point in explaining the concept of positive reinforcement to this woman because I was simply going to make sure Lilah didn't escape again.
I didn't do a very good job of it. Just a couple of weeks later I got a call from an insurance company on the same street. This time it took me a bit longer to find Lilah because she had been picked up on the far side. This is a scary fact to anyone who knows the street because cars drive very fast down it and . . . I don't want to think about it and I really wish Lilah hadn't made so many friends at the insurance company because it guaranteed that she would try to go back.
Did I mention that she can contort her body like the magician's assistant who gets cut in half? I believe she would be perfectly comfortable, her head sticking out of that box while she curls her hind legs back up against her chest inside a space half her size.
So, of course, she made a run for it again today. It was another beautiful almost-70-degree day, the air was fresh, the sky was blue, and I thought I'd do the girls a favor by letting them hang out on the deck while I walked The Boy to school. They are, after all, reasonably big dogs, and this is a reasonably safe neighborhood, so I felt confident that no one would walk in our wide open back door in the forty minutes I was gone.
I was happily walking the empty stroller home (amazing how many people don't seem to consider that I might have a perfectly good reason to be pushing an empty stroller down the street) when my cell phone rang. It was Hubby.
"I just got a message that we're supposed to call some number or the police are going to take one of the dogs to the pound," he said, sounding understandably distraught.
"I'm walking, I can't write a number down," I huffed, feeling suddenly crushed by the fact that I desperately needed to get some work done and could not spend my time getting one of the dogs out of the pound. I hoped Hubby would say he'd take care of it.
He didn't. "I'll call the answering machine and leave it there," he said. I would have liked to tell him what I thought of this plan.
I didn't. "There are some people in front of our house with Lilah," I said instead as I turned the corner.
Those people turned out to be two police officers.
"Are you the owner?" one of the officers asked. Apparently she had spent enough time with Lilah to know that the affection I was receiving didn't mean a thing and was possibly even less heartfelt than the affection she had received upon their meeting.
I admitted that I was.
"I'm glad we found you," she said. "I sure didn't want to take her to the pound."
"The engraving on her tags is terrible," I babbled. "It's so hard to see my cell phone number." Why is it that I felt the need to explain why I am not quite as irresponsible as I seem when I was, after all, irresponsible enough to let her get out in the first place?
"That's your cell phone number?" The officer looked at me sharply.
"Um . . ." Of course they had called. Of course I had left my cell phone on the stroller sitting on the front porch of The Boy's school while I sat inside with him trying to make him believe that it's safe and fun there and it would be an excellent idea to loosen his death grip on my arm.
"I'm afraid I'll have to write you a warning," the officer said kindly.
She was so kind that I decided to have a conversation with her and her partner. A very stupid conversation.
"My last basset hound got arrested too," I laughed. "One day there was a knock on the door and they were checking for licenses--"
"Is she licensed?" The officer paused in writing up my warning, her pen poised to check off yet another infraction.
"She's licensed in California," I lied. If you are an authority connected with the California Bar, you did not just read that last sentence. "We just moved here a couple of months ago."
It actually turned out pretty well. She gave me two forms and specific instructions on licensing the girls, which was a lot easier than figuring it out myself.
Still, Lilah has a criminal record, Audrey is a notorious chicken thief, and I can't help but be worried about the bad influence they are having on their little brother. His admiration for them is apparent already. He chews on their bones, samples the food in their dishes, and helps himself to their water bowl.
And he was, after all, a dog for Halloween. Hound behavior can not be far behind.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
The Boy Gets Sick
You knew it was coming, didn't you? What possible post could follow the one entitled "The Boy Starts School" but "The Boy Gets Sick"? I was even kind of excited at the possibility of garnering multiple postings from the single act of enrolling The Boy in preschool, in spite of knowing full well that "The Boy Gets Sick" was the most likely subject of these postings.
It took him exactly three days to adjust to preschool but only two days of preschool to get his first cold. Since his first day was a Thursday, this means I had an entire weekend to work on convincing myself that I was not, in fact, sending my child to preschool purely to make my own life easier at the expense of my precious child (although my life is oh so very much easier when he isn't staying home sick).
As you can tell, I have not yet reached the point where I feel no shame in, say, leaving my child with a sitter while I pay the equivalent of four cans of organic formula to treat myself to an oxygenated facial. Because I have not yet figured out how it is really best for The Boy to stay with a sitter while I pay the equivalent of four cans of organic formula to treat myself to an oxygenated facial, I have not had a facial since my fortieth birthday, 14 months ago, when I could conveniently take The Boy along in utero.
His cold initially manifested itself only as a puzzling crankiness displayed toward our first weekend guest, a good friend who, even if he hadn't been a good friend before, leapt into the stratosphere of good friend-ness by driving to Asheville from Greencastle, Indiana, just to see us. Or maybe, as I now reflect on it, also to get away from Greencastle, Indiana.
Nonetheless, we were thrilled to be hosting him. The Boy, as I said, was not acting so thrilled. This may be normal baby behavior -- unexplained fussiness, days when a baby just doesn't feel like smiling -- but it is simply not normal for The Boy. Not that it stopped us from dragging him along as we treated our friend to an Appalacian weekend of the Fall Festival in Spruce Pine, home of (as a large sign informed us) the world's best Christmas trees; afternoon mojitos on our deck; a walk to downtown for a dinner that lasted well past The Boy's bedtime; hiking in Montreat; picnicking at an Episcopalian retreat center; and drinks at my brother- and sister-in-law's house.
This last event was the final straw for The Boy, who insisted I take him home because his head was pounding and his nose was stuffy and no one was serving him any gimlets. Once there, I decided I was possibly the best mother in the world for knowing that all he needed was a warm bath, lots of liquids, and a good night's sleep in a cozy crib to awaken . . . perfectly well, but for a slightly runny nose that didn't bother him unless it was being wiped by me or Hubby.
Of course, if that were the end of the story, this would be called "The Boy Gets a Cold," not "The Boy Gets Sick."
"The Boy Gets Sick" takes up after The Boy's fabulous first full week of school, when we took him on a road trip to Chapel Hill so Hubby could attend a conference.
All was off to a lovely start as The Boy and I wandered the UNC Chapel Hill arboretum, enjoying the hush of drying autumn leaves and the warmth of an 80-degree day and my new iPod Nano until The Boy fell asleep. Briefly. For the last time in ten days when falling asleep wouldn't take some whining and a lot of holding and maybe some baby Tylenol.
Forty minutes later, I was standing in front of Alumni Hall being one of those women with the Crying Baby. I am not accustomed to being one of those women. I am accustomed to giving The Boy a big hug or a toss in the air or a "booga booga!" and having him smile and feeling like everyone is staring at me in the hopes of picking up some pointers on good parenting because plainly The Boy's good nature is all due to me. It was humbling to be on the other end, to have people staring at me in the hopes of picking up some pointers on how not to parent.
Hubby made the mistake of leaving a message on my cell phone informing me that he might meet us for lunch at his 12:15 break. At 12:13, The Boy had been squealing and jack-knifing out of my arms for a full 53 minutes and Hubby was nowhere in sight. "It's 12:15," I snarled at his voice mail. I figured the circumstances justified my lying about the two-minute time difference. "I need you."
The minutes crawled by. The Boy continued to exhibit unfortunate bad judgment in insisting on squirming out of my arms and then crying as if I had already succumbed to my sneaking desire to abandon him here in this lovely town with lovely people who would surely find someone to take him in and raise him as one of their own.
At 12:22 I called Hubby again. This time he picked up. "I really need you," I choked through the effort of not screaming that I never ask him for help and I would never interrupt his conference if it weren't important and this was his son goddamn it and wasn't his son more important than his job?
Happily, Hubby doesn't need to have everything spelled out for him. "I really need you," was clue enough that this was not my first call for help.
His arrival was simultaneously the source of great relief and great stress. Because when you are dealing with a crisis all alone you may be forced to make every decision yourself, but at least when you make a decision you get to follow through with it, not argue about whether to take The Boy to an urgent care facility and whether he has an ear infection and whether it is wise to diagnose an ear infection based on information one has learned from the internet.
I'm not too proud to say that the on-call pediatrician agreed with Hubby about avoiding urgent care. But I did acquire some perfectly sound information about ear infections on a parenting website, and my diagnosis was confirmed when, finally, I was able to take The Boy to his pediatrician's sick clinic back home.
"He's got an infection in both ears," she confirmed as I reminded myself that, nice as it is to be right, I'd rather The Boy not have an ear infection.
I'm happy to say that I still don't question my decision to send The Boy to preschool, even though it's now a week later and we went to sick clinic for the third time this morning and every one of the three pediatricians in the practice has looked in The Boy's ears and two of them have spent more time than I'm sure they would like on the phone with me. Someone's got to help me figure out that The Boy might be more inclined to take his amoxicyllin if we render it cherry-flavored instead of bubble gum (a vast improvement, in his estimation) and that the amoxicyllin isn't working and that Suprax seems to be (in my estimation Suprax is an improvement because it comes in cherry flavor so you don't have to spend half an hour lugging your sick child back to the pharmacy to pay $1.99 for the pharmacist to make his medicine cherry-flavored). I feel utterly justified in seeking professional help when The Boy awakens after a few hours of sleep yelling and arching his back like a small, rigid fish. I will even admit to a thrill of pleasure that what the professional recommends is sleeping with The Boy propped up against me to keep the pressure from building up in his ears. I won't, however, admit that it's also really nice to have the bed all to ourselves because that would be suggesting that I enjoy banishing Hubby to the daybed in my office.
The Boy still isn't 100 percent, but I suspect today I will succeed in dropping him off at school without receiving a phone call ten minutes later informing me that he has a temperature of 101.8. For the past few days his smile has been back and he once again laughs when I drop him backwards in my arms and he has returned to his habit of speaking to himself with great concentration as he bangs two toys together.
And while I would never take advantage of something like my child's illness, it's likely that I won't feel comfortable leaving him on Thursday to speak at a Law and Popular Culture conference in Milwaukee, as I'm scheduled to do. Sure, it's flattering to be invited, even if I'm no longer a law professor nor likely to ever be one again. Without a doubt, I still enjoy the public speaking that is rarely part of one's life when one works at home and takes care of a 10-month-old. Still, The Boy is far more important than any of that, and he always will be, even if he doesn't really need to me stay home with him.
Motherhood, it seems, has a sneaky way of reminding us about our priorities.
It took him exactly three days to adjust to preschool but only two days of preschool to get his first cold. Since his first day was a Thursday, this means I had an entire weekend to work on convincing myself that I was not, in fact, sending my child to preschool purely to make my own life easier at the expense of my precious child (although my life is oh so very much easier when he isn't staying home sick).
As you can tell, I have not yet reached the point where I feel no shame in, say, leaving my child with a sitter while I pay the equivalent of four cans of organic formula to treat myself to an oxygenated facial. Because I have not yet figured out how it is really best for The Boy to stay with a sitter while I pay the equivalent of four cans of organic formula to treat myself to an oxygenated facial, I have not had a facial since my fortieth birthday, 14 months ago, when I could conveniently take The Boy along in utero.
His cold initially manifested itself only as a puzzling crankiness displayed toward our first weekend guest, a good friend who, even if he hadn't been a good friend before, leapt into the stratosphere of good friend-ness by driving to Asheville from Greencastle, Indiana, just to see us. Or maybe, as I now reflect on it, also to get away from Greencastle, Indiana.
Nonetheless, we were thrilled to be hosting him. The Boy, as I said, was not acting so thrilled. This may be normal baby behavior -- unexplained fussiness, days when a baby just doesn't feel like smiling -- but it is simply not normal for The Boy. Not that it stopped us from dragging him along as we treated our friend to an Appalacian weekend of the Fall Festival in Spruce Pine, home of (as a large sign informed us) the world's best Christmas trees; afternoon mojitos on our deck; a walk to downtown for a dinner that lasted well past The Boy's bedtime; hiking in Montreat; picnicking at an Episcopalian retreat center; and drinks at my brother- and sister-in-law's house.
This last event was the final straw for The Boy, who insisted I take him home because his head was pounding and his nose was stuffy and no one was serving him any gimlets. Once there, I decided I was possibly the best mother in the world for knowing that all he needed was a warm bath, lots of liquids, and a good night's sleep in a cozy crib to awaken . . . perfectly well, but for a slightly runny nose that didn't bother him unless it was being wiped by me or Hubby.
Of course, if that were the end of the story, this would be called "The Boy Gets a Cold," not "The Boy Gets Sick."
"The Boy Gets Sick" takes up after The Boy's fabulous first full week of school, when we took him on a road trip to Chapel Hill so Hubby could attend a conference.
All was off to a lovely start as The Boy and I wandered the UNC Chapel Hill arboretum, enjoying the hush of drying autumn leaves and the warmth of an 80-degree day and my new iPod Nano until The Boy fell asleep. Briefly. For the last time in ten days when falling asleep wouldn't take some whining and a lot of holding and maybe some baby Tylenol.
Forty minutes later, I was standing in front of Alumni Hall being one of those women with the Crying Baby. I am not accustomed to being one of those women. I am accustomed to giving The Boy a big hug or a toss in the air or a "booga booga!" and having him smile and feeling like everyone is staring at me in the hopes of picking up some pointers on good parenting because plainly The Boy's good nature is all due to me. It was humbling to be on the other end, to have people staring at me in the hopes of picking up some pointers on how not to parent.
Hubby made the mistake of leaving a message on my cell phone informing me that he might meet us for lunch at his 12:15 break. At 12:13, The Boy had been squealing and jack-knifing out of my arms for a full 53 minutes and Hubby was nowhere in sight. "It's 12:15," I snarled at his voice mail. I figured the circumstances justified my lying about the two-minute time difference. "I need you."
The minutes crawled by. The Boy continued to exhibit unfortunate bad judgment in insisting on squirming out of my arms and then crying as if I had already succumbed to my sneaking desire to abandon him here in this lovely town with lovely people who would surely find someone to take him in and raise him as one of their own.
At 12:22 I called Hubby again. This time he picked up. "I really need you," I choked through the effort of not screaming that I never ask him for help and I would never interrupt his conference if it weren't important and this was his son goddamn it and wasn't his son more important than his job?
Happily, Hubby doesn't need to have everything spelled out for him. "I really need you," was clue enough that this was not my first call for help.
His arrival was simultaneously the source of great relief and great stress. Because when you are dealing with a crisis all alone you may be forced to make every decision yourself, but at least when you make a decision you get to follow through with it, not argue about whether to take The Boy to an urgent care facility and whether he has an ear infection and whether it is wise to diagnose an ear infection based on information one has learned from the internet.
I'm not too proud to say that the on-call pediatrician agreed with Hubby about avoiding urgent care. But I did acquire some perfectly sound information about ear infections on a parenting website, and my diagnosis was confirmed when, finally, I was able to take The Boy to his pediatrician's sick clinic back home.
"He's got an infection in both ears," she confirmed as I reminded myself that, nice as it is to be right, I'd rather The Boy not have an ear infection.
I'm happy to say that I still don't question my decision to send The Boy to preschool, even though it's now a week later and we went to sick clinic for the third time this morning and every one of the three pediatricians in the practice has looked in The Boy's ears and two of them have spent more time than I'm sure they would like on the phone with me. Someone's got to help me figure out that The Boy might be more inclined to take his amoxicyllin if we render it cherry-flavored instead of bubble gum (a vast improvement, in his estimation) and that the amoxicyllin isn't working and that Suprax seems to be (in my estimation Suprax is an improvement because it comes in cherry flavor so you don't have to spend half an hour lugging your sick child back to the pharmacy to pay $1.99 for the pharmacist to make his medicine cherry-flavored). I feel utterly justified in seeking professional help when The Boy awakens after a few hours of sleep yelling and arching his back like a small, rigid fish. I will even admit to a thrill of pleasure that what the professional recommends is sleeping with The Boy propped up against me to keep the pressure from building up in his ears. I won't, however, admit that it's also really nice to have the bed all to ourselves because that would be suggesting that I enjoy banishing Hubby to the daybed in my office.
The Boy still isn't 100 percent, but I suspect today I will succeed in dropping him off at school without receiving a phone call ten minutes later informing me that he has a temperature of 101.8. For the past few days his smile has been back and he once again laughs when I drop him backwards in my arms and he has returned to his habit of speaking to himself with great concentration as he bangs two toys together.
And while I would never take advantage of something like my child's illness, it's likely that I won't feel comfortable leaving him on Thursday to speak at a Law and Popular Culture conference in Milwaukee, as I'm scheduled to do. Sure, it's flattering to be invited, even if I'm no longer a law professor nor likely to ever be one again. Without a doubt, I still enjoy the public speaking that is rarely part of one's life when one works at home and takes care of a 10-month-old. Still, The Boy is far more important than any of that, and he always will be, even if he doesn't really need to me stay home with him.
Motherhood, it seems, has a sneaky way of reminding us about our priorities.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
The Boy Goes to School
I wonder what would happen if we all gathered up the things we swore we would do one way but ended up doing differently and put them together into one big This Is Your Life slide show illustrating how sadly mistaken most of us are when we predict what our lives will turn into.
I'd like to think I would have a great big laugh and then spend the next week thinking about how glad I am that I didn't dedicate my life to working in the DC Public Defenders Office (that job prospect withered when my interviewer asked how aggressive I was willing to be with the 80-year-old woman accusing my client of rape; um, not very) or to sitting at a beaten old desk somewhere in New England wearing an off-white fisherman's sweater and long permed hair that looks like Andie McDowell's in St. Elmo's Fire writing short stories that are short on everything but precious, tormented descriptions of what it's like to feel depressed (something I'm sure I would have done after college if only I'd had the confidence to apply for the advanced fiction writing class despite learning in the intermediate fiction writing class that my short stories were short on everything but precious, tormented descriptions of what it's like to feel depressed).
The more time has gone by and the more times I've changed course, the more I glory in the unexpected change of plans. There are those who have accused me, in various ways, of being a bit of a dilettante or who view me with the bemused fondness one might feel for a neighbor's small child as having a rather broad flaky streak for someone who has a degree from Columbia Law School and once worked for a big, stuffy DC law firm. (My fondest memory of my 21 months there was when the one openly gay associate told me I had taken over the mantle of the single female associate who tested the boundaries of acceptable lawyer dress. In the early nineties, that meant, most notably, my mini-skirted tangerine DKNY suit paired with black stockings and two-inch black pumps that hurt my feet but looked kind of sexy. I still miss that outfit.)
So I forgive myself for not following my declared intent to post to my blog every day, er, every week, um, well, I had a really big legal project that took me two weeks and it seemed important to finish it even though it meant that the two people who read my blog regularly have given up on me and everyone else has forgotten that I am supposedly writing about our life in Asheville and in fact has perhaps forgotten that I moved to Asheville. I forgive myself for writing three and a half pages of my yoga teacher-sleuth series before being distracted by the aforementioned legal project (hey, a girl's gotta pay the bills) and never managing to have that conversation with the literary agent who happened to be an usher at my wedding and therefore is probably being kinder to me than my meager output justifies. I forgive myself for the dwindling time and attention I have been giving to my yoga practice and for not following all the generous admonitions of friends and former students to start teaching it again. I even forgive myself for not breastfeeding for an entire year, although that turned out to be a bit of an impossibility, a story for another day and another medium in case anyone is really all that interested.
Most of all -- and here, finally, is the point of this post-- I forgive myself for sending The Boy to preschool before he could walk.
That was my very clear plan. I work at home, I like having The Boy at home, and when we were in Long Beach we had the most amazing sitter five hours a day so I could do my work. Which mostly meant the work of washing bottles and doing laundry and shopping for groceries and getting the occasional pedicure. But that wasn't her fault.
How much better would it be, I fantasized, to have the same arrangement in our new Asheville home, where I have a large, sunny office instead of the cramped end of the kitchen table that was my office in Long Beach. Imagine how much more work I'd get done when I no longer had to hide behind my laptop while The Boy was being fed lest he become distracted and abandon the bottle for loudly voiced demands that Mommy come play with him. I believed babysitting rates would be lower in Asheville so I could have more hours closed up in my little sanctuary and I would not only get tons of writing and legal work done but would also have time to read all of the New York Times best novels of 2006 and listen to a daily podcast of Fresh Air.
I was, of course, wrong about every detail of this fantasy, although that's not why The Boy ended up in preschool at the Jewish Community Center.
Here's another one of those moments when I wonder if the person reading this is someone who knows me well enough to cry, "The JCC?! Who cares if she put The Boy in preschool before he can walk? You want to talk shocking, she joined the JCC! Next thing you know, the most non-Jewish Jew I know is going to tell me she's had The Boy circumcised so she can have him Bar Mitzvahed in a bizarre cross-cultural ceremony where every Hebrew prayer is followed by a chant of ohm and The Boy reads from the Torah while sitting in lotus pose1"
Never fear. I remain what The Hubby lovingly calls a "self-hater." I still hide when my friends send out invitations to seders and I never know when Hannukah is and I probably wouldn't fast on Yom Kippur if I didn't already have kind of a self-denial thing where food is concerned. In short, the only reason I joined the JCC was because I am now a mother and mothers do things for their children that they never thought they'd do. Like sending their boy to preschool before he can walk.
It all began innocently enough. The Boy had his nine month check-up with his new pediatrician and Hubby and I were once again congratulating ourselves on how clever we were to move to Asheville, where the pediatricians and young and hip and non-interventionist and, most importantly, charmed by our baby (not, I hasten to add, that Long Beach pediatricians weren't charmed by him as well). Then the subject turned to preschool.
"There are a few really good ones in town," Dr. C. informed me as The Boy clapped his hands wildly and I clapped wildly back. "But there aren't enough for the demand. It's a good idea to get yourself on a waiting list now."
Ah, another milestone of parenthood, one of those moments where you feel a surge of pride and love that your child is growing up while working hard to ignore the nagging voice somewhere in the back of your mind whispering that you will regret this sign of progress when you realize it means that parenthood just got even more difficult. Preschool, after all, means colds and tuition bills and your child preferring his caregivers over you.
But we weren't talking starting preschool. We were just talking about waiting lists. It was a beautiful day, so I decided to take a walk to one of the ones Dr. C. recommended, just to take a look and imagine the distant day when The Boy could walk and I would enroll him in preschool.
This one was in a Episcopal church about a mile from our home. There are many Episcopal churches in Asheville. Billy Graham is Episcopalian. The Billy Graham Training Center is located near Asheville. These are things I did not know before I moved to Asheville. This particular Episcopalian church, however, is not, as far as I know, affiliated with Billy Graham.
The Boy and I casually entered the church office, acting for all we were worth like it was the most natural thing in the world for a transplanted faux Jew and her uncircumcised son to enter the office of an Episcopalian church in Asheville.
"I wanted to learn more about the day care program," I explained to the perfectly welcoming woman there. People in Asheville are very nonjudgmental. "And maybe put him on the waiting list."
"Oh, the child care center is completely separate from the church," she said. I had a fleeting image of her waiting until I left the office and then snorting, "She's obviously not Episcopalian," to her co-workers, but decided she was too nice to do anything of the sort. She proved me right by adding, "I'll take you there."
And so she did, through several doors, across the lobby, and past the group of volunteers bickering about how best to sort donated sweaters for a church sale. She pointed to a pair of doors with bright children's drawings around them.
I walked through them and wandered down the hall clutching the stroller like a golden ticket into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Surely there was no better proof than a stroller -- with a little boy in it, no less -- that I belonged there and was not a bad person like the spy who I vaguely recall being in the Gene Wilder version of the movie. I remember him being very scary and having small glasses with lenses that I took to be the kind that turn dark gray in bright light.
I headed for the one open door and found an office staffed by a woman with the practiced but genuine smile of someone who works in a preschool and explained why we were there. She didn't seem to wonder why this strange woman had wandered unannounced into her preschool to gaze upon the vulnerable sleeping children. If we had been in Long Beach, I'd have been face down on the ground by then with my wrists in handcuffs and my boy in the arms of a Social Services worker.
Luckily, we were in Asheville, and instead of calling the police, the woman took us to the playground, where a few of the kids who apparently take short naps were playing. The Boy was entranced. I was hooked. The woman told me spots usually open up in the spring. Perfect.
Two days later, on one of our Mommy and The Boy Fridays, The Boy and I were playing in City Bakery, one of his favorite places in the world because everyone smiles at him and the floors are clean enough that Mommy lets him crawl around and sometimes Daddy comes to see us in and doesn't even flinch when The Boy slobbers cookie crumbs on his work shirt. We were just getting ready to go when we spotted our neighbor, M.
I told her The Boy was now on a waiting list for preschool. "R.'s school is right up the block," she said, referring to her three-year-old daughter with the huge grin and joyful laugh. "Come on. I'll show it to you."
This preschool, by the way, is also in an Episcopalian church. As I may have mentioned, there are many Episcopalian churches in Asheville. Which means the odds didn't exactly favor The Boy ending up at the one Jewish preschool. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Right now, we are at R.'s school. Jack is surrounded by R. and her classmates, smiling his almost-three-toothed grin as they pat his head and cry, "It's a baby!" I have noticed that three-year-olds are thrilled with babies, as if in their newly found state of consciousness small, nonsentient beings are proof that they are the big boys and girls their parents assure them they are when coaxing them to go to bed or to stop teasing the dog.
Quick as a wink, I was in another office, filling out the forms to put The Boy on another preschool waiting list, thrilling in the delicious and rare combination of motherhood and efficiency. I thought we had an in when the director mentioned that she had once attended Cal State Long Beach, but all she offered was a discussion of our old neighborhood and how much we both missed Trader Joe's. When she told me she had adopted her sons from Vietnam, I eagerly told her about The Boy's forthcoming Chinese sister, but that didn't seem to buy us the right to leapfrog over even one waiting list kid either.
Still, I reminded myself, we were in no hurry. True, the pediatrician reckoned The Boy would be walking by his one year check up in December. But that was still a few months away and surely some parent would leave Asheville in January so my boy could have their child's place in preschool.
To complete the trifecta of best-preschools-in-the-area, I had to visit the JCC. I had heard good things about it. The Boy's cousin once went to some after-school programs there and loved it. It is a lovely half-mile walk from our house. But, as I many have mentioned, I have this weird fear of being associated with people who are like me.
Our first visit didn't help. The JCC lobby was filled with loaf upon loaf of challah bread to be distributed for Sukkhot. My skin began to itch.
We were stopped in the lobby by a sign-in log and a volunteer retired schoolteacher from New Jersey. How was she to know that, while it might thrill her to inform me two of the other mothers in the preschool were lawyers, it made me want to run screaming out the doors and into a nice, safe Episcopalian church?
When the head of the preschool appeared with Blackberry in hand to schedule an appointment when I would be allowed to view this well regarded preschool, I was pretty certain I knew which one was running a distant third to the others.
The scheduled tour didn't help. Along with The Boy and I, a miserable looking pregnant woman trudged after the preschool director as she informed us of the name of each class (Hebrew words that the two-to-five-year-olds in attendance would be far more qualified to define for you than I) and how long the teacher had been at the school. Relevant information, I suppose, but where were the kids crowding around The Boy and convincing both him and me that he had to start school tomorrow if not sooner?
By the time we crossed the street to visit the separate little house where the children under two play, I was merely being polite. The most interesting part of the tour, as far as I could tell, was hearing that the sullen pregnant woman already had three boys, had been on "the Depo Provera" when she got pregnant, and was carrying twins.
Figuring The Boy should at least have some fun at this school, I helped him stand holding onto a toddler-sized table. He grinned at me, and the happiness his smiles spark melted over just a little bit to the preschool.
The director peeled herself away from the discussion of how not thrilled the pregnant woman was to be pregnant and crouched down so as to better coo at The Boy.
"You know," she said with her first smile at me since we had met, "I could get him in here right away if you join the JCC."
Joining the JCC entitles you to jump to the top of the preschool waiting list. Being Jewish does not entitle you to jump to the top of the preschool waiting list, as I learned after writing "Jewish" in big letters on the waiting list form. It was the first time I had written anything on a form asking my religion and will undoubtedly be the last.
We went outside in the yard, where the kids were playing on a small plastic slide and in a colorful playhouse. They waved buckets and action figures at the caregivers. The Boy sat by himself for a while examining pieces of grass while I chatted with one of the caregivers. I liked her, I noted.
"Do the kids who can't walk yet get to come outside too?" I asked. The Boy crawled toward another child and grabbed at his ear.
"Oh, of course," she assured me as I pried The Boy's fingers from his new friend's head. "If they don't like crawling on the grass we'll spread out some blankets for them."
The Boy enthusiastically reached for another child's nose, and I reasoned that he is too social a being to be shut up at home with a marginal babysitter (I didn't have high hopes when I resorted to Craig's List, but I was out of options). He'd be walking within a few months and he can get around pretty darn well crawling and I convinced myself he wouldn't end up sitting in a corner crying while the other kids played and distracted the caregivers. I didn't have my checkbook with me, so I didn't join the JCC until the next day.
The Boy has been going to school for a little over a week now. He still can't walk, but he loves to crawl after one of his classmates who can. He also, they tell me, loves music and playing ball and having his diaper changed by anyone but his parents. And though he was so angry at me when they called me to come pick him up on his first day that he refused to look me in the eye, he plainly loves it now. Every evening on our stroll home, instead of the protruding bottom lip and pointedly turned head I got on that first day, I am treated to a babbled monologue about his day, or at least that's what I believe he's telling me since I don't pretend to understand what, if anything, he's saying. But the tone is unmistakably that of a ten-month-old who is quite thrilled to be going to preschool before he's able to walk.
And, hey, I'm a member of the Asheville JCC. That's got to be worth something.
I'd like to think I would have a great big laugh and then spend the next week thinking about how glad I am that I didn't dedicate my life to working in the DC Public Defenders Office (that job prospect withered when my interviewer asked how aggressive I was willing to be with the 80-year-old woman accusing my client of rape; um, not very) or to sitting at a beaten old desk somewhere in New England wearing an off-white fisherman's sweater and long permed hair that looks like Andie McDowell's in St. Elmo's Fire writing short stories that are short on everything but precious, tormented descriptions of what it's like to feel depressed (something I'm sure I would have done after college if only I'd had the confidence to apply for the advanced fiction writing class despite learning in the intermediate fiction writing class that my short stories were short on everything but precious, tormented descriptions of what it's like to feel depressed).
The more time has gone by and the more times I've changed course, the more I glory in the unexpected change of plans. There are those who have accused me, in various ways, of being a bit of a dilettante or who view me with the bemused fondness one might feel for a neighbor's small child as having a rather broad flaky streak for someone who has a degree from Columbia Law School and once worked for a big, stuffy DC law firm. (My fondest memory of my 21 months there was when the one openly gay associate told me I had taken over the mantle of the single female associate who tested the boundaries of acceptable lawyer dress. In the early nineties, that meant, most notably, my mini-skirted tangerine DKNY suit paired with black stockings and two-inch black pumps that hurt my feet but looked kind of sexy. I still miss that outfit.)
So I forgive myself for not following my declared intent to post to my blog every day, er, every week, um, well, I had a really big legal project that took me two weeks and it seemed important to finish it even though it meant that the two people who read my blog regularly have given up on me and everyone else has forgotten that I am supposedly writing about our life in Asheville and in fact has perhaps forgotten that I moved to Asheville. I forgive myself for writing three and a half pages of my yoga teacher-sleuth series before being distracted by the aforementioned legal project (hey, a girl's gotta pay the bills) and never managing to have that conversation with the literary agent who happened to be an usher at my wedding and therefore is probably being kinder to me than my meager output justifies. I forgive myself for the dwindling time and attention I have been giving to my yoga practice and for not following all the generous admonitions of friends and former students to start teaching it again. I even forgive myself for not breastfeeding for an entire year, although that turned out to be a bit of an impossibility, a story for another day and another medium in case anyone is really all that interested.
Most of all -- and here, finally, is the point of this post-- I forgive myself for sending The Boy to preschool before he could walk.
That was my very clear plan. I work at home, I like having The Boy at home, and when we were in Long Beach we had the most amazing sitter five hours a day so I could do my work. Which mostly meant the work of washing bottles and doing laundry and shopping for groceries and getting the occasional pedicure. But that wasn't her fault.
How much better would it be, I fantasized, to have the same arrangement in our new Asheville home, where I have a large, sunny office instead of the cramped end of the kitchen table that was my office in Long Beach. Imagine how much more work I'd get done when I no longer had to hide behind my laptop while The Boy was being fed lest he become distracted and abandon the bottle for loudly voiced demands that Mommy come play with him. I believed babysitting rates would be lower in Asheville so I could have more hours closed up in my little sanctuary and I would not only get tons of writing and legal work done but would also have time to read all of the New York Times best novels of 2006 and listen to a daily podcast of Fresh Air.
I was, of course, wrong about every detail of this fantasy, although that's not why The Boy ended up in preschool at the Jewish Community Center.
Here's another one of those moments when I wonder if the person reading this is someone who knows me well enough to cry, "The JCC?! Who cares if she put The Boy in preschool before he can walk? You want to talk shocking, she joined the JCC! Next thing you know, the most non-Jewish Jew I know is going to tell me she's had The Boy circumcised so she can have him Bar Mitzvahed in a bizarre cross-cultural ceremony where every Hebrew prayer is followed by a chant of ohm and The Boy reads from the Torah while sitting in lotus pose1"
Never fear. I remain what The Hubby lovingly calls a "self-hater." I still hide when my friends send out invitations to seders and I never know when Hannukah is and I probably wouldn't fast on Yom Kippur if I didn't already have kind of a self-denial thing where food is concerned. In short, the only reason I joined the JCC was because I am now a mother and mothers do things for their children that they never thought they'd do. Like sending their boy to preschool before he can walk.
It all began innocently enough. The Boy had his nine month check-up with his new pediatrician and Hubby and I were once again congratulating ourselves on how clever we were to move to Asheville, where the pediatricians and young and hip and non-interventionist and, most importantly, charmed by our baby (not, I hasten to add, that Long Beach pediatricians weren't charmed by him as well). Then the subject turned to preschool.
"There are a few really good ones in town," Dr. C. informed me as The Boy clapped his hands wildly and I clapped wildly back. "But there aren't enough for the demand. It's a good idea to get yourself on a waiting list now."
Ah, another milestone of parenthood, one of those moments where you feel a surge of pride and love that your child is growing up while working hard to ignore the nagging voice somewhere in the back of your mind whispering that you will regret this sign of progress when you realize it means that parenthood just got even more difficult. Preschool, after all, means colds and tuition bills and your child preferring his caregivers over you.
But we weren't talking starting preschool. We were just talking about waiting lists. It was a beautiful day, so I decided to take a walk to one of the ones Dr. C. recommended, just to take a look and imagine the distant day when The Boy could walk and I would enroll him in preschool.
This one was in a Episcopal church about a mile from our home. There are many Episcopal churches in Asheville. Billy Graham is Episcopalian. The Billy Graham Training Center is located near Asheville. These are things I did not know before I moved to Asheville. This particular Episcopalian church, however, is not, as far as I know, affiliated with Billy Graham.
The Boy and I casually entered the church office, acting for all we were worth like it was the most natural thing in the world for a transplanted faux Jew and her uncircumcised son to enter the office of an Episcopalian church in Asheville.
"I wanted to learn more about the day care program," I explained to the perfectly welcoming woman there. People in Asheville are very nonjudgmental. "And maybe put him on the waiting list."
"Oh, the child care center is completely separate from the church," she said. I had a fleeting image of her waiting until I left the office and then snorting, "She's obviously not Episcopalian," to her co-workers, but decided she was too nice to do anything of the sort. She proved me right by adding, "I'll take you there."
And so she did, through several doors, across the lobby, and past the group of volunteers bickering about how best to sort donated sweaters for a church sale. She pointed to a pair of doors with bright children's drawings around them.
I walked through them and wandered down the hall clutching the stroller like a golden ticket into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Surely there was no better proof than a stroller -- with a little boy in it, no less -- that I belonged there and was not a bad person like the spy who I vaguely recall being in the Gene Wilder version of the movie. I remember him being very scary and having small glasses with lenses that I took to be the kind that turn dark gray in bright light.
I headed for the one open door and found an office staffed by a woman with the practiced but genuine smile of someone who works in a preschool and explained why we were there. She didn't seem to wonder why this strange woman had wandered unannounced into her preschool to gaze upon the vulnerable sleeping children. If we had been in Long Beach, I'd have been face down on the ground by then with my wrists in handcuffs and my boy in the arms of a Social Services worker.
Luckily, we were in Asheville, and instead of calling the police, the woman took us to the playground, where a few of the kids who apparently take short naps were playing. The Boy was entranced. I was hooked. The woman told me spots usually open up in the spring. Perfect.
Two days later, on one of our Mommy and The Boy Fridays, The Boy and I were playing in City Bakery, one of his favorite places in the world because everyone smiles at him and the floors are clean enough that Mommy lets him crawl around and sometimes Daddy comes to see us in and doesn't even flinch when The Boy slobbers cookie crumbs on his work shirt. We were just getting ready to go when we spotted our neighbor, M.
I told her The Boy was now on a waiting list for preschool. "R.'s school is right up the block," she said, referring to her three-year-old daughter with the huge grin and joyful laugh. "Come on. I'll show it to you."
This preschool, by the way, is also in an Episcopalian church. As I may have mentioned, there are many Episcopalian churches in Asheville. Which means the odds didn't exactly favor The Boy ending up at the one Jewish preschool. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Right now, we are at R.'s school. Jack is surrounded by R. and her classmates, smiling his almost-three-toothed grin as they pat his head and cry, "It's a baby!" I have noticed that three-year-olds are thrilled with babies, as if in their newly found state of consciousness small, nonsentient beings are proof that they are the big boys and girls their parents assure them they are when coaxing them to go to bed or to stop teasing the dog.
Quick as a wink, I was in another office, filling out the forms to put The Boy on another preschool waiting list, thrilling in the delicious and rare combination of motherhood and efficiency. I thought we had an in when the director mentioned that she had once attended Cal State Long Beach, but all she offered was a discussion of our old neighborhood and how much we both missed Trader Joe's. When she told me she had adopted her sons from Vietnam, I eagerly told her about The Boy's forthcoming Chinese sister, but that didn't seem to buy us the right to leapfrog over even one waiting list kid either.
Still, I reminded myself, we were in no hurry. True, the pediatrician reckoned The Boy would be walking by his one year check up in December. But that was still a few months away and surely some parent would leave Asheville in January so my boy could have their child's place in preschool.
To complete the trifecta of best-preschools-in-the-area, I had to visit the JCC. I had heard good things about it. The Boy's cousin once went to some after-school programs there and loved it. It is a lovely half-mile walk from our house. But, as I many have mentioned, I have this weird fear of being associated with people who are like me.
Our first visit didn't help. The JCC lobby was filled with loaf upon loaf of challah bread to be distributed for Sukkhot. My skin began to itch.
We were stopped in the lobby by a sign-in log and a volunteer retired schoolteacher from New Jersey. How was she to know that, while it might thrill her to inform me two of the other mothers in the preschool were lawyers, it made me want to run screaming out the doors and into a nice, safe Episcopalian church?
When the head of the preschool appeared with Blackberry in hand to schedule an appointment when I would be allowed to view this well regarded preschool, I was pretty certain I knew which one was running a distant third to the others.
The scheduled tour didn't help. Along with The Boy and I, a miserable looking pregnant woman trudged after the preschool director as she informed us of the name of each class (Hebrew words that the two-to-five-year-olds in attendance would be far more qualified to define for you than I) and how long the teacher had been at the school. Relevant information, I suppose, but where were the kids crowding around The Boy and convincing both him and me that he had to start school tomorrow if not sooner?
By the time we crossed the street to visit the separate little house where the children under two play, I was merely being polite. The most interesting part of the tour, as far as I could tell, was hearing that the sullen pregnant woman already had three boys, had been on "the Depo Provera" when she got pregnant, and was carrying twins.
Figuring The Boy should at least have some fun at this school, I helped him stand holding onto a toddler-sized table. He grinned at me, and the happiness his smiles spark melted over just a little bit to the preschool.
The director peeled herself away from the discussion of how not thrilled the pregnant woman was to be pregnant and crouched down so as to better coo at The Boy.
"You know," she said with her first smile at me since we had met, "I could get him in here right away if you join the JCC."
Joining the JCC entitles you to jump to the top of the preschool waiting list. Being Jewish does not entitle you to jump to the top of the preschool waiting list, as I learned after writing "Jewish" in big letters on the waiting list form. It was the first time I had written anything on a form asking my religion and will undoubtedly be the last.
We went outside in the yard, where the kids were playing on a small plastic slide and in a colorful playhouse. They waved buckets and action figures at the caregivers. The Boy sat by himself for a while examining pieces of grass while I chatted with one of the caregivers. I liked her, I noted.
"Do the kids who can't walk yet get to come outside too?" I asked. The Boy crawled toward another child and grabbed at his ear.
"Oh, of course," she assured me as I pried The Boy's fingers from his new friend's head. "If they don't like crawling on the grass we'll spread out some blankets for them."
The Boy enthusiastically reached for another child's nose, and I reasoned that he is too social a being to be shut up at home with a marginal babysitter (I didn't have high hopes when I resorted to Craig's List, but I was out of options). He'd be walking within a few months and he can get around pretty darn well crawling and I convinced myself he wouldn't end up sitting in a corner crying while the other kids played and distracted the caregivers. I didn't have my checkbook with me, so I didn't join the JCC until the next day.
The Boy has been going to school for a little over a week now. He still can't walk, but he loves to crawl after one of his classmates who can. He also, they tell me, loves music and playing ball and having his diaper changed by anyone but his parents. And though he was so angry at me when they called me to come pick him up on his first day that he refused to look me in the eye, he plainly loves it now. Every evening on our stroll home, instead of the protruding bottom lip and pointedly turned head I got on that first day, I am treated to a babbled monologue about his day, or at least that's what I believe he's telling me since I don't pretend to understand what, if anything, he's saying. But the tone is unmistakably that of a ten-month-old who is quite thrilled to be going to preschool before he's able to walk.
And, hey, I'm a member of the Asheville JCC. That's got to be worth something.
Monday, October 8, 2007
I'm Out There
Okay, plenty of you already knew that I'm out there. But now that I've started blogging, I'm out there, and it's both scary and exhilarating.
How do I know I'm being read by someone other than those who care about me or at least pretend to care because they're kind people? Because I just received a comment from Mars Hill College scolding me for hyperbole in my last post.
It was a really polite and not unwarranted comment. Although I wouldn't say I went as far as hyperbole. I am willing to own up to highlighting certain observations that I find amusing as I settle into life in WNC, as we folks tucked into hills where Tennessee and South Carolina sort of cuddle North Carolina call it. (Look at a map. I'm not hyperbolizing, just coming up with what I and perhaps one or two of your will find an amusing description.)
Here's the honest truth. Hubby and I pushed The Boy in his stroller from Main Street to campus and we really, truly couldn't find anything open. Maybe we missed a big chunk of downtown. Maybe there's more than one campus library. All I know is I would have liked to use the bathroom and I had a really difficult time finding someplace where I could do so. Luckily, "would have liked to use the bathroom" is different from "had to use the bathroom" so my failure did not achieve crisis proportions.
I point this out not to sound defensive, although no matter how assiduously I edit, I'm sure that's exactly how I sound. Rather, I made a promise to myself when I started blogging that I would find my humor in situations and my reaction to them but not in ridiculing particular people. Is that possible? Hardly, since people are frequently an integral part of any situation. But I try not to judge and I try not to feel bad when those I write about feel judged anyhow.
So was I judging Mars Hill College and the students who don't spend their Sundays as I did during my college days -- sprawled on a campus lawn with piles of books at my side and a highlighter in my hand pretending not to be distracted by the far more interesting sight of that cute guy from the hockey team in my Astronomy class and whether I should say hello to him because we had an actual conversation last week during our lab at the campus observatory but what if he doesn't remember me and I end up really embarrassed? Actually, my intent is to poke fun at myself for channeling two Ivy League degrees, years of postgraduate study, membership in the California Bar, and an invitation to apply for tenure at a respected midwestern law school into not doing any work in particular in big town in western North Carolina.
The heart of the joke, of course, is that Asheville isn't anything you'd expect from its size and location. In fact, I haven't seen a single person smoking a corn cob pipe and the folks on my block were as surprised as I when Audrey caught a chicken. The problem is, in poking fun at myself for half-expecting to turn into a hillbilly, I expect my fellow WNC residents to be in on the joke.
Still, I think it's cool that someone from Mars Hill College is reading my blog and has pointed out to me that others who might have a reason to visit Mars Hill College are too. And I think it's another lovely illustration of life here that they were so darned nice about it.
How do I know I'm being read by someone other than those who care about me or at least pretend to care because they're kind people? Because I just received a comment from Mars Hill College scolding me for hyperbole in my last post.
It was a really polite and not unwarranted comment. Although I wouldn't say I went as far as hyperbole. I am willing to own up to highlighting certain observations that I find amusing as I settle into life in WNC, as we folks tucked into hills where Tennessee and South Carolina sort of cuddle North Carolina call it. (Look at a map. I'm not hyperbolizing, just coming up with what I and perhaps one or two of your will find an amusing description.)
Here's the honest truth. Hubby and I pushed The Boy in his stroller from Main Street to campus and we really, truly couldn't find anything open. Maybe we missed a big chunk of downtown. Maybe there's more than one campus library. All I know is I would have liked to use the bathroom and I had a really difficult time finding someplace where I could do so. Luckily, "would have liked to use the bathroom" is different from "had to use the bathroom" so my failure did not achieve crisis proportions.
I point this out not to sound defensive, although no matter how assiduously I edit, I'm sure that's exactly how I sound. Rather, I made a promise to myself when I started blogging that I would find my humor in situations and my reaction to them but not in ridiculing particular people. Is that possible? Hardly, since people are frequently an integral part of any situation. But I try not to judge and I try not to feel bad when those I write about feel judged anyhow.
So was I judging Mars Hill College and the students who don't spend their Sundays as I did during my college days -- sprawled on a campus lawn with piles of books at my side and a highlighter in my hand pretending not to be distracted by the far more interesting sight of that cute guy from the hockey team in my Astronomy class and whether I should say hello to him because we had an actual conversation last week during our lab at the campus observatory but what if he doesn't remember me and I end up really embarrassed? Actually, my intent is to poke fun at myself for channeling two Ivy League degrees, years of postgraduate study, membership in the California Bar, and an invitation to apply for tenure at a respected midwestern law school into not doing any work in particular in big town in western North Carolina.
The heart of the joke, of course, is that Asheville isn't anything you'd expect from its size and location. In fact, I haven't seen a single person smoking a corn cob pipe and the folks on my block were as surprised as I when Audrey caught a chicken. The problem is, in poking fun at myself for half-expecting to turn into a hillbilly, I expect my fellow WNC residents to be in on the joke.
Still, I think it's cool that someone from Mars Hill College is reading my blog and has pointed out to me that others who might have a reason to visit Mars Hill College are too. And I think it's another lovely illustration of life here that they were so darned nice about it.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Natural Livin'
It's been a week since we went to the Natural Living Fair, but it must not have rubbed off on me because I've spent every day since then being a lawyer. Which, for me, is not very natural. But it does help pay for our support of local, sustainable agriculture and green household cleaning products and the energy efficient (and, not coincidentally, vitally important to my well being) storm windows we are still looking for someone to install. Not only is it not easy being green, it's not cheap either.
It is, however, a nice way to spend our dedicated one weekend day per week exploring our new environs. On other weekends, we've driven to neighboring Weaverville to sit at a lovely bakery/cafe that was undoubtedly nicer than the Starbucks The Boy favored in Long Beach or kind of scuzzy but reputedly hip Insomnia in our our former haunts of West Hollywood. Still, sipping a decaf hazelnut latte and working my way through a chocolate chip macaroon so rich I wasn't hungry for three days doesn't exactly count as authentic hillbilly living.
Then there was our Sunday foray to Mars Hill, home of Mars Hill College. Established in 1858, Mars Hill College appears to uphold a fine tradition of closing everything on Sundays. Everything. College library? Check. Dining hall? Check. Dorms? Check. Quaint stores on Main Street not owned by the College? Check, check, and check. The single exception was a soccer match we watched for about fifteen minutes because there was a small square of shade in the stands and it was really hot out and, as I might have mentioned, everything in Mars Hill was closed. Aside from the players on the field, there wasn't a student to be seen anywhere in town. Where do they go? Do they work in the fields or carve their corncob pipes on Sundays? Or does the answer to this mystery lie somewhere in the website's mention of the school's Baptist tradition?
Last weekend our exploration led us to the Natural Living Fair in Mills River. Who could resist an event billed as "a celebration of sustainable living in the southern Appalachians"? Certainly not us. Hubby pulled on his Birkenstocks, I gulped down a breakfast of organic oats and almond milk, and we loaded The Boy into our reasonably gas-conscious Honda CRV.
Soon we were headed down the winding road toward Deefields retreat, lined up behind a Subaru Outback and a Honda Pilot. Plainly we fit the target demographic of the Natural Living Fair -- people who really want to save the environment but also really want that extra cargo space and so purchase a crossover while apologetically telling all their friends that it's not an SUV.
We parked in a dusty sort-of field and marveled at the clear, warm skies. September was drawing to a close and I could still wear open-toed shoes. This California girl was feeling good and open to a sustainable living adventure.
The adventurer in me wavered a bit at the sight of the meager array of activities set in a straggling line on the grounds that reminded me of the dusty faded-ness of my long-ago summers at Camp Kennolyn. A group of children galloped by bearing the unmistakable signs of homeschooling: longish hair, sturdy shoes, and clothing that their mothers only hoped they would wear unself-consciously for the rest of their lives. No, that boy in the tie-died tee-shirt and shiny black stretch pants tucked into white socks will one day rebel with all the fury of a fourteen-year-old boy. Puberty, as we all know, happens whether you are home schooled or not.
We opted to pass up the lecture on building your own greenhouse, although the couple buying tickets in front of us seemed quite eager to ensure that the whole thing hadn't been built during the Saturday lecture. Instead, we headed for the vendors because what could be better than living sustainably but still getting to buy stuff?
The best stuff to buy, apparently, if you are live in the Asheville area and are into natural living but aren't really doing it, are drums. The drum vendor was, in fact, doing a cracking business. Excuse me, a thumping business. Everywhere we went, smallish men with shaggy hair and Birkenstocks were comparing their shiny new drums with shy, happy smiles. I tried to picture our neighbors setting up a drum circle in the middle of the street one Friday night and couldn't quite do it. While there are undoubtedly some happening drum circles in Asheville, we just don't live in that world. But I'm happy to know it exists.
What we are also unlikely to see on our block, even with its rich history of chicken farming, are goats. And, because The Boy is unlikely to see goats on our block, encountering them at the Natural Living Fair was worth the price of admission.
He perused them carefully with that fat-cheeked scowl of concentration he gets when pushing buttons on the Tivo remote and fast-forwarding the show I'm trying to watch or grabbing the pink Razr phone he covets from my hands as I call the West Coast. Four legs, fur, he seemed to be thinking. Yet somehow not dog. His mouth worked with the temptation to say his favorite word, but he resisted the urge. He didn't know what to call these things, but they sure were interesting. Until we pulled out a camera and the goats were forgotten in his eagerness to pose with that big, two-toothed grin we love so much. At least we have pictures of him with goats in the background.
The goats were definitely the high point. A lot better than the garbled, PC puppet show where a yellow space creature traveled to India to make fun of western notions of yoga and say a bunch of Hindi words that no one in the audience was likely to remember if they didn't already know them. (The term "preaching to the choir" comes to mind.) Definitely more interesting than the hopeful collection of food stands -- except that one from Greenlife, where Hubby got a decent brautwurst but, sadly, couldn't buy a beer. (Beer, it turns out, is perfectly natural but a big pain if you are getting permits for a natural living fair.) Of course, we didn't have to drive out to Mills River to buy food from Greenlife, since it's a 10-minute walk from our house. And while Hubby and I thought it was pretty fun to dance with The Boy to the bluegrass band, he didn't find it nearly as hilarious as we did and looked kind of dizzy and bored.
Still, we spent a lovely couple of hours outdoors, and I did learn a thing or two. I learned that I will never home school The Boy, not that it was ever a consideration to begin with. I learned that I'm not all that interested in owning my own drum or in socializing with people who do. And I learned that the Port-a-Potties at natural living fairs are pretty much the same as they are everywhere else, except maybe a little bit cleaner, which was nice.
So does this mean that I am destined to live unnaturally? Maybe. Or maybe we all do what we can and just strive to do better. Honestly, it feels pretty good to live someplace where people care about these things. Because I do care, and that must be worth something.
It is, however, a nice way to spend our dedicated one weekend day per week exploring our new environs. On other weekends, we've driven to neighboring Weaverville to sit at a lovely bakery/cafe that was undoubtedly nicer than the Starbucks The Boy favored in Long Beach or kind of scuzzy but reputedly hip Insomnia in our our former haunts of West Hollywood. Still, sipping a decaf hazelnut latte and working my way through a chocolate chip macaroon so rich I wasn't hungry for three days doesn't exactly count as authentic hillbilly living.
Then there was our Sunday foray to Mars Hill, home of Mars Hill College. Established in 1858, Mars Hill College appears to uphold a fine tradition of closing everything on Sundays. Everything. College library? Check. Dining hall? Check. Dorms? Check. Quaint stores on Main Street not owned by the College? Check, check, and check. The single exception was a soccer match we watched for about fifteen minutes because there was a small square of shade in the stands and it was really hot out and, as I might have mentioned, everything in Mars Hill was closed. Aside from the players on the field, there wasn't a student to be seen anywhere in town. Where do they go? Do they work in the fields or carve their corncob pipes on Sundays? Or does the answer to this mystery lie somewhere in the website's mention of the school's Baptist tradition?
Last weekend our exploration led us to the Natural Living Fair in Mills River. Who could resist an event billed as "a celebration of sustainable living in the southern Appalachians"? Certainly not us. Hubby pulled on his Birkenstocks, I gulped down a breakfast of organic oats and almond milk, and we loaded The Boy into our reasonably gas-conscious Honda CRV.
Soon we were headed down the winding road toward Deefields retreat, lined up behind a Subaru Outback and a Honda Pilot. Plainly we fit the target demographic of the Natural Living Fair -- people who really want to save the environment but also really want that extra cargo space and so purchase a crossover while apologetically telling all their friends that it's not an SUV.
We parked in a dusty sort-of field and marveled at the clear, warm skies. September was drawing to a close and I could still wear open-toed shoes. This California girl was feeling good and open to a sustainable living adventure.
The adventurer in me wavered a bit at the sight of the meager array of activities set in a straggling line on the grounds that reminded me of the dusty faded-ness of my long-ago summers at Camp Kennolyn. A group of children galloped by bearing the unmistakable signs of homeschooling: longish hair, sturdy shoes, and clothing that their mothers only hoped they would wear unself-consciously for the rest of their lives. No, that boy in the tie-died tee-shirt and shiny black stretch pants tucked into white socks will one day rebel with all the fury of a fourteen-year-old boy. Puberty, as we all know, happens whether you are home schooled or not.
We opted to pass up the lecture on building your own greenhouse, although the couple buying tickets in front of us seemed quite eager to ensure that the whole thing hadn't been built during the Saturday lecture. Instead, we headed for the vendors because what could be better than living sustainably but still getting to buy stuff?
The best stuff to buy, apparently, if you are live in the Asheville area and are into natural living but aren't really doing it, are drums. The drum vendor was, in fact, doing a cracking business. Excuse me, a thumping business. Everywhere we went, smallish men with shaggy hair and Birkenstocks were comparing their shiny new drums with shy, happy smiles. I tried to picture our neighbors setting up a drum circle in the middle of the street one Friday night and couldn't quite do it. While there are undoubtedly some happening drum circles in Asheville, we just don't live in that world. But I'm happy to know it exists.
What we are also unlikely to see on our block, even with its rich history of chicken farming, are goats. And, because The Boy is unlikely to see goats on our block, encountering them at the Natural Living Fair was worth the price of admission.
He perused them carefully with that fat-cheeked scowl of concentration he gets when pushing buttons on the Tivo remote and fast-forwarding the show I'm trying to watch or grabbing the pink Razr phone he covets from my hands as I call the West Coast. Four legs, fur, he seemed to be thinking. Yet somehow not dog. His mouth worked with the temptation to say his favorite word, but he resisted the urge. He didn't know what to call these things, but they sure were interesting. Until we pulled out a camera and the goats were forgotten in his eagerness to pose with that big, two-toothed grin we love so much. At least we have pictures of him with goats in the background.
The goats were definitely the high point. A lot better than the garbled, PC puppet show where a yellow space creature traveled to India to make fun of western notions of yoga and say a bunch of Hindi words that no one in the audience was likely to remember if they didn't already know them. (The term "preaching to the choir" comes to mind.) Definitely more interesting than the hopeful collection of food stands -- except that one from Greenlife, where Hubby got a decent brautwurst but, sadly, couldn't buy a beer. (Beer, it turns out, is perfectly natural but a big pain if you are getting permits for a natural living fair.) Of course, we didn't have to drive out to Mills River to buy food from Greenlife, since it's a 10-minute walk from our house. And while Hubby and I thought it was pretty fun to dance with The Boy to the bluegrass band, he didn't find it nearly as hilarious as we did and looked kind of dizzy and bored.
Still, we spent a lovely couple of hours outdoors, and I did learn a thing or two. I learned that I will never home school The Boy, not that it was ever a consideration to begin with. I learned that I'm not all that interested in owning my own drum or in socializing with people who do. And I learned that the Port-a-Potties at natural living fairs are pretty much the same as they are everywhere else, except maybe a little bit cleaner, which was nice.
So does this mean that I am destined to live unnaturally? Maybe. Or maybe we all do what we can and just strive to do better. Honestly, it feels pretty good to live someplace where people care about these things. Because I do care, and that must be worth something.
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